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# Stellar Populations in NGC 4038/39 (The Antennae): Exploring A Galaxy Merger Pixel-by-PixelBased in part on observations obtained at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.

## 1 Introduction

The Antennae is a well-known example of a strongly interacting pair of nearby spiral galaxies (at 19.2 Mpc assuming $`H_o=75`$ $`\mathrm{km}^1\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$; Whitmore et al. 1999) viewed nearly face-on. With this favorable geometry, we can examine the stellar content in the disks of these galaxies without complications arising from inclination or heavy dust obscuration, as is often the case for more advanced mergers (Sanders $`\&`$ Mirabel 1996, and references therein). The galaxies in the Antennae are merging slowly on wide orbits (e.g., Mihos, Bothun, $`\&`$ Richstone 1993). Thus, we would expect multiple episodes of enhanced star formation, triggered during times of closest approach of the two systems, to be separated far enough in time from each other to be observed as separate entities in the merging galaxies.

The fact that enhanced episodes of star-formation accompany mergers of galaxies has been hinted at for almost 50 years, at least since Zwicky (1957) noted that the filaments connecting multiple galaxies are mostly blue. However, even though mergers may play a dominant role in determining the morphology of galaxies, recent evidence has shown that the total amount of star-formation over the course of a merger is relatively modest compared to the amount of star-formation over a galaxy’s lifetime (Kennicutt, 1998). For example, the strength of the burst star-formation rate in NGC 4038/9 resulting from their recent merger is at most a few times that of a steadily star- forming disk (Kennicutt, 1998). By studying the Antennae in detail, we will not only gain insight into the nature of the newly formed populations, but we will also learn about the roles of old, intermediate-age, and young populations in NGC 4038/9, and the distribution of dust in the merger.

Optical and near-infrared colors provide a natural way to sort out stellar populations, as shown by Frogel (1985). Near-infrared colors are less sensitive to recent star-formation than optical colors and are relatively insensitive to the severe extinction present at optical wavelengths; the extinction optical depth at K is only 10 percent of that in the V-band (Martin $`\&`$ Whittet, 1990). Since mergers are often dusty systems, the contribution of the K-band data to our analysis plays a crucial role in sorting out the amount of dust present, and thus helps us determine the stellar populations present. Near-infrared observations will be most sensitive to radiation from the old stellar population of the Antennae, i.e. those stars present before the most recent bursts of star-formation. For nearly all galaxies the old population constitutes most of a galaxy’s stellar mass. Optical colors, on the other hand, are most sensitive to young Population I blue stars and will be most affected by dust. Even though the young stars dominate the optical light from a galaxy, they account for only a small fraction of the total mass of a galaxy.

The Antennae have been studied in great detail with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST); these studies have concerned themselves primarily with discrete sources in the two galaxies (i.e., star clusters). Many “super star clusters” have been identified in the Antennae. These stellar systems, often found in merging galaxies, present an opportunity to study the formation processes of globular clusters (e.g., Holtzman, J. A. et al. 1992). Extensive work on the Antennae by Whitmore $`\&`$ Schweizer (1995), Whitmore et al. (1999) (hereafter, W99), and Zhang, Fall, $`\&`$ Whitmore (2001) (hereafter, ZFW) has concentrated on these super star clusters, in addition to less extreme clusters. These authors find that the clusters range in age from very young $`<5`$ Myr-old clusters, which must have formed in the most recent merger event, to very old $`1215`$ Gyr-old clusters, probably true globular clusters which must have been present in the progenitor galaxies before the interaction. All told, they identified 14,000 point-like objects, with approximately 8000 of them being young clusters (using an estimate based on subtracting all definite stars).

The super star clusters, however, tell only part of the story of star-formation in the Antennae. Our purpose in this paper is primarily to analyze the more extended stellar populations throughout the galaxies, to which clusters may or may not be contributors, such as the disks and bulges of the galaxies. This gives a more complete picture of the star-formation in the merger. Although our data consist of BVRJHK ground based images of the Antennae, we make use of only the B, V, and K band data; the near-infrared K band being crucial in our population analysis. An especially effective way to study the diffuse light of galaxies (e.g., Abraham $`\&`$ Merrifield 2000, Eskridge et al. 2003, Kong et al. 2000), or a merger (de Grijs et al., 2003), is to examine images pixel by pixel, thus exploiting the full spatial resolution of the images. Using spectral synthesis of the observed colors in each pixel, we find the luminosity-weighted average population(s) present, and assign a luminosity-weighted average age to each pixel. From this, we derive effective population age and reddening maps of the Antennae that we use to study the locations of young, intermediate-age, and old populations, along with the dust distribution. In $`\mathrm{\S }2`$ we describe the observations and data; in $`\mathrm{\S }3`$ we explain the techniques used to obtain ages and reddening. The derived age and extinction maps, in addition to the clusters detected only at K, are examined in $`\mathrm{\S }4`$; our conclusions are given in $`\mathrm{\S }5`$.

## 2 Observations

B, V, and R images of the Antennae were obtained under photometric conditions on UTC 1995 March 8 on the 1.5 m telescope of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) with the direct imaging filter wheel and the $`1024\times 1024`$ Tek No.2 CCD. This CCD gives a field of $`7\mathrm{}5\times 7\mathrm{}5`$ with a spatial scale of 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$44 pixel-1. Cumulative on-source integration times were 20 min, 15 min, and 10 min at B, V, and R, respectively. Twilight sky exposures were used to provide flat-field calibration. The images in each filter were added together and cosmic rays were cleaned using interactive median filtering. Equatorial standard star fields from Landolt (1992) were observed at a range of airmasses to derive photometric transformations onto the Kron-Cousins BVR system. The final images have limiting surface brightnesses ($`3\sigma `$ rms) of 24.6, 24.4, and 23.8 mag arcsec-2 for B, V, and R, respectively.

J, H, and K images of the central regions of the Antennae were obtained through thin cirrus on UTC 1995 March 13 with the CTIO 1.5 m telescope using the CTIO Infrared Imager (CIRIM). Each of the images covered a field of view of $`5\mathrm{}\times 5\mathrm{}`$ with a spatial scale of 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$16 pixel-1. The J and H images were taken in groups of 5 equal length integrations with comparable length off-target sky images acquired between integrations. Among the 5 images, the target position was dithered on the detector by $`30\mathrm{}`$ in a cross-shaped pattern to allow for median combination and to avoid bad pixels and detector blemishes. The K images were acquired as 10 separate images taken in two sequences of 5 images each using the same sky chopping and target dithering pattern as the J and H images. The integration time of each image that went into each of the 10 K-band images is only 5 seconds. We would chop to sky each time we took a 5 second image. Each sequence of images in a given filter began and ended with off-target sky images of comparable exposure to the on-target images, providing a complete set of sky frames for subtraction. Cumulative on source exposure times were 30, 23, and 43 minutes at J, H, and K, respectively.

Because the long exposure images were acquired under non-photometric conditions, we also took short J, H, and K images of the Antennae under photometric conditions two nights later. Standard stars from the list of Carter $`\&`$ Meadows (1995) were observed at a range of airmasses on the night the short images were taken. The long exposure images were calibrated using stars common to both long- and short-exposure images. Photometry was reduced to the CTIO/CIT system (Elias et al., 1982). The final images have limiting surface brightnesses ($`3\sigma `$ rms) of 21.4, 20.8, and 19.7 mag arcsec-2 for J, H, and K, respectively.

To facilitate comparison between images in different photometric bands, we merged the IR and optical data sets into 6 photometrically calibrated images on a common pixel scale of 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$16 pixel-1, corresponding to a linear scale of 108 parsecs per pixel. Our final images have a modest seeing of $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ FWHM (140 parsecs effective linear resolution). We used the near-IR images as the fiducial ones since they have the largest pixels. The optical images were placed on the scale of the near-IR ones with linear transformations that included translation, scaling, and rotation terms. These transformations were derived by fitting to the positions of stars common to the images. Inter-image registration is accurate to $`\pm 0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}2`$, as estimated from the variances in the centroids of field stars in the final registered images. These images, in which each pixel in each image samples the same location in the galaxy, form the basic data of our subsequent analysis. As examples, Figures 1a, 1b, and 1c display the B, V, and K images, respectively. Absolute uncertainties in the photometry are estimated to be $`\pm 0.02`$ mag at B, 0.03 at V, and 0.06 at K. The larger uncertainties in the near-infrared reflect our resort to a “bootstrap” calibration between photometric and non-photometric images.

## 3 Analysis

The main objective of this paper is to determine the stellar content of the Antennae as a function of position. We are especially interested in deriving luminosity-weighted ages for the different populations. As mentioned in the Introduction, our approach to this objective will be based on a pixel-by-pixel analysis of the images. Pixels are excluded from the analysis if they are below a threshold value of 5$`\sigma `$ above the median sky value at K (18.8 mag/ pixel; 19.2 mag/ arcsec2). This criterion is adopted since contribution from the sky is greatest in the K-band and because the K image is the noisiest of the three. Since all of our images are aligned and transformed onto the same pixel scale, pixels rejected from the K-band image are also rejected from the other bands.

We model pixels from the Antennae with two single stellar population models: one which models exponentially decaying star-formation on a timescale of $`\tau `$= 100 Myr, the typical dynamical time for a galactic disk, and another with a decay timescale of $`\tau `$= 15 Gyr, which describes an older but still star-forming disk, from the 1996 version of the Bruzual $`\&`$ Charlot GISSEL models (Bruzual $`\&`$ Charlot 1993; hereafter, BC). The models have a Salpeter initial mass function truncated at 0.1 and 100 M and solar metallicity. This is in agreement with Mengel et al. (2002) who found that the spectra of a number of clusters in the Antennae was consistent with solar metallicity. We cannot rule out the possibility, however, that there was steady enrichment of the stars over the last 15 Gyr, which would result in older stars that are more metal-poor. Nonetheless, the qualitative results of this paper do not differ if a $`\tau `$= 15 Gyr model with sub-solar metallicity is used.

The colors $`VK`$ and $`BV`$ were chosen because $`VK`$ has a long wavelength baseline that gives good leverage for measuring dust extinction, and $`BV`$ is a strong indicator of the presence of a young population (young clusters form an age sequence in increasing $`BV`$). Color maps for $`BV`$ and $`VK`$ are in Figures 2a and 2b. Young clusters (white) are the most apparent feature on the $`BV`$ image, while $`VK`$ reveals a large amount of dust (black), in addition to some unobscured clusters (white).

In Figures 3a and 3b we plot contours of pixel densities for $`VK`$ versus $`BV`$ from the 5$`\sigma `$ cuts of NGC 4038 and 4039, respectively. These pixels have not been dereddened. BC models are plotted in Figures 3a and 3b as thin and thick lines for the decay times of 100 Myr and 15 Gyr, respectively. Contours are for pixel densities of 10-70 pixels in steps of 20, with the dotted contours tracing the outer envelopes of the distributions of pixels. The contours for pixels from NGC 4038 are also plotted in Figure 3c, and ages are marked on the models in this figure in units of Gyr. Reddening vectors are plotted for $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ of 1.0 in all panels of Figure 3.

We estimate the age of each pixel from the 5$`\sigma `$ cuts in Figures 3a and 3b by dereddening the pixels to have the same colors as the stellar population models, using the reddening law given by Cardelli, Clayton, $`\&`$ Mathis (1989) with an $`\mathrm{R}_\mathrm{V}`$ of 3.1. We assume that the light in each pixel is dominated by a single stellar population and that the offset of a pixel from the model locus is due entirely to reddening. The age of the location on the stellar population model that the pixel dereddens to is assigned to the pixel, and the dereddening necessary to move the pixel to the model line is noted. The goal is to produce both age and reddening maps of the Antennae. By doing this analysis pixel-by-pixel, we not only analyze the populations found in star clusters (as in previous analyses), but we also find ages of diffuse light present in the images, where the contribution from clusters is variable.

Figures 4a and 4b show histograms of the number of dereddened pixels with different ages for NGC 4038 and 4039, respectively, modeled with the $`\tau `$= 15 Gyr model. Both histograms show a tall narrow peak at $`15`$ Gyr along with a smaller peak at a much younger age of less than one or two Gyr. We associate the pixels in the 15 Gyr peak with the old underlying disk and bulge populations of the galaxies and we take the younger peak to be evidence for a recent starburst population. Figure 5 is an image of the stellar ages in the Antennae, where pixels from the 15 Gyr peaks of Figures 4a and 4b are shaded black. We interpret these pixels as composing the older star-forming disks and bulges of the Antennae, and assign ages to them from the model with a decay time of 15 Gyr. These pixels follow the distribution of W99’s old globular clusters.

We model the remaining pixels (excluding the 15 Gyr pixels) with the $`\tau `$=100 Myr model. Age histograms for these pixels are shown in Figures 4c and 4d for NGC 4038 and 4039, respectively. We are insensitive to ages $`1`$ Gyr, where reddening vectors are almost exactly parallel to the $`\tau `$=100 Myr model. Reddening vectors are not parallel to the $`\tau `$=100 Myr model for ages $`1`$ Gyr. Figure 4c shows 3 age peaks in NGC 4038: around 90, 300, and 600 Myr. Poissonian error bars are plotted for each bin in the histogram. These 3 peaks appear to be significant. When we examine where in the images the pixels in each peak lie, we find the following. Pixels from the first peak outline the young star clusters. Those from the second peak tend to be found near pixels from the first peak, and thus also outline the young star clusters. However, pixels from the third peak tend to be found toward the outer regions of NGC 4038’s spiral arm and some in the region of overlap between the two galaxies. Pixels from the youngest peak in NGC 4039 (Figure 4d) have a median age of $``$ 400 Myr. When we look for their location in the images, we find that they are primarily situated in the bulge and spiral arm, with a few pixels located along the outskirts of the disk. Those in the small peak at $``$ 800 Myr in NGC 4039 are most likely due to noise; these pixels are sparsely scattered along the faint outskirts of the disk of NGC 4039 and are most often isolated pixels. In Figure 5, pixels are shaded according to age, with the oldest ones shaded the darkest. Note that errors in photon counting statistics are about $`1\%`$, and calibration errors are $`2\%`$ for B, $`3\%`$ for V, and $`6\%`$ for K. The typical color error bar plotted in Figure 3a implies an error in age that is approximately our bin size in the logarithmic age histograms in Figures 4c and 4d (0.1 dex).

Are the separate 90, 300, and 600 Myr peaks of Figure 4c and the 400 Myr peak of Figure 4d artifacts? If they are, then we would expect to detect random errors in the ages of these pixels, for example, finding young pixels in regions where we would expect to find intermediate-aged or old pixels. Since we observe age gradients in the 90 and 300 Myr pixels, which is a systematic trend, the pixels in these peaks cannot be due to random noise. A similar argument applies to pixels from the 400 Myr peak in Figure 4d and the 600 Myr peak in Figure 4c. The 400 and 600 Myr pixels are spatially separated from the other peaks and trace structure in NGC 4039 (spiral arm and bulge) and in NGC 4038 (outer part of the spiral arm), respectively. Finally, as we shall detail in $`\mathrm{\S }4.2`$, the ages of the peaks are consistent with previous observations.

We have thus far assumed that the dereddened colors in each pixel map onto a unique age in the single stellar population models. For those pixels that map onto an intermediate-age population (90, 300, and 600 Myr for NGC 4038, and 400 Myr for NGC 4039; Figures 4c and 4d), their colors might plausibly be due to a mix of young ($`40`$ Myr) and old ($`15`$ Gyr) stars. One way to address this issue is to use the properties of a linear color, or “flux-ratio,” diagram. Linear color diagrams were used to identify the components of composite stellar populations by Rabin (1981) and Frogel (1985). With the aid of a linear color diagram, we find that the colors of pixels in the $`600`$ Myr peak can only be due to an intermediate-age single stellar population; no reasonable combination of young and old stars with the models we have used here can produce such colors. In Figure 5, pixels from the $`600`$ Myr peak in NGC 4038’s histogram (Figure 4c) are shaded darker than those of the younger peaks. They are spatially distinct from the young ($`40`$ Myr) population and are located in the outer parts of NGC 4038’s disk and the overlap region between the two galaxies. The $`600`$ Myr pixels trace the intermediate-aged ($`500`$ Myr) clusters reported by W99. On the other hand, we find that pixels in the 90 and 300 Myr peaks of NGC 4038 and the 400 Myr peak of NGC 4039 can be due to a mixture of old and young starlight. These pixels tend to lie in regions surrounding the young clusters in Figure 5.

Unfortunately, with our data, stellar population models have little diagnostic power for ages younger than 40 Myr. We therefore take the pixels that do not deredden to the model line (i.e., those that deredden below the model line in Figures 3a and 3b) and assign ages to them of $`40`$ Myr. We call these “zero-age” pixels since the models have no diagnostic power below 40 Myr. On the age map in Figure 5 they compose the white regions and clearly trace the sites of the youngest clusters. These pixels are coincident with most of the $`30`$ Myr clusters in W99 and are found in regions with H$`\alpha `$ emission. Another reason why these pixels deredden below the model line may be due to added contribution to the broadband flux by a gaseous emission component (see Charlot 1996 and references therein, Zackrisson et al. 2001, Anders $`\&`$ Fritze-v. Alvensleben (2003), and Krüeger et al. 1995).

## 4 Morphology

### 4.1 Age and Extinction Maps

The luminosity-weighted age map of the Antennae in Figure 5 shows that large-scale morphological features correlate with age. The youngest pixels (those which do not deredden to the model line and which are shaded white) are found in the centers of clusters in the very dusty “Northeastern Star Formation Region” (Region I; $`A_V`$ $`23`$), the “Western Loop” (Region II; $`A_V`$ $`1.52.5`$), and the “Northwest Extension” (Region III; $`A_V`$ $``$1.5-2.5), using nomenclature from Figure 5a of W99. Our K- band image (Figure 1c) aids in the detection of this young population, especially in Region I, since its light can penetrate much of the dust present. Notice the many high surface brightness clusters in Region I, along with patches of dust in the $`VK`$ image in Figure 2b. An age gradient is detected surrounding the star-forming clusters in the regions mentioned above, which may also be due to the mixing of light from the old disk population with a contribution from the zero-age clusters that decreases as pixels are located with increasing distance from the young clusters. This gradient is apparent in Figure 5 as the shading darkens with increasing distance from the centers of clusters. Current star-formation is also readily apparent in 4 small knots surrounding the nucleus of NGC 4038. Young pixels of ages $`60`$ Myr are found near their centers, and pixels with ages of up to $`350`$ Myr are found on the outskirts of the knots. Mengel et al. (2001) find knots near the 4038 nucleus to be $`65\pm 15`$ Myr old from K-band spectra. The nucleus of NGC 4039 has an age of $`55`$ Myr at its center (Mengel et al. 2001 measure $`65\pm 15`$ Myr for it from K-band spectra), knots in the arm emerging from the nucleus are about 80-90 Myr, and ages of about 100-400 Myr are found in the diffuse light surrounding the knots in the arm. These populations can also be explained as a combination of old and young populations. All these star-forming regions are apparent in both the B and the V-band images in Figures 1a and 1b and the $`BV`$ color map in Figure 2a. W99 calculate ages of $`510`$ Myr for clusters in Region II, one third of clusters with ages $`100`$ Myr and two thirds with ages $``$ 30 Myr with “streaks” of recent star-formation in Region I, less than $`5`$ Myr for the young clusters in the “Overlap Region,” and “somewhat older” in the arm of NGC 4039 from a mix of GHRS spectroscopy, H$`\alpha `$, and UBVI colors from HST. The youngest pixels follow the H$`\alpha `$ map in ZFW. ZFW find that the H$`\alpha `$ flux is not followed by highly reddened young clusters, as expected, but is instead closely associated with $`10`$ Myr young bright clusters.

We detect a $`600`$ Myr intermediate-aged population in the diffuse light in an arc to the west of Region II, to the east of Region I, to the north of the “Northwest Extension,” to the south of the NGC 4038 nucleus, and on the east side of the “Overlap Region.” The $`600`$ Myr population appears to be a remnant of NGC 4038’s pre-encounter star-forming disk. W99 identify intermediate-age clusters ($`500`$ Myr old), “with the most obvious members located in the ‘Western Loop’” (Region III). Our $`600`$ Myr old population follows these clusters. W99 comment that these clusters appear to have formed in a separate burst during a previous encounter of the two galaxies.

In Figure 5, the old $`15`$ Gyr underlying disk and bulge population of NGC 4038 and 4039 is shaded black. This population permeates the disk of NGC 4039 and is prominent only in the inner parts and outskirts of NGC 4038’s disk.

In Figure 6, we present an extinction map of the Antennae where areas shaded black represent the dustiest regions and have $`A_V`$ of $`23`$. White areas demarcate the zero-age clusters that do not deredden to a model locus. There is a huge mass of dust apparent in the “Overlap Region” ($`A_V23`$). Dust clouds of varying thickness ($`A_V`$ $`1.52.5`$) are detected throughout the disk of NGC 4038. The dust lane passing through the nucleus of NGC 4038 has $`A_V`$ $`2.02.8`$. Most of the diffuse light in this disk has an $`A_V`$ of $`1`$. The spread in $`A_V`$ for pixels from NGC 4038 is evidenced by the spread of pixels in $`VK`$ in Figure 2b. NGC 4039’s nucleus and small spiral arm, each with an extinction of $`2.4`$ and $`1.21.6`$, respectively, are quite dusty. The inner disk of NGC 4039 does not contain many dust clouds and has an $`A_V`$ of $`1`$, similar to NGC 4038’s inner disk. This is well illustrated in Figure 2a where the pixels from NGC 4039 do not have as great of a spread in $`VK`$ as those from NGC 4038.

A low-resolution CO map shows 3 major concentrations: the NGC 4038 nucleus, the “Overlap Region,” and the NGC 4039 nucleus (ZFW). A high-resolution CO map shows a more extended distribution in the “Overlap Region” and Region II (ZFW). ZFW also find that highly reddened young star clusters correlate well with molecular clouds. Most of the gas in the merger is found in the “Overlap Region,” along with more than half of all highly reddened clusters (ZFW). They also find bright young clusters to generally be near peaks of the CO emission. As seen in the age map in Figure 5, our youngest clusters do indeed come from these highly reddened regions. ZFW find that young bright clusters ($`10`$ Myr) have a mean $`A_V`$ of $`1.5`$, and that clusters with ages $`100`$ Myr (but still younger than the intermediate-age population) have a mean $`A_V`$ of $`0.3`$. These $`A_V`$ values are consistent with our extinction map. We also find reddened clusters in the “Overlap Region” in our K-image which are not detected at B or V. In short, the far- and mid-infrared maps presented in ZFW resemble the CO maps, which in turn resemble the extinction map in Figure 6.

### 4.2 “Hidden” Clusters Present in the K-band

We have detected 5 objects on our K-band image for which we obtain only upper limits in the B and V-bands, and identify them as heavily reddened star clusters. Some have been previously studied with spectroscopy, as discussed below. Their locations are indicated with open circles on the B and K-band images in Figure 7, with clusters numbered from 1 to 5 on the K-band image in Figure 7a. All are located in the very dusty ($`A_V`$ $`23.2`$) “Overlap Region” between the two galaxies. K-band magnitudes of these clusters were measured in a square aperture, 3 pixels (3$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$48) on a side, corresponding to $`320`$ parsecs. Given our seeing of $``$1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5 FWHM at K, these could in fact be multiple (2 or 3) clusters unresolved by our seeing, as it is well known that massive clusters in the Antennae are often clustered (ZWF). Upper limits ($`3\sigma `$) for B, V, $`BK`$, and $`VK`$ are given in Table 1. The uncertainty in B, V, $`BK`$, and $`VK`$ is 0.1, while the uncertainty in K is 0.06.

Clusters 2 and 5 have near-infrared magnitudes reported in the literature that are also listed in Table 1. Mengel et al. (2001) observed cluster 2, also known as cluster 80 from Whitmore $`\&`$ Schweizer (1995), with integral field K-band spectroscopy. They derived a K-band magnitude from the spectroscopy in a 2$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$2 box (205 parsecs), and measured a V-band magnitude from W99’s V-band image in the same aperture. Gilbert et al. (2000) also imaged cluster 2 in the K-band, and quoted a V-band measurement from the HST image. They determined a half-light radius of $`32`$ parsecs and found that the cluster releases strong far-ultraviolet flux that excites the surrounding medium on scales of up to 200 parsecs. While the K-band measurements for cluster 2 from our measurements, Mengel et al. (2001), and Gilbert et al. (2000) are consistent considering the apertures used, V-band measurements differ between authors. Because of our modest seeing ($`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$), we do not directly detect cluster 2. Instead, we measure an upper limit of $`21.2\pm 0.1`$. This is consistent with Gilbert et al. (2000) who obtain V=23.5 (via a private communication with B.C. Whitmore $`\&`$ Q. Zhang 1999 who measure it from the HST image). Mengel et al. (2001) measure V=$`18.8\pm 0.15`$ for cluster 2, which is not consistent with either our measurement or that of Gilbert et al. (2000). Cluster 5 is resolved into at least 2 separate clusters on the W99 image, cluster 355 from Whitmore $`\&`$ Schweizer (1995) and cluster 15 from W99. These 2 parts were observed by Mengel et al. (2002), and they give magnitudes for V and Kshort in a 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$74 radius. In Table 1 we sum Mengel et al. (2002)’s measurements for these 2 clusters. Our measurements of this cluster most likely differ from Mengel et al. (2002) because of a combination of factors. Namely, the seeing on our image is large, we use a different aperture than Mengel et al. (2002), and we calculate sky counts locally, in an area which could be contaminated by light from neighboring clusters. In addition, Mengel et al. (2002) noted (see the “Comments” column in Table 1 of their paper), that there were difficulties keeping both targets in the slit during integrations.

Mengel et al. (2001) derive an $`A_V`$ for cluster 2 of 4.3 from the flux ratio of Br$`\gamma `$/H$`\alpha `$. Gilbert et al. (2000) estimate the screen extinction to the cluster to be $`A_V=910`$. The extinction values found from these higher resolution observations are larger than those determined from our data since, with a higher resolution, one can see in between dust features which are smoothed over in our images.

## 5 Conclusions

With simple modeling, we have mapped the distributions of stellar populations and dust in the Antennae, and derived the star-formation history of the encounter between NGC 4038 and 4039. This was done with a pixel-by-pixel analysis of modest-seeing (1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5) ground-based images.

We detected two epochs of star-formation that presumably resulted from the two most recent close encounters of the galaxies. In brighter regions, where we do not expect a significant contribution from an underlying older ($`15`$ Gyr) population, we discerned a very young, essentially zero-age burst. We called it “zero-age” because we have no diagnostic power with single stellar population models for very young populations where, below 40 Myr, colors are degenerate with reddening for our data. Pixels of “zero-age” correspond to the brightest blue star-forming regions associated with the HII regions seen by W99. An intermediate-aged ($`600`$ Myr) population was found to lie in the outer regions of NGC 4038’s spiral arm; it is the same population as the one detected in W99’s HST study. Populations with ages between about 40 and 500 Myr can be explained as either single or composite populations, depending on assumptions about reddening. These populations outline young star-forming regions in the Antennae. The intermediate-age ($`600`$ Myr) population most likely formed in a burst during the first encounter between the two galaxies which resulted in the tidal tails. Current star-formation in the Antennae appears to be confined to locations where there was previous star-formation activity, as evidenced by the location of the intermediate-aged population, along the NGC 4038 spiral arm. In addition to the young and intermediate-aged populations, we detected an old star-forming disk population of $`15`$ Gyr which traces the disk of NGC 4039 and the inner disk and bulge of NGC 4038.

Based on de Vaucouleurs et al. (1991)’s classification of NGC 4038 as an SB(s)mpec and NGC 4039 as an SA(s)mpec, we suggest that NGC 4038 was probably a gas-rich Sb/Sc galaxy before the encounter, while NGC 4039 was probably a relatively gas-poor Sa. The encounter between the two that occurred about 600 Myr ago could have consumed most of the gas in NGC 4039. Thus, within this galaxy we found very few “zero-age” clusters. NGC 4038, being of later type, still retained a significant amount of its copious gas content after the first encounter. It is this gas that is responsible for the current “zero-age” burst of star-formation and that gives NGC 4038 its dramatic appearance. We infer that the product of a merger between an Sa and an Sc galaxy, especially if observed at a higher redshift, would probably resemble a disturbed Sc galaxy if viewed in a rest-frame optical band at a similar stage in a merger sequence as the Antennae. This is due to the prominence of star-formation in the disk of NGC 4038, compared to activity elsewhere in the merger, and to the low surface brightness of other features such as tidal tails and the meager amount of star-formation in NGC 4039.

Our extinction map delineates where dust accumulates in the merger. While there is a large dust cloud where the two galaxies overlap, much less extinction is detected over most of the galaxies’ disks. This is expected, since in a merger interstellar gas and dust are destabilized and fall toward the central potential well. In addition to reddening, our K-band image allows us to find buried star-formation regions that are not detected in our B or V-band images, clearly showing the value of near-infrared imaging of dusty mergers.

The success of the pixel by pixel analysis when applied to a complex system such as the Antennae suggests that this simple method could be used to study the stellar content and star-formation histories of galaxies for which comparably detailed HST imagery is not available. The key is to have the rest-frame H or K-band in addition to rest-frame visible colors to create a long baseline in wavelength that reaches to the near-infrared. This baseline is needed to gain leverage with the dust content and thus be able to do the population analysis, and, at least in this case, to reveal a few surprises (i.e., the buried clusters).

We thank the CTIO TAC for generous allocation of time for the OSU Galaxy Survey, and the anonymous referee for their thorough and thoughtful comments. Funding for the OSU Bright Spiral Galaxy Survey was provided by grants from The National Science Foundation (grants AST-9217716 and AST-9617006), with additional funding by the Ohio State University. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) that is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.


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# IceCube’s Development Environment.

## I Introduction

### I.1 IceCube Overview

The IceCube experiment is a neutrino telescope in which 1 km3 of ice is instrumented with Digital Optical Modules (DOMs), i.e. light detectors. The experiment is comprised of around 150 collaborators from all over Europe and America, but it is located at the South Pole. This location provides some fairly unique problems such as the following:

* For 8 months of the year the Pole is manned by “Winter-overs” only and there is no outside access.
* These “Winter-overs” are not usually the same people who develop the experiment’s software.
* The satellite connection to the Pole is limited and can also be intermittent.

Given these conditions not only is software reliability a major asset to the experiment, but it is also essential for the “Winter-overs” to be able to handle any software issue that arise during the 8 months that the Pole is shut. Therefore it is important for IceCube to have a software development environment that can help mitigate these issues.

## II Software Development Environment

### II.1 Requirements

The software reliability issue led IceCube to make the decision that one of its key requirements for its software development environment is that it must support and encourage industry proven “good practices”. This was considered to be one of the best ways to mitigate the risk to the whole project contributed by the software reliability issue. This led to the environment needing to provide tools which covered the following practices:

This includes support for some version of the “Unified Change Management” model ucm-whitepaper .

This is separate for the work space management, as this tools will have language dependent portions, whereas work space management should be language neutral.

This helps capture the requirements of the software in a concrete form. It also means that software units can be replaced provided that the new code passes these tests.

This covers the repeated building, testing and reporting of any new code additions, so that errors can be found early in the development process.

This provides an institutional memory for the experiment as there is expected to be significant turnover of personnel due to the long lifetime of the experiment.

Another decision, that also addressed reliability risk, was that as much software as possible at the Pole should be written in Java as this was a found to be a more robust language than C++. However the physicists required that their online filter code be written in C++ so that they would be able to exploit the resources provided by the ROOT package root-site . Similarly, DOM programming is best done in C, due to the nature of the hardware. This meant the the development environment needed multi-language support.

### II.2 Implementation

No single, affordable, off the shelf product was found that fulfilled all these requirements. Meanwhile it was observed that there were many open source tools that addressed subsets of these requirements. Therefore IceCube decided to create its own development environment by selecting those open source tools which it could exploit and develop its own tools in those areas where no open source solution existed. In the end this turned out to be only one area, work space management.

#### II.2.1 Work Space Management

Figure 1 illustrates the basic ideas behind the work space management cycle as defined by the Unified Change Management model. A developer enters the cycle by initializing an area to be a work space to tack a specified issue. Once the space is established, the developer is free to work on the code and its test, including adding new code and new tests if the issue is an enhancement request. Eventually the point should be reached when the change is notional complete. At this point in time the code should pass all of its unit tests. Once this requirement has been satisfied the code is then delivered, ready for integration with the rest of the software product.

The exact results of code delivery depends a great deal on the size of the product. For small products delivery may simply be inclusion of the new and modified code in the next continuous integration test of the product. Large projects, on the other hand, will be broken down into hierarchical subsystems and “delivery”” will mean that the new and modified code is passed on to an integrator who will bring together all the changes in that subsystem, test that they work together and then pass the resulting code base on to the next level of the hierarchy.

As noted above, no open source tool was found to handle these responsibilities so the bfd tool has been created. This initializes work spaces with the files and soft links they need to be able to work. It also adds a layer of policy on top of a code archive system, in IceCube’s case this is CVS, that handles code checkout, checkin and tagging.

#### II.2.2 Code Building

As the core of the IceCube software system will written be in Java, it was decided that ant ant-site  would be the best choice as the main build tool for the environment. This tool is already the standard build tool for many Java products. One of the major benefits is that it is written in Java which means that it can execute anywhere you expect Java code to execute.

Also, by being written in Java, ant easily extensible although there are already plenty of “tasks” for handling the more common duties associated with code building such as; skeleton processing; running JUnit (see below); integration with other tools such as JDepend jdepend-site  \- a metric calculation program.

The execution of ant is driven by a build.xml file, therefore a standard build.xml file is provided for each project within the IceCube software system. Figure 2 shows the public targets for the standard file.

Similarly a standard build.xml file is provided for each work space. This file contains call downs to the public targets of each project contained in a work space, as well as extra targets that handle work space level issues. e.g. creation of deployment tar-balls.

#### II.2.3 Unit Testing

The model adopted for unit testing in IceCube is the XUnit framework xunit-paper . The Java implementation of this framework is called JUnit junit-site . In this framework a set of test for a particular unit (at the base level this is a class) are created and grouped together in a “TestCase” for that unit. Each test codifies one of the requirements that has been specified for that unit.

A skeleton for the TestCase for a class is generated by ant when ant is used to generate the class skeleton. Thus, for the simpler classes the developer simply needs to provide a set of implementations that test all requirements and the job is complete.

JUnit provides both a GUI and text based interface for testing. However ant also provides its own interface and this is the one used by IceCube. The ant interface generates an XML file as well as providing a summary of the execution of the tests. A further ant task can be used to convert this XML file into a set of HTML frames that can easily be viewed to see which tests succeeded and which failed and why.

#### II.2.4 Continuous integration

The earlier a problem can be discovered the sooner it can be fixed and the less impact it will have on the overall development of a software product. To that end it makes sense to continuously integrate all parts of a product to check that no change has broken another part of the software. IceCube’s solution to this issue is to use the CruiseControl cc-site  software. This can be integrated with ant build files so is a good match to the rest of the IceCube system. Builds are currently executed every time a change committed to the CVS archive and a build is not in progress. Work is in progress to also allow builds to be scheduled, e.g. every night.

The results of a build can be readily made available on the Web, along with the results of the unit test.

As well as the standard CruiseControl output, the results can be passed to the Tinderbox tinder-site  program which can display a graphical of the current state of various different configurations of builds.

#### II.2.5 Issue Tracking

In the initial incarnation of the IceCube development environment Issuezilla was chosen to handle issue tracking. This product was an outgrowth of the Bugzilla product used by Netscape to track Mozilla issues. However the future of this product is unclear as its developers are now focused on a Java based replacement, Scarab, whose development appears to a stalled over the last half year of so.

In the meantime an open source development of the old SourceForge project, GForge gforge-site , has recently announced its presence. This tool not only provides issue tracking facilities, but it can also act as a “portal” though which the entire software effort of IceCube could be accessed.

All this means that the Issue tracking portion of the IceCube development environment has yet to be finally settled.

## III Walk Through of a User Session

In this section of the paper we will see an example walk through of the development environment highlighting many of the typical uses. Some features of the environment, e.g. baselining, are not yet implemented and so are not included in this example.

### III.1 Creating a Work Space

Figure 3 shows an example of how a work space can be initialized. It is fairly straightforward. A directory, which will be the work space, is creates and then bfd init is executed in that directory. This created the necessary files and soft links. The example shows the contents of the work space after it is initialized.

The final set of the example shows the “sourcing” of the appropriate setup file that sets up the necessary environmental variables to use the work space. This command needs to be executed every time a session begins work in the work space.

### III.2 Checking out and Building a Project

Figure 4 shows how to checkout a project, in this case the icebucket project, from the code archive and then build it using the ant command. As you can see in the example two jar files are created, one holds the project code, and the other holds the code and resources needed to run the unit tests of the project.

### III.3 Creating a New Project

Figure 5 shows how the contents of a new project, gromit, can be created using ant. Dependencies of one project on another are stored in the project.xml file of project, thus the need to edit this file in the example to include the fact that gromit is dependent upon icebucket.

### III.4 Creating a New Class

Figure 6 shows how ant can be used to create new class files. It also shows that the test file for a class is also created at the same time as the class itself.

### III.5 Implementing a Class

Figure 7 shows the steps that can now be taken to provide an implementation of a class and its unit test. It also shows how a JUnit test can be run outside ant.

### III.6 Delivering a Project

Figure 8 shows how, once development of a class has been completed, it can be delivered and thus made available to the next stage of integration.

### III.7 Cleaning up

Figure 9 shows how you can clean up a work space once its task has been accomplished. Using this command, rather than simply using a rm -rf, checks that everything has been safely stored in the code archive.

## IV Summary

IceCube has created a development environment for its software based, where possible, on open source tools. The aim of this environment has been to simplify the developers work load by integrating “good practices” into the environment. So far these goals have been achieved and early adopters of the environment have been pleased by the ease it has brought to their development process.


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# Chapter 1 Search for Sub-TeV Gamma Rays Coincident with BATSE Gamma Ray Bursts

## Chapter 1 Search for Sub-TeV Gamma Rays Coincident with BATSE Gamma Ray Bursts

### Abstract

Project GRAND is a 100m $`\times `$ 100m air shower array of proportional wire chambers (PWCs). There are 64 stations each with eight 1.29 m2 PWC planes arranged in four orthogonal pairs placed vertically above one another to geometrically measure the angles of charged secondaries. A steel plate above the bottom pair of PWCs differentiates muons (which pass undeflected through the steel) from non-penetrating particles. FLUKA Monte Carlo studies show that a TeV gamma ray striking the atmosphere at normal incidence produces 0.23 muons which reach ground level where their angles and identities are measured. Thus, paradoxically, secondary muons are used as a signature for gamma ray primaries. The data are examined for possible angular and time coincidences with eight gamma ray bursts (GRBs) detected by BATSE. Seven of the GRBs were selected because of their good acceptance by GRAND and high BATSE fluence. The eighth GRB was added due to its possible coincident detection by Milagrito. For each of the eight candidate GRBs, the number of excess counts during the BATSE T90 time interval and within $`\pm 5^{}`$ of BATSE’s direction was obtained. The highest statistical significance reported in this paper ($`2.7\sigma `$) is for the event that was predicted to be the most likely to be observed (GRB 971110).

### 1. Introduction

The mystery of the astrophysical origin for gamma bursts (GRBs) has been present for some time. Although there is no one complete paradigm for their origin, it is likely that energetic ($``$ TeV) gamma rays might also be produced along with the low energy burst. Previous literature presents at least some evidence for a possible association of energetic gamma rays with low-energy GRBs. EGRET detected several GRBs which emitted high energy photons in the $``$ 100 MeV to 18 GeV range . There have also been some results from the Tibet air shower array suggestive of gamma rays beyond the TeV range . Possible evidence for TeV emission in coincidence with a BATSE GRB has been reported from the Milagrito detector .

### 2. Project GRAND

GRAND is located at $`86.2^{}`$ W and $`41.7^{}`$ N. It detects cosmic ray secondaries at ground level by means of 64 tracking stations of proportional wire chambers (PWCs). Each station has eight 1.29 m2 PWC planes. Each secondary muon is measured to $`0.26^{}`$ precision, on average, in each of two orthogonal planes. A 51 mm thick steel plate is located between the sixth and seventh PWC plane allowing muons to be distinguished from electrons. The data presented here are from single-track triggers with only the muon tracks selected. Secondary muons are primarily the result of interactions of primary cosmic rays with the atmosphere producing pions, which then decay into muons. The muons are produced at small angles relative to the pion and are then deflected in the earth’s magnetic field and scattered in the atmosphere resulting in an effective net angular resolution of about $`\pm 5^{}`$ (depending slightly on the primary spectral index; see Fig 6 in ). Thus the experimental angular resolution is much better than the effective angular resolution which is governed by the deflections suffered by the muons before they reach the detector.

GRAND utilizes the fact that gamma rays have a detectable signal of muons from gamma-hadro production in the atmosphere making it possible to study coincidences between GRBs and gamma ray showers in the 10 GeV $``$ Eγ $``$ 1 TeV energy region (see Fig 6 of ).

In the gamma primary energy region above 10 GeV, the recorded muon rate is 2400 Hz. A FLUKA MC simulation shows that a 1 TeV gamma ray normally incident upon the earth’s atmosphere produces an average of 0.23 muons which reach detection level. Paradoxically, muons are used as a signal for gamma ray primaries. Our response to primary gamma rays has a threshold of $``$ 10 GeV (optimum response). Our ability to correlate short bursts of muons with an identifiable source of primary radiation has been shown in a detection which was coincident with the solar flare of 15 April 2001 . The statistical significance of this observation was 6.1$`\sigma `$ for a ground level event of 0.6 hours duration.

### 3. Data Analysis

For each GRB, an acceptance factor, based on the elevation angle of the burst and the geometry of the array, was multiplied by BATSE’s fluence in their highest energy bin to obtain a rudimentary likelihood, $`LogLk`$, that we could observe the GRB. The top seven GRBs for which we had data were selected for analyses. In addition the Milagrito event, GRB 970417a, was included.

First, the BATSE RA and Dec were transformed to a local horizon coordinate system and projected onto the xz-plane ($`\theta _x`$) and the yz-plane ($`\theta _y`$). A window of $`\pm 5^o`$ in $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta _x`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta _y`$ was centered on the location of the GRB. To correct for the experimental dead time, the total event rate over the whole sky was employed as a high-statistics measure of the live time of each time bin; each bin’s data were corrected for its corresponding live time. The background was determined during a time interval of 20$`\times `$T90 before the start of the BATSE trigger (except for GRB 971110 which was 10$`\times `$T90 in order to stay within the data tape for this event).

Table 1 lists BATSE data on eight gamma ray bursts: the date of the trigger, the trigger number, the time duration for 90% of the burst’s counts to occur (in seconds); the right ascension, declination, and the BATSE angular error in degrees. Next is the angular elevation (degrees) above our horizon and our selection criterion ($`LogLk`$), described below. The last column of Table 1 summarize the muon secondaries observed by us within a $`\pm 5^{}`$ square angular window centered on the burst location during the BATSE T90 time interval. The error is the total error (statistical plus systematic) which is discussed below. Further details on these observations can be found in .

### 4. Significance and Errors

The signal (Sig) calculated for a GRB is the difference between the total counts inside the T90 interval (corrected for dead time) and the background counts normalized to the live time of the T90 time interval and corrected for dead time. The statistical significance (number of standard deviations above background) of each event was determined according to the likelihood ratio method of Li and Ma,  which makes a good accounting of the true significance for events with differing background and event times.

It is possible that the background fluctuates in excess of the expected $`\sqrt{N}`$ statistics. As a check on systematic errors in the signal for GRB 971110, similar angular sections of the sky (which have the same absolute values of $`\theta _x`$ and $`\theta _y`$ and thus the same average counting rates) and the same time interval (T90) but at different, neighboring times were analyzed. These time intervals span $`\pm `$26 hours relative to the BATSE trigger for GRB 971110 and were analyzed in the same way as described in the preceding paragraphs. The standard deviation width of the distribution of these 1587 background cases is 171, whereas the expected statistical deviation based upon the square root of the background count rate is only 141. Adopting this total error as the quadrature sum of the statistical and systematic errors, then 97 counts are ascribed as the additional systematic error in our analysis for GRB 971110. With this additional systematic error, the ratio of signal-to-noise becomes $`Sig/\delta Sig=2.72`$. The fractional additional systematic error for GRB 971110 was then used for the other GRB candidates in order to estimate their total errors. The final results with total errors (statistical plus systematic) are in the last column of the Table 1.

The probability of a $`+2.7\sigma `$ fluctuation in an assumed Gaussian white-noise distribution is $`3.5\times 10^3`$. The probability without assuming a Gaussian shape was measured with the 1587 background cases: There were ten random fluctuations $`|466|`$ yielding a probability of $`3.2\times 10^3`$ for a background fluctuation to produce a fluctuation of $`+466`$. For one event out of the eight analyzed to exhibit this much deviation would correspond to a random probability of 0.025. Thus, the statistics of this event are interesting but not compelling.

No convincing evidence is found, though there is a possible 2.7$`\sigma `$ detection associated with the most probable candidate.

The authors wish to acknowledge contributions of D. Baker, J. Carpenter, S. Desch, M. Dunford, P.C. Fragile, C.F. Lin, M. López del Puerto, G.J. Mathews, R. Skibba, J. Vermedahl, and M. Wysocki; and satellite data from BATSE (NASA). Project GRAND’s research is presently being funded through the University of Notre Dame and private grants.

### 5. References

1. Amenomori et al. 1996, Astronomy and Astrophysics 311, 919

2. Catelli J.R., Dingus, B.L., Schneid, E.J. 1997, AIP Conference Proc. 428

3. Hurley K. 1994, Nature 372, 652

4. Li T.P., Ma Y. Q. 1983, Astrophysical Journal 272, 317

5. Milagrito Collab, Atkins R. et al. 2000, ApJ Lett. 553, L119

6. Milagrito Collab, Atkins R. et al. 2003, ApJ. 583, 824

7. Milagrito Collab, Leonor I.R. et al. 1999, Proc. of the 26th ICRC 4, 12

8. Padilla L. et al. 1998, Astronomy and Astrophysics 337, 43

9. Poirier J., D’Andrea C. 2002, Journal of Geophysical Research 107, 1376

10. Poirier J., Roesler S., Fassó A., 2002, Astroparticle Physics 17, 441

11. Poirier J. et al. 2002, Physical Review D 67, 042001

12. Schneid E.J. et al. 1992, Astronomy and Astrophysics 255, L13


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# A comment on: ‘Some problems with calculating the quantum corrections to the classical ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopole’

\[

## Abstract

In a recent publication we noticed that the Hamiltonian density for fluctuations around the ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopole appeared to be non-Hermitian. Here we show that when this Hamiltonian density is integrated into the Hamiltonian all non-Hermitian terms give a vanishing total contribution.

\]

In a recent letter  we were looking at the quantum fluctuations around the ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopole and noticed that the Hamiltonian density appeared to be non-Hermitian. We then speculated that this could indicate a subtlety in the behaviour of monopoles, although we also said the problem may be merely technical.

The aim of this comment is to show that there are no problems with the Hermiticity of the Hamiltonian. When the Hamiltonian density is integrated to the Hamiltonian the non-Hermitian terms give a vanishing contribution.

For illustration we consider the Hamiltonian density for the gauge fluctuations around the monopole

$`_{\mathrm{qu}}=\frac{1}{2}\pi _a^i\pi _a^i+\frac{1}{2}a_a^i\left(𝒦_{ab}^{ij}+𝒱_{ab}^{ij}+𝒟_{ab}^{ij}\right)a_b^j,`$ (1)
where $`𝒱_{ab}^i=𝒱_{ba}^{ji}`$, $`𝒦_{ab}^{ij}=\delta _{ab}\left(^2\delta ^{ij}^i^j\right)`$ and $`𝒟_{ab}^{ij}=D_{abl}^{ij}_l`$. The conjugate momenta are $`\pi _a^i=\dot{a}_a^i`$ in a temporal gauge. Then the first few terms in this Hamiltonian are Hermitian because

$`{\displaystyle d^3ra_a^i𝒦_{ab}^{ij}b_b^j}={\displaystyle d^3rb_a^i𝒦_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j},a_a^i𝒱_{ab}^{ij}b_b^j=b_a^i𝒱_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j;`$ (2)
the first by partial integration, neglecting surface terms, and the second by $`𝒱_{ab}^{ij}=𝒱_{ba}^{ji}`$. However, a partial integration of $`𝒟_{ab}^{ij}=D_{abl}^{ij}_l`$ implies

$$(𝒟^{})_{ab}^{ij}=𝒟_{ba}^{ji}_lD_{bal}^{ji}𝒟_{ab}^{ij},$$
(3)
whereby $`𝒟_{ab}^{ij}`$ is not Hermitian, as pointed out in ref. .

This non-Hermiticity is misleading though. Although the Hamiltonian density $`_{\mathrm{qu}}`$ appears to contain non-Hermitian terms, both the Hamiltonian $`H_{\mathrm{qu}}=d^3r_{\mathrm{qu}}`$ and the field equations contain only Hermitian operators.

Let us consider the Hamiltonian and the field equations separately:

(i) Notice that $`𝒟_{ab}^{ij}`$ in (1) can be split into Hermitian and anti-Hermitian components:

$`𝒟=𝒟_H+𝒟_A,𝒟_H^{}=𝒟_H,𝒟_A^{}=𝒟_A,`$ (4)
defined by $`𝒟_H=\frac{1}{2}(𝒟+𝒟^{})`$, $`𝒟_A=\frac{1}{2}(𝒟𝒟^{})`$. Now, the Hamiltonian can be written as (the dots denote other terms in the Hamiltonian)

$`H_{\mathrm{qu}}[a_a^i,\pi _a^i]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^3r_{\mathrm{qu}}[a_a^i,\pi _a^i]}`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{}+{\displaystyle d^3ra_a^i(𝒟_H)_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j}+{\displaystyle d^3r(𝒟_A)_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j}`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{}+{\displaystyle d^3ra_a^i(𝒟_H)_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j}`$ (7)
because of $`d^3ra_a^i(𝒟_A)_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j=d^3ra_a^i(𝒟_A)_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j=0`$. Thus the non-Hermitian part $`𝒟_A`$ does not contribute to the Hamiltonian, which then contains only Hermitian terms.

(ii) The second argument uses the field equations . Consider, for instance, the Lagrangian density for gauge fluctuations in a temporal $`a_a^0=0`$ gauge,

$`_{\mathrm{qu}}[a_a^i]`$ $`=`$ $`\frac{1}{2}\dot{a}_a^i\dot{a}_a^i+\frac{1}{2}^ia_a^j^ia_a^j\frac{1}{2}^ia_a^j^ja_a^i`$ (9)
$`+\frac{1}{2}a_a^i𝒱_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j+\frac{1}{2}a_a^iD_{abl}^{ij}_la_b^j.`$
One must also impose an additional Gauss’s law constraint from this choice of gauge. From (9) the field equations are

$`\ddot{a}_a^i+𝒦_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j+\frac{1}{2}(𝒱_{ab}^{ij}+𝒱_{ba}^{ji})a_b^j`$ (10)
$`+\frac{1}{2}𝒟_{ab}^{ij}a_b^j+\frac{1}{2}(𝒟_{ba}^{ji}_lD_{bal}^{ji})a_b^j=0.`$ (11)
By (3) the last operator is recognized as $`(𝒟^{})_{ab}^{ij}`$ and the field equations are

$$\ddot{a}_a^i+\left(𝒦_{ab}^{ij}+𝒱_{ab}^{ij}+(𝒟_H)_{ab}^{ij}\right)a_b^j=0.$$
(12)
Again, only the Hermitian component contributes to the equations of motion.

Finally, we note it is not surprising that the operators in the Hamiltonian $`H_{\mathrm{qu}}`$ are Hermitian. The quadratic-order Hamiltonian also describes the scattering of scalar and gauge bosons off the classical monopole background. For the $`S`$-matrix to be unitary one should expect a Hermitian Hamiltonian.