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# Projective Dynamics Analysis of Magnetization Reversal

## Abstract

The computational Projective Dynamics method is used to analyze simulations of magnetization reversal in nanoscale magnetic pillars. It is shown that this method can be used to determine the magnetizations corresponding to the metastable minimum and saddle point in the free energy, and the free-energy barrier associated with those points. For the nanopillars studied here, entropy is found to provide a significant contribution to the free-energy barrier which determines the reversal time scale.

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Understanding magnetization reversal is important for technological applications where the magnetic orientation of nanoscale regions must be quickly assigned. For information storage, two configurations of the magnetization are used to encode the state of a bit of data. During the assignment process, strong fields are applied to create a free-energy minimum for only one of these configurations, and the bit almost certainly assumes the equilibrium configuration. For weaker fields, the two configurations correspond to local free-energy minima separated by a free-energy maximum. The minimum corresponding to a magnetization parallel to the applied field is truly stable, while the antiparallel minimum is higher in energy and therefore metastable. In this situation the configuration depends not only on the relative weights of the minima, but for device and human time scales, it also depends on the history of the configuration. At some point along the most probable path between the minima there must occur a free-energy maximum in the form of a saddle point. The free-energy difference between the maximum and either minimum, often called a free-energy barrier, determines the time scale for transitions of the configuration from that minimum to the other.

To a first approximation these barriers and the curvature of the free energy near the extrema control the nonequilibrium dynamics of a system. Thus locating free-energy extrema is essential for developing a detailed understanding of the dynamics of metastable states, and that understanding is important for such things as maximizing data integrity and enabling the technology of hybrid recording , which uses lower-than-coercive applied fields to assign magnetic orientations in high-coercivity magnetic materials. While the free-energy minima can be easily located, the saddle point has proven much harder to measure . Here we present results using the Projective Dynamics method  to probe the magnetization reversal of high-aspect-ratio nanoscale model magnets.

It has already been shown that the Projective Dynamics method can be used to locate the saddle point . The method involves projecting the original description of the dynamics in terms of a large number of variables onto a stochastic description in terms of one variable. For example, the dynamics of the thousands of individual spins in a nanoscale pillar can be projected onto the stochastic dynamics of the total magnetization along the long axis of the nanomagnet, $`M_z`$. The transition rates between values of $`M_z`$ are measured by the probabilities $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$, which correspond to an increase in the volume of stable magnetization, and $`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}`$, which correspond to a decrease in the volume. For values of $`M_z`$ with $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$$`>`$$`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}`$, on average the volume of the stable magnetization grows. This corresponds to a negative local slope for the free energy. Likewise, $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$$`<`$$`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}`$ corresponds to a positive local slope. Values of $`M_z`$ for which $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$$`=`$$`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}`$ correspond to zero slope, i.e. extrema of the free energy. Crossings of $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$ and $`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}`$, then, can be used to determine the locations of the extrema, including the saddle point.

Here we present results for Projective Dynamics applied to micromagnetic simulations of magnetization reversal in a chain of 17 spins, $`\stackrel{}{S}_i`$, with the chain aligned along the $`z`$-axis . Using an extended Heisenberg model, the internal energy of the system is given by

$$E=J\underset{i=1}{\overset{16}{}}\widehat{S}_i\widehat{S}_{i+1}\frac{D}{2}\underset{i}{}\underset{ji}{}\frac{\left[3\widehat{z}\left(\widehat{z}\widehat{S}_j\right)\widehat{S}_j\right]\widehat{S}_i}{|ji|^3}+B\underset{i}{}S_{i,z},$$
(1)
where $`J`$ is the exchange energy, $`B`$ is the strength of the external field oriented parallel to $`\widehat{z}`$, and $`D`$ is the strength of the dipole-dipole interactions in energy units, see Eqs. (17) and (18) of Ref. . We choose parameters consistent with previous studies of iron nanopillars modeled as a one-dimensional chain of spins : $`J`$$`=`$$`1.6\times 10^{12}`$ erg and $`D`$$`=`$$`4.1\times 10^{12}`$ erg. The dynamics consist of each spin precessing around a local field, i.e. the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}\widehat{S}_i}{\mathrm{d}t}=\frac{\gamma _0}{1+\alpha ^2}\widehat{S}_i\times \left[\stackrel{}{H}_i\alpha \widehat{S}_i\times \stackrel{}{H}_i\right],$$
(2)
where the scaled electron gyromagnetic ratio $`\gamma _0=9.26\times 10^{21}`$ Hz/erg for this system, and the local field is given by the functional derivative $`\stackrel{}{H}_i=\delta E/\delta \stackrel{}{S}_i`$. The phenomenological damping parameter $`\alpha =0.1`$ was chosen to give underdamped dynamics, and an Euler integration scheme was used .

Dipole-dipole interactions make head-to-tail alignment of the spins along the chain favorable and provide a strong uniaxial anisotropy for this system. For each simulated reversal, the nanopillar was allowed to come to equilibrium in a field $`B_0`$$`=`$$`1.9\times 10^{12}`$ erg ($`1000`$ Oe). Then the magnitude of $`B`$ was quickly decreased to a value of $`B_0`$ to create a metastable configuration of the magnetization. For each integration step, data for $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$, $`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}`$, and the energy were binned on $`M_z`$. Results for this system have been presented previously . Here we present improved results obtained from a systematic choice in bin width and from including lower temperatures.

Projective dynamics is most easily analyzed for discrete systems, such as the Ising model with spin-flip dynamics. Then $`M_z`$ changes by $`S`$, $`0`$, or $`+S`$ at each step, and the stochastic dynamics are easy to analyze in terms of jumps along a well-defined chain of states. When $`M_z`$ is a continuous variable, binning is used to create the chain of states. However, there are competing limitations that determine the bin size. One is the assumption of complete mixing within a bin, which is required for the transitions between bins to be a Markov process. If the bins are too large, then complete mixing within the bins will not be present and there will be memory effects. Another limiting effect is gathering enough statistics in each bin to measure the probabilities $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$ and $`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}.`$ If the bins are too small, there will be inadequate statistics related to these measured probabilities. Furthermore, we would like to have the projected Markov matrix be tridiagonal, which allows calculation of residence times using Eq.(3), introduced below, rather than inverting a large matrix. Tridiagonality of the Markov matrix requires that jumps from anywhere in the bin can go only into the bin with the next largest or smallest $`z`$-component of the magnetization.

The results presented in this work were obtained in the following manner. Data were collected for on the order of $`10^2`$ switches for each temperature with a bin of width $`b`$$`=`$$`5\times 10^5.`$ The data were then analyzed for bin widths of $`b`$, $`2b`$, $`3b`$, etc. until jumps only occurred between neighboring bins. Using this method, the optimal bin width was found to be $`5b`$ at $`T`$$`=`$$`3`$ K and $`25b`$ at $`T`$$`=`$$`50`$ K. In contrast, in Ref.  bins of width $`100b`$ where used. Both probabilities, $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$ (circles) and $`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}`$ (squares), for $`T`$$`=`$$`5`$ K, are shown in Fig. 1. Also shown are two fifth-order polynomials fit to these probabilities. Throughout this work, fifth-order polynomial fits have been used to determine the intersection of $`P_{\mathrm{grow}}`$ and $`P_{\mathrm{shrink}}`$, and we find that the order of polynomial used affects the estimated location by less than $`1\%`$ for the saddle point. The crossings for $`T`$$`=`$$`5`$ K are labeled with arrows in Fig. 1, with the crossing near $`M_z`$$`=`$$`0.995`$ the metastable minimum and that near $`M_z`$$`=`$$`0.95`$ the saddle point.

The values of $`M_z`$ for the metastable minimum (circles) and the saddle point (diamonds) for all temperatures $`T`$ are shown in Fig. 2. Similar results have been shown previously , but the results shown here are quantitatively different because of the smaller bins used. The changes are as large as $`10\%`$ and are strongest for the saddle point. The linear dependence of the $`M_z`$ of the saddle point on $`T`$ noted previously  is present in the new data as well, but only for $`T`$$`>`$$`5`$ K. The solid line is a least-squares fit, and its intercept is $`M_z`$$`=`$$`0.958`$. The deviation from linearity at low temperature is expected to the extent that extrapolation of the linear fit to $`T`$$`=`$$`0`$ K is not consistent with the internal-energy maximum, described below. This deviation was not seen in previous studies since such low temperatures are considered here for the first time.

The free energy, $`F`$$`=`$$`ETS`$, has contributions from the internal energy and the entropy, $`S`$. When the temperature is exactly zero, there is no entropic contribution to the free energy, and the saddle point corresponds to the maximum in the internal energy. The results for the maximum of the average internal energy, $`E`$, binned on $`M_z`$ are shown (squares) in Fig. 2. The $`M_z`$ for the saddle point and the internal-energy maximum converge as the temperature decreases, as expected. The separation between $`M_z`$ at the internal-energy maximum and the saddle point at fixed $`T`$ is a measure of the importance of entropic contributions to the magnetization reversal process. The separation in Fig. 2 indicates that entropy is quite important in these model nanopillars.

The internal-energy “barrier”, the difference between $`E`$ at the saddle point and the metastable minimum, is shown vs temperature $`T`$ in Fig. 3 as squares. Note that for all but the lowest temperatures the difference is negative, indicating that the $`E`$ for the saddle point is lower than that of the metastable minimum. It is indeed possible for a system to be metastable in this situation, because it is a free-energy barrier that is actually required. The free-energy barrier can be estimated using Projective Dynamics from the time spent in each bin $`i`$, $`h(i)`$, which is proportional to the Boltzmann factor $`\mathrm{exp}(F(i)/k_BT).`$ For a tridiagonal Markov matrix, the residence time $`h(i)`$ can be found from the growing and shrinking probabilities by

$$h(i)=\left[1+P_{\mathrm{shrink}}(i1)h(i1)\right]/P_{\mathrm{grow}}(i),$$
(3)
with $`h(1)=1/P_{\mathrm{grow}}(1),`$ where we take the first bin to be the stable state and iterate Eq. (3) towards the metastable state. (Note that the cited references iterate from the metastable to stable state.) free-energy barrier is $`\mathrm{\Delta }F`$$`=`$$`k_BT\mathrm{ln}(h(i_{\mathrm{min}})/h(i_{\mathrm{saddle}}))`$, where $`i_{\mathrm{min}}`$ is the bin containing the metastable minimum and $`i_{\mathrm{saddle}}`$ contains the saddle point. The results for the free-energy barrier are shown (circles) in Fig. 3. The free-energy barrier is always positive and approaches the internal-energy barrier as $`T`$$``$$`0`$, as expected. However, it is clear from the internal-energy barrier being negative for most temperatures and from the temperature dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }F`$, that the entropy contributes significantly to the metastability. This indicates that the configuration of $`\{S_i\}`$ is relatively restricted at the saddle-point, and that this restriction is more important than the combined dipole-dipole and exchange energies at all but the smallest temperatures. The difference between the maximum $`E`$ and the value at the metastable minimum is also shown in Fig. 3 as diamonds. This difference might easily be mistaken for the barrier to magnetization reversal, but here it is much less sensitive to the temperature than the measured free-energy barrier.

In this paper, the usefulness of Projective Dynamics for locating the metastable minimum and saddle point in magnetization reversal has been demonstrated. Once these points are known, it is also possible to directly find the free-energy barrier of the reversal process, also using Projective Dynamics, or the internal-energy barrier, using some other technique to find the internal energy. One of the truly exciting aspects of Projective Dynamics is that it is not limited to analyzing simulations. Since only data on the time-dependence of the slow variable is needed, the analysis can also be applied to experimental data.

This work was supported by the LDRD Program of ORNL, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC (U.S. DOE Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725), by the Computational Material Science Network of BES-DMSE, by the U.S. NSF (Grant 0120310), and by Florida State University.


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# The Athena Startup Kit

## I INTRODUCTION

Atlas ref:Atlas94  is a multi-purpose high energy physics experiment planned for the Large Hadron Collider ref:LHC95  (LHC), which is scheduled for startup after 2007. The data processing needs of Atlas, its variety in subsystems, and its expected longevity pose a big challenge for the software that will be needed for extracting physics out of the future Atlas data. This challenge has attracted a large software community, with developers working today, still a few year before the experiment starts running, on every aspect of the system. Most of the huge Atlas code base, from the software that the end-user runs to the configuration of the infrastructure tools, is currently under heavy development. This has resulted in a state of flux, as a consequence of which all software usage becomes low-level, and all users end up fixing the same problems multiple times. The threshold for new users is high, and casual users are, time and again, forced to relearn most of what they thought they knew.

A large fraction of the Atlas software runs within the athena framework, and in order to alleviate several of the chores that developers and end-users alike have to perform in order to work with that system, the Athena Startup Kit (ask) has been developed. Its main features are:

* Automation of end-user tasks, to save time.
* Integration of the framework, the releases, and the release tools to improve perceived coherency.
* Encapsulation of volatile wisdom (from web-pages and peoples’ heads) of known problems and their workarounds, to make it more accessible.

There are several different categories of athena users and ask addresses the needs of all of them. Ask performs the steps needed to setup tools, locate resources, work around known problems, and execute the athena program. In addition, ask has athena specific functionality: it can generate and update user code meant for athena execution (“algorithms”), generate default job options scripts, and update the dependencies for different releases and compile modes.

A simplistic implementation of ask would mean that its maintenance would turn into a full-time job, which is unacceptable. Thus, ask is coded in such a way that all expected changes are properly taken into account when they occur, that a solution that has been successfully applied before is applied again if the problem resurfaces, and that it has a “Plan B” for most tasks. This paper describes in detail how this robustness is achieved.

## II WORK MODEL

There are three main aspects to everything that ask performs: first, setup a clean-room to work in; then, decompose the task at hand; and finally, always be ready to handle failure.

### II.1 The Clean-Room

There is a whole score of problems related to improper configuration of the working environment by the end-user. In order to keep full control of the environment, ask does not require any actions outside its own process (or any of its subprocesses). Although the user needs to have full access to the environment in case all else fails, in general she is shielded. Ask accomplishes this by executing a working shell in the background, to which it establishes open pipes for input and output, and it then works on this shell as if it was itself just another end-user. This shell is its “clean-room,” and ask has full control: all communication proceeds through an API, which allows ask to verify and validate any commands, their progress, and their results. It is not uncommon to allow commands that may cause havoc, and simply correct settings afterwards.

A shell that is started from the current process inherits the environment and configuration of the current process, which can be invalid to begin with. Note however, that what may seem like an invalid configuration to ask may in fact be an experimental setup from an expert user, who really wants to have the environment setup this way in order to see what happens. Therefore, ask can not simply override any existing configuration. Instead, it accepts the settings from the user and only provides what appears to be missing. This is a very productive and pleasant way of working: as an expert user, you configure only that part of the system that you are interested in, and ask takes care of the rest.

In practice, it turns out that for beginning and casual users a different approach is needed: many of them have residual configuration in their login files. This usually does not cause any problems at first, but sooner or later these settings will go out of date, leaving the user puzzled when things start to mysteriously fail. The user will, typically, blame111In fact, it used to be that every ask bug report was resolved by simply having the user clean up his environment. this on ask and may decide to drop the tool in disappointment. Consequently, ask comes in two modes: expert and non-expert (the latter is the default). In non-expert mode, ask removes any known Atlas software configuration from the environment before executing any of its own code. This way, ask will operate as if it started from a clean environment and perform the whole setup and configuration itself.

Regardless of whether the user or ask has done the configuration, every task is executed from a known state: ask enters a base directory, from where the task can move into its working directory, and it locates the required resources and verifies their configuration, repairing the setup as needed (taking guidelines from experts, overriding non-experts). Each task can then be implemented in a straightforward way, since it will, by design, not get executed until it has a very good chance of succeeding.

If an environment setup is irreparably broken, or if a critical resource is unlocatable, ask has no choice but to stop. However, since such a problem occurs in very specific cases, it is often (but not always) possible to present a clear and concise error report to the user. See Section II.3 for a more detailed discussion of error handling by ask.

### II.2 Task Decomposition

Many of the tasks performed by ask use the same tools and require similar resources. Further, steps within individual tasks sometimes overlap and can consequently be shared. In fact, most tasks share the same initialization and finalization step. Thus, it makes sense to implement the tasks in a layered execution model:

* Encapsulate tools
Each task has access to the execution shell, but only standard unix commands are executed directly. Tools that are part of Atlas software, however, are normally222Similar to the setup of the environment, the user can access the tools directly if all else fails used directly. Instead, tools are encapsulated in modules, which enables ask to locate tools and to verify their setup and possibly update or repair it, before any attempt is made to perform actions with the tool. This is the lowest layer.
* Refactorize steps
It is a good programming practice to minimize the amount of duplicate code and in ask this means that all steps that are shared between tasks are refactored. Further, the order of execution of steps is also often the same. By design many actions need the same set of parameters, and it is therefore straightforward to use meta-programming to create templates that are parametrized on the core action of a task. This guarantees that the execution order is proper, which greatly simplifies the implementation of individual steps. This is the programmatic layer.
* Construct recipes
The end-user typically does not think about tasks in the same granularity as tool authors do. Thus, recipes, that are end-user tasks, are constructed from the programmatic tasks. Since programmatic tasks are supposed to be self-contained, they can be freely mixed and matched in the recipes: it is only the goal of the recipes that puts constraints on their order. This is the user layer.
* User interfaces
The recipes typically take input and have output. The former needs to be collected from the user, and the latter needs to be presented back to the user. The user interfaces connect input/output elements with recipes to present the ask functionality to the user. There is a graphical interface and a command line interface. This is the application layer.

Third party programs or scripts, can access ask functionality at any layer, but do so most commonly at the programmatic and/or user layer. These programs are typically similar in setup as the user interfaces (in effect, they are also located in the application layer). For example, the ask distribution includes a program that performs full Atlas software builds and is targeted at software librarians. But in principle, it is just a batch version of the command line interface with a few different defaults and a few extended recipes.

### II.3 Error Handling

There are several different kinds of errors that ask can encounter:

* Random.
Errors due to (temporarily) missing resources such as disk access, kerberos tokens, the tag collector, etc. These errors come and go and, unfortunately, the solution is usually “come back later, and try again” or requires some user intervention. Reporting is often, but not always, straightforward. For example, if a kerberos ticket is missing and ask attempts to access a file in the code repository, it will be cvs that fails and ask will only have an error from that tool to report, thus masking the real error.
* User actions.
Errors because of a file that does not compile, an executable that does not link, an option script that the user requested but that does not exist, etc. Reporting these errors is simple: ask needs to retrieve the error code, stop the task, and report the error message from the tool that failed.
* Broken system.
Errors as a result of misconfiguration of the Atlas software distribution that is used. There is not much point in reporting this kind of error, unless the user is testing the distribution. Instead, ask attempts to work around the problem. If that fails, then the requested task can not be performed.

It is the last item that is the most interesting, because in handling that category of errors there is the most to gain in terms of productivity for the end-user, especially if he or she is a novice or casual user. In order to deal with broken systems, ask has several options. First of all, it may come prepared: for several releases and configurations, it comes with specific workarounds that are simply programmed into ask. That way, the problem will not appear in the first place, because the workaround is the default.

It gets more interesting when a task does fail. In that case, ask will try a few more things that might work, such as locating an alternative resource, querying an alternative source, or simply accepting a default and hope for the best. The ticket here is that this is precisely how an end-user would attempt to tackle the problem herself, with the exception that ask can perform the trials much, much faster, and it has therefore a good chance of arriving at a solution with the end-user never knowing that there was a problem.

As a final resort, ask sometimes explicitly fixes a workspace. Since this usually involves moving or replacing files and/or directories, this is done only when the case is very clear.

Note that as before, when all else fails, ask does allow expert access at all levels, at any time.

## III IMPLEMENTATION

One of the stated goals of ask (see section I) is the integration of the framework, the releases, and the release tools. The natural choice is then to implement ask in a scripting language, because that is the only way to effectively and productively integrate such a variety of tools and environments. The prevalent scripting language in Atlas software is python ref:python , which is e.g. used for the scripting facilities of the athena framework. Python is often praised for its effective use as a “glue” language, because of its extending and embedding features, and the choice for python is therefore natural.

Python is portable, interpreted, and gives you a lot of functionality per line of code because of its extensive set of ready-to-use modules that come with every standard installation. That, and the fact that most (if not all) unix distributions actually ship with a version of python, means that all the user needs to do to install ask, is to make sure that the scripts are located in a directory that is in included in their PATH environment variable. This is the case for all Atlas accounts at CERN, because ask has been installed in the official scripts directory. Consequently, all Atlas users have immediate access to ask without the need of any further setup.

## IV USER INTERFACE

This section describes how the ask functionality is presented to the user. The details of the individual commands, buttons etc. are explained in the manual ref:ASK-manual , which is included with the distribution, and are not further elaborated here.

There are two user interfaces in ask: a graphical user interface (GUI) and a command line interface (CLI). The former is meant for beginning and casual users, as well as for tutorials; whereas the latter is more attuned to advanced users, developers, and librarians.

### IV.1 Graphical User Interface

Historically, the first usage of ask was to generate an athena skeleton package. In order to be able to capture all user-configurable parameters at once, a small graphical interface interface was developed. This proved especially practical for package updates, since the current information could be displayed, ready for the user to modify. For educational purposes, a pseudo-shell, displaying the underlying commands that ask executes, was added to the GUI. A sample view of the full GUI is shown in Figure 1. On the left, the user can find all tasks, grouped by category in notebook tabs; on the right is the pseudo-shell, where the user can see the commands that ask executes and their the results. In principle, if the user’s shell environment is clean, these commands can be repeated on a real login shell to achieve the same results as with ask.

The categorization of tasks is chosen in such a way as to make sure that a user only rarely needs to leave the current screen. In fact, the screen selected on startup is different for an empty work directory (where the user will most likely want to create or checkout a new package), than for a directory with existing packages (where the user will most likely want to work with any of these packages). There are no dialog boxes in ask: all input, which is minimal and completely optional by design, is collected directly in the current screen, and all output messages are in a log window that is always visible.

Integration of interactive athena is via the pseudo-shell. The entry box on the lower right automatically activates when the athena prompt is detected, and the user can enter input to athena there.

### IV.2 Command Line Interface

The feature set available through the CLI is the same as the one available through the GUI. But there are two main advantages, for proficient users, to the CLI over the GUI:

* The CLI is really just the standard python interpreter. Thus, if the user is well versed in python, she can use any and all functionality available in python. Furthermore, rather than typing all commands, sets of commands can be collected in a script which is subsequently executed in the interpreter.
* Access to underlying system internals, the shell environment, build and release tools, etc. is more natural than in the GUI. One of the options available to the expert is starting a login shell as a subprocess of ask. This shell will inherit a properly setup environment, but otherwise acts the same as if ask wasn’t there.

An additional advantage, for all users, is that the CLI can be used over a poor network connection333With the new version of ask, which can be installed locally while issuing commands on a secure shell to a remote host, this is less of an issue. where the GUI is prohibitively slow. Finally, the CLI includes a few “über-recipes,” e.g.:

\[lxplus\] mkdir work; cd work
\[lxplus\] ask
==\> : welcome to Athena Startup Kit v1.1
==\> NOTE: enter "help()" to receive help
\>\>\> run( ’AtlfastOptions.txt’ )

will perform all steps necessary to run the Atlas fast simulation from the latest official release (for any other package, all the user needs to do is specify the appropriate, released options file). It absolutely does not get any easier than this!

Integration with interactive athena is natural as long as the user realizes that athena is run from a separate python process that does not share any functions or data with the ask process: the user simply sees a prompt switch and can just continue typing.

## V APPLICABILITY

Naturally, ask is used by the author himself, both to run Atlas software as well as when working on the development of the athena framework. The typical ask user, however, is a beginning user, because of the exposure of ask to the Atlas collaborators through the software tutorials. The reconstruction tutorial ref:recotutorial  is used by many as their first starting point with Atlas software: the tutorial shows how to roll your own athena algorithm and how to access reconstruction objects in the transient data store. That is the typical for how most end-users actually work, thus the reconstruction tutorial is popular.

Ask has been in use for some time for the builds of the Atlas software release at LBNL. This use exploits the ask error handling in a creative way: when resources are missing (which they by definition are, since the build has yet to take place), ask will fall back on CERN, where the release has already been built, since no build is attempted at LBNL before that. Thus, ask can fully automatically retrieve the latest settings, versions of tools, and targets from the CERN release and apply them as appropriate when building the LBNL release.

## VI OUTLOOK

It is clear that ask is currently the best way to get started with Atlas software. Getting something to run successfully, and being able to look at some output files with data in them, is a great motivator for users new to Atlas. When its abundant documentation, its use in tutorials, and its ready availability are taken into account, then ask’s value is obvious.

As Atlas software stabilizes, and as parts of it get replaced by higher quality software, the number of needed workarounds can be trimmed: at some point this will render most of ask obsolete. Elements of it, however, will remain relevant: creating new packages, updating algorithm and requirements files, its tutorial aspect, etc., all have a long life expectancy. It is foreseen, that these parts will be packaged as software components and transferred to the ganga ref:ganga  project, which has already benefitted from the design ideas from ask.

There will be no major additions of functionality to ask, because of this expected integration with ganga. For example, ask does not currently have the capability to submit jobs to batch systems, even though it is relatively simple to add such a feature based on the generated standalone execution scripts. Instead, ask will be maintained to handle future distributions of the Atlas software and to improve on its existent functionality. It will keep serving its current audience until it gets replaced by a version of ganga that has equivalent or better functionality.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by the Office of Science. High Energy Physics, U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.


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# Unusual CO Line Ratios and kinematics in the N83/N84 Region of the Small Magellanic Cloud

## 1 Introduction

The Magellanic Clouds —with their unobscured lines of sight, their small internal extinction, and their profusion of star-forming sites— constitute excellent laboratories for the study of the interaction between massive stars and their environment. They are also the nearest metal–poor systems with active star–formation ( $`Z_{LMC}Z_{}/4`$ and $`Z_{SMC}Z_{}/9`$ for the Large and the Small Cloud respectively; Dufour, 1984; Kurt & Dufour, 1998). As such, they provide invaluable insight into the physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium (ISM) in primitive galaxies.

In this work we will discuss some of the molecular gas properties and kinematics in the N83/N84 region of the Small Magellanic Cloud (Henize, 1956, Figure 2). This region is especially interesting because it is one of the few isolated, yet relatively active star-forming regions in the otherwise inconspicuous SMC Wing. It comprises several CO clouds (Mizuno et al., 2001; Israel et al., 2003), H II regions (Henize, 1956; Davies et al., 1976), various early–type stars (Testor & Lortet, 1987), and an expanding shell coincident with both the NGC 456 stellar association and a possible supernova remnant (source 448 in Haberl et al., 2000, henceforth HFPK2000-448 (catalog )). This expanding shell appears to be interacting with the nearby molecular cloud, sweeping and compressing an important mass of molecular hydrogen (at least $`10^4`$ M; c.f., §3.3.2), and perhaps setting up a second generation of star formation. If N 83 indeed contains a supernova remnant, it represent one of a handful of opportunities to study the interaction between a molecular cloud and a SNR in a metal poor environment.

Recently, Bolatto et al. (2000) have reported the detection of unusually high 12CO ($`21`$)/ ($`10`$)$`3`$ ratios in the molecular envelope of the N159/N160 complex in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Such high ratios are rarely observed in the Galaxy and are interesting because they convey information on the structure of the ISM in these systems (c.f., §3.1). Bolatto et al. suggested that these high ratios are a direct consequence of the low metallicity of the medium. If this is the case, we expect them to be more pronounced in regions with strong UV radiation fields and even lower metallicity. We undertook the present study in order to search for anomalous 12CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratios in a region of very low metallicity, and thus to verify how widespread such ratios are. A second motivation was to attempt to further distinguish between the mechanisms that can cause such ratios.

The present study also allows us to revisit the problem of estimating molecular masses using CO observations in metal–poor systems. Low heavy–element abundances cause lower dust–to–gas ratios in a low metallicity ISM ($`D/GZ^{12}`$; Lisenfeld & Ferrara, 1998). Because dust particles are efficient absorbers of UV light, they shield molecules from dissociative radiation. Thus, the lower dust–to–gas ratios in the SMC ($`D/G_{SMC}1/30D/G_{MW}`$; Stanimirovic et al., 2000, and references therein) lead us to expect higher rates of molecular photodissociation. This is particularly true for molecules such as CO, where lower metallicities also imply lower column densities, hence significantly smaller self-shielding. Indeed, it has long been known that emission from molecules is much fainter in dwarf galaxies, which tend to be low metallicity systems (e.g., Taylor, Kobulnicky, & Skillman, 1998).

Because of these effects, exactly how CO emission traces the molecular ISM in metal-poor systems remains uncertain, and it has stayed a goal of extragalactic CO observations to characterize this relationship. Since the early days of CO observations in the Galaxy astronomers have derived CO–H2 calibrations and used them to compute H2 column densities and masses (e.g., Sanders, Solomon, & Scoville, 1984; Bloemen et al., 1986; Dame, Hartmann, & Thaddeus, 2001, and references therein). The factor to convert 12CO integrated intensities into H2 column densities is referred to as $`\text{X}\text{CO}=\mathrm{N}(\text{H}\text{2})/\mathrm{I}(\text{12}\text{CO})`$, and has been determined using the virial theorem, X–ray shadowing experiments, and an array of other techniques. As it is notoriously difficult to incorporate all of the relevant physics (such as cloud structure and optical depth) into model calculations, astronomers have relied on empirical calibrations of XCO rather than on a–priori determinations.

Since its introduction, it has been clear that XCO must be a function of the local conditions of the ISM or at least the average properties of the cloud ensemble; some of the most relevant quantities are thought to be radiation field, dust–to–gas ratio, and metallicity. There are several calibrations of XCO with metallicity available in the literature (Dettmar & Heithausen, 1989; Wilson, 1995; Arimoto, Sofue, & Tsujimoto, 1996; Israel, 1997, 2000; Bolatto, Jackson, & Ingalls, 1999; Barone et al., 2000; Boselli, Lequeux, & Gavazzi, 2002). These all agree that decreases in ISM metallicity and dust–to–gas ratio should result in noticeable increases in XCO, meaning a lower CO integrated intensity per unit H2 column density. They differ, however, in their estimates just how large these increases in XCO will be. In particular, observational studies find that XCO appears to depend strongly on the attained linear resolution. Studies based on observations with high linear resolution, such as that provided by interferometers, tend to find smaller increases in XCO in metal–poor galaxies than those accomplished with larger beams (e.g. Wilson, 1995; Walter et al., 2001, 2002; Rosolowsky et al., 2003). Based on comparisons with far infrared dust emission, Israel (2000) has ascribed these effects to intrinsic observational bias.

## 2 Observations

Carbon monoxide emission from the N83/N84 region was first detected and subsequently mapped by Israel et al. (1993, 2003) as part of the ESO-SEST Key Programme “CO in the Magellanic Clouds.” Because of considerable improvements in millimeter receiver sensitivity in the years since, it has become possible to use SEST 111The Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) is operated jointly by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Swedish Science Research Council (NFR). to make large maps of relatively faint sources in a reasonable period of time. It has also become possible to simultaneously observe the ($`10`$) and ($`21`$) transitions of CO, allowing us to obtain reliable line ratios. We mapped a region of $`10\mathrm{}\times 9\mathrm{}`$ encompassing N83, N84, and HFPK2000-448, simultaneously at 115.271204 and 230.542408 GHz (Figure 1). We detected over a dozen clouds in this area. The properties of the peak ($`21`$) spectra from these clouds are compiled in (Table 1).

We acquired the maps in November 2000, by using SEST 115/230 GHz dual SIS receiver and feeding the two frequencies into the split high–resolution acousto–optical spectrometer (AOS) backend. The resulting bandpasses ($`50`$ km s-1 for 230 GHz and $`100`$ km s-1 for 115 GHz) easily accomodated the narrow lines and small velocity variations inside the molecular complex. The spectra were obtained using double–beam–switching mode, with a chop of 11.5′ in azimuth. The few spectra contaminated by emission in the off position were reobserved at a different hour angle. According to its documentation, SEST has HPBW(230)$`23\mathrm{}`$ and HPBW(115)$`45\mathrm{}`$, and its main beam efficiencies are $`\eta _{mb}(230)0.50`$ and $`\eta _{mb}(115)0.70`$. We initially mapped a 24″ grid (i.e., approximately full–beam spacing at 230 GHz) and refined this to a 12″ grid in regions of bright emission and those regions in which we wished to increase the signal–to–noise ratio. We used a nearby SiO maser to determine pointing and focus corrections before each observing session. The SEST pointing accuracy is 3″ RMS. Assuming a 63 kpc distance to the SMC, the scale of these observations is $`18`$ pc per arcminute.

To compare the ($`21`$) and ($`10`$) data, we convolved the spectra of both transitions to a common angular resolution, thus removing the effect of the different beam size of the observations. We found unusually high 12CO($`21`$)/($`10`$) line ratios in two regions of the map (Figure 2). The first instance occurs just south of N84, close to the IRAS 01133–7336/N84D H II region (Figure 4a). The second region is found in the gas inside the expanding shell N 83, which is associated with NGC 456 and HFPK2000-448 (Figure 4b). To determine the optical depth $`\tau _{21}`$ of the ($`21`$) emission we obtained 13CO ($`21`$) spectra toward several positions (Figure 5). Table 2 summarizes our observations, as well as our results for $`\tau _{21}`$ obtained assuming N(12CO)/N(13CO)$`4090`$ (c.f., §3.1.3).

## 3 Discussion

### 3.1 The Origin of the Unusually High Line Ratios

Optically thick CO emission arising from thermalized gas at $`T>10`$ K yields a brightness-temperature ratio ($`21`$)/($`10`$)$`1`$. Deviations from these conditions —for example, lower temperatures or subthermal excitation in gas with volume densities below the critical density of the ($`21`$) transition, $`n_{crit}10^4`$ cm-3— generally produce ratios less than unity. However, somewhat higher ratios, ($`1.2`$) are frequently found in LMC and SMC molecular clouds (Israel et al., 2003, and references therein). These are probably caused by a mixture of high and low optical depths in molecular clouds and cloud envelopes (i.e., a departure from the assumption of a homogeneous source characterized by a single temperature and a single column density).

Unusually high 12CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratios were observed by Bolatto et al. (2000) in the LMC, who discussed four possible origins for them: 1) self–absorbed 12CO ($`10`$)emission, 2) optically thin emission from isothermal gas, 3) ensembles of small, optically thick isothermal clumps, and 4) optically thick emission with temperature gradients. With the available data they were not able to unequivocally determine the cause of the high ratio, although self–absorbed CO emission appeared unlikely. The same causes may explain the high ratios we find in the N83/N84 region of the SMC. In this Section, we describe each of these mechanisms and explore how well they can account for the new data on the SMC.

#### 3.1.1 Self–absorbed emission

Self–absorption is caused by an intervening envelope of colder CO in the line of sight, which produces a dip in the background CO spectra. This effect is more prominent for lower $`J`$ transitions, since most of the intervening cold gas will be found near the ground state. The spectra obtained toward the region south of N84 clearly show that the 12CO ($`10`$) transition is not suppressed by self–absorption. Fig. 4 demonstrates that the two transitions have the same line profile, thus convincingly showing they arise from the same parcels of gas.

#### 3.1.2 Optically thin emission

It can be shown that for gas in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) the ratio of optical depths in the ($`10`$) and ($`21`$) transitions is

$$\frac{\tau _{21}}{\tau _{10}}=2\frac{\left(1e^{\frac{2h\nu _{10}}{kT_{ex}}}\right)}{\left(e^{\frac{h\nu _{10}}{kT_{ex}}}1\right)},$$
(1)
where $`\tau _{10}`$ and $`\tau _{21}`$ are the opacities of the respective transitions, $`\nu _{10}`$ is the frequency of the lower transition, $`T_{ex}`$ is the excitation temperature, and $`k`$ and $`h`$ are Boltzmann’s and Planck’s constants. Since the opacity of rotational transitions is proportional to the square of their rotation quantum number $`J`$ at high temperatures, optically thin warm gas can produce ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratios $`4`$. The emission from such regions will be faint, and observations in the Galactic plane may be biased against finding them, which may explain why it is easier to find them in the Magellanic Clouds. However, we clearly detected emission from 13CO in the same place south of N 84 where we measured a high 12CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$)$`=2.0\pm 0.2`$ ratio (Figure 5). Although the observed 12CO/13CO ($`21`$)$`20`$ ratio is somewhat high, it nevertheless indicates that this transition is optically thick unless the carbon isotopic abundance ratio is much lower in the SMC than in the Galaxy. The best available determinations of isotopic abundance ratios in the SMC suggest that N(13C)/N(12C)$`4090`$, although data are scarce (Heikkilä, Johansson, & Olofsson, 1999). In Table 2 we summarize our optical depth results for several clouds in the complex. The range of $`\tau _{21}`$ values listed in the last column are calculated assuming the quoted limits from Heikkilä, Johansson, & Olofsson (1999).

For the pointing at ($`+0.0,0.4`$) we find an opacity in the range $`\tau _{21}1.54.4`$, indicating that the ($`21`$) emission there is optically thick. If the N(12CO)/N(13CO) column density ratio turns out to be significantly lower than 40, however, the emission could be optically thin. Such a scenario could conceivably result from the combined effects of chemical fractionation and selective photodissociation in the ISM. Heikkilä, Johansson, & Olofsson (1999), for example, determined this ratio to be $`15`$ in the N27 region of the SMC using a mean escape probability radiative transfer code modeling spherical clouds.

#### 3.1.3 Emission from very small warm clumps

Collections of very small, isothermal, optically thick clumplets also have the potential to produce high 12CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratios. They do so partially through a beam filling effect; because of the faster growth of the ($`21`$) opacity with column density the optically thick region of the clumps appears larger in the higher transitions, thus filling more of the beam. Figure 6 illustrates the geometry of this effect, in which the optically thick $`\tau _{21}=1`$ “photosphere” of the clump is larger and occurs closer to its surface than the $`\tau _{10}=1`$ “photosphere.” Perhaps more importantly, small clumps provide a natural geometry that allows the ($`21`$) transition to become optically thicker than the ($`10`$) transition. The line ratios for a spherical geometry can be easily computed under the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE); this is probably a safe assumption if the clumps have volume densities in excess of $`n10^4`$ cm-3 (because of the critical density $`n_{crit}J^3`$, it is extremely difficult to obtain a high ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratio with subthermal excitation unless the equivalent radiation temperature is higher than the gas temperature, which is not usually the case in mm–wave radio astronomy). For each transition, we assumed a constant gas temperature and density and numerically integrated to find the opacity, $`\tau (r)`$, in a clump as a function of $`r`$, the projected distance to the center. The results of these calculations as a function of the gas temperature, $`T_g`$, and the central clump opacity, $`\tau ^C`$, are shown in Figure 7. The shaded regions represent the observational constraints: the measured 12CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratio and the central clump opacity derived from the 12CO/13CO ($`21`$) measurements as described in the previous paragraph. The observations constrain the gas temperature to be strictly $`T_g>30`$ K and more likely $`T_g40`$ K. The clump radius is constrained to be $`\tau ^C1`$ in opacity units for the ($`21`$) transition. This opacity translates into a physical column density $`N(\text{12}\text{CO})1.5\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2 at $`T_g40`$ K, which can be converted to a length of $`R0.1`$ pc by assuming that all the carbon is locked in the CO molecules with a carbon abundance of $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{C}/\mathrm{H})4.7`$ (Garnett et al., 1995; Kurt & Dufour, 1998) and that the volume density is $`n_{H_2}10^4`$ cm-3 (i.e., about the critical density of the ($`21`$) transition). The resulting parameters thus indicate fairly standard, but very warm, clumps. The heating is presumably provided by the star cluster found near the high-ratio region (source 166 of Bica & Schmitt, 1995) or by the adjacent H II region and IR source (IRAS 01133–7336; Figure 2).

The appeal of the “small warm clumps” scenario is twofold: 1) it naturally explains why it is easier to find high line ratios in systems of low metallicity, such as the LMC and SMC, and 2) as it has predictive power, it can easily be falsified. Indeed, we have shown that clump radii have to be small in opacity units to produce large ratios. If the physical sizes of clumps do not change with metallicity, low CO column densities will be more common in lower metallicity systems because of the lower abundances of carbon and oxygen. If the abundance of CO scales by a factor similar to that of the metallicity, then a clump with central opacity $`\tau ^C(\text{12}\text{CO})4`$ in the Milky Way would have $`\tau ^C(\text{12}\text{CO})0.5`$ in the SMC. The “small warm clumps” model requires that the 13CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratio be $`34`$ in this source, and it can be used to predict the intensities of the higher CO transitions. The model also requires that the N(12CO)/N(13CO) column density ratio be $`4050`$ south of N84.

#### 3.1.4 Optically thick regions with large temperature gradients

High brightness ratios can, in principle, also be produced by optically thick gas if the $`\tau =1`$ surfaces of each transition occur in regions of different temperature. To reproduce the observations, we need a ratio of excitation temperatures $`T_{ex}(\tau _{21})/T_{ex}(\tau _{10})2`$. How large a temperature gradient does this change represent? Using the LTE approximation we computed the column densities of CO necessary to attain $`\tau =1`$ for each transition at different temperatures. We used this information to obtain a very rough estimate of the typical increment in column density $`\mathrm{\Delta }N(\text{12}\text{CO})`$ required to go from the $`\tau _{21}=1`$ surface at $`T`$, to the $`\tau _{10}=1`$ surface at $`T/2`$. We found that a reasonable estimate is $`\mathrm{\Delta }N(\text{12}\text{CO})10^{16}`$ cm-2. Taking into account the abundance of carbon, this is equivalent to a change in visual extinction $`\mathrm{\Delta }\text{A}\text{V}0.05`$. Since CO becomes the main reservoir of carbon at $`\text{A}\text{V}1`$, this means that the cloud turns optically thick in the ($`10`$) transition at a depth only $`5\%`$ larger than that at which the $`\tau _{21}=1`$ surface is found. To explain the observations, however, we require the excitation temperature of the gas to drop by a factor of two for this $`5\%`$ change in depth. Gas temperature profiles computed for PDRs externally heated by UV sources show that such gradient is extremely unlikely (e.g., Hollenbach & Tielens, 1999). This simple argument is also supported by line ratios obtained from self–consistent PDR calculations. At no point in the parameter space of a homogeneous, externally heated PDR is the CO $`\text{(}21\text{)}/\text{(}10\text{)}>1.8`$, and ratios greater than unity only occur at very high densities and radiation fields (Kaufman, Wolfire, Hollenbach, & Luhman, 1999). Perhaps embedded IR sources with no UV flux, such as protostars, could produce the heating necessary to obtain the right temperature ratio without the associated photodissociation of CO. This appears very unlikely, however, since these sources would have to occur at a particular depth, coincident with the $`\tau _{21}=1`$ surface.

We have explored four possible explanations for the unusually high 12CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratios observed south of the N84 region. We have shown that two mechanisms, self–absorption and optically thin emission, are improbable. Of the remaining two, small warm clumps and optically thick gas with large temperature gradients, we prefer the first, although it is not possible to entirely discard the second with the present data. High line ratios could also conceivably originate in the optically thin portion of clumps with density gradients (for example, critical Bonnor–Ebert spheres). The proper modeling of such objects, however, requires a full self–consistent radiative transfer and temperature profile calculation, and is beyond the scope of this paper: nevertheless we note that warm temperatures will still be necessary to produce high line ratios. In addition, the relevant ratios are also obtained if we allow completely inhomogeneous models. One of the simplest examples would be a population of cold, dense clumps surrounded by a warm, tenuous envelope. Unfortunately, a model containing only two completely independent components already has a minimum of eight free parameters, which greatly exceeds the number of constraining observational parameters (three in our case). We may decrease the number of free parameters somewhat by making plausible assumptions, but even in that case would we need more constraints than we presently have. Future observations may remedy this.

### 3.2 The Expanding Molecular Shell

The second instance of unusually high 12CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratios in the N83/N84 region occurs in a remarkable place: the inside of the expanding shell–like structure associated with NGC 456 and HFPK2000-448 (Figure 2). This optical shell has a molecular counterpart apparent in a careful inspection of Figure 3. Starting at velocities 155–157 km s-1 the center of N83 lights up, while at 161 km s-1 the eastern rim emits brightly in CO. At 165 km s-1, some emission shows up at the center of the shell in the maps of the ($`21`$) transition. The spectrum obtained over the central 1′ of this structure even more clearly exhibits this kinematic signature (Figure 4b). While the emission associated with the walls of the shell has very similar brightness temperature in the ($`10`$) and ($`21`$) transitions, the gas inside the shell appears brighter in the ($`21`$) transition by a factor of $`2`$. The shell is $`50`$ pc in diameter, and the molecular material associated with it is expanding at a velocity $`\pm 6.5`$ km s-1. The northern and eastern edges of the shell are sharp and well defined in the optical pictures, while its southwestern edge appears ragged and soft. The cause of this difference in appearance is strikingly clear in the CO channel maps: along the northern and eastern edges, the expansion of the shell is contained by a molecular cloud at $`\text{V}\text{LSR}163`$ km s-1, while the south and west sides appear able to expand more freely. It is not immediately clear whether this bright CO cloud (corresponding to peaks MP 5 and MP 7 in Table 1) consists of swept-up matter, or represents an ambient cloud interacting with the expanding shell.

A question arises: is the expanding shell due to a supernova explosion, or is it a wind–driven structure? The classification by Haberl et al. (2000) of HFPK2000-448 as a SNR was tentative, and based on the detection of coincident radio continuum emission at 13 cm and X–Ray emission by ROSAT. Extended X–ray emission and/or extended nonthermal radio continuum are telltale evidence for SNRs. However, in the case of HFPK2000-448 the data are not conclusive. The X–ray emission could be extended but the quality of this determination (as measured by its likelihood parameter) is low, and there is no detection of the radio continuum at other frequencies to confirm that the spectral index is nonthermal.

In any case, the rather modest expansion measured in CO is hard to reconcile with the much higher expansion speeds expected from a supernova remnant. It is quite in line, however, with the much lower speeds that should characterize wind–driven shells. From the interstellar bubble model by Weaver et al. (1977), we find that the age, $`t`$, of the bubble is related to its radius, $`R_s`$, in parsecs and its expansion velocity, $`V_s`$, in km s-1 by $`t=6\times 10^5R_s/V_s`$. With a radius of about 25 pc and an expansion velocity of 6.5 km s-1, the age of the bubble should be about 2.3 million years. From the model we also find the relation between mechanical wind-luminosity, $`L_w`$, in erg s-1 and original ambient total hydrogen density, $`n_H`$, in cm-3 to be $`L_w/n_H=7.65\times 10^{46}R^5/t^3`$. By conservatively assuming $`L_w/L_{bol}=10^3`$ for the ratio between mechanical wind and stellar bolometric luminosities, we may reduce this to $`L_{bol}/n_H=6\times 10^{37}\mathrm{ergs}^1\mathrm{cm}^3=1.5\times 10^4\mathrm{L}_{}\mathrm{cm}^3`$. If the total stellar luminosity of the embedded association NGC 456 is of the order of $`10^7`$ L, the original ambient density should have been of the order $`n_H650`$ cm-3. These luminosities and original densities seem quite reasonable for a luminous association dispersing its molecular birthcloud. It is also not unreasonable to suppose that a massive member of the association turned supernova within a few million years. If such an event indeed occurred, the resulting remnant should rapidly have filled the wind–blown bubble that we have observed. Consequently, the chemistry and excitation around N 83 could be dominated by SNR–caused shocks, even though the overall kinematics of the shell would still be those of a wind–driven structure. We found no evidence, however, of uncommon mm–line ratios in the N83B/C molecular cloud. Its 12CO ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratio is $`0.9`$, identical to that of the rest of the complex, and our observations of HCO+ ($`10`$) toward offsets ($`3.6,4.6`$) yield a ratio 12CO/HCO+ $`18\pm 2`$, similar to that reported by Heikkilä, Johansson, & Olofsson (1999) toward the SMC source N27.

It would be of considerable interest to confirm the SNR identification of N 83/HFPK2000-448. If it is confirmed, N 83 in the SMC would be very similar to the well-established SNR N 49 in the LMC, which also appears to be interacting directly with a molecular cloud (Banas et al., 1997). N 83 would represent another excellent opportunity to study molecular cloud–SNR interactions in a metal-poor environment, complementing studies of similar interactions within the Galaxy. Indeed, notwithstanding the fact that most Type II supernovae must occur within their parent clouds and despite their potential importance as triggers of a secondary wave of star–formation activity (Opik, 1953), there are only a handful of such molecular cloud–SNR associations identified in the literature (e.g., Cornett, Chin, & Knapp, 1977; Wootten, 1977; Wilner, Reynolds, & Moffett, 1998; Kim et al., 1998; Dubner et al., 1999, and references therein). Most of these interactions lie in the Galactic plane, where obscuration and confusion pose observational difficulties that are largely absent in the Magellanic cluds.

### 3.3 The XCO Factor in N83/N84

#### 3.3.1 Measuring Cloud Properties

To measure the individual cloud properties we proceeded as follows: from the individual map spectra we constructed uniformly sampled main beam intensity data cubes in the CO ($`21`$) and ($`10`$) transitions using the COMB built–in 2D gaussian interpolation. The cubes have angular resolutions (HPBW) of $`35\mathrm{}`$ and $`55\mathrm{}`$, respectively, corresponding to spatial resolutions of $`11`$ pc and $`17`$ pc. Their velocity resolution is 0.25 km s-1. After convolving the ($`21`$) cube to the resolution of the ($`10`$) cube, we carried out a pixel–by–pixel comparison of the two cubes and found that the best linear relation between both datasets was $`\text{I}\text{CO}\text{(}10\text{)}=0.9\text{I}\text{CO}\text{(}21\text{)}`$, very similar to other results obtained for Magellanic Cloud objects (c.f. Israel et al., 2003, and references therein). This scaling will be used later to compute molecular masses using CO ($`21`$) observations.

We proceeded to identify clouds in the channel maps, and then measured three properties for each cloud: its size, its velocity dispersion, and its integrated CO intensity. From the first two quantities we calculated a virial mass for each cloud, which we compared to the mass derived from the integrated intensity using the Galactic CO–to–H2 conversion factor. To obtain these numbers we specified a threshold intensity, then built a mask that started from a seed position and velocity, and included neighboring regions of the data cube with two adjacent velocity channels above this threshold. We defined a “cloud” as an unmasked region contiguous in $`\alpha \delta v`$ space. This is a practical definition that is similar or identical to those employed in a number of other studies (e.g. Solomon et al., 1987; Heyer et al., 2001; Rosolowsky et al., 2003). The threshold intensity was varied over a wide range, and cloud properties were computed for each of its values. Obviously, very high values of the threshold will select only small regions within a cloud, while low values will tend to merge clouds together, and even lower values will include positive noise as emission. We determined the reasonable range of values to use for each cloud by observing when the cloud properties experienced a “jump” caused by the mask growing into a neighboring cloud.

After identifying an individual cloud, we calculate its size, velocity dispersion, and CO flux as follows. To obtain the size, we compute the second moment of the integrated brightness distribution of the cloud in the $`\alpha \delta `$ plane (i.e., the RMS size). Because the moment underestimates the true size for gaussian clouds, we include a correction factor that depends on the ratio of the threshold intensity used to the peak intensity of the cloud. The inclusion of this factor is important for two reasons: 1) in cases of confusion and low signal–to–noise, it allows us to estimate the properties of an entire cloud from the portion that is easily identifiable, and 2) it avoids oversubtraction in our beam deconvolution. It assumes, however, that the cloud is gaussian in position–velocity space. Fortunately, this assumption can be veryfied by observing how the cloud properties change as a function of threshold intensity (they should be constant), and it appears to hold for the clouds here studied. From the corrected second–moment values, we “deconvolve” the beam by subtracting its size from the measured cloud size in quadrature. Finally, we apply the factor of $`\frac{3.4}{\sqrt{\pi }}`$ (Solomon et al., 1987) to convert from the RMS size to the radius of a theoretical spherical cloud (this factor can be readily motivated by considering a constant density spherical cloud and comparing the RMS size to the spherical radius). Along with an assumed SMC distance of 63 kpc (see Walker 1998; Cioni et al. 2000), this treatment results in a physical cloud size given by the formula:

$$R_{sph}0.41\sqrt{\sigma _\alpha ^2+\sigma _\delta ^22\sigma _{beam}^2},$$
(2)
where $`\sigma _\alpha `$ and $`\sigma _\delta `$ are the threshold–corrected RMS sizes of the cloud in the $`\alpha `$ and $`\delta `$ directions, $`\sigma _{beam}`$ is the RMS size of the beam (all measured in arcseconds), and $`R_{sph}`$ is the spherical radius of the cloud in parsecs.

Other works, in particular those focused on Milky Way clouds, have treated clouds as ellipsoids and used the corresponding form of the virial theorem due to Bertoldi & McKee (1992). This approach is problematic in extragalactic astronomy, because the observations do not have many resolution elements across the cloud and their signal–to–noise is low. Under these conditions deconvolution becomes very difficult and the precise shape of the source is hard, if not impossible, to recover. Therefore, we content ourselves with measuring a single size parameter and considering the simple model of a spherical cloud.

We calculate both the threshold–corrected RMS velocity dispersion, $`\sigma _v`$, and the equivalent width, $`EW`$, from the integrated spectrum of each cloud. For the equivalent width, we employ the definition of Heyer et al. (2001),

$$EW=\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_i\psi (v_i)}{\text{Max}(\psi (v_i))}$$
(3)
where $`\psi (v_i)`$ is the spectrum of the cloud in question. For a gaussian distribution, $`EW=1.06FWHM`$. Because it does not diverge when signal–free noise is added to the edge of a spectrum, this linewidth measure is more robust than the second moment as a measure of the RMS velocity dispersion. Moreover, by comparing these two measures we get a good idea of how well a spectrum is approximated by a gaussian (for our data, the ratio $`EW/\sigma _v`$ correlates very well with the $`\chi ^2`$ value of a gaussian fit to a spectrum).

We compute the CO luminosity by summing the intensities of the entire cloud and again applying a correction factor based on the peak–to–threshold ratio and an assumed gaussian profile. In the case of the CO ($`21`$) data cube, we applied the aforementioned $`0.9`$ conversion factor to calculate the corresponding CO ($`10`$) luminosity for the cloud: essentially, we used the ($`21`$) measurements as predictors of the ($`10`$) intensities, taking advantage of their higher S/N and spatial resolution. To compute molecular cloud masses (including the contribution by He) we use the formula

$$\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{mol}}=\alpha _{\mathrm{CO}}S_{\mathrm{CO}}d^2,$$
(4)
where $`S_{\mathrm{CO}}=\text{I}\text{CO}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the spatially integrated 12CO flux of the molecular cloud measured in Jy km s-1, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{CO}}=1.07\times 10^4`$ $`M_{}`$ Mpc-2 (Jy km s-1)-1 (corresponding to a canonical conversion factor $`\text{X}\text{CO}=2\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1 ), and $`d`$ is the distance to the SMC in Mpc.

We compute the virial masses using the assumption that each cloud is spherical and virialized with a density profile of the form $`\rho r^1`$. Thus the virial mass is given by the formula (Solomon et al., 1987)

$$\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{vir}}=1040\sigma _v^2R_{sph},$$
(5)
where $`\sigma _v`$ is the RMS cloud velocity dispersion in km s-1, $`R_{sph}`$ is the spherical cloud radius in pc, and Mvir is the cloud’s virial mass in M.

#### 3.3.2 Results

We have applied the procedure described above to several subsets of the data, as well as the whole datacube. We focused our attention on three clouds contained in the Nyquist–sampled regions of our original dataset, roughly corresponding to MP7, MP10, and MP13 in Table 1 (i.e., the clouds associated with N83B/C, N84C, and N84B/D respectively; Fig. 2). We also computed masses for what we call the “northern region” (the complex encompassing N83B/C and N84C but not including MP6, which appears to be an unrelated cloud peaking a much lower velocities), and for the complex as a whole. Our results are summarized in Table 3. Because the dominant sources of uncertainty in our determination of cloud masses are the cloud boundary definitions, we repeated the procedure described above for a wide variety of thresholds. Thus, we probed the properties of the complex on a variety of size scales, and on each scale we estimated a reasonable range of values for each of the physical parameters. In Table 3 we give the properties of structures on scales ranging from what seem to be compact, self–gravitating object to complexes composed of a few large, bound, virialized clouds connected by low surface brightness filaments.

How do the results obtained from the ($`21`$) data compare with those from the more commonly observed ($`10`$) transition? CO ($`10`$) usually provides the basis for estimating XCO in the SMC and other galaxies, even though the lower spatial resolution at $`115`$ GHz makes size measurements more difficult. We performed identical analyses on both datasets. For the most part, the $`115`$ GHz properties were similar to those derived from the $`230`$ GHz data, though the CO flux and linewidth of MP10 are both notably larger at $`115`$ GHz. The complex, as a whole, has somewhat higher linewidth (and consequently virial mass) when measured in the ($`10`$) transition. This is artificial and caused by the higher noise of the ($`10`$) datacube: to encompass the same area used in the ($`21`$) calculations we need to use too low a threshold, causing positive noise to be included as emission.

Because of the higher resolution and better signal–to–noise, we prefer the results from the ($`21`$) data. Assuming all clouds share the same conversion factor, these results yield $`\text{X}\text{CO}7.0\pm 3.4\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1 (i.e., $`3.5\pm 1.7`$ times the Galactic value) on the size scale of individual molecular clouds ($`10`$ pc). Using this conversion factor, the total molecular mass traced by CO in the complex is $`M(\text{H}\text{2})2.5\times 10^5`$ M.

We believe our algorithm to be both robust and simple. It is designed to be easily applicable to a heterogeneous set of observations. However, because several details (particularly the masking correction) differ from those previous works, our results (particularly our size measurements) may not be readily comparable to those in the literature. To account for this, we applied our algorithm to both the Rosette Molecular Cloud (Williams, Blitz, & Stark, 1995) and a subset of well resolved solar metallicity clouds from the BIMA survey of M 33 (Rosolowsky et al., 2003). Both of these tests yielded values for XCO of $`3.44.0\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1. In light of this, our result can be restated as follows: our measurments of the XCO factor in the SMC yield a value for XCO $`1.9\pm 0.9`$ times the value of XCO obtained for identical measurements on the Rosette Molecular Cloud and several M 33 clouds.

How do these molecular masses and estimates of XCO compare to those obtained by other studies of the SMC? The results presented here are consistent with those obtained independently by Israel et al. (2003), taking into consideration that they mapped only part of the complex in the ($`10`$) CO transition, with generally lower signal–to–noise ratios. Our ($`21`$) result is lower by about a factor of $`2`$ than the average value XCO$`12\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1 obtained by Rubio et al. (1993) from SEST CO ($`10`$) measurements of clouds elsewhere, in the southwest Bar of the SMC. However, when we adjust the sizes of Rubio et al. (1993) to match our own definition and include beam deconvolution, we find a $`40\%`$ reduction in the average size of a cloud. The corresponding drop in cloud virial masses suggests a value of XCO$``$ 6—8$`\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1 consistent with our estimates. We also take the opposite approach, bringing our results into line with their measurements by considering the properties of the N83 complex at the $`0.4`$ K km s-1integrated intensity contour. If we reject the low velocity emission, as Rubio et al. (1993) did for several clouds, and employ their definitions and formulae then we obtain a conversion factor of XCO$`20\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1, in excellent agreement with their average result for complexes ($`23\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1). This value is also in agreement with that obtained by Mizuno et al. (2001) using the NANTEN telescope, with a beam size HPBW$`2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$.

#### 3.3.3 Caveats and Limitations

We note that most common limitations inherent to the data such as low signal–to–noise, blended line profiles, and low spatial resolution will drive our estimate of XCO toward higher rather than lower numbers. All the usual caveats regarding the applicability of the virial theorem apply, with the added concern that we are considering a particularly active region. The effects of an expanding shell and active star formation on nearby clouds, although not immediately apparent from the data, may be important.

We should caution that virial estimates of XCO on the large scales are suspect. First, they require assuming that the entire complex is virialized and that large scale motions (e.g., galactic rotation, expanding shells) are negligible. Second, the mass on the spatial scale of the measurement has to be dominated by molecular hydrogen, meaning that the contributions from stars and H I are negligible. The ATCA+Parkes HI observations of this region (Stanimirovic et al., 1999), for example, show that the atomic hydrogen mass in a 120 pc diameter region centered on the N83/N84 complex is $`530\times 10^3`$ M, very similar to our virial mass estimate. Because this is an integral along the line–of–sight, however, it is impossible to assert how much of this mass is really associated with the complex. Third, they require assuming that the velocity field inside the region is uniformly traced by CO emission, otherwise the intensity–weighted second moment usually employed to obtain the velocity dispersion is meaningless.

Finally, we have gauged the magnitude of the conversion factor indepently from virial considerations by following the method outlined by Israel (1997). We use his SMC calibration $`N_\mathrm{H}/\sigma (FIR)=1.65\times 10^{28}\mathrm{cm}^2(\mathrm{Wm}^2\mathrm{sr}^1)^1`$ to derive the molecular mass from the far infrared emission near the N83/N84 complex. At 15′ resolution, the temperature–corrected far–infrared surface brightness is $`\sigma (FIR)=7\times 10^7\mathrm{Wm}^2\mathrm{sr}^1`$ (Schwering, 1988; Schwering & Israel, 1990) so that $`N_\mathrm{H}=1.2\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. Both the old H I map by McGee & Newton (1981) and the newer ATCA+Parkes data by Stanimirovic et al. (1999) yield a mean neutral hydrogen column density of $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}=5.5\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. From this we deduce the molecular hydrogen column density $`N_{\mathrm{H2}}=3.2\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, corresponding to a molecular gas fraction $`2N_{\mathrm{H2}}/(N_\mathrm{H}+N_{\mathrm{He}})=0.4`$, which is not unusual for a star–forming region. The CO luminosity integrated over the N 83/N 84 complex is given by Mizuno et al. (2001) as $`L_{\mathrm{CO}}=1.3\times 10^4\text{K km s}\text{-1}\mathrm{pc}^2`$. As this luminosity is beam-independent for unresolved sources, we can easily extrapolate to the 15′ resolution of the molecular hydrogen column density just derived. At that resolution, the CO integral corresponding to the observed CO luminosity would be $`I_{\mathrm{CO}}=0.22\text{K km s}\text{-1}`$. This is probably an underestimate, because such a large beam would encompass additional H II regions most likely associated with their own CO clouds. Our best estimate – to be verified by future CO mapping of the area – is therefore $`I_{\mathrm{CO}}=0.33\pm 0.11\text{K km s}\text{-1}`$, yielding an independent estimate $`\text{X}\text{CO}=100\pm 50\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1 very similar to the other XCO values of the SMC found in the same way (Israel, 1997).

These results fit well into an apparently consistent pattern. Observations with high linear resolutions, i.e. single–dish observations of nearby extragalactic objects such as those presented here or interferometric observations of more distant objects, consistently suggest virial cloud masses implying nearly Galactic XCO conversion factors regardless of environment. By contrast, observations not resolving individual clouds but covering whole complexes have suggested much higher conversion factors in metal–poor systems. This pattern may be explained in several ways: 1) it may be caused by a large “mm–dark” molecular mass in metal–poor galaxies, comprised by H2 clouds without CO emission. In this scenario the observed CO emission arises only from the densest, most shielded clouds in a complex. If this is true, CO observations suffer from a severe observational bias. 2) It is possible that the complexes observed are not virialized, or their masses dominated by unaccounted–for stellar or atomic gas components, and that there is not a great deal of hidden molecular mass. In this case, high–resolution observation such as those presented here, suggest that individual clouds are virialized with an approximately Galactic XCO, indicating that metal–poor galaxies have molecule–poor ISMs.

If the complexes are virialized and their masses are dominated by the molecular gas, then their global dynamics would be better probes of the overall molecular mass than the dynamics of individual clouds. On the other hand, if complexes are not virialized or their masses not dominated by molecular gas, then there may be no way for CO observations to get a handle on the total molecular masses of metal–poor galaxies. In this case other tracers, such as far–infrared emission from dust, large surveys of UV H2 line absorption, or FIR \[C II\] measurements, may be the only way of obtaining global molecular mass estimates. By themselves, CO observations are insufficient to distinguish between these two scenarios. Observations of other tracers, such as the far–infrared, will be necessary to establish whether CO is a good tracer in metal–poor galaxies.

## 4 Summary and Conclusions

We have presented new CO ($`10`$) and ($`21`$) observations of the N83/N84 nebulae in the SMC that show an active and complex region, home to several interesting astrophysical phenomena. We have identified 14 molecular clouds and an expanding molecular shell with a center coincident with the NGC 456 stellar association and the HFPK2000–448 radio continuum/X–ray source classified by Haberl et al. (2000) as a SNR. The shell is most likely wind–driven, and appears to have an age of 2.3 million years. We have also identified two extended regions of unusually high ($`21`$)/($`10`$) ratio: the first found south of the complex near the N84D emission line region, the second located inside the expanding molecular shell. A 13CO spectrum toward this first region shows that the ($`21`$) transition has opacity $`\tau 1.54.4`$ assuming N(12CO)/N(13CO)$`4090`$.

Barring the unlikely cases that the isotopic N(12C)/N(13C) carbon ratio is considerably lower than in the Galaxy or that fractionation effects have decreased the isotopomer N(12CO)/N(13CO) ratio to much below the isotopic ratio, this high line ratio is not caused by low optical depths. Inspection of the line profiles in Figure 4 also shows that the high ratio is not due to self–absorbed ($`10`$) emission. We have considered optically thick emission with temperature gradients, but some simple calculations show that the gradients required to reproduce the observed ratio are unrealistically large compared to those expected in photodissociation regions. Finally, we modeled the emission produced by an ensemble of spherical, isothermal clumps, and found that we can reproduce the observations with fairly warm ($`T_g40`$ K) but otherwise normal molecular clumps ($`n10^4`$ cm-3, $`R0.1`$ pc). The high temperature required may explain why these high ratios are not more commonly observed.

We have also used the CO data to revisit the problem of the CO–H2 conversion factor in the SMC. Using a simple and robust algorithm we found the XCO factor in three clouds of the complex to be $`\text{X}\text{CO}7.0\pm 3.4\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (K km s-1)-1 ($`\text{X}\text{CO}3.5\pm 1.7`$ times the Galactic value), estimated from the CO ($`21`$) data using virial calculations and supported by the results obtained from the ($`10`$) data. This value is about $`1.9`$ times that which we obtain when applying our algorithm to the Rosette Molecular Cloud and GMCs in M 33. The result is an XCO that is considerably smaller than would be expected a priori for the very metal–poor SMC, which has a metallicity $`Z1/9Z_{}`$. Higher values have been obtained from a CO/virial analysis of the complex as a whole, and higher yet from a non-virial, far-infrared analysis of the complex. These results are consistent with the pattern emerging from extragalactic observations over the last decade.

The research of A. D. B. and A. L. was supported by NSF grant AST-9981308. A. D. B. would like to thank J. Simon, R. Plambeck, and D. Hollenbach for reviewing drafts of this manuscript. We made extensive use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), the Los Alamos National Laboratory astrophysics preprint database, NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service (ADS), and the Centree de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS) online databases, specially the Aladin sky atlas and the Simbad reference database.


text:
# Kähler Solvmanifolds

## Abstract.

Compact Kähler solvmanifolds are classified up to biholomorphism. A proof of a conjecture Benson and Gordon, that completely solvable compact Kähler solvmanifolds are tori is deduced from this.

Partially supported by the NSF

In this note, we use the term solvmanifold in a somewhat restricted sense. A solvmanifold will be a compact quotient $`G/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ of a connected simply connected solvable real Lie group by a discrete subgroup. Such a space is a $`K(\mathrm{\Gamma },1)`$. Our goal is to classify all Kähler solvmanifolds up to biholomorphism. To be precise, we consider a Kähler solvmanifold to be a solvmanifold with complex structure and Kähler metric that are not assumed invariant under the group. (The invariance of the complex structure will follow from our theorem.) Complex tori are clearly examples of such spaces. Hasegawa \[H2\] has shown how to construct additional examples by taking quotients of suitable tori, and we show that all Kähler solvmanifolds arise this way. As a corollary, we prove a conjecture of Benson and Gordon \[BG2\] that tori are the only Kähler solvmanifolds corresponding to completely solvable Lie groups111 The proof in \[TK\] is incomplete; see \[H2, p.257\].. The main new ingredient here is the restriction theorem for polycyclic Kähler groups proved by Nori and the author \[AN\].

After the completion of the first version of this paper, I have learned from Alex Brudnyi that he had obtained similar results in his 1995 PhD thesis (Technion) and subsesquent papers \[Br1, Br2\]. However the methods are quite different and do not yield the analogous result for solvmanifolds which are bimeromorphic to a compact Kähler manifolds (theorem 2).

Let us start by defining a few basic terms and constructions. A solvable group $`G`$ is called completely solvable, or of real type, if all the eigenvalues of images of the elements of its Lie algebra under its adjoint representation are real. Given a solvmanifold $`G/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, the map

$$G/\mathrm{\Gamma }\frac{G/[G,G]}{im(\mathrm{\Gamma }G/[G,G])}$$

defines a fiber bundle over a torus called the canonical torus fibration in \[AS\].

###### Lemma 1.

The fibers are compact nilmanifolds (i.e. quotients of connected nilpotent Lie groups by lattices).

###### Proof.

Since $`[G,G]`$ is nilpotent \[R, 3.11\], it lies in the maximum connected nilpotent subgroup $`N`$. $`N\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is a cocompact lattice in $`N`$ by a theorem of Mostow \[M\], see also \[R, 3.3\]. Hence $`[G,G]\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is also a cocompact lattice in $`[G,G]`$ \[R, 2.3\]. ∎

A complex torus is a quotient $`V/L`$ of a complex vector space by a lattice. We can identify $`V`$ with the holomorphic tangent space at $`0`$, and the map $`VV/L`$ with the exponential map. Holomorphic maps of complex tori can always be lifted to affine maps of vector spaces \[GH, p.326\]; in particular, maps preserving $`0`$ are necessarily homomorphisms. For any compact Kähler manifold $`X`$, the Albanese torus $`Alb(X)`$ is a complex torus with real dimension equal to the first Betti number of $`X`$ \[GH, p. 331\]. After choosing a base point $`xX`$, there is a holomorphic map, called the Abel-Jacobi map, $`\alpha :XAlb(X)`$ with $`\alpha (x)=0`$ which is topologically just the classifying map $`XK(H_1(X,)/torsion,1)`$.

###### Lemma 2.

If a compact Kähler manifold is diffeomorphic to a torus then it is biholomorphic to a complex torus.

###### Proof.

Let $`X`$ be the manifold in question. Then it follows that the Albanese map is a holomorphic diffeomorphism and hence biholomorphism. ∎

When $`X`$ is a Kähler solvmanifold, the Abel-Jacobi map would coincide with the canonical torus fibration. We will make use of this fact later on.

We give a general method for producing Kähler solvmanifolds along the lines of Hasegawa’s paper \[H2\]. This method will produce all examples. We will make use of the standard description of group extensions using cohomology \[B\].

###### Construction 1.

Let

$$0^{2m}\mathrm{\Gamma }^{2n}0$$

be a group extension such that

1. The homomorphism $`^{2n}GL(2m,)`$, associated to the extension, has finite image.
2. $`^{2n}GL(2m,)`$ extends to a homomorphism $`^{2n}GL(2m,)`$ of real Lie groups.
3. There is a complex structure $`J_0`$ on $`^{2m}`$ invariant under the action of $`^{2n}`$.
4. The class of the extension in $`H^2(^{2n},^{2m})`$ has finite order.

Let $`V=^{2m}^{2n}`$, and choose complex structure $`J`$ on it extending $`J_0`$. Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ denote the semidirect product $`^{2m}^{2n}`$ under the action (b). Note that as a sets, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`V`$ are one and the same, nevertheless it is useful to keep a distinction. Consider the diagram

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}0& & ^{2m}& & \mathrm{\Gamma }& & ^{2n}& & 0\\ & & & & & & & & \\ 0& & ^{2m}& & \stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}& & ^{2n}& & 0\end{array}$$

where the left hand square is the “pushout”. Assumption (d) shows that the bottom sequence splits. Therefore we get embeddings $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. The quotient $`X=(\mathrm{\Gamma })/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is a solvmanifold. Under the identification $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=V`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ will act on $`V`$ by complex affine transformations. Therefore $`X`$ inherits a complex structure. We can find, thanks to (a), a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$-invariant Hermitean inner product on $`V`$, and this descends to a flat Kähler metric on $`X`$. Note that different choices of $`J`$ can yield nonbiholomorphic, but diffeomorphic, examples.

Examples of the above type can be constructed quite explicitly. For instance, they include all the hyperelliptic (also called bielliptic) surfaces \[H2\]. In particular, they not all tori. However, they are always quotients of tori by a finite group acting freely. This is a consequence of the next lemma which implies that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ contains a normal abelian subgroup $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of finite index. Then $`X`$ is a quotient of the complex torus $`V/\mathrm{\Delta }`$ by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }/\mathrm{\Delta }`$.

###### Lemma 3.

Suppose that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is a finitely generated group which fits into an extension,

$$0^{2m}\mathrm{\Gamma }\stackrel{\pi }{}^{2n}0$$

Then conditions (a) and (d), above, hold if and only if $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ contains a normal abelian subgroup of finite index.

###### Proof.

Suppose conditions (a) and (d) hold. Let $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ be the preimage in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ of $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}=ker[^{2n}GL(2m,)]`$. This has finite index. Since $`H^2(\mathrm{\Delta }^{},^{2m})`$ is torsion free \[B\], (d) shows that the sequence

$$0^{2m}\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }^{}0$$

splits. Therefore $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is a normal abelian subgroup of finite index.

Conversely, let $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be a normal abelian subgroup of finite index. Since $`\pi (\mathrm{\Delta })`$ acts trivially on $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{2m}`$ which has finite index in $`^{2m}`$, it follows that it acts trivially on $`^{2m}`$. Consequently $`^{2n}GL(m,)`$ factors through $`^{2n}/\pi (\mathrm{\Delta })`$. Let $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}=\pi ^1(\pi (\mathrm{\Delta }))`$ and consider the commutative diagram

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}0& & ^{2m}& & \mathrm{\Gamma }& & ^{2n}& & 0\\ & & & & & & & & \\ 0& & ^{2m}& & \stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}& & \pi (\mathrm{\Delta })& & 0\\ & & & & & & & & \\ 0& & \mathrm{\Delta }^{2m}& & \mathrm{\Delta }& & \pi (\mathrm{\Delta })& & 0\end{array}$$

Since $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is abelian, the extension class of the bottom row is $`0`$. The lower left hand square is a pushout. Therefore the extension class of the bottom row maps to the class of the middle row, and consequently this is also zero. The upper right hand square is a pullback. This implies that the extension class $`e`$ of the top row maps to the class of the middle row under the map $`H^2(^{2n},^{2m})H^2(\pi (\mathrm{\Delta }),^{2m}).`$ This homomorphism is injective modulo torsion, since the transfer map \[B\] gives a splitting after tensoring with $``$. Therefore $`e`$ must be torsion. ∎

###### Theorem 1.

Every Kähler solvmanifold is biholomorphic to one of the examples described in Construction 1.

###### Remark 1.

The theorem is a classification up to biholomorphism not isometry. These examples can have nonflat Kähler metrics, and there does not appear to be any sensible way to classify these.

###### Proof of theorem.

Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be a cocompact lattice in a simply connected solvable Lie group $`G`$ such that $`X=G/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ has a Kähler structure. By \[R, 4.28\], $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is polycyclic. Therefore \[AN, 4.10\] implies that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ contains a nilpotent subgroup $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ of finite index. We can find a subgroup $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ of finite index which is normal in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is again nilpotent, thus $`T=\mathrm{\Gamma }/\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is an aspherical manifold with a nilpotent fundamental group. Pulling back the Kähler structure from $`X`$ also makes $`T`$ into a Kähler manifold such that the projection $`TX`$ is holomorphic. Therefore by \[BG1, theorem B\], $`T`$ is homotopic to a torus. Consequently, \[M, theorem A\] shows that $`T`$ is diffeomorphic to a torus. Then $`T`$ is a complex torus by lemma 2.

Consider the Abel-Jacobi map $`\alpha :XA=Alb(X)`$. This is surjective since it coincides with the canonical torus fibration. Let $`f:TA`$ denote the composition $`TXA`$. We can choose a base point of $`X`$ so that $`0T`$ maps to $`0A`$. Then $`f:TA`$ becomes a homomorphism. Therefore $`f`$ is a bundle with fiber $`K=ker(f)`$ which is a product of a torus with a finite abelian group. In particular, $`TA`$ is a submersion, which implies that $`XA`$ is also a submersion. Therefore the fibers of $`\alpha `$ are connected Kähler nilmanifolds (lemma 1), and hence tori by \[BG1, theorem A\] or \[H1\]. It follows also that $`[G,G]`$ is abelian, and hence isomorphic to a Euclidean space (with even dimension).

The exact sequence for homotopy groups of a fibration applied to $`\alpha `$ yields the extension

$$0^{2m}\mathrm{\Gamma }^{2n}0$$

We have to check that the conditions of construction 1 hold. Properties (a) and (d) follow from lemma 3. The action of of $`G/[G,G]^{2n}`$ on $`[G,G]^{2m}`$ gives the extension required for (b). Let $`V=^{2m}^{2n}`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ acts on this by real affine transformations. $`V`$ has a complex structure $`J`$ coming from the identification of $`V`$ with the tangent space of $`T`$ at $`0`$. $`^{2m}`$ is invariant under $`J`$ since it can be identified with the tangent space to $`K`$ at $`0`$. The action of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ on $`V`$ is holomorphic with respect to $`J`$, therefore $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ acts by complex affine transformations. In particular, the action of $`^{2n}`$ on $`^{2m}`$ leaves $`J|_{^{2m}}`$ invariant, and this completes the proof. ∎

As corollaries, we confirm conjectures of Hasegawa and Benson and Gordon.

###### Corollary 1.

A Kähler solvmanifold is both a quotient of a complex torus and a bundle of complex tori over a complex torus.

###### Proof.

In the notation of the previous proof, $`X`$ is quotient of $`T`$ by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }/\mathrm{\Delta }`$. We have a submersion $`\alpha :XA`$. The map $`TX`$ induces a surjective homomorphism from $`K`$ to a fiber of $`\alpha `$ with a finite kernel $`H`$. From this, we can deduce that $`XA`$ is a locally trivial bundle with fiber $`K/H`$. ∎

###### Corollary 2.

Let $`X=G/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be a Kähler solvmanifold with $`G`$ completely solvable. Then $`X`$ is biholomorphic to a complex torus.

###### Proof.

The theorem shows that $`G`$ contains a lattice which is free abelian of even rank. At this point, we are in a position to argue as in \[TK\]. We can apply Saito’s rigidity theorem \[S\] to conclude that $`G`$ is in fact abelian, and therefore that $`X`$ is a torus. ∎

We can prove a slightly stronger result by the same method.

###### Theorem 2.

The examples given in Construction 1 are the only complex solvmanifolds which are bimeromorphic to a compact Kähler manifolds.

It is just a matter of going through each step and making sure that everything still works. We indicate the main points:

* The key step that a nilmanifold cannot be bimeromorphic to a compact Kähler manifolds unless it is a torus is already supplied by Hasegawa \[H1\]. This is deduced by showing that a nilmanifold cannot be formal unless it is a torus and then applying \[DGMS\]. This argument yields a bit more, namely a generalization of \[BG1, theorem B\], that tori are the only compact bimeromorphically Kähler manifolds homotopic to a nilmanifold.
* The above discussion about the Albanese carries over to the class compact bimeromorphically Kähler manifolds without any modification. See for example \[GPR, p. 337\]
* Since fundamental groups of complex manifolds are invariant under blow ups with smooth center, the classes of fundamental groups of compact bimeromorphically Kähler manifolds and compact Kähler manifolds coincide. Thus \[AN, 4.10\] also applies to the former.