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# Study of Coherent and Incoherent Plasma Emissions: Role of Plasma Wave Excitation and Breaking

## Abstract

Here we experimentally map the dynamics of electron plasma waves in laser solid interaction. We do time resolved measurements of second harmonic and hard X-ray generation from interaction of intense ($`10^{16}Wcm^2`$, 100 fs, 800nm) laser with a pre-plasma generated on a solid surface. The parameter space explored in this time resolved study includes variation of scale length, laser polarization and laser intensity in conjunction. These measurements done together brings novel features of strongly driven electron plasma wave behavior, which have not been explored experimentally so far. We model the results in terms of Resonance Absorption and Wave-Breaking mechanisms. The Harmonic and X-ray emission show contrasting behaviour, which indicates pitfalls in trying to increase harmonic efficiencies by brute force. However by simple adjustments, we observe that hard X-rays can be enhanced or controlled upto two orders of magnitude and second harmonic upto one order of magnitude under optimum conditions. These results should help us understand the governing mechanisms for short wavelength generation and fast particle generation to develop more efficient sources for application purposes.

The advent of short pulse and high peak power laser technology has fuelled development of new sources of light and fast particles. This also has resulted in development of new ideas and physics behind interaction of high intensity light with matter. There is immense interest in understanding and increasing efficiency of High Harmonic Generation (HHG) from different media like gases, solids, clusters and liquid drops etc. HHG is the most promising way of creating XUV Kapteyn ; Solid ; Others  and water-window photon sources Krausz  for applications in lithography, real time imaging of biological samples. Similarly the electron and ion acceleration using high power lasers has resulted in advances in realizing Tabletop particle accelerator schemes Hegelich . Another important area concerns the yeilds and applications of short pulse X-ray sources using laser-solid interaction Bastiani ,Linde  for probing atomic and nuclear motions.

In intense laser-solid iteraction, which is our main concern in this work (although the reults may be valid for liquids, clusters as well), it is a common knowledge that the collective processes like resonance absorption and plasma oscillations play an important role in high harmonic and X-ray generation. The resonance absorption phenomenon has been expensively studied in literature. Since it is leads to strong excitation of electron plasma waves (EPW) near critical density, the growth and decay of these plasma waves thus plays crucial role. Such dynamical aspects of plasma waves have been theoretically been studied extensively using analytical and numerical techniques, although experimental verification and understanding is still lagging much behind. As an example the concept of electron plasma wavebreaking invoked first by Dawson Dawson  is particularly intresting and significant Coffey ; Mulser  as it has been understood as the mechanism responsible for the generation of fast particles observed in laser-solid experiments. However hardly any direct experimental evidence of the effect in context of high intensity laser plasma interaction. There has been one experimental report Gizzi  invoking wavebreaking (WB), however, it does not go into details of the phenomenon, but stops merely at hinting towards the existence of wavebreaking phenomenon. In view of ever increasing intensities of lasers it seems inevitable that plasma waves of large amplitudes do not break. Thus undoubtedly, there is immense importance of EPW dynamics in deciding the efficiencies of plasma emmission both of coherent type (High Harmonic Genration) and incoherent type (fast particle and hard X-ray generation).

We here do an detailed experimental study and modelling of the EPW phenomenon over large parameter space. The parameters that were simultaneously varied in conjunction for this time resolved study included the scale length of plasma, the laser polarization, the pump laser internsity, the prepulse laser intensity. The observables include pump reflectivity, probe reflectivity, Second Harmonic Generated (SHG) by the pump, Hard-Xray emmitted and the spectrum of the reflected fundamental and SHG. We establish important mechanisms, which operate and control harmonic and X-ray emissions from plasmas. The simple optimization of conditions is shown to lead to X-ray enhancements by two orders of magnitude and second harmonic by one order of magntitude. The results also show that parameter space for optimisation of X-ray and harmonic yields can be very different and the difference results from process of plasma wave breaking. The results also indicate pitfalls in simple minded approach to increase harmonic efficiencies by brute force increase of laser intensity.

The experimental set-up consists $`10^{16}Wcm^2`$ pump (100 fs, 800nm) incident at $`45^{}`$ with respect to target normal. The prepulse is 50 times weaker than pump and at near normal incidence. We monitor the input laser, reflected pump, reflected probe with photodiodes (Hamamatsu) and the second harmonic generated by pump is monitored with PMT (Hamamatsu). The SHG emmission was observed to be specular in our experiments. The target used in this study is solid glass (BK7) $`2\mathrm{"}\times 2\mathrm{"}\times 5mm`$ pieces. Finally NaI (Tl) detector appropriately gated with respect to laser, placed at $`22.5^{}`$ with respect to target normal is used to measure the hard X-ray emissions from the plasma in the energy range from 30 to 500 keV. This experiment involved variation of scale length of preplasma and polarization plane of main laser pulse and intensities of pump and probe, unlike any previous studies where at most one variation was considered at a time leading to incomplete picture.

First we compare the hard X-ray and SHG measurements as a function of prepulse to main pulse time delay (i.e. as function of scale length of preplasma) at fixed polarization of pump (p-polarization), fixed pump intensity ($`10^{16}Wcm^2`$), fixed probe intensity (50 times weaker than pump). The results are shown in figure 1. We have plotted integrated hard X-ray yeild over 30-500keV and second harmonic efficiency which defined as $`\eta =I(2\omega )/I^2(\omega )`$ with time delay. In both the plots the data are normalized with respect to yeilds obtained with the pump alone acting, thus the baseline value for pump alone acting is normailzed to unity in each case. The most conspicuous feature is contrary behaviour of Second Harmonic generation (SHG) and X-rays near vicinity of 24 ps delay. The X-ray yield is seen to enhance by a factor of 140 ,i.e. more than tw order of magntitude, when compared to yield with pump alone indicating large amount of fast electron generation near 24 ps. The SHG on the other hand shows a dip around 24 ps thus exhibiting perfect anti-correlation with X-ray data. The maximum enhancement in SHG at the peak values around the dip is 3 times when normalized with respect to main pulse acting alone. At the dip the SHG is still about 1.5 times the value without prepulse. The baseline, which has been normalized to unity here, corresponds to absolute SHG efficiency of $`5\times 10^6`$ with p-pump and at least 50 times lower for s-pump alone.

Next instead of comparing total yeilds of X-rays with and without prepulse we now spectrally resolve the X-ray yeilds and compare hot electron temperatures at different positions. One with only pump acting which corresponds to points on baseline of figure 1(b) and other with prepulse dealy of 24 ps that at position where X-ray yeild enhances by a factor of 140. The result shown in figure two shows enhanced hot electron temperatures at 24 ps. Comparison of the hot electron spectra shows that; in absense of prepulse, we get 3 keV as main temperature component, while the second component is almost insignificant as seen from statistical weights. With the prepulse at 24 ps, the we require two temperatures for good fit, 5 and 37 keV, the second temperature being very prominent unlike the first case. This indicates strong RA is operational and large quantity of fast particles is being generated, with optimised prepulse delay of 24 ps. A resonable explanation of these results lies in the phenomenon of excitation of plasma waves via Resonance Absorption (RA). RA is crucially dependent on the scale length of the plasma and the component of electric field parallel to density gradient driving the plasma waves i.e. polarization of the pump pulse. It is expected that at certain optimum length scale there will be maximal RA, where plasma waves are driven very hard. Similarly in going from S- to P-polarization we are effectively increasing the E field component along density gradient, which is driving plasma waves under conditions of resonance absorption.

We next establish these facts quantitavely using the reflectivity of the main pulse to deduce the scale lengths of preplasma(Fig 3). The top x-axis is time delay and bottom axis represents scale length resulting from prepulse deduced by numerically calculated reflectivity (solid curve) solving Helmoltz equation in a sharp density profile Milchberg , with a collision frequency of $`0.05\omega `$. Thus the scale length at 25 ps where we see phenomenon of enhancement of X-rays and simultaneous dip of SHG is $`\lambda `$ under our conditions. This region around $`L\lambda `$ (time delay 15-25 ps) corresponds to maximum absorption and hence large number of plasma waves are strongly driven in this resonance absorption region. (Remember the defination of scale length is important, here we are deducing actually total plasma length, scale length may be smaller than this, depending on the profile used.)

Now that resonance absorption(RA) is clearly established, we attempt to explain the figure 1 and 2. As noted earlier in near resonance region we do expect large amplitude plasma waves driven strongly by the laser. Hence these plasma waves when damping can be invoked to explain enhanced X-ray yeilds and temperatures. However this explanation is clearly not sufficient when to attempt to exlplain the SHG data, in particular the strong dip around eactly the position where large amount of fast particles are being generated. Thus we have to look more carefully at the behavior of strongly driven plasma waves. As the SHG current is assumed to come from two contribitions one term proportional to pondemotive force which will be effective both for s and p-polarization and other term proportional to $`.n_eE`$ which is strongly active for plasma waves driven by p-polarized laser. Now if the plasma waves start breaking when driven too hard the second term which is main contribution will be disrupted and hence we will get decrease of SHG. Since we are actually driving plasma very very hard hence it is not unexpected that wave breaking will set in when density fluctuation becomes of the order of unperturbed density itself. Thus the wavebreaking phenomenon which is theoretically understood very well has to be invoked here to undertand the results. In addition here we can measure the exact conditions for the onset of wave breaking. This should help in testing the theoretical and numerical wave breaking models .

Now we model the physics of wavebreaking relevant to our conditions and parameters. The starting point is the equation $`k_peE_p/m\omega ^21`$ for breaking of the plasma wave i.e. the ratio of the amplitude of the oscillation of the electron to the wavelength of the plasma wave, where $`k_p,E_p`$ is the wave vector and electric field of the plasma wave. Further observing $`E_p=E_d/ϵ`$, where $`E_d`$ is the driving electric field and $`ϵ`$ is dielectric constant. The dielectric constant will have a non zero minimum value at critical layer, (due to finite width of resonance region?) and minimum value is obtained by averaging over half a wavelength aroung resonance. We get $`ϵ_{min}=\pi /(2k_{min}L)=\lambda _p/4L`$, where L is plasma scale length. Now we use $`k_p=2\pi /\lambda _p`$, and $`\lambda _p=\lambda _{de}^{2/3}L^{1/3}`$ for thermal plasma waves. Now putting this together and using the defination $`E_{th}=kT_e/e\lambda _{de}`$ substituting in the original condition, we get the wave breaking condition (WBC) as $`(E_d/E_{th})(L/\lambda _{de})^{1/3}1`$. The driver field can either be calucated numerically again using solution of Helmoltz calculation in steep density profile done above for fitting pump reflectivity or one can simply get the resonance absorption from denisov function. Then assuming a temperature of 200 eV, we plot the WBC for different peak laser intensities in figure 4. The flat line at $`WBC=1`$ represents the critical limit necessary for wavebreaking. The denisov function relfectivity is also plotted at the bottom. The WBC for low intensities is not satisfied and hence waves will not break for intensity of order $`10^{14}Wcm2`$. However as we increase the intensity the WBC is satifies over larger and larger scale lengths. At the maximum intensity $`10^{16}Wcm2`$ waves can break over almost upto $`1.5\lambda `$. Hence we verify that wavebreaking does occur comfortably over our range of parameters. In addition this illustrates that wavebreaking is ubiquitous in intense laser plasma interaction studies done around or above $`10^{16}Wcm2`$.

Now we revisit figure 1 with these results. The hard Xray enhancement is explained as during wavebreaking the energy lost by the wave will be converted to kinetic energy of electrons, thus the accelerated electrons will result in enhanced bremsstrahlung, in agreement with our experimental results. In case of SHG we can understand that as the scale length changes, we pass through resonance absorption region where plasma wave amplitude increases to high value leading to breaking of plasma waves. As we know wave breaking results in disruption of the non-linear source current thus explaining the dip observed in SHG. However still we need to explain the non zero value of 1.5 SHG efficiency at dip position at 24 ps. The reason for related to the fact for a given laser pulse which typically has 40-50 laser cycles, each one exciting plasma waves. Thus at each cycle we can define the intensity of inident wave and hence driver field for the plasma wave. Thus we have to view it as highly dynamical situation in 100 fs duration. As we increase peak intensity of laser pulse; at certain critical intesity the plasma waves related to peak of the laser pulse start to break thus reducing SHG, however, the wings of laser still produce SHG efficiently. As pulse peak value of intensity is increased further more and more laser cycles near peak contribute to plasma wavebreaking. However still there is some non-broken waves at the wings which will keep SHG to non zero value. If we make simple estimate in case of peak pulse intensity of $`10^{16}Wcm^2`$, the laser cycles with peak intensity below 1/50 of peak will not break as seen from the figure 4. Now if we estimate for a gaussian pulse roughly 1/10 of energy of pulse is contained in the wings below the wave breaking threshold which will continue to yeild SHG. This clearly is not enough as the dip at 24 ps is only factor of two lower that the maximum SHG efficiency observed, where energy in wings is expected to yeild much lower SHG efficiency. The explanation behind this lies in the fact that even in the case of maximum SHG position in figure 1, there is enough wavebreaking present, which keeps the maximum value of SHG signal low. Hence one should compare the efficiency for 24 ps dip position to the maximum value which would have been there in totally wave breaking free experiment.

To make the situation clear and to substantiate above claims we now study the behavior of SHG with scale length at low and high intensity cases. Figure 5 shows three cases: p-polarized pump at high intensity ($`10^{16}Wcm^2`$), p-polarized pump at low intensity ($`2x10^{15}Wcm^2`$) and s-polarized pump at high intensity ($`10^{16}Wcm^2`$) For the sake of comparison we have multiplied the efficiencies in each case by factor indicated in the figure 5. This is done in such a way that value for pump alone acting is each case is same as for highest intensity p-polarized pump case which as shown already in figure 1 to be normalized to unity. Thus the curve for s-polarized case in reality is a lower in SHG efficiency value by a factor of 65 that of high intensity p-polarized case and the low intensity p-polarized case is a factor of 20 below that of high intensity case. It is obvious from the figure 5 that at low intensities Indeed if we reduce the peak laser pulse intensity we see that maximum SHG efficiency in low intensity case is as large as a factor 13 compared to pump alone acting. Thus this experiment is relatively wavebreaking free version of high intensity strongly wavebreaking case, where the maximum SHG efficiency goes only upto factor of 3 before dipping. Also now the finite non zero SHG efficiency value of 1.5 at the dip at 24 ps in high intensity plot, when compared to maximum value of 13 in low intensity relatively wavebreaking free yeilds a contrast of about a factor of 1.5 to 13, which can be explained to be due SHG generated in the wings of the pulse. This disscussion on comparison of high and low intensity cases also make it clear that wavebreaking is taking place not only in the scale length regime where SHG shows a dip, but over a large range of scalelengths. Further the scale length region of validity of WBC increases with increasing intensity. Finally SHG efficiency for s-polarization although very low can be explained to be due to pondermotive effect and this effect can also keep SHG to a finite value. In addition source of SHG in case of s-polarization is due to imperfect polarization state of the laser (purity 99 percent) and focussing geometry effects over the spatial spot size of the laser.

Further we now see the intensity scaling of SHG at fixed delay positions (5ps,21 ps) and polarization state (p-pol). The results are plotted in figure 6. Also plotted are the fits assuming SHG yeild varies as square of incident intensity. We observe that the scling deviates from exponent value of 2, at intensity equivalent 0.1 of the maximum intensity. The deviation from square scaling is also observed to be earlier in case when the delay is at 21 ps i.e. the dip position and final difference in values of fit and observed values is also much larger, than observed at 5 ps.

Now same arguements used above for scale length variation study of wavebreaking can be used in case of polarization variation. As we change the polarization from S to P we are increasing the driving field for elctron plasma waves and hence their amplitude. This ultimately leads to breaking of the waves when a critical limit is reached. Figure 7 shows the dependence of X-ray yield as a function of pump polarization for two cases, with and without prepulse. With prepulse at 24 ps (maximum yeild position in figure 1), we observe that going from S-pol to P-pol we can enhance X-ray yield by two orders of magnitude. Without prepulse however maximum change is atmost a factor of 2. Thus in conjunction with a prepulse, laser polarization can be a very effective and simple way to control X-ray yield over a wide dynamic range. Inset of fig 7 shows the ratio of two yields above i.e. with and without prepulse as function of polarization. The enhancement is maximum for P-polarization and insignificant for S-polarization. This demonstrates of a simple way to control X-ray yeilds over two orders of magntitude. Merely by rotating the half wave plate one can tune X-ray yeilds to a factor of 100 if there is a prepulse present at right delay. If however prepulse were not present the rotation of half wave plate will not yeild even a factor 2 variation.

Same effect can be observed in SHG also where the wavebreaking is brought about clearly. We compare polarization dependence of SHG ahown in figure 8. The SHG behaviour without and with a prepulse at 7ps, which is position of peak enhencement of SHG is completely opposite to that of X-rays. There is enhancement in both cases i.e. with and without prepulse for all polarization states, however the relative enhancement (the ratio of yields with and without prepulse) is maximum for S-polarization ($`14`$) whereas only 3 for P-polarization (inset fig 3). Comparing insets of figure 7 and figure 8, we have an important observation namely that the enhancement ratio curve as a function of polarization is opposite for X-rays and SHG due to wavebreaking effects.

Finally the spectrum of SHG in direction collinear with reflected pump is shown in figure 9. At negative delay the spectrum is smooth. For p-polarization at positive delays as we go near the dip position the spectrum starts becoming more and more distorted and split.

In conclusion, the novel time resolved simultaneous study of SHG and X-rays as a function of scale length and laser polarization elucidates features of electron plasma wave dynamics. The Harmonic and X-ray emission yeilds are observe over wide range of parameters. We interpret the results in terms of Resonance Absorption and Wave-Breaking mechanisms. The modelling of results is in good agreement with observed results. We propose SHG is a very sensitive indicator of wave breaking and can be useful tool for understanding plasma wave dynamics. Under optimum conditions we observe that hard X-rays can be enhanced by a factor of 100 and second harmonic by factor of 10. The plasma scale length and laser polarization when used in conjunction, provide a wide dynamic range and are thus most effective as controlling parameters of short wavelength sources for application purposes.

We would like to thank D. Mathur, M. Krishnamurthy, P. P. Rajeev, A. K. Dharmadhikari, J.A. Dharmadhikari and M. Anand for discussions and useful suggestions. We also thank S. Narayanan, S. Bagchi and Aoife Bharucha for help.


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# Topological Quantum Field Theories and Operator Algebras

## 1 Introduction

We have seen much fruitful interactions between 3-dimensional topology and operator algebras since the stunning discovery of the Jones polynomial for links  arising from his theory of subfactors  in theory of operator algebras. In this paper, we review the current status of theory of “quantum” topological invariants of $`3`$-manifolds arising from operator algebras. The original discovery of topological invariants arising from operator algebras was for knots and links, as above, rather than $`3`$-manifolds, but here we concentrate on invariants for $`3`$-manifolds. On the way of studying such topological invariants, we naturally go through topological invariants of knots and links. From operator algebraic data, we construct not only topological invariants of $`3`$-manifolds, but also topological quantum field theories of dimension 3, in the sense of Atiyah , as the title of this paper shows, but for simplicity of expositions, we consider mainly complex number-valued topological invariants of oriented compact manifolds of dimension 3 without boundary.

All the constructions of such topological invariants we discuss here are given in the following steps.

1. Obtain combinatorial data arising from representation theory of an operator algebraic system.
2. Realize a manifold concretely using basic building blocks.
3. Multiply or add the complex numbers appearing in the data in Step 1, in a way specified by how the basic building blocks are composed in Step 2, and compute the resulting complex number.
4. Prove that the complex number in Step 3 is independent of how the basic building blocks are composed, as long as the homeomorphism class of the resulting manifold is fixed.

In Step 1, the prototype of the representation theory for operator algebras is the one for finite groups. That is, for a finite group $`G`$, we consider representatives of unitary equivalences classes of irreducible unitary representations. This finite set has an algebraic structure arising from the tensor product operation of representations, and it produces combinatorial data such as fusion rules and $`6j`$-symbols. In our setting, we work on some form of representation theory of operator algebraic systems analogous to this classical representation theory of finite groups.

Steps 2 and 3 already appear in the original definition of the Jones polynomial , where each link is represented as a closure of a braid, the Jones polynomial is defined from such a braid through certain representation theory, and then it is proved that this polynomial is independent of a choice of a braid for a fixed link.

This strategy should work, in principle, in any dimension, but so far, most of the interesting constructions arising from operator algebras are for dimension 3, so we concentrate in this case in this survey.

There have been many constructions of such topological invariants for 3-dimensional manifolds and two of them are particularly related to operator algebras. One is a construction of Turaev-Viro  in a generalized form due to Ocneanu, and the other is the one by Reshetikhin-Turaev . For these two, the triple of operator algebraic systems, representation theoretic data, and the topological invariants in each case is listed as in Table 1.

Since both operator algebras and (topological) quantum field theory are of infinite dimensional nature, one expects a direct and purely infinite dimensional construction of the latter from the former, but such a construction has not been known yet. All the constructions below go through representation theoretic combinatorial data who “live in” finite dimensional spaces, so one could eliminate the initial infinite dimensionality entirely, if one is interested in only new constructions and computations of topological invariants of 3-dimensional manifolds. Still, the infinite dimensional framework of operator algebras is useful, as we see below, even in such a case, because it gives a conceptually convenient working place for various constructions and computations.

We also mention one reason we operator algebraists are interested in this type of theory, even purely from a viewpoint of operator algebras. Classification theory is a central topic in theory of operator algebras, and representation theory gives a very important invariant for classification. Since a series of great works of A. Connes in 1970’s, it is believed that under some nice analytic condition, generally called “amenability”, a certain representation theory should give a complete invariant of operator algebraic systems, such as operator algebras themselves, group actions on them, or certain families of operator algebras. For this reason, studies of representation theories in operator algebraic theory are quite important since old days of theory of operator algebras. What is new after the emergence of the Jones theory is that the representation theory now has a “quantum” nature, whatever it means.

The author thanks R. Longo, N. Sato, and H. Wenzl for comments on this manuscript.

## 2 Turaev-Viro-Ocneanu invariants

Here we review the Turaev-Viro-Ocneanu invariants of 3-dimensional manifolds. The book  is a basic reference.

Our operator algebra here is a so-called von Neumann algebra, which is an algebra of bounded linear operators on a certain Hilbert space that is closed under the $``$-operation and the strong operator topology. (Here we consider only infinite dimensional separable Hilbert spaces, though a general theory exists for other Hilbert spaces.) Requiring closedness under the weak operator topology, we obtain the same class of operator algebras. If we use a norm topology, we have a wider class of operator algebras called $`C^{}`$-algebras. Although von Neumann algebras give a subclass of $`C^{}`$-algebras, it is not very useful, except for some elementary aspects of the theory, to regard a von Neumann algebra as a $`C^{}`$-algebra, because a von Neumann algebra is far from being a “typical” $`C^{}`$-algebra. For example, most of natural $`C^{}`$-algebras are separable, as Banach spaces, but von Neumann algebras are never separable, unless they are finite dimensional. We assume, as usual, that a von Neumann algebra contains the identity operator, which is the unit of the algebra. A commutative $`C^{}`$-algebra having a unit is the algebra of all the continuous functions on a compact Hausdorff space, and a commutative von Neumann algebra is the algebra of $`L^{\mathrm{}}`$-functions on a measure space. This gives a reason for a basic idea that a general $`C^{}`$-algebra is a “noncommutative topological space” and a general von Neumann algebra is a “noncommutative measure space”. A finite dimensional $`C^{}`$\- or von Neumann algebra is isomorphic to a finite direct sum of full matrix algebras $`M_n(𝐂)`$. In this paper, we deal with only simple von Neumann algebras in the sense that they have only trivial two-sided closed ideals in the strong or weak operator topology. This simplicity is equivalent to triviality of the center of the algebra, and we call such a von Neumann algebra a factor, rather than a simple von Neumann algebra.

In the Murray-von Neumann classification, factors are classified into type I, type II1, type II, and type III. Factors of type I are simply all the bounded linear operators on some Hilbert space, and they are not interesting for the purpose of this survey. We are interested in factors of type II1 in the following two sections and those of type III in the last section. Although technical details on these factors are not necessary for conceptual understanding of the theory, we give brief explanations on how to construct such factors.

We start with a countable group $`G`$. The (left) regular representation gives a unitary representation of $`G`$ on the Hilbert space $`\mathrm{}^2(G)`$. We consider the von Neumann algebra generated by its image. If the group $`G`$ is commutative, the resulting von Neumann algebra is isomorphic to $`L^{\mathrm{}}(\widehat{G})`$. If the group $`G`$ is “reasonably noncommutative” in an appropriate sense, the resulting von Neumann algebra is a factor of type II1. One example of such a group is that of all permutations of a countable set that fix all but finite elements.

Another construction of a factor arises from an infinite tensor product of the $`n\times n`$-matrix algebra $`M_n(𝐂)`$. We can define such an infinite tensor product in an appropriate sense, and then this infinite dimensional algebra has a natural representation on a separable Hilbert space. The von Neumann algebra generated by its image is a type II1 factor and these are all isomorphic, regardless $`n`$. This infinite tensor product also has many other representations on Hilbert spaces and “most” of them generate factors of type III.

The most natural starting point of a representation theory for factors is certainly a study of all representations of a fixed factor on Hilbert spaces. (A factor is an algebra of operators on a certain Hilber space by definition, but we consider representations on other Hilbert spaces. In our setting, it is enough to consider only representations on infinite dimensional separable Hilbert spaces.) We certainly have a natural notion of unitary equivalence for representations of factors of type II1 or III, but this notion is not particularly interesting, as follows. Such representations are never irreducible, and for a fixed type II1 factor, we can classify representations completely, up to unitary equivalence, with a single invariant, called a coupling constant, due to Murray and von Neumann, having values in $`(0,\mathrm{}]`$. (This invariant produces the Jones index as below, and produces something deep in this sense, but the classification of representations themselves is rather simple and classical.) For factors of type III, the situations are even simpler; they are all unitarily equivalent for a fixed type III factor.

A representation of a factor can be regarded as a (left) module over a factor, trivially. It was Connes who realized first that the right setting for studying representation theory of factors is to study bimodules, rather than modules. That is, we consider two factors $`M`$ and $`N`$, which could be equal, and study a Hilbert space $`H`$ which is a left $`M`$-module and a right $`N`$-module with the two actions commuting. We call such $`H`$ an $`M`$-$`N`$ bimodule and write $`{}_{M}{}^{}H_{N}^{}`$. The situation where both $`M`$ and $`N`$ are of type II1 is technically simpler. We have natural notions of irreducible decomposition, dimensions having values in $`(0,\mathrm{}]`$ which are defined in terms of the coupling constants, contragredient bimodules, and relative tensor products. For example, for two bimodules $`{}_{M}{}^{}H_{N}^{}`$ and $`{}_{N}{}^{}K_{P}^{}`$, we can define an $`M`$-$`P`$ bimodule $`{}_{M}{}^{}H_NK_P`$ and the dimension is multiplicative. For a factor $`M`$, the algebra $`M`$ itself trivially has the left and right actions of $`M`$, so it has a bimodule structure, but this $`M`$ is not a Hilbert space. We have a natural method to put an inner product on $`M`$ and complete it, and in this way, we obtain an $`M`$-$`M`$ bimodule. By an abuse of notation, we often write $`{}_{M}{}^{}M_{M}^{}`$ for this bimodule, by ignoring the completion. This bimodule has dimension one, and plays a role of a trivial representation. In this way, our representation theory is quite analogous to that of a compact group. Connes used a terminology correspondences rather than bimodules. See  for a general theory on bimodules.

Jones initiated studies of inclusions of factors $`NM`$ in . Such $`N`$ is called a subfactor of $`M`$. By an abuse of terminology, the inclusion $`NM`$ is often called a subfactor. Technically simpler situations are that both $`M`$ and $`N`$ are of type II1. Then we have an $`M`$-$`M`$ bimodule $`{}_{M}{}^{}M_{M}^{}`$ as above, and we restrict the left action to the subalgebra $`N`$ to obtain $`{}_{N}{}^{}M_{M}^{}`$. The dimension of this bimodule is called the Jones index of the subfactor $`NM`$ and written as $`[M:N]`$. (This terminology and notation come from an analogy to a notion of an index of a subgroup.) Jones proved in  an astonishing statement that this index takes values in $`\{4\mathrm{cos}^2(\pi /n)n=3,4,5\mathrm{}\}[4,\mathrm{}]`$ and all the values in this set are realized. This is in a sharp contrast to the fact that the coupling constant of a type II1 factor $`M`$ can take all values in $`(0,\mathrm{}]`$. Jones introduced the basic construction whose successive uses produce an increasing sequence $`NMM_1M_2\mathrm{}`$ and using this, he introduced the higher relative commutants and the principal graph for subfactors. Although we do not give their definitions here, we only mention that if the subfactor has index less than 4, then the principal graph is one of the $`A`$-$`D`$-$`E`$ Dynkin diagrams, as noted by Jones. (See \[11, Chapter 9\] for precise definitions.)

It was Ocneanu  who realized that these invariants and further finer structures related to them can be captured by theory of bimodules and that they can be characterized by a set of combinatorial axioms. We explain his theory here. See \[11, Chapter 9\] for more details. We start with a type II1 subfactor $`NM`$ with finite Jones index. (If we have a finite index and one of $`N`$ and $`M`$ is of type II1, then the other is also of type II1 automatically.) Ocneanu’s idea was to develop a representation theory for a pair $`NM`$. We start with $`{}_{N}{}^{}M_{M}^{}`$ and this plays a role of the fundamental representation. We also have $`{}_{M}{}^{}M_{N}^{}`$ and make relative tensor products such as $`{}_{N}{}^{}M_MM_NM_M`$. They are not irreducible in general, so we make irreducible decompositions. We look at all unitary equivalence classes of $`N`$-$`N`$ bimodules arising in this way. In general, we expect to have infinitely many equivalence classes, but it sometimes happens that we have only finitely many equivalence classes. This is the situation we are interested in, and in such a case, we say that the subfactor $`NM`$ has a finite depth. (The terminology “depth” comes from the way of Jones to write higher relative commutants.) This finite depth condition is similar to rationality condition in conformal field theory and quantum group theory. If we have a finite depth, we also have only finitely many equivalence classes of irreducible $`M`$-$`M`$ bimodules arising in the above way. Note that a compact group has only finitely many equivalence classes of irreducible unitary representations if and only if the group is finite. We assume the finite depth condition and fix a finite set of representatives of equivalence classes of irreducible $`N`$-$`N`$ bimodules arising as above from $`NM`$. Note that it contains a trivial bimodule, that for each bimodule in the set, its contragredient bimodule is equivalent to one in the set, and that a relative tensor product of two in the set decomposes into a finite direct sum of irreducible bimodules each of which is equivalent to one in the set. We say such a finite set of bimodules is a finite system of bimodules. Choose three, not necessarily distinct, irreducible $`N`$-$`N`$ bimodules $`A,B,C`$ in the system. Then we can decompose $`A_NB_NC`$ in two ways. That is, we first decompose $`A_NB`$ in one, and we first decompose $`B_NC`$ in the other. In this way, we obtain the “quantum” version of the classical $`6j`$-symbols which produce a complex number from six bimodules and four intertwiners. Such quantum $`6j`$-symbols were known in the quantum group theory, and Ocneanu found that a general system of bimodules produce similar $`6j`$-symbols and that classical properties such as the Frobenius reciprocity also holds in this setting. Associativity of the relative tensor product gives a so-called pentagonal relation as in the classical setting. This finite system of bimodules and quantum $`6j`$-symbols are the combinatorial data arising from a representation theory of a subfactor $`NM`$.

Turaev and Viro  constructed topological invariants of 3-dimensional manifolds using the quantum $`6j`$-symbols for the quantum group $`U_q(sl_2)`$ at roots of unity, and Ocneanu realized that a generalized version of this construction works for general quantum $`6j`$-symbols arising from a subfactor of finite Jones index and finite depth as above. The construction goes as follows for a fixed finite system of bimodules. (See \[11, Chapter 12\] for more details.)

We first make a triangulation of a manifold. That is, we regard a manifold made of gluing faces of finitely many tetrahedra so that we have an empty boundary and compatible orientation. Then we label each of the six edges with bimodules in the system and each of the four faces, triangles, with (co-)isometric intertwiners. When all the tetrahedra are labeled in this way, the quantum $`6j`$-symbol produce a complex number for each labeled tetrahedron. This number is simply a composition of the four intertwiners, up to normalization arising from dimensions of the four bimodules. (The composed intertwiners give a complex number because of irreducibility of the bimodules.) The well-definedness of this number comes from the so-called tetrahedral symmetry of quantum $`6j`$-symbols. Then we multiply all these numbers over all the tetrahedra in the triangulation, and add these products over all isometric intertwiners in an orthonormal basis for each face and over all labeling of edges with bimodules. With an appropriate normalization arising from dimensions of the bimodules, the resulting number is a topological invariant of the original 3-dimensional manifold. In order to prove this topological invariance, one has to prove that the complex number is independent of triangulations of a manifold. The relations of two triangulation of a manifold have been known by Alexander. That is, one triangulation is obtained from the other by successive applications of finitely many local changes of triangulations, called Alexander moves. (This result of Alexander holds in any dimension.) Pachner has proved that a different set of local moves also gives a similar theorem, and this set is more convenient for our purpose. That is, it is enough for us to prove that the above complex number is invariant under each of the Pachner moves. This invariance follows from properties of the quantum $`6j`$-symbols, such as the pentagon relation. So we conclude that the above complex number gives a well-defined topological invariant of 3-dimensional closed oriented manifolds. If we reverse the orientation, the topological invariant becomes the complex conjugate of the original value. In the original setting of Turaev-Viro  based on the quantum $`6j`$-symbols of $`U_q(sl_2)`$, the resulting invariants are real, so they do not detect orientations, but there is an example of a subfactor which produces a non-real invariant for some manifold and thus can detect orientations. (Actually, the original construction of Turaev-Viro  works without orientability.) Also note that in our setting, each intertwiner space has a Hilbert space structure and each dimension of a bimodule, which is sometimes called a quantum dimension, is positive. Such a feature is called unitarity of quantum $`6j`$-symbols, and this unitarity does not necessarily hold in a purely algebraic setting of quantum $`6j`$-symbols for quantum groups. We can apply the same construction by using the system of the $`M`$-$`M`$ bimodules instead of that of the $`N`$-$`N`$ bimodules, but the resulting invariant is the same.

A large class of subfactors are constructed with methods related to classical theory of groups and Hopf algebras, and their “quantum” counterparts, that is, quantum group theory and conformal field theory such as the Wess-Zumino-Witten models. For such subfactors, we have various interesting studies from an operator algebraic viewpoint, but if we are interested only in resulting topological invariants through the above machinery, they do not produce really new invariants. It is, however, expected that we have much wider varieties of subfactors in general. One “evidence” for such expectation is study of Haagerup . By purely combinatorial arguments, he found a list of candidates of subfactors of finite depth in the index range $`(4,3+\sqrt{2})`$, and it seems that most of these are indeed realized. None of them seem to be related to conformal field theory or today’s theory of quantum groups so far. Haagerup himself proved that the first one in the list is indeed realized, and Asaeda and he further proved that another in the list is also realized in . The nature of topological invariants arising from these two subfactors is not understood yet, but we expect that they contain some interesting information. Since the list of Haagerup is only for a small range of the index values, we expect that we would have by far more examples of “exotic” subfactors as mentioned above, but an explicit construction of even a single example is highly difficult. We know almost nothing about topological meaning of invariants arising from such subfactors. Izumi  has some more examples of such interesting subfactors.

## 3 Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants

Another construction of topological invariants due to Reshetikhin-Turaev  requires a “higher symmetry” for combinatorial data arising from a representation theory. This higher symmetry is called a modularity of a tensor category. It is also called a nondegenerate braiding.

Wenzl has a series of work , partly with V. G. Turaev, on related constructions, but here we concentrate on two methods producing a modular tensor category from a general operator algebraic representation theory. One is within subfactor theory, due to Ocneanu, and presented in this section, and the other is due to Longo, Müger and the author , explained in the next section.

We first give a brief explanation on braiding. In a representation theory of a group, two tensor products $`\pi \sigma `$ and $`\sigma \pi `$ are obviously unitarily equivalent for two representations $`\pi `$ and $`\sigma `$, but for two $`N`$-$`N`$ bimodules $`A`$, $`B`$, we have no reason to expect that $`A_NB`$ and $`B_NA`$ are equivalent, and they are indeed not equivalent in general. It is, however, possible that for all $`A`$ and $`B`$ in a finite system, we have equivalence of $`A_NB`$ and $`B_NA`$. If we can choose isomorphisms of these two bimodules in a certain compatible way simultaneously for all bimodules in the system, we say that the system has a braiding. See  for more details, where an equivalent, but slightly different formulation using endomorphisms, rather than bimodules, is presented.

The isomorphism between $`A_NB`$ and $`B_NA`$ can be graphically represented as an overcrossing of two wires labeled with $`A`$ and $`B`$, respectively. Then the assumption on “compatibility” implies, for example, the Yang-Baxter equation, which represents the Reidemeister move of type III as in Fig. 1, where each crossing represents an isomorphism and each hand side is a composition of three such isomorphisms.

In representation theory of groups, the tensor product operation is trivially commutative in the above sense. This is “too commutative” in the sense that we have no distinction between an overcrossing and an undercrossing in the above graphical representation, and this is not very useful for construction of topological invariants, obviously. So, in order to obtain an interesting topological invariant, an overcrossing and an undercrossing must be “sufficiently different”. Such a condition is called nondegeneracy of the braiding. This condition can be also formulated in the language of tensor categories, and then it is called a modularity of the tensor category. A non-degenerate braiding, or a modular tensor category, produces a unitary representation of the modular group $`SL(2,𝐙)`$.

We first explain how to obtain such a nondegenerate braiding in subfactor theory. We start with a subfactor $`NM`$ with finite Jones index and finite depth. Then Ocneanu has found a construction of a new subfactor from this subfactor, which is called the asymptotic inclusion . He realized that the system of bimodules for this new subfactor has a nondegenerate braiding and it can be regarded as the “quantum double” of the original system of $`N`$-$`N`$ (or $`M`$-$`M`$) bimodules arising from the subfactor $`NM`$. Note that the original system of $`N`$-$`N`$ bimodules and that of $`M`$-$`M`$ bimodules are not isomorphic in general, but they have the same “quantum double” system of bimodules. Popa has a more general construction of this type, called the symmetric enveloping algebra . Longo-Rehren  has found the essentially same construction as the asymptotic inclusion in the setting of algebraic quantum field theory. See \[11, Chapter 12\] for more details on the asymptotic inclusion and  for detailed analysis based on the Longo-Rehren approach.

Suppose we have a nondegenerate braiding. It is also known that such a braiding can arise from quantum groups or conformal field theory. Reshetikhin-Turaev  has constructed a topological invariant of 3-dimensional manifold from such a system. First we draw a picture of a link on a plane. This has various overcrossings and undercrossings. We label each connected component with an irreducible bimodule in the system, then each crossing gives an isomorphism arising from the braiding. Then this labeled picture produces a complex number as a composition of these isomorphisms. This is an invariant of “colored links”, where coloring means labeling of each component with an irreducible bimodule. Actually, this number is not invariant under the Reidemeister move of type I, and it is invariant under only the Reidemeister moves of type II and type III, so this is not a topological invariant of colored links, but it gives a “regular isotopy” invariant of colored links, for which invariance under the Reidemeister moves of type II and type III is sufficient. Then we sum these complex numbers over all possible colorings, with appropriate normalizing weights arising from dimensions of the bimodules. In this way, we obtain a complex number from a planar picture of a link. There is a method to construct a 3-dimensional oriented closed manifold from such a planar picture of a link, called the Dehn surgery. Roughly speaking, we embed a link in the 3-sphere, and remove a tubular neighbourhood, consisting of a disjoint union of solid tori, from the 3-sphere, and then put back the solid tori in a different way. Different links can produce the same 3-dimensional manifolds, but again, it is known that in such a case, the two links can be transformed from one to the other with successive applications of local moves. Such moves are called Kirby moves. Reshetikhin and Turaev have proved that nondegeneracy of the braiding implies invariance of the above complex number, the weighted sum of colored link invariants, under Kirby moves, thus we obtain a topological invariant of 3-dimensional manifolds in this way. Reshetikhin and Turaev considered an example arising from the quantum groups $`U_q(sl_2)`$ at roots of unity, but the general machinery applies to any nondegenerate braiding. See the book  for more details on this construction.

So, starting with a subfactor with finite Jones index and finite depth, we have two topological invariants of 3-dimensional manifolds. One is the Turaev-Viro-Ocneanu invariant arising from the system of $`N`$-$`N`$ bimodules. The other is the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariant of the “quantum double” system of the original system of $`N`$-$`N`$ bimodules. It is quite natural to investigate the relation between these two invariants. Sato, Wakui and the author proved in  that these two invariants coincide. Ocneanu  has also announced such coincidence and it seems to us that his method is different from ours. Sato and Wakui  also made explicit computations of this invariant for various concrete examples of subfactors and manifolds, based on Izumi’s explicit computations of the representations of the modular group arising from some subfactors, including the “exotic” one due to Haagerup, in .

Another computation of topological invariants arising from subfactors is based on $`\alpha `$-induction . This method, in particular, produces subfactors with principal graphs $`D_{2n}`$, $`E_6`$, and $`E_8`$, and the corresponding Turaev-Viro-Ocneanu invariants can be computed once we have a description of the “quantum doubles” by , and these quantum doubles were computed in . (Also see .) This $`\alpha `$-induction is also related to theory of modular invariants . See  for more on this topic.

## 4 Algebraic quantum field theory

Another occurrence of nondegenerate braiding in theory of operator algebras is in algebraic quantum field theory , which has its own long history. This theory is an approach to quantum field theory based on operator algebras. That is, in each bounded region on a spacetime, we assign a von Neumann algebra on a fixed Hilbert space. We think that each such von Neumann algebra is generated by observable physical quantities in the bounded region in the spacetime. In this way, we think that this family of von Neumann algebras parametrized by bounded regions gives a mathematical description of a physical theory. We often restrict bounded regions to those of a special form. We impose a physically natural set of axioms on this family of von Neumann algebras and make a mathematical study of such axiomatized systems. A spacetime of any dimension is allowed in this axiomatized approach, and the four dimensional case was studied originally for an obvious physical reason. These studies of Doplicher-Haag-Roberts  and Doplicher-Roberts  have been quite successful. Recently, it has been realized that this theory in lower dimensional spacetime has quite interesting mathematical structures. Two-dimensional case has caught much attention in connection to conformal field theory and one-dimensional case also naturally appears in a “chiral” decomposition of a two-dimensional theory. Mathematical structures of one-dimensional theory was studied in . In one-dimensional case, our “spacetime” is simply $`𝐑`$ and a bounded region is simply a bounded interval. It is often convenient to compactify the space $`𝐑`$ to obtain $`S^1`$ and consider “intervals” contained in $`S^1`$. In this setting, our mathematical structure is a family of von Neumann algebras on a fixed Hilbert space parameterized by intervals in $`S^1`$. We impose a set of axioms. For example, one axiom requires that we have a larger von Neumann algebra for a larger interval. Another axiom requires “covariance” of the theory with respect to a projective unitary representation of a certain group of the “spacetime symmetry”. We also have an axiom on “locality” which says if two regions are spacelike separated, then the corresponding von Neumann algebras mutually commute. Another requires existence of a “vacuum” vector in the Hilbert space. Positivity of energy in the sense that a certain self-adjoint operator is positive is also assumed. See  for a precise description of the set of axioms. (Actually the main results in  hold under a weaker set of axioms, but we do not go into details here.) Under the usual set of axioms, each von Neumann algebra for an interval becomes a factor of type III, so we call such a family a net of factors. Now the index set of intervals on the circle $`S^1`$ is not directed with respect to inclusions, since the entire circle is not allowed as an interval, so it is not appropriate to call such a family a net, but this terminology has been commonly used.

This family is our operator algebraic system and we consider a representation of such a family of von Neumann algebras. Such an idea is due to Doplicher-Haag-Roberts  and is called the DHR theory. We have a natural notion of irreducibility, dimensions, and tensor products for such representations. Note that we do not have an obvious definition of tensor products for two representations of such a net of factors. The key idea was that the tensor product operation is realized through compositions of endomorphisms. Also the dimension in the usual sense is always infinite. So it was highly nontrivial to obtain sensible definitions of the tensor product and the dimension. This work is much older than the subfactor theory in the previous section, and its similarity to subfactor theory was soon recognized in  in a precise form.

In this way, we have a representation theory for a net of factors. A tensor product operation is “too commutative” for higher dimensional spacetime, but in dimensions one and two, it has an appropriate level of commutativity, and naturally produces a braiding. (See  for example.) So we have two problems for getting a modular tensor category from such a representation of a net of factors on $`S^1`$. One is whether we have only finitely many equivalence classes of irreducible representations or not. The other is whether the braiding is nondegenerate or not. In , Longo, Müger and the author have found a nice operator algebraic condition that implies positive answers to these two problems and we introduced the terminology “complete rationality” for this notion. One of the key conditions for this notion is finiteness of a certain Jones index. Note that in subfactor theory in the previous section, our “family of operator algebras” has only two factors $`N`$ and $`M`$, and its representation theory produced a tensor category, without a braiding in general. Now our “family of operator algebras” is a net of factors and has continuously many factors with more structures, and its representation theory produces a braided tensor category.

Xu has proved in  that the $`SU(N)_k`$-nets corresponding to the WZW-models $`SU(N)_k`$ are completely rational. Xu worked on coset models in the setting of nets of factors on $`S^1`$ in , and obtained several interesting examples. He then studied in  about topological invariants arising from these nets, which seems to be quite interesting topologically. He also worked on orbifold models in this context in . Finally, we also note that complete rationality is also important in classification theory of nets of factors as in .


text:
# Diagnostic Signatures of Radio and HXR Emission on Particle Acceleration Processes in the Coma Cluster

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Radio halos in galaxy clusters are diffuse radio sources possessing large sizes and steep spectra. The radio emission must be produced by the synchrotron radiation of relativistic electrons. Nonetheless, the sources of these relativistic electrons are still unclear. In the intracluster medium (ICM), relativistic electrons lose energy on the time scale of order $`10^8`$ years because of inverse Compton and synchrotron losses (e.g., Ip & Axford, 1999). Because of the short lifetimes of the relativistic electrons, it is difficult to interpret the large size of radio halos as the result of the diffusion of the relativistic electrons injected from radio galaxies (Jaffe, 1977). Consequently, for the formation of radio halos, a significant level of re-acceleration might be involved. The secondary electron model first proposed by Dennison (1980) provides a different scenario for the origin of the radio halo and can avoid the problem of re-acceleration for the relativistic electrons in the primary electron models. However, this model encounters serious problems when comparing with observations (for a recent review, see Brunetti, 2002).

Coma C in the Coma cluster is the prototype of radio halos in galaxy clusters. Being the best studied example, Coma C has been observed at many different radio wavebands (e.g., Schlickeiser, Sievers, & Thiemann, 1987; Kim et al., 1990; Venturi, Giovannini, & Feretti, 1990; Giovannini et al., 1993; Deiss et al., 1997; Thierbach, Klein, & Wielebinski, 2003). Deiss et al. (1997) argued that the measurement at 2.7 GHz by Schlickeiser et al. (1987) is too low and suggested that the integrated spectrum might have no tendency to steepen as suggested by Schlickeiser et al. (1987); however, this strong steepening of the radio spectrum at high frequencies was confirmed by Thierbach et al. (2003). Giovannini et al. (1993) used the radio data at 1380 MHz (Kim et al., 1990) and 326 MHz (Venturi et al., 1990) to derive the radial distribution of the spectral index in Coma C, and they found a central “plateau” with a size of $`15\mathrm{}`$ for the spectral-index distribution. In the central region, the value of the spectral index is $`0.8`$; in the outside region, the spectral index strongly steepens as the radius increases.

Observations with BeppoSAX and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have detected a hard X-ray (HXR) excess with respect to thermal emission from the Coma cluster (Fusco-Femiano et al., 1999; Rephaeli, Gruber, & Blanco, 1999; Rephaeli & Gruber, 2002). The HXR excesses from several other clusters have also been reported (Kaastra et al., 1999; Fusco-Femiano et al., 2000, 2001; Gruber & Rephaeli, 2002). The most favored mechanism of the HXR excess is inverse Compton scattering (ICS) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons by relativistic electrons. Since these electrons with energy $`\gamma 10^4`$ will also produce radio synchrotron radiation, the HXR excesses and radio halos may originate from the same electron population. In the Coma cluster, the volume-averaged values of magnetic fields deduced from the comparison of the radio with the HXR excess emission is $``$ 0.1–0.3 $`\mu `$G (Fusco-Femiano et al., 1999; Rephaeli et al., 1999; Rephaeli & Gruber, 2002). These low values of field strength are not consistent with those deduced from the measurements of Faraday rotation. Clarke, Kronberg, & Böhringer (2001) have shown that many clusters have relatively large ($``$ 4–8 $`\mu `$G) fields. For the Coma cluster, Kim et al. (1990) found a central field strength of $`1.7\pm 0.9\mu `$G, and Feretti et al. (1995) estimated the strength to be $`6\pm 1\mu `$G. It is thus very important to see whether it is possible to produce the observed HXR excess via the inverse Compton mechanism with such a high central magnetic field. Nonetheless, some uncertainties in both methods may lead to the discrepancy (Newman, Newman, & Rephaeli, 2002). An alternative interpretation of the HXR excess is non-thermal bremsstrahlung from supra-thermal electrons (Enßlin, Lieu, & Biermann, 1999; Blasi, 2000; Dogiel, 2000; Sarazin & Kempner, 2000). However, a huge amount of energy is necessary in this model to produce the observed HXR excess (Petrosian, 2001; Blasi, 2000).

Brunetti et al. (2001) proposed a two-phase model to interpret the radial steepening of the spectral-index distribution in Coma C. In this two-phase model, the relativistic electrons were injected during a first phase in the past and re-accelerated during a second phase up to present time. In such a re-acceleration model, there must be a cutoff in the electron spectrum because of the balance between the loss and the gain of the electron energy. A cutoff in the electron spectrum should lead to a cutoff in the emissivity of synchrotron radiation and then in the integrated radio spectrum. If the magnetic fields have a radial-decrease profile, the cutoff frequencies will decrease with the increasing radius. Consequently, a radial steepening of the spectral index between two fixed frequencies will appear. Brunetti et al. (2001) successfully reproduced the radial steepening of the spectral index, the radio spectrum steepening at high frequencies, and the HXR excess in the Coma cluster; however, the central “plateau” in the spectral-index distribution was not well explained. The authors adopted a central field strength of $`3\mu `$G in their models. As pointed in their work, the spectral index would be very steep in low magnetic fields and flat in moderate ones. It would be important to know whether a stronger central magnetic field can reproduce the central “plateau” in the spectral-index distribution without violating the observational constraints from the radio and HXR emission.

Cluster mergers are very violent events and release a large amount of energy ($`10^{64}`$ ergs). Merger shocks and violent turbulence must play an important role in the generation and re-acceleration of relativistic electrons (Sarazin, 2001). Nonetheless, Gabici & Blasi (2003) claimed that the shocks generated by major mergers, mergers between clusters with comparable mass, is too weak to account for the spectral slopes of the non-thermal emission. The Mach numbers of the shocks in major mergers are of order of unity in their simulations and roughly consistent with the Mach number $``$ 2 observed in Cygnus A (Markevitch, Sarazin, & Vikhlinin, 1999). However, if a significant level of re-acceleration is involved, the evolved spectra of relativistic electrons may be able to account for the observed spectra of non-thermal emission.

In this paper, we investigate the radio and HXR excess emission in the Coma cluster assuming the magnetic fields possessing a central field strength of $`6\mu `$G and a radial-decrease profile. The effects of different Mach numbers of merger shocks on the formation of radio halos and HXR excesses are also investigated. We assume that relativistic electrons are injected by merger shocks and re-accelerated by ensuing violent turbulence. The turbulence is expected to be more violent at the moment right after the merger shocks and then gradually decays with time (Ricker & Sarazin, 2001); therefore, particles in the ICM might obtain stronger re-acceleration in the early period of mergers and then, following the decay of turbulence, the strength of re-acceleration would decrease. In this work, both time-independent and time-dependent re-acceleration models are considered. The radial variation of the spectral index of synchrotron radiation in the Coma cluster is computed to test the scenarios of the cosmic-ray electron re-acceleration. In particular, we try to obtain a central “plateau” in the spectral-index distribution that is in agreement with observational results reported by Giovannini et al. (1993). We also investigate the production of an HXR excess with the assumption that the HXR excess is due to ICS of the CMB photons by the cosmic-ray electron distribution that we obtained from the spectral index fitting. Comparing the modelling results with the observations, we find that the Mach numbers of the merger shocks have to be in a very small range to form the radio halo and the HXR excess observed in the Coma cluster.

In this paper, $`H_0=50`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 is assumed. The red shift $`z`$ of the Coma cluster is $`0.0233`$, so that the distance is $``$ 140 Mpc and $`1\mathrm{}`$ corresponds to $``$ 40 kpc. The virial radius of 3.28 Mpc (Girardi et al., 1998) is adopted as the radius of the Coma cluster.

## 2 PARTICLE ACCELERATION MODELS

The energy variation of particles can be expressed as:

$$\frac{d\gamma }{dt}=b_0+b_1\gamma +b_2\gamma ^2,$$
(1)
where $`b_0=b_{\mathrm{Coul}}`$, $`b_1=b_{\mathrm{brem}}b_{\mathrm{acc}}`$, and $`b_2=b_{\mathrm{syn}}+b_{\mathrm{IC}}`$. The coefficients of the loss rates due to the Coulomb and bremsstrahlung losses can be approximated as (Sarazin, 1999):

$$b_{\mathrm{Coul}}1.2\times 10^{12}n_{gas}\left[1.0+\frac{\mathrm{ln}(\gamma /n_{gas})}{75}\right]\text{s}^1,$$

and

$$b_{\mathrm{brem}}1.51\times 10^{16}n_{gas}[\mathrm{ln}(\gamma )+0.36]\text{s}^1,$$

where $`n_{gas}`$ is the gas density. For the Coma cluster, it can be defined as:

$$n_{gas}(r)=n_0f_{gas}(r)=n_0[1+(\frac{r}{r_{gas}})^2]^{3\beta _{gas}/2},$$
(2)
where $`n_0=2.89\times 10^3`$ cm-3, $`r_{gas}=10\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}50.42`$ Mpc, and $`\beta _{gas}=0.75`$ (Briel, Henry, & Böhringer, 1992). We set $`\gamma =10^3`$ and $`n_{gas}=10^3`$ cm-3 into the logarithms for simplicity.

The coefficients in the loss function of inverse Compton scattering and synchrotron radiation can be expressed as (Sarazin, 1999):

$$b_{\mathrm{IC}}=1.37\times 10^{20}(1+\mathrm{z})^4\text{s}^1,$$

and

$$b_{\mathrm{syn}}=1.3\times 10^{21}\left(\frac{B}{1\mu G}\right)^2\text{s}^1,$$

where z $`1`$ is assumed in these calculations.

To account for the temporal dependence of the electron re-acceleration due to violent turbulence, the general form of the acceleration function $`b_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ is given by:

$$b_{\mathrm{acc}}(r,t)=b_a(r)g(t),$$
(3)
where

$$b_a(r)=a_0+a_1f_a(r)$$
(4)
$$g(t)=1+Ae^{Dt}.$$
(5)
The parameters $`A`$ and $`D`$ are the amplification factor and the dissipation factor, respectively. The cases with $`A=D=0`$ are called time-independent acceleration, and the cases with $`A0`$ and $`D0`$ are called time-dependent acceleration. According to the numerical work of Ricker & Sarazin (2001), the maximum temperature of mergers is $``$ three times of the initial temperature before merging and returns to that when the passed times after merging are greater than 1 Gyr. Because the sources for heating gas are turbulence and shocks generated by merging, it is reasonable to relate the temperature variation with the turbulence strength, i.e., the strength of re-acceleration. Thus we choose the values of the amplification factor $`A`$ and the dissipation factor $`D`$ under the constraint that the maximum value of $`g(t)`$, i.e., $`1+A`$, is $``$ 3 and the value of $`g(t)`$ is $``$ 1 when $`t=`$ 1 Gyr in our models.

The re-acceleration model in the two-phase model proposed by Brunetti et al. (2001) is a time-independent acceleration model in our classification. Brunetti et al. (2001) suggested that the re-acceleration function ($`\chi (r)`$ in their eq.  corresponding to $`b_a(r)`$ here) can be parameterized as the sum of a uniform large-scale component and a small-scale component and assumed that the uniform large-scale component is caused by shocks and/or turbulence, possibly generated during a recent merger, and the small-scale component assumed to be proportional to the inverse of the typical distance between galaxies is due to the amplification of these shocks/turbulence by the motion of the massive galaxies in the cluster core. Following Brunetti et al. (2001), we assume that the acceleration component $`a_0`$ in the re-acceleration function $`b_a(r)`$ is due to turbulence and spatially uniform in the cluster. The lower-hybrid-wave turbulence proposed by Eilek & Weatherall (1999) is a possible scenario for this kind of re-acceleration. They showed that large amplitude Alfvén waves do generate lower hybrid waves which collapse to produce localized, intense wave packets, and even a modest level of lower hybrid turbulence can be very effective at accelerating relativistic particles. For the $`a_1f_a(r)`$ component (corresponding to the small-scale component in the two-phase model), we assume that this is caused by the orbiting motion of galaxies. According to the work of Deiss & Just (1996), the excited turbulent motions of ICM are related to the galaxy density in the cluster and vary as $`v_{turb}^2n_{gal}`$, so that we assume $`f_a(r)n_{gal}`$. The $`\beta `$-model is adopted for the galaxy distribution in the Coma cluster:

$$n_{gal}(r)f_{gal}(r)=[1+(\frac{r}{r_{gal}})^2]^{3\beta _{gal}/2},$$
(6)
where $`r_{gal}0.18`$ Mpc and $`\beta _{gal}=0.86`$ (Girardi et al., 1998). We define $`f_a(r)=f_{gal}(r)`$.

For time-independent acceleration, the analytic solution of equation (1) with the condition that $`\gamma `$ and $`n_{gas}`$ are constant in the logarithms of the Coulomb and bremsstrahlung losses are (see, e.g., Brunetti et al. (2001)):

$$\tau =\frac{2}{\sqrt{|\eta |}}\left(\mathrm{tanh}^1y\mathrm{tanh}^1y_0\right),$$
(7)
where

$$\tau =tt_0,$$

$$\eta =4b_0b_2b_1^2,$$

$$y=\frac{2b_2\gamma +b_1}{\sqrt{|\eta |}},$$

$$y_0=\frac{2b_2\gamma _0+b_1}{\sqrt{|\eta |}}.$$

The notation $`\gamma _0`$ is the energy of electrons at time $`t_0`$.

This solution can be rewritten as:

$$\gamma (t)=\frac{\sqrt{|\eta |}}{2b_2}\left(\frac{y_0+\mathrm{tanh}x}{1+y_0\mathrm{tanh}x}\right)\frac{b_1}{2b_2},$$
(8)
where

$$x=\frac{\sqrt{|\eta |}}{2}\tau .$$

The cutoff energy is defined by setting $`\gamma _0=\mathrm{}`$ at time $`t_0`$ in equation (8) and can be expressed as:

$$\gamma _c(t)=\frac{\sqrt{|\eta |}}{2b_2\mathrm{tanh}x}\frac{b_1}{2b_2}.$$
(9)
## 3 INJECTION AND EVOLUTION OF THE ELECTRON SPECTRUM

In our models, the relativistic electrons are assumed to be injected by merger shocks. A power-law spectrum of relativistic electrons is expected from diffuse shock acceleration. We assume that the injected spectrum has the form:

$$n_e(\gamma ,r)=f_e(r)K_e\gamma ^s,$$
(10)
where $`f_e(r)`$ is assumed to be proportional to the gas distribution and is normalized to be equal to $`f_{gas}(r)`$ as described in equation (2), i.e., $`f_e(r)=f_{gas}(r)`$. The parameter $`K_e`$ can be determined by normalizing the theoretical radio spectrum to the observed data. The power-law index $`s`$ is related to the Mach number $``$ of the merger shocks by the expression: $`s=2(^2+1)/(^21)`$ (e.g., Gabici & Blasi, 2003). For studying the effects of the Mach numbers of merger shocks on the non-thermal emission in galaxy clusters, we adopt different values for the power-law index $`s`$: 2.5, 3.3, 4.0, and 4.7 corresponding to Mach numbers: 3, 2, 1.73, and 1.58, respectively. Without loss of generality, we ignore the initial variation of the power-law index in the cluster for simplicity.

Cosmic-ray protons can also generate secondary electrons. Nonetheless, it is still unclear about the contribution of the secondary electrons to the relativistic electrons in galaxy clusters. In our calculation, we consider only the electrons injected by merger shocks, and assume that the secondary electrons are negligible (Kuo, Hwang, & Ip, 2003).

The evolution of the electron population is described by the kinetic equation:

$$\frac{n_e(\gamma )}{t}=\frac{}{\gamma }[b(\gamma )n_e(\gamma )]+q(\gamma ),$$
(11)
where $`b(\gamma )=b_0+b_1\gamma +b_2\gamma ^2`$. Here we assume no continuous injections, i.e., $`q(\gamma )=0`$. The analytic solution of equation (11) for time-independent acceleration is then:

$$n_e(\gamma ,t)=n_e(\gamma _0,t_0)\left[\frac{1\mathrm{tanh}^2x}{(1y\mathrm{tanh}x)^2}\right],$$
(12)
where $`x`$ and $`y`$ are defined in equations (8) and (7), respectively.

## 4 DISTRIBUTION OF MAGNETIC FIELDS IN COMA

Using the techniques of dimensional analysis for studying turbulent structures, Jaffe (1980) derived a magnetic field model determining by the gas and galaxy distributions and described by:

$$B(r)=B_0f_B(r)=B_0[f_{gas}(r)]^m[f_{gal}(r)]^n,$$
(13)
where $`f_{gas}(r)`$ and $`f_{gal}(r)`$ are defined in equations (2) and (6), and $`(m,n)=(0.5,0.4)`$. For the Coma cluster, there are other constraints that can be used to determine the profile of magnetic fields; the observed spectral-index distribution possesses a central “plateau” and strongly steepens outside this region. It is expected that the profile of the magnetic field strongly affected the size of the central “plateau” and the steepness of the spectral-index distribution outside this region. We assume the central field strength $`B_0`$ is 6 $`\mu `$G. The profile with $`(m,n)=(0.7,0.3)`$ shown in Figure 1 is chosen in our paper in order to make the size of the central “plateau” and the steepness of the spectral-index distribution outside this region calculated in the acceleration models agreeing with the observations.

The orbiting motion of galaxies might amplify the seed fields to grow into the present magnetic field in galaxy clusters (Jaffe, 1980; Roland, 1981; Ruzmaikin, Sokoloff, & Shukurov, 1989). However, De Young (1992) has shown that the turbulent dynamo driven by the galaxy motion is difficult to produce the present micro-gauss fields. Cluster merging, a very energetic process, may offer a possibility to produce the observed fields. Because the decay time of the magnetic field is very long, the magnetic field will gradually build up under successive merging (Tribble, 1993). It is reasonable to assume that the observed fields at the present time is the amplified fields after the last merging. This is the reason for the assumption that the magnetic field is time-invariant in our models.

We note that the profile of $`(m,n)=(0.7,0.3)`$ is adopted for the purpose of reproducing the observed spectral-index distribution and might be different from a real distribution of cluster magnetic fields. For examples, the profiles of simulated magnetic fields are flat in the core region and the fields are $``$ 1 $`\mu `$G (Dolag, Bartelmann, & Lesch, 2002). From the Faraday rotation measurements, the magnetic fields are $``$ 4–8 $`\mu `$G out to $``$ 0.75 Mpc from cluster centers (Clarke et al., 2001). The adopted central magnetic field is higher than the simulated results but lower than the observational ones.

## 5 MODELLING PROCEDURE

In this section, we briefly describe the methods for calculations. We assume the electron spectra have a power law at time $`t=0`$, which corresponds to the moment right after the main-merger shock. The electron spectra have an initial power-law index $`s`$ according to the Mach number of the shock and would then evolve according to the formulism described in $`\mathrm{\S }`$ 2 and $`\mathrm{\S }`$ 3. Since a flat central region in the spectral-index distributions of the radio-halo emission may exist only in a short period during the evolution of radio halos, we calculate the brightness distributions at two fixed frequencies, 326 MHz and 1380 MHz, for different evolution time scales and derive the spectral-index distribution from them. To fit and compare our models with observations, we first vary the acceleration function $`b_{\mathrm{acc}}(r,t)`$ and judge whether the corresponding spectral-index distributions are consistent with the observations according to two criteria: (1) there is a flat central region with $`\alpha _{326}^{1380}=`$ 0.8 as reported by Giovannini et al. (1993) and (2) $`\alpha _{326}^{1380}=`$ 1.8 is located in the range of 16$`\mathrm{}`$–18$`\mathrm{}`$ to agree with the results obtained by Deiss et al. (1997). The spectral-index distributions at different time $`t`$ with a step of 0.2 Gyr are computed until consistency with the criteria have been obtained. Second, we also calculate the spatial brightness distributions at 326 MHz to compare with the observed one at 90 cm (Govoni et al., 2001, kindly provided by F. Govoni). Third, we normalize the theoretical radio spectrum to the observed data at 430 MHz and then determine the normalized parameter $`K_e`$ in equation (10). Finally, the HXR spectrum is calculated in a region with a projected radius of 50$`\mathrm{}`$ and compared with the observational data from BeppoSAX (Fusco-Femiano et al., 1999) and OSSE (Rephaeli, Ulmer, & Gruber, 1994). The thermal temperature of the cluster is assumed to be 8.21 keV (Hughes et. al., 1993) in our calculations.

## 6 MODEL RESULTS FOR COMA C

### 6.1 Time-Independent Re-Acceleration

We study the time-independent re-acceleration models by assuming that the amplification and dissipation factors in the acceleration function are zero. Different initial power-law indices corresponding to different Mach numbers are considered. The values of the parameters in the time-independent models are listed in Table 1.

Figure 2 shows the results from the models with the power-law index $`s=`$ 2.5 (models A1 and A2). The radii of the flat central regions in the spectral-index distributions are $`6\mathrm{}`$ in both models, which is roughly in consistent with the observations. Nonetheless, the spatial brightness distributions are much more concentrated toward the central regions comparing with observations; the integrated radio spectra also deviate from the measured data both at the low and high frequency parts. The HXR spectra are too low to compare with the observations. These results show that a merger shock with a Mach number $`3`$ cannot produce the radio and HXR emission observed in the Coma cluster.

Figure 3 and Figure 4 show the results with the power-law index $`s=3.3`$ (models A3 and A4) and the power-law index $`s=4`$ (models A5 and A6), respectively. All these models can produce a flat spectral-index distribution with a radius of $`5\mathrm{}`$–6$`\mathrm{}`$ in the central regions. The brightness distributions and the HXR spectra are all roughly consistent with the observations in these models, although distributions seem to be better described by the $`s=4`$ models than the $`s=3.3`$ ones. These models can also match the integrated radio spectra very well; the spectra also seem to be better fitted by the models with $`s=4`$ than those with $`s=3.3`$. These results indicate that merger shocks with Mach numbers $``$ 2 can produce the main features of the radio and HXR emission observed in the Coma cluster.

Figure 5 shows the results with the power-law index $`s=4.7`$ (models A7 and A8). We cannot obtain the spectral-index distributions that have a spectral index $`\alpha _{326}^{1380}=`$ 1.8 in the region 16$`\mathrm{}`$–18$`\mathrm{}`$ that satisfy the second criterion described in $`\mathrm{\S }`$ 5 for models with a power-law index $`s=4.7`$ or higher when we fit the central flat spectral index to $`\alpha _{326}^{1380}`$ 0.8. Nonetheless, we try to find a flat central distribution in the spectral index distribution for these models by ignoring the second criterion. The results are shown in Figure 5. The radii of the flat central regions are $`4\mathrm{}`$ in model A7 and $`6\mathrm{}`$ in model A8. The spectral index $`\alpha _{326}^{1380}=`$ 1.8 locates at radius larger than $`20\mathrm{}`$ in both models. The spatial brightness distributions show a flat distribution in the central regions; this is particularly obvious for models A8. Both models do not fit the integrated radio spectral data at high frequencies; model A8 also overproduces the HXR excess. These results indicate that it is difficult to produce all observed features of the radio and HXR emission in the Coma cluster by mergers shocks with Mach numbers $`1.6`$.

According to the results shown in Figures 25, a central “plateau” in the spectral-index distribution can be produced for all these models. Nonetheless, only the models with the initial electron power-law index $`4.7>s3.3`$ can produce results that match all observed features of the radio and HXR emission in the Coma cluster; this corresponds to a very narrow range for the Mach numbers of the merger shocks, i.e., $`1.6<2`$.

### 6.2 Time-Dependent Re-Acceleration

In this section, we show the effects of time-dependent re-acceleration by assuming that the amplification factor $`A=1`$ and the dissipation factor $`D=2`$ Gyr-1. We note that the values of $`A`$ and $`D`$ are constrained by the conditions $`1+A3`$ and $`Ae^{Dt}`$ becoming sufficient small as $`t`$ approaching 1 Gyr. Since we just want to investigate the effects of the time-dependent re-acceleration on our current models, we fix the values of $`A`$ and $`D`$ for simplicity. A suitable but different choice of $`A`$ and $`D`$ could affect the results, particularly, on the evolving time scales that fit the observations. The values of the parameters in the time-dependent models are listed in Table 2. Since the results from the time-independent models with $`s=2.5`$ and 4.7 strongly deviate from the observations, we consider only the cases of $`s=3.3`$ and 4 in the time-dependent models.

Figure 6 shows the results with the power-law index $`s=3.3`$ (models B1 and B2). The flat central regions in the spectral-index distributions have radii of $`6\mathrm{}`$ in both models B1 and B2. However, we note that in the model B2 the spectral index $`\alpha _{326}^{1380}=`$ 1.8 locates at $`20\mathrm{}`$, which does not satisfy the second criterion stated in $`\mathrm{\S }`$ 5. The brightness distributions are concentrated to the central regions resembling those from models A1 and A2. These results indicate that models with time-dependent re-acceleration have effects similar to those with flatter initial electron spectra. This also shows that merger shocks with Mach numbers, $`2`$, i.e., $`s3.3`$, cannot produce the radio emission observed in the Coma cluster.

Figure 7 shows the results with the power-law index $`s=4`$ (models B3 and B4). The flat central regions in the spectral-index distributions have a radius of $`4\mathrm{}`$ in model B3 and $`6\mathrm{}`$ in model B4. The integrated radio spectra and the HXR spectra obtained from both models are all in very good agreement with the observations. The brightness distributions also agree very well with the observations in inner part of the cluster, but are slightly lower than the observed ones at the radii greater than $`18\mathrm{}`$.

We find that the radio spatial brightness distribution is very sensitive in these time-dependent models. Our results indicate that the models with time-dependent re-acceleration have effects on the brightness distribution similar to those with flatter initial electron spectra. These effects can be understood because the time-dependent re-acceleration function provides a larger re-acceleration to the electrons at the early stage of the evolution; this is similar to have a flatter initial electron spectrum. Nonetheless, time-dependent models can still fit the integrated radio spectra and the HXR excess emission better. Combining the results from the time-independent and time-dependent models, we find that only merger shocks with Mach numbers, $`1.6<<2`$, i.e., the power-law index $`4.7>s>3.3`$, can reproduce the results agreeing with the observations in the Coma cluster.

## 7 DISCUSSION

As shown in the modelling results, a central “plateau” in the spectral-index distribution can be produced in clusters with a central field strength of 6 $`\mu `$G. To understand the origin of this characteristic feature of the radio emission of Coma C, we use the results of Model A6 as an example and show the electron spectra and the radio emissivity of this model at different locations in Figures 8 and 9, respectively. It is obvious that the electrons in the central regions are strongly accelerated to the cutoff energies and flat spectra can be formed within the central $`10\mathrm{}`$ regions. The ratios between the radio emissivity at 326 MHz and that at 1380 MHz are almost equal within the central regions and, at these two frequencies, the radio emissivity within the central regions dominates over that outside this regions; thus a central “plateau” may form in the spectral-index distribution. Outside the central region, the electron spectra are not very different from one another because the effects are mainly from the inverse Compton losses and the spatially uniform re-acceleration, and then the differences between the radio emissivity at different locations are mainly due to the variations of the magnetic fields. As the radius increases, the high-frequency emissivity gradually decreases because of weaker magnetic fields; therefore, the progressive steepening of the spectral index is presented. Naturally, it should also exist a decline at high frequencies in the integrated radio spectrum as proposed by Schlickeiser et al. (1987).

It is interesting to note that the size of the “plateau” is almost equal to the region where the magnetic field is $``$ 3 $`\mu `$G (Figure 1). This fact might indicate that the formation of this “plateau” is related to the situation that the synchrotron losses dominate over the inverse Compton losses (e.g., Brunetti et al. 2001). The “plateau” should be produced by the combination of the radial setting of re-acceleration and that of magnetic fields. As discussed in previous paragraph, when the inverse Compton losses dominate, it is impossible to obtain a flat “plateau” because the radius-dependent magnetic fields will cause the high-frequency emissivity to decrease as the radius increase. In other words, it is possible to obtain a flat spectral index “plateau” in our models only when the synchrotron losses dominate over the inverse Compton losses. If a central “plateau” presents in the spectral-index distribution, the central strength of the cluster magnetic field should be greater than 3 $`\mu `$G. Note that since a central “plateau” can exist only in a period in the evolution of radio halos, a central “plateau” in the spectral-index distribution may be absent even a cluster possessing a high central field.

The emissivity of the HXR excess of the Model A6 is shown in Figure 10. Obviously, the HXR excess is mainly contributed from the outer regions of the cluster volume ($`>30\mathrm{}`$) as indicated by Brunetti et al. (2001). This might reconcile the problem that the volume-averaged magnetic fields derived from the HXR excesses are usually much lower than the magnetic fields from the Faraday rotation measurements. However, we note that the average magnetic field in the core regions adopted here is $``$ 2 $`\mu `$G while the magnetic fields from the Faraday rotation measurements are $``$ 6 $`\mu `$G. It might be possible that a further fine-tuned version of our model can solve the problem of the high field–ICS discrepancy.

It is expected that the profile and strength of magnetic fields will affect our results. From the Faraday rotation measurements, the magnetic fields are $``$ 4–8 $`\mu `$G out to $``$ 0.75 Mpc from cluster centers (Clarke et al., 2001). We note that the magnetic fields in galaxy clusters might have a higher value and a flatter profile in the core region than the adopted model. A higher magnetic field requires a stronger re-acceleration to sustain the radio emission. To produce a “plateau” distribution of the spectral index for a higher magnetic field with a flatter profile, the re-acceleration function need to be almost constant over the region. This indicates that the re-acceleration caused by the galaxy motions might be negligible.

The ICS of the CMB photons by relativistic electrons is also suggested as the mechanism of the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) excess in the Coma cluster (Hwang, 1997; Enßlin, & Biermann, 1998). However, the EUV excess possesses a narrow radial profile and concentrates in the inner regions of the cluster (Bowyer & Berghöfer, 1998), while the HXR excess is mainly contributed from the outer regions of the cluster volume as shown in Figure 9. It is thus inadequate to assume that the EUV-emitting electrons are also from the outside and low-magnetic-field regions of the cluster. Tsay, Hwang, & Bowyer (2002) investigated the EUV excess with a $`5\mu `$G field; they showed that it is possible to explain the EUV excess and the radio emission with such a high average magnetic field. The EUV-emitting electrons and the radio/HXR-emitting electrons could have very different distributions because the low-energy EUV-emitting electrons suffer much less energy losses during their evolution and can accumulate over a much longer age.

## 8 SUMMARY

Time-independent and time-dependent re-acceleration models are studied to investigate the formation of the radio halo and HXR excess in the Coma cluster with a high central field strength of 6 $`\mu `$G. In these models, the relativistic electrons are injected by merger shocks and re-accelerated by ensuing violent turbulence. The effects of the strength of merger shocks on the formation of the radio halo and HXR excess are also considered.

We have reproduced all the main features in the radio and HXR excess emission of the Coma cluster in our models. We have obtained a central “plateau” in the spectral-index distribution as observed in the Coma cluster with a high central field strength of 6 $`\mu `$G in our models. The size of the “plateau” is almost equal to the region where the synchrotron loss dominates over the inverse Compton loss, i.e., the magnetic field is $``$ 3 $`\mu `$G. Our models can naturally produce the observed radial steepening of the radio spectral index. We can fit the integrated radio spectra very well, in particular, we can reproduce the high-frequency decline feature in the spectra as measured by Thierbach et al. (2003). These same models can also produce the observed HXR excess, which is mainly from the outer regions of the cluster volume as pointed out by Brunetti et al. (2001).

We have also shown that only merger shocks with Mach numbers in a very small range can produce results agreeing with the observations of the radio and HXR emission in the Coma cluster. The Mach numbers are $`1.6<<2`$, corresponding to the initial electron power-law index $`4.7>s>3.3`$, which are consistent with simulations and observations of merger shocks.

We have adopted a artificial magnetic field distribution in our calculation. The real magnetic field might be higher and have a flatter distribution than the adopted model. It is possible to obtain similar results for a higher magnetic field with a stronger re-acceleration. However, it might be have problems to produce the observed HXR excess within the ICS scheme for such a high magnetic field.

We are grateful to S. Bowyer for a careful reading of the manuscript and several suggestions that helped to improve this paper. We thank F. Govoni for kindly providing the data of the Coma radio profile. We are also grateful to an anonymous referee for his valuable comments which stimulated us to significantly improve this paper. This work was partially supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan under NSC 91-2112-M-008-045, and by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan through the CosPA Project 91-N-FA01-1-4-5. CYH acknowledges support by the National Science Council through grant NSC 91-2112-M-008-039.