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# The X-ray nebula around the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC4388

## 1 introduction

NGC4388 ($`z=0.00842`$) is a nearly edge-on ($`i78^{}`$) spiral galaxy hosting a Seyfert 2 nucleus (Phillips & Malin 1982; Filippenko & Sargent 1985), located near the core of the Virgo cluster. The recession velocity measured for this galaxy (2540 km s-1) is much higher than the cluster mean velocity (1100 km s-1). This suggests that the galaxy is moving away from us through the intracluster medium (ICM) at a supersonic speed, and an interaction between the galaxy and ICM has been suspected, particularly in the context of ram-pressure stripping of the interstellar medium (Chamaraux et al 1980; Giovanelli & Haynes 1983; Kenney & Young 1986; Petitjean & Durret 1993; Veilleux et al 1999).

Radio images show a compact double central source and a plume extending to the north (Stone, Wilson & Ward 1988; Hummel & Saikia 1991; Falcke, Wilson & Simpson 1998). No broad emission component was found in optical spectropolarimetric observations of the nucleus (Kay 1994). However, the somewhat controversial detection of off-nuclear broad H$`\alpha `$ emission by Shields & Filippenko (1988) led to the idea of an obscured Seyfert 1 nucleus in NGC4388. Unambiguous confirmation of the hypothesis came from hard X-ray observations by which a strongly absorbed ($`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`10^{23}`$cm-2) X-ray source has been detected (Hanson et al 1990; Iwasawa et al 1997; Forster, Leighly & Kay 1999; Bassani et al 1999).

The presence of extended optical emission-line nebulae in NGC4388 has been known for a few decades (Ford et al 1971; Sandage 1978; Colina et al 1987; Pogge 1988; Corbin, Baldwin & Wilson 1988; Veilleux et al 1999; Yoshida et al 2001). Besides the low excitation optical emission extending along the galaxy disk, which probably traces active star forming regions, the high excitation extended emission above the galactic plane has been of great interest in connection with its kinematics and ionization mechanism. Until recently, the extraplanar ionized gas was known to extend up to 4 kpc from the nucleus, but the wide-field images obtained from the SUBARU SuprimeCam show optical filaments extending up to 35 kpc to the north-east (Yoshida et al 2001). Studies of the excitation conditions in this extraplanar nebula suggest that it is likely to be photoionized by the central active nucleus, although some contribution by shock excitation has been claimed recently (Ciroi et al 2003). The required ionizing luminosity is estimated to be of the order of $`10^{43}`$erg s-1(Colina 1992; Kinney et al 1991; Yoshida et al 2001).

The soft X-ray emission of NGC4388 was first shown to be extended from a ROSAT HRI observation (Matt et al 1994). However, the details of the extended X-ray emission and its origin have been unclear. In this paper, we present an imaging observation with the Chandra X-ray Observatory (Weisskopf et al 2000), which reveals the detailed morphology of the extended X-ray nebula and spectral variations across the nebula, as well as the active nucleus seen in hard X-rays. The distance of the galaxy is assumed to be 16.7 Mpc throughout this paper. The angular scale is then $`81`$ pc arcsec-1 (or 12 arcsec corresponding to 1 kpc).

## 2 Observation and data reduction

NGC4388 was observed with the Chandra ACIS detectors on 2001 June 8. The nucleus of the galaxy was positioned on the ACIS-S3 detector. The focal plane temperature for this observation was $`120^{}`$C. The data reduction was carried out using the CIAO 2.2 package and calibration files in CALDB version 2.10.

The data at the position of the nucleus of NGC4388 are affected by photon pile-up (the estimated pile-up fraction is about 10 per cent). The detector background of ACIS-S3 during this observation was relatively stable. The analysis for the emission at small radii was performed using the data of the full exposure of 20 ks. However, for extended emission found at larger radii, we filtered the event file using the 2.5–7 keV light curve from a source-free region on the S3 chip. Data taken in periods when the background counts deviate by more than 20 per cent from the mean value have been discarded, which results in an exposure time of 14 ks for analysis. The spectral analysis was performed using XSPEC version 11. The time dependent degradation of the ACIS sensitivity at low energies have been corrected with acisabs by Chartas & Getman.

The total background-corrected observed fluxes are estimated to be $`3.4\times 10^{13}`$erg cm-2 s-1 in the 0.5–2 keV band, and $`3.7\times 10^{12}`$erg cm-2 s-1 in the 2–7 keV band.

## 3 Active nucleus

The composite X-ray image of the central part of NGC4388, produced from the three energy bands, 0.3–1 keV,

1–3 keV and 4–7 keV, is shown in Fig. 1. The active nucleus is located at the position of the hard X-ray peak indicated in blue. The soft X-ray emission shows complex morphology. Particularly bright is a conical feature to the south. These soft X-ray features are discussed in detail in the following section.

### 3.1 The hard X-ray nucleus

The active nucleus of NGC4388 is very faint below 4 keV in the Chandra image and not visible below 1 keV, due to obscuration probably associated with gas in the edge-on stellar disk.

Strong emission is seen at energies above 4 keV. Its spectral shape is consistent with a strongly absorbed source (Fig. 2). The spectrum presented in Fig. 2 was taken from within 1.5 arcsec radius of the hard X-ray peak. It can be broadly described as having a heavily absorbed power-law above 3 keV with Fe K line features at 6.4 and near 7 keV and a flat component at low energies. As mentioned in Section 2, the nucleus is so bright that the data were affected by moderate photon pile-up (estimated to be $`10`$ per cent). The main consequences of the photon pile-up are a hardening of the spectrum and a reduction in the detected flux. We correct for these effects using the pile-up model of Davis (2001).

The absorption column density is found to be $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`3.5_{0.3}^{+0.4}\times 10^{23}`$cm-2(hereafter quoted errors are for a 90 per cent confidence range for one parameter of interest, unless stated otherwise), when the photon index of the power-law continuum is assumed to be 1.8 and a simple absorbed power-law is fitted to the 4–7.8 keV data. A deep Fe K photoelectric absorption edge seen above 7.1 keV is consistent with the large absorption column density.

A strong Fe K$`\alpha `$ line is found at an energy of $`6.36_{0.02}^{+0.02}`$ keV (hereafter quoted line energies are corrected for the galaxy redshift) with an equivalent width of $`EW=440\pm 90`$ eV. The line flux is $`(9.3\pm 1.9)\times 10^5`$ph s-1 cm-2. This line is unresolved and the 90 per cent upper limit of the line width is FWHM $`23500`$ km s-1. There is also an excess peak at $`7.1\pm 0.1`$ keV with $`EW=200\pm 120`$ eV, and a less significant peak at $`6.8`$ keV with $`EW60`$ eV (90 per cent confidence detection). The estimated line fluxes for these lines are $`2.7\times 10^5`$ and $`1.2\times 10^5`$ph s-1 cm-2, respectively. Given the low pile-up fraction, these weak emission features (at least the statistically robust one at 7 keV) are unlikely to be artifacts of pile-up. A similar feature was detected at $`6.9\pm 0.1`$ keV in the ASCA SIS spectrum. Fe K$`\beta `$ emission is predicted to be three times weaker than the observed value. It could be blended with FeXXVI K$`\alpha `$ at 6.97 keV from a highly ionized medium. A similar K$`\alpha `$ line from hydrogen-like iron has been detected in the XMM-Newton spectrum of the Seyfert 2 galaxy Mrk463 (Sanders et al 2003 in prep.). The presence of such a highly ionized Fe line is consistent with the high ionization gas (log $`\xi 3`$) hypothesized in the following section.

Extrapolating the absorbed power-law leaves a faint excess below 4 keV. The spectrum is nearly flat $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.3_{0.6}^{+0.5}`$ in the 0.5–2 keV band. This component is probably scattered light of the hidden active nucleus. As the soft X-ray image shows, the nucleus is very faint below 1 keV, suggesting further obscuration to the scattering region, in addition to the primary obscuration of the central source occuring probably at much smaller radii.

The observed fluxes (corrected for pile-up) in the 0.5–2 keV and 2–7 keV bands are $`2.1\times 10^{14}`$erg cm-2 s-1 and $`2.7\times 10^{12}`$erg cm-2 s-1, respectively. The estimated absorption-corrected 2–10 keV luminosity, excluding the iron line luminosity, is $`6.3\times 10^{41}`$erg s-1. This value is lower than the two previous ASCA observations in 1993 and 1995 (Iwasawa et al 1997; Forster et al 1999) by a factor of 2–3.

### 3.2 Position of the active nucleus

The obscuration of the nuclear region affects the measurements of the position of the optical nucleus of this galaxy. The northern blob of the central double radio source has been considered to be the active nucleus, since it has a flat spectrum (Carral, Turner & Ho 1990). The best registration of the radio and optical images obtained so far is the one by Falcke et al (1998, see the paper for detailed discussion) for the VLA and HST data. The positions of the HST red peak and the northern blob in the VLA 3.5 cm map are in agreement to within 0.45 arcsec. Our 4–7 keV image shows a strong point-like source with a faint envelope. In this energy band, the nucleus is largely free of obscuration and its position should coincide with the active nucleus. We have applied the latest aspect correction using the alignment files released in 2002 May by the Chandra Science Center. With this aspect correction, the expected absolute positional accuracy is smaller than 0.6 arcsec. Our 4–7 keV peak is located at R.A. = $`12^\mathrm{h}25^\mathrm{m}46^\mathrm{s}.77`$, Dec. = $`+12^{}39^{}44^{\prime \prime }.0`$ (J2000), which is $`0.6`$ arcsec NE of the VLA radio nucleus. Given the uncertainties, the optical, radio and the X-ray positions are all in agreement.

## 4 Soft X-ray nebula

The soft X-ray emission is spatially extended and shows interesting morphology. The 0.3–1 keV image of the central $`2^{}\times 1.65^{}`$, or $`9.7\times 8.0`$ kpc is shown, along with the X-ray colour map (0.7–1 keV / 0.4–0.7 keV) in Fig. 3. Some regions of interest are investigated separately below. Basic data for these regions are summarized in Table 1.

### 4.1 Southern cone

The soft X-ray (0.3–1 keV) image shows a well-defined conical extension to the south (Fig. 1, Fig. 3a), resembling the \[OIII\]$`\lambda 5007`$ ionization cone (Pogge 1988; Falcke et al 1998; Veilleux et al 1999; Yoshida et al 2001). The western side of the soft X-ray cone, in particular, has a sharp, straight boundary at $`PA220^{}`$. Its apex is, however, slightly north of the hard X-ray peak. With the apex of the cone slightly displaced from the nuclear position (0.5 arcsec to the east, 2.5 arcsec to the north) when extrapolated with the rims of the cone, the opening angle of the X-ray cone is measured to be $`55^{}`$.

The surface brightness of the soft X-ray emission drops at the centre due to strong absorption, whilst at radii from the nucleus larger than 2 arcsec, where the brightness peaks, its profile shows an exponential decline ($`\mathrm{exp}[(r2.6)/3.9]`$, where $`r`$ is the radial distance from the hard X-ray nucleus in arcsec). An alternative description is with a King profile with a core radius of 5.7 arcsec (or 460 pc) and a slope index of $`1.7`$. In either case, the soft X-ray emission reaches the background level at radii of 20–25 arcsec (1.6–2 kpc), and there appears to be no further emission at larger radii to the south (in contrast to the northerly direction; see the following section).

The ACIS-S spectrum of the southern cone is shown in Fig. 4. The spectral data were taken from a conical region in the radial range of 1.5–19 arcsec from the nucleus. The spectrum is dominated by soft X-ray emission below 3 keV.

Although the steep rise of the soft X-ray spectrum down to 0.5 keV can be approximated by a power-law form with photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }3.4`$, the most likely explanation for the soft X-ray emission is a blend of strong emission lines. Modelling by thermal emission spectra (from collisionally ionized plasma, e.g., MEKAL, Kaastra 1992) is not favoured on the following grounds. If the observed X-ray emission is due to collisionally ionized plasma, a likely origin is a galactic outflow driven by a nuclear starburst. Circumstantial evidence against this hypothesis is that, although star formation is taking place in the spiral arms of the stellar disk (Pogge 1988), there is no strong evidence for a compact nuclear starburst in NGC4388. To drive a well-collimated outflow, as seen in the southern cone, a compact starburst region needs to be thermalized to form a high pressure core (e.g., Chevalier & Clegg 1985), which does not appear to be the case in NGC4388.

Spectral analysis does not support the thermal emission hypothesis either. A single temperature model fails to explain the strong OVII emission lines at 0.56 keV, even with non-solar abundance ratio. Strong OVII is emitted from $`kT0.15`$ keV gas if it is collisionally ionized. Since this low temperature gas does not emit much above 0.7 keV, a higher temperature gas is required to explain the data. A two-temperature model in which one component has a fixed temperature of $`kT_1=0.15`$ keV and the other has a fitted temperature of $`kT_2=0.53_{0.07}^{+0.07}`$ keV gives a reasonable fit to the data up to 1.5 keV with $`\chi ^2=30.1`$ for 39 degrees of freedom. This fit, however, underestimates the Mg emission feature at 1.3 keV by a factor of 2, and the Si feature at 1.8 keV by a factor of 4, on extrapolation. This modelling also has two significant problems: 1) the metallicity, which is assumed to be identical between the two components, is very low, $`0.08_{0.06}^{+0.14}`$ solar. This is not consistent with the gas which should have been enriched by supernovae through a starburst; 2) large internal absorption of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`=2.4_{1.5}^{+1.6}\times 10^{21}`$cm-2 is required. With the Galactic dust-to-gas ratio, this implies visual extinction of $`A_\mathrm{V}2.2`$ mag. Unlike the northern extension (see Section 4.2), the southern cone is located well outside the obscuration and such a large extinction is unlikely to be present (even the nuclear optical spectrum taken from inner radii shows a smaller reddening $`A_\mathrm{V}0.9`$, Petitjean & Durret 1993).

We therefore explore the possibility of photoionized plasma, as postulated for the optical ionization cone. In terms of quality of the fit to the data, the photoionization model described below gives a better fit to the data in the same energy range (0.4–1.5 keV) with $`\chi ^2=19.1`$ for 40 degrees of freedom.

High resolution X-ray spectra of photoionized gas in Seyfert 2 galaxies obtained from grating spectrometers show many emission features from a broad range of ionization in the soft X-ray band (e.g., see Kinkhabwala et al 2002; Brinkman et al 2002 for XMM-Newton RGS and Chandra LETGS data, respectively, of NGC1068; Sako et al 2000 for Mrk 3). These emission lines are heavily blended together and mostly difficult to resolve at the spectral resolution of the CCD. This heavy line blending also makes an estimate of the underlying continuum difficult in a CCD spectrum, if it is present at all. Therefore, we will not perform a detailed analysis here as one would accomplish with a high resolution grating spectrum, but instead only describe some key features characterizing the observed spectrum and present a possible model, which should be treated as a guide only.

A few of the strongest emission-line peaks can be recognized in the data at 0.56, 0.86, 1.33, 1.77 and 2.33 keV, for which the typical error in the line centroids is 0.04 keV and the significance of the detection is larger than 90 per cent confidence level. These correspond to the OVII triplet, a blend of various Fe L emission, OVIII Radiative Recombination Continuum (RRC) and NeIX (0.92 keV), and low ionization (IV–VIII; for the ionization parameter inferred below) lines of Mg, Si and S, respectively. These are all low ionization features, and the 0.4–0.9 keV data and the three discrete emission-lines above 1 keV are explained well with emission from optically thin gas with log $`\xi 0.4`$ (here, we compare with model spectra generated by XSTAR version 2.1 by T. Kallman, see Kallman & Bautista 2001, for optically thin gas, illuminated by a power-law continuum between 13.6 eV and 50 keV with a photon-index of 1.8. The ionization parameter is defined as $`\xi =L/(nR^2)`$ erg cm s-1, where $`L`$ is the 1–1000 Ryd luminosity, $`n`$ is the density and $`R`$ is the distance from the ionizing source. XSTAR calculates physical conditions for a spherical gas shell by solving radiative transfer. The quoted value for $`\xi `$ is for the inner edge of the shell. Therefore the calculated spectra include emission from a range of $`\xi `$ lower than the quoted value from outer radii). This fit requires no significant excess absorption by cold gas above the Galactic value ($`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`=2.6\times 10^{20}`$cm-2, Dickey & Lockman 1990). The only significant residual below 0.9 keV is an excess at 0.65 keV, which could be OVIII Ly$`\alpha `$, indicating the presence of higher ionization gas.

The 0.9–3 keV data unexplained by the above $`\mathrm{log}\xi 0.4`$ emission, apart from the Mg, Si and S emission lines, may be emission and scattered continua from highly ionized, low density gas, as suggested by the excess OVIII at 0.65 keV. Unfortunately, there is no other significant detection of spectral signatures, which could be used to constrain the ionization parameter. If FeXXV at 6.7 keV, possibly present in the hard X-ray spectrum (see Section 5.1), is real and originates from the same medium as the OVIII emission, then the ionization parameter $`\xi `$ would be a few thousands. For example, the spectrum from high ionization gas with $`\xi =2000`$, when combined with the low ionization (log $`\xi =0.4`$) spectrum, can provide a reasonable fit to the 0.4–3 keV data (see Fig. 4). This high ionization spectrum has broader radiative recombination continua due to high temperature of the gas ($`T10^6`$ K), as well as high ionization lines, which could fill the continuum between the emission lines of low ionization spectrum. A possible alternative which would play the same role is the soft X-ray excess component of the reflection spectrum, which is seen in the hard X-ray band (see e.g., Ross, Fabian & Young 2000 for a computed reflection spectrum from mildly ionized matter). Further investigation is, however, beyond the capability of the present CCD spectrum.

In summary, low ionization (log $`\xi 0.4`$) photoionized gas appears to be a plausible explanation for prominent soft X-ray spectral features; Another component, which could be highly ionized (log $`\xi 3`$) gas, is required, although its origin is not clear. It should, however, be noted that this two-component photoionization model is only an approximation required to describe the spectrum at the CCD resolution with limited signal-to-noise ratio, from which only a few strong emission features can be recognized. Emission features from photoionized gas with a broad range of ionization parameter are likely to be present and would be detected in a high resolution spectrum.

There are significant spectral changes within the southern cone (see Fig. 3b). Spectra from radial ranges of 1.5–7 arcsec (0.1–0.6 kpc) and 7–19 arcsec (0.6–1.5 kpc) are compared (cf. the \[OIII\]/H$`\alpha `$ maximum occurs at 3 arcsec from the nucleus, Falcke et al 1998; Veilleux et al 1999). At the low energy end, the spectrum from the larger radii is slightly softer than that from the inner part. The spectral softening at larger radii can be explained by a slight increase in ionization parameter for the low ionization gas, or a decrease in absorption, or both. In the second case, with a constant ionization parameter of log $`\xi =0.4`$, a marginal excess absorption ($`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`2\times 10^{20}`$cm-2) above the Galactic value is found for the inner part while no excess absorption is required for the outer part.

### 4.2 Northern extension within 1 kpc

In contrast to the southern extension, the inner part on the north side of the nucleus (within $`15`$ arcsec, or 1.2 kpc) is faint in the soft X-ray (0.3–1 keV) band. However, the appearance of the image changes dramatically in the higher energies. In the 1–2 keV band, the northern and southern extensions show comparable brightness, apart from at very inner radii (Fig. 5). This is also demonstrated by radial profiles in the two energy bands (Fig. 6).

This change in appearance of the X-ray image can be understood as a result of obscuration toward the northern extension (and the nucleus). The soft X-ray spectrum taken from the radial range of 3–11 arcsec (0.2–0.9 kpc) to the north of the nucleus is shown as “N plume” in Fig. 4. In comparison with the southern cone spectrum, the soft X-ray excess below 0.9 keV is much less pronounced, and the low ionization emission lines from Mg and Si in the 1–2 keV range are stronger relative to the emission complex at lower energies. The data can be modelled by the same combination of low and high ionization gases as used for the southern cone spectrum (see Section 4.1) but with a larger absorption column density of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ = $`2.1_{0.5}^{+0.6}\times 10^{21}`$cm-2(the model is shown in solid histogram together with the data in Fig. 4). Combining with the radial surface brightness profiles in Fig. 6, it can be argued that, in the absence of absorption, the nebulae to the north and south would share similar brightnesses and possibly ionization conditions.

NGC4388 is viewed nearly edge-on, with the near side of the stellar disk being tilted upward by $`12^{}`$ (see Fig. 5 of Veilleux et al 1999). This enables us to have a clear view of the SW cone. On the other hand, the tilted near side of the disk blocks our line of sight towards the northern extension, suppressing low energy X-ray emission through photoelectric absorption. Probably we see the northern extended X-ray emission through the stellar disk for which the inferred column density appears to be reasonable.

There are a few morphological and spectral features to note on the northern extension: the 1–2 keV image (Fig. 5) shows that a relatively narrow bright filament emanates from the nucleus at $`PA55^{}`$ before bending northwards at $`3`$ arcsec from the nucleus, past which point the filament opens up, similar to the radio plume imaged with the VLA (Falcke et al 1998).

### 4.3 Lower surface brightness emission within 4 kpc

Besides the bright southern cone and the northern extension at small radii, lower surface brightness soft X-ray emission is seen in the radial range of 1–4 kpc from the nucleus. The extension is to the east along the stellar disk, to the west with a bent morphology, and to the north-east, as shown in Fig. 3a. Although there is possible evidence for spectral variations across the low surface brightness emission (Fig. 3b), limited statistics due to the short exposure of our observation prevent us from dividing the low surface brightness emission into multiple regions and analysing their spectra separately. The soft X-ray spectrum integrated over this region is shown in Fig. 4 as “LSB”.

Although, as cautioned above, the photoionization model should be taken as only a guide, the spectrum favours a higher ionization parameter of log $`\xi 1.4`$ for the low ionization gas than that for the southern cone. A large absorption of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`=2.5_{0.8}^{+0.9}\times 10^{21}`$cm-2 is required. It should also be noted that the emission extended along the stellar disk might be different in origin. As the optical H$`\alpha `$ image and the excitation map (Corbin et al 1988; Veilleux et al 1999; Yoshida et al 2001) show, this region is the site of intense star formation in the spiral arms, and the soft X-ray emission could originate in thermal hot gas with a temperature of a few million K. The spectrum there lacks the strong OVII feature at 0.55 keV, but the quality of the present data cannot provide a clear answer to the question of whether the gas is collisionally- or photo-ionized.

To the north-east, the soft X-ray image shows three shell-like structures, aligned parallel to each other with an approximate separation of 10 arcsec, or 0.8 kpc (Fig. 7). They are located in the radial range of 14–40 arcsec (1.1–3.2 kpc) from the nucleus at PA$`40^{}`$, and coincide with the location of the \[OIII\] north-east complex (e.g., Veilleux et al 1999). The colour map (Fig. 3b) shows that the three-shell region has a harder spectrum than the surroundings. In fact, the shell structure is clearer in the 0.7–1 keV image than in the 0.4–0.7 keV image.

### 4.4 Northern extension beyond 4 kpc

The large-scale image in the 0.3–2.5 keV band is shown in Fig. 8. The original image was produced from the entire ACIS-S3 chip with 5 arcsec binning. In this energy band, the Virgo cluster emission is significant. The background obtained from a source-free region on the same detector was assumed to be constant over the field. After subtracting the background, the image has been adaptively binned so that each pixel has a signal-to-noise ratio larger than 2.5.

Very low surface brightness emission extends to the north-east beyond the region shown in Fig. 3. There is a low sensitivity belt on the detector due to the CCD node boundary, which extends in $`PA120^{}`$ at around 1.8 arcmin ($`9`$ kpc) from the nucleus. Including this sensitivity gap, extended emission with significance above $`3\sigma `$ reaches 3.3 arcmin ($`16`$ kpc) from the nucleus. It coincides with the region where emission-line filaments are seen in both the H$`\alpha `$ and \[OIII\] images taken by the SUBARU Suprime-Cam (Yoshida et al 2001).

The radial surface brightness profile of the 0.3–2.5 keV emission to the north-east (in the P.A. range between $`0^{}`$ and $`50^{}`$) can be fit well with a power-law ($`r^\alpha `$; $`r`$ in kpc) with $`\alpha =1.39\pm 0.06`$. A fainter excess is seen further out at PA$`45^{}`$, 4 arcmin (20 kpc) away from the nucleus, where there is a bright complex of H$`\alpha `$ knots, which is a part of the SUBARU 35-kpc-long filament (Yoshida et al 2001). However, the significance of this X-ray excess is just above $`2\sigma `$.

The spectrum taken from the region between 4 kpc and 9 kpc in radius is shown in Fig. 4 (as “NE VLSB”). No significant emission is detected above 2 keV. Two prominent emission lines from low ionization Mg and Si at 1.3 and 1.8 keV, respectively, are seen in the 1 – 2 keV range. The inferred ionization parameter is found to be slightly low at log $`\xi 0.3`$ with Galactic absorption.

## 5 Hard X-ray emission

### 5.1 Circumnuclear hard X-ray emission

The 4–7 keV emission is highly concentrated around the nucleus (approximately 90 per cent of the total 4–7 keV flux comes from the central 2 arcsec in radius) but marginally resolved. The surface brightness distribution of the hard X-ray emission is found to be skewed slightly to the north at low brightness levels (see also the following subsection on the Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission). Although the asymmetry suggests that the extension is real, since the point spread function (PSF) of the Chandra optics (HRMA) has a broad low-level wing at high energies, we have examined the radial distribution of the hard X-ray emission. Fig. 9 shows radial surface brightness profiles in the 4–7 keV band, taken from northern and southern regions divided at P.A. of 80 and 255 to compare with the PSF (NB. the northern region overlaps the southern cone slightly at its inner western edge). We note that the photon pile-up at the nucleus results in a slightly diluted core. The innermost bins of the two observed profiles have been increased by 10 per cent as an approximate correction for pile-up.

A PSF was simulated at the monochromatic energy of 6.4 keV for the same position on the detector as that of the hard X-ray nucleus, using the standard PSF library in CIAO. The total hard X-ray spectrum peaks at the Fe K$`\alpha `$ band (6.1–6.6 keV), which carries $`20`$ per cent of the observed 4–7 keV counts. Because the off-axis angle of the source is small (0.65 arcmin) and 6.4 keV is close to the higher end of the bandpass, the simulated PSF can be regarded as a conservative estimate of the PSF for the 4–7 keV emission. While the radial profile for the southern half is consistent with the PSF, the northern half shows significant excess emission above the PSF but reaches the background level at around 30 arcsec ($`2.5`$ kpc).

The origin of the extended hard X-ray emission is probably some form of reflection of the hidden active nucleus, as suggested by the hard spectrum (Fig. 10). This appears to be true, at least, for the spectrum of the low surface brightness emission region which shows a strong Fe K line at $`6.35\pm 0.06`$ keV with $`EW=1.8\pm 0.9`$ keV. A similar picture is consistent with the noisy spectrum of the inner northern plume, which barely shows evidence for an Fe K line with $`EW=770\pm 610`$ eV. This cold reflection could contribute to low ionization lines at lower energies (e.g., 2–4 keV band), depending on the ionization state and obscuration to the reflecting medium. The reflecting medium could be molecular clouds distributed in the stellar disk (recall the Sgr B2 clouds near our Galactic centre, which is located 100 pc away from the Sgr A, e.g., Koyama et al 1996). If ram-pressure stripping of the gas in the host galaxy is taking place (e.g., Petitjean & Durret 1993; Cayatte et al 1994; Veilleux et al 1999) and the stripped gas forms sufficient column density to the central source, it would also work as an X-ray reflector, albeit ram-pressure stripping is not expected to be effcient near the centre of a galaxy.

Much of the hard X-ray tail in the southern cone spectrum could be accounted for by the faint wing of the PSF for the nuclear source, although a faint extension is present at the inner part of the western edge of the cone, on inspecting the 4–7 keV image. The hard X-ray spectrum lacks a strong Fe K emission line (Fig. 10). The 90 per cent upper limit on the EW of a narrow line at 6.4 keV is still consistent with the spectral shape of the nuclear source (Section 3.1). A higher energy line, e.g., at 6.7 keV, appears to be more favoured by the data (in this case, the EW could be around 800 eV), although the significance of the line is sensitive to the assumed underlying continuum. This line may arise from the high ionization gas (log $`\xi 3`$) in agreement with the soft X-ray emission (Section 4.1).

### 5.2 Extended Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission

The Fe K$`\alpha `$ emitting region is spatially resolved in the Chandra image. A narrow-band (6.2–6.5 keV) image centred on cold iron K$`\alpha `$ emission is shown in Fig. 11. While much of the line emission arises from the nuclear region, the image of the low surface-brightness emission shows ridges extending to the north-east and north-west. A faint extension appears to be present to the north up to 30 arcsec (2.5 kpc). The reality of this extended line emission is supported by the hard X-ray emission with an asymmetric extension examined in the previous subsection (Fig. 9) and the spectrum of the low surface brightness region (LSB in Fig. 10) which shows a strong Fe K$`\alpha `$ line with EW much larger than that of the nuclear spectrum. The energy of the line centroid ($`6.4`$ keV) of the LSB spectrum implies that the line emission originates in low ionization gas. The extension of the line emission is in rough agreement with the photoionized gas traced by soft X-ray emission, although any detailed correlation between the two emission components is unclear due to the low signal to noise ratio of the Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission data.

The 6.4 keV Fe K$`\alpha `$ line is a reliable indicator of cold gas, and could trace the history of nuclear activity by mapping the iron line emission (Fabian 1977). The extension of the line emission implies that the central source was turned on at least ten thousands years ago. More details could be obtained from a deeper observation.

## 6 discussion

The soft X-ray image shows clear bi-conical extended emission, bearing a strong resemblance to the optical \[OIII\] ionization cone. The faintness of the northern cone is probably due to the effect of shadowing by the stellar disk on the near side (see Section 4.2). The spatial correlation between the soft X-ray and optical line emission, which was not found in the much lower signal-to-noise image taken by the ROSAT HRI (Matt et al 1994), suggests a common mechanism working for the creation of the extended nebula. As discussed in Section 4.1, the extended X-ray emission in NGC4388 is unlikely to be thermal (collisionally ionized) emission from a shock-heated medium, as previously thought (however, Netzer, Turner & George 1998 explained the ASCA spectrum with a photoionization model). Convincing evidence for photoionized gas that is responsible for the soft X-ray emission in other Seyfert 2 galaxies has been obtained from high resolution spectroscopy with the XMM-Newton RGS and the Chandra LETG (Kinkhabwala et al 2002; Brinkman et al 2002; Ogle et al 2000; Sako et al 2000; see also Young, Wilson & Shopbell 2001). This also seems to be the case for the X-ray nebula around NGC4388.

The strong OVII emission, together with the other low energy X-ray emission features, found in the spectrum of the southern cone suggests that photoionized gas with a low ionization parameter (log $`\xi 0.4`$) dominates the bright soft X-ray emission. With the inferred low ionization, the same gas could explain the optical \[OIII\] luminosity, since photoionization codes predict the luminosity ratio of \[OIII\]$`\lambda 5007`$ to OVII (0.55 keV) to be $`40`$ for the ionizing spectrum we assumed (this value is from XSTAR). Given the rough power-law approximation to the shape of the ionizing spectrum for the photoionization calculation and various uncertainties, including the aperture difference and varying absorption/extinction across the region, which complicate any direct comparison, the observed line flux ratio ($`1.2\times 10^{12}`$erg cm-2 s-1 for \[OIII\] measured with a $`12^{\prime \prime }`$ aperture by Falcke et al (1998); $`1.8\times 10^{14}`$erg cm-2 s-1 for OVII measured only from the southern cone) is in a rough agreement with the prediction. Recall that the $`\xi `$ quoted above is for the inner edge of a photoionized gas shell in the calculation of XSTAR (see Section 4.1), and the ionization parameter varies across the gas: OVII peaks near the inner edge while OIII peaks at outer radii where $`\xi `$ is lower but the radial emissivity of the two have a significant overlap.

In the southern cone, a comparison between the spectra of the inner and outer parts suggests the ionization parameter is approximately constant with radius (Section 4.1). This implies that the radial density profile follows $`nR^2`$. Since the temperature (a few $`10^4`$ K here) should hold for gas with the same ionization parameter, the pressure profile is also proportional to the inverse square of the radius, which is consistent with gas expanding at constant velocity, ejected matter from the active nucleus, for instance.

If the X-ray nebula around NGC4388 is indeed photoionized gas, as we demonstrated, its size of over 10 kpc is larger than other photoionized nebulae known around nearby Seyfert galaxies. High resolution X-ray spectroscopy is desirable to confirm the photoionization nature. The large extent of the X-ray emission would make a Chandra grating observation difficlt. An observation with the XMM-Newton RGS may still be possible, given the broader PSF of the XMM-Newton telescopes. Note, however, such a grating observation will lose information on the spatial variation of gas properties, as we see in the Chandra data.

Large scale X-ray nebulae with the size up to a few tens kpc, which are often associated with H$`\alpha `$ emission (e.g., Heckman et al 1996; Lira et al 2002), are usually attributed to thermal emission heated by starburst-driven winds (e.g., Lehnert, Heckman & Weaver 1999; Gallagher et al 2002; Done et al 2003). However, at least in the presence of an active nucleus, the possibility of photoionized gas as a source of an extended X-ray nebula should be considered, especially when there is a correlation with high ionization optical emission gas such as \[OIII\]$`\lambda 5007`$, as seen in NGC4388.

While the radial extent of the southern cone is limited, the question arises why the extension of the gas to the north is so much larger in both optical line and X-rays. Various possibilities for the origin of this gas have been proposed: ram-pressure stripping of the interstellar medium (Petitjean & Durret 1993; Veilleux et al 1999), debris of a small accreted galaxy (Yoshida et al 2001), and a starburst-driven superwind (e.g., Corbin et al 1988). The last possibility is not favoured because the X-ray spectrum is not thermal (see also Veilleux et al 1999; Vollmer & Huchtmeier 2003). The extended cold iron K emission rather favours a photoionization model. The narrow filaments of a few tens of kpc length, imaged by SUBARU, are certainly suggestive of the merger debris hypothesis. They are reminiscent of the tidal tails often observed in a major merger system, e.g., in HI. Of course, the unusual environment particular to NGC4388, residing in the cluster core and moving at high velocity in it, may play an important role in causing the long one-sided matter distribution.

The radial surface-brightness profile of the soft X-ray emission suggests that the density profile to the north side of the galaxy is significantly flatter than that to the south. If the ionized gas in the northern extension is excited through photoionization by the active nucleus, then its luminosity is controlled by the amount of matter available for photoionization. If the ionization parameters obtained from the photoionization models of the various regions are used as a guide, the very low surface brightness region at large radii (4–9 kpc or NE VLSB; Section 4.4) appears to have a lower ionization parameter than the inner north plume (within 1 kpc; Section 4.2). The decrease in the ionization parameter indicates that the density profile is flatter than $`nR^2`$. Under a matter-bounded condition, the emissivity depends on the photoionization rate which is proportional to density. The observed power-law form of the soft X-ray surface-brightness profile ($`R^{(1.4\pm 0.1)}`$, Section 4.4) implies that the density profile to the north of the galaxy may have a similar form, if projection effects are not important, i.e., it has a shallow depth, for example, of a sheet-like structure, as expected for a narrow streak of stripped gas, or the debris/tidal tail of a galaxy merger.

The apparent high ionization condition found at intermediate radii (LSB; Section 4.3) is not explained by the above scenario. This could result from a different ionization condition, i.e., a different distribution function of ionization parameters, in the north-east “three-shell” region. Although the X-ray spectrum of that region alone is too noisy to be conclusive, the X-ray colour map (Fig. 3b) indicates that the shell region shows a harder spectrum than the surrounding area. The aligned shell-like structure resembles that in the optical ionization bi-cone of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC5252 (e.g., Tadhunter & Tsvetanov 1989; Acosta-Pulido et al 1996). It is also reminiscent of the X-ray bow structure found in the X-ray nebula around the Vela Pulsar (Pavlov et al 2001). These structures may be due to a density discontinuity created by shock (the shells in NGC5252 may be pre-existing HI rings). The harder spectrum of the shell region could be related to the shock-heated media, although increased absorption is an alternative explanation.

The radio images show that radio-emitting plasma extends to the north at large radii whereas the axes of the ionization bi-cone and bright radio emission lie along the NE-SW direction. Veilleux et al (1999) attributed this misalignment to buoyancy or refractive bending (note that the NE extraplanar ionized gas is moving towards us and the axis of the ionization cone is not perpendicular to the stellar disk). As we noted in Section 4.2, the major axis of the 1–3 keV (green colour in Fig. 1) or 1–2 keV (Fig. 5) emission, which is likely to trace the path of the nuclear radiation at inner radii (within 1 kpc), lies in the NE-SW direction. Its southern extension also match the well-defined edge of the western side of the southern soft X-ray/OIII cone. The fact that the eastern edge of the southern cone is more blurred suggests that some buoyancy effect might bring the ionised gas southwards, while the true axis of the nuclear radiation which escapes from the nuclear obscuring torus is indicated by the 1–3 keV elongation. In this case, although the apparent opening angle of the southern cone is about $`55^{}`$, the nuclear ionizing radiation could be more collimated. On the north side, both the 1–2 keV X-ray emitting gas and radio plasma point towards the NE at small radii and bend towards the north at $`3`$ arcsec from the nucleus.

NGC4388 is often believed to be interacting strongly with the Virgo ICM at supersonic speeds. A Mach cone formed on the far-side of the galaxy with an opening angle of $`80^{}`$ has been proposed by Veilleux et al (1999). Some temperature rise in the bow-shocked region around the interaction point is expected above the surrounding ICM, which should have a temperature of $`kT2`$ keV. Unfortunately, we were unable to find such a bow-shocked region, mainly due to the presence of the extended ionized gas. The lack of evidence for strong interaction with the ICM leaves room for the hypothesis that NGC4388 could be more distant than the Virgo cluster and lies closer to at its Hubble distance for $`cz=2540`$ km s-1.

Finally, with regard to the unification scheme of the two types of Seyfert galaxies, if the nucleus of NGC4388 were viewed from a direction near the axis of the ionization cone, the central X-ray source would be seen through the low ionization gas (and possibly very high ionization gas). The column density of the low ionization gas could be of the order of $`10^{22}`$cm-2, depending on the filling factor. Although the detailed X-ray grating spectra of bright Seyfert 1 galaxies, such as NGC3783 (Kaspi et al 2002), do not show clear evidence for such low ionization gas, it might be seen in other mildly-absorbed Seyfert nuclei.

## Acknowledgements

XSTAR is maintained by Tim Kallman and his collaborators at Goddard Space Flight Center. ACF and KI thank Royal Society and PPARC, respectively, for support. This research was supported in part by NASA through grants NAG 81027 and NAG 81755 to the University of Maryland.

## appendix

Detector-efficiency corrected versions of spectral data shown in Fig. 2, Fig. 4 and Fig. 10 are presented below. The count rate spetra have been divided by the effective area. The correction is independent of the fitted model but some uncertainty may have been introduced due to the detector resolution and data binning. The time-dependent efficiency degradation in the low energy range specific to the ACIS-S3 detector, which was taken into account by acisabs in the spectral analysis, has also been included.


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# Consistency Conditions for AdS/CFT Embeddings

## Abstract

The group embeddings used in orbifolding the AdS/CFT correspondence to arrive at quiver gauge field theories are studied for both supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric cases. For an orbifold $`AdS_5\times S^5/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ the conditions for embeddings of the finite group $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in the $`SU(4)O(6)`$ isotropy of $`S^5`$ are stated in the form of consistency rules, both for Abelian and Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

preprint: June 2003

Introduction

Independently of the important question of whether or not superstring theory, or M theory, is the correct theory of quantum gravity, superstring theory can be used through the AdS/CFT correspondence to arrive at interesting gauge field theories in four spacetime dimensions. According to the AdS/CFT correspondence, a Type IIB superstring compactified on an $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ background is dual to an $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric gauge field theory in flat 4-dimensional spacetime. The $`𝒩=4`$ theory is much too symmetric to be of phenomenological interest. What makes the AdS/CFT correspondence far more interesting is the possibility of orbifolding $`S^5S^5/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is a finite group embedded in the isometry $`SU(4)O(6)`$ of $`S^5`$ in the 3-dimensional complex space $`𝒞_3_6`$. Although $`O(6)`$ and $`SU(4)`$ have the same local structure, i.e. Lie algebra, globally $`O(6)`$ is doubly-covered by $`SU(4)`$ and this distinction will be important to us here.

Another consideration, already discussed fully in , is the survival of chiral fermions. The correct statement of the necessary and sufficient condition is that the 4 of $`SU(4)`$ must be neither real nor pseudoreal for chiral fermions to be present in the quiver gauge field theory.

It is often stated that the number of surviving supersymmetries is $`𝒩=2,1,0`$ according to whether $`\mathrm{\Gamma }SU(2),SU(3),SU(4)`$. While this statement essentially survives our analysis, the statement itself needs sharpening, in particular by a more careful definition of the embedding. The present article is devoted to addressing that issue.

$`𝒩=1`$ Embeddings of Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in SU(4) and O(6).

To preserve $`𝒩=1`$ supersymmetry one must keep exactly one invariant spinor under the joint action of the finite symmetry $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the quiver gauge group, which for Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is $`SU(N)^p`$ where $`p`$ is the order of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. This implies that one component of the 4 of $`SU(4)`$ is the trivial singlet representation of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

The most general Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ of order $`g=o(\mathrm{\Gamma })`$ is  made up of the basic units $`Z_p`$, the order p cyclic groups formed from the $`p^{th}`$ roots of unity. It is important to note that the the product $`Z_pZ_q`$ is identical to $`Z_{pq}`$ if and only if p and q have no common prime factor.

If we write the prime factorization of g as:

$$g=\underset{i}{}p_i^{k_i}$$
(1)
where the product is over primes, it follows that the number $`N_a(g)`$ of inequivalent abelian groups of order g is given by:

$$N_a(g)=\underset{k_i}{}P(k_i)$$
(2)
where $`P(x)`$ is the number of unordered partitions of $`x`$. For example, for order $`g=144=2^43^2`$ the value would be $`N_a(144)=P(4)P(2)=5\times 2=10`$. For $`g31`$ it is simple to evaluate $`N_a(g)`$ by inspection. $`N_a(g)=1`$ unless g contains a nontrivial power ($`k_i2`$) of a prime. These exceptions are: $`N_a(g=4,9,12,18,20,25,28)=2;N_a(8,24,27)=3`$; and $`N_a(16)=5`$. This confirms that:

$$\underset{g=1}{\overset{31}{}}N_a(g)=48$$
(3)
Let us define $`\alpha =exp(2\pi i/p)`$ and write the embedding as $`\mathrm{𝟒}=(\alpha ^{A_1},\alpha ^{A_2},\alpha ^{A_3},\alpha ^{A_4})`$. For $`𝒩=1`$ we have agreed that one $`A_\mu `$ must vanish so let us put $`A_4=0`$ and denote the embedding by the shorthand $`\underset{¯}{𝐀}(A_1,A_2,A_3)`$.

Consider now the 6 of $`SU(4)`$ which is the antisymmetric part in $`(\mathrm{𝟒}\times \mathrm{𝟒})`$. The 6 is necessarily real, and in the double covering of $`O(6)`$ is identified with the defining ”vector” representation of $`O(6)`$. In the shorthand notation already adopted for the 4, the 6 is $`\mathrm{𝟔}=(A_1,A_2,A_3,A_1+A_2,A_2+A_3,A_3+A_1)`$.

For general $`\underset{¯}{𝐀}`$, the 6 is not real but we must now impose the condition that the diagonal $`3\times 3`$ matrix with diagonal elements $`\alpha ^{\underset{¯}{𝐀}}`$ be a transformation belonging to $`SU(3)`$, i.e. a matrix which is unitary and of determinant one. This requires that $`_iA_i=0`$ (mod p). But with that condition we can rewrite (up to mod p) $`\mathrm{𝟔}(A_1,A_2,A_3,A_3,A_2,A_3)`$ which is manifestly real and hence we have a consistent embedding.

Thus, in this the simplest case, the embedding is uniquely defined for the 4 of $`SU(4)`$ by the three components (recall $`A_40`$) of $`\underset{¯}{𝐀}(A_1,A_2,A_3)`$ which for consistency must satisfy $`A_1+A_2+A_3=0`$ (mod p). This will always lead to a consistent $`𝒩=1`$ chiral quiver gauge theory.

$`𝒩=0`$ Embeddings of Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in SU(4) and O(6).

For $`𝒩=0`$ the discussion is similar to the above except that $`A_4`$ does not vanish. Therefore the considerations involve not $`\underset{¯}{𝐀}`$ with three components but $`A_\mu =(A_1,A_2,A_3,A_4)`$ with four components.

Consider now the 6 of $`SU(4)`$ which is the antisymmetric part in $`(\mathrm{𝟒}\times \mathrm{𝟒})`$. The 6 can be written $`\mathrm{𝟔}=(A_1+A_4,A_2+A_4,A_3+A_4,A_1+A_2,A_2+A_3,A_3+A_1)`$.

But here for consistency the $`4\times 4`$ diagonal matrix with diagonal elements $`\alpha ^{A_\mu }`$ must be an $`SU(4)`$ transformation which requires $`_\mu A_\mu =0`$ (mod p) in which case the 6 is again manifestly real.

For a consistent $`𝒩=0`$ quiver gauge field theory, therefore, the 4 of $`SU(4)`$ is defined by four non-vanishing integers $`A_\mu `$ satisfying $`A_1+A_2+A_3+A_4=0`$ (mod p). This is the necessary and sufficient condition for consistent Abelian orbifolding to $`𝒩=0`$. Similar results hold for products of abelian groups, e.g., for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=Z_pZ_Q`$ we can write $`\mathrm{𝟒}=(𝐞^{𝐀_\mathrm{𝟏}}𝐞^{𝐁_\mathrm{𝟏}},𝐞^{𝐀_\mathrm{𝟐}}𝐞^{𝐁_\mathrm{𝟐}},𝐞^{𝐀_\mathrm{𝟑}}𝐞^{𝐁_\mathrm{𝟑}},𝐞^{𝐀_\mathrm{𝟒}}𝐞^{𝐁_\mathrm{𝟒}})`$ where we require $`_\mu A_\mu =0`$ (mod p) and $`_\mu B_\mu =0`$ (mod q).

$`𝒩=1`$ Embeddings of Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in SU(4) and O(6).

As usual, going from Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ to Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ makes everything more complicated. This is why paper  is necessarily much longer than e.g. paper !

The complication arises because for Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, the irreducible representations $`\rho _i`$ can have dimensions $`d_i`$ greater than one. If the order of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is $`g`$ the dimensions must satisfy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_id_i^2=g`$. The resultant gauge group for the quiver theory is $`_iSU(nd_i)`$. Because of this more complex quiver theories emerge from Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ than are possible for Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. On the other hand, as shown in , the constraints imposed phenomenologically are also more complex to such an extent that for all $`g31`$ only one acceptable theory occurs amongst many hundreds of candidates.

For the Non-Abelian embeddings we must again study whether the $`\mathrm{𝟔}(\mathrm{𝟒}\times \mathrm{𝟒})_a`$ is consistently real. Let us, for the $`𝒩=1`$ case write $`\mathrm{𝟒}=(_i^{^{}}\rho _i^{^{}},1)`$ where $`d_i^{^{}}=3`$ and where none of the $`\rho _i^{^{}}`$ is the identity representation. (Here the set {$`i^{^{}}`$} is a subset of the {$`i`$}). This will generically lead to an $`𝒩=1`$ supersymmetric quiver gauge theory.

The consistency requirements for this Non-Abelian embedding are very demanding and may be stated as the three rules for $`𝒩=1`$:

1. Exactly one component of the 4 of $`SU(4)`$ must be the identity of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. That is,

4 = ($`_i^{^{}}\rho _i^{^{}}`$, 1) where the $`\rho _i^{^{}}`$ are irreducible representations (not the identity) of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ satisfying $`d_i^{^{}}=3`$.

2. Written as a block-diagonal matrix the determinant of the $`3\times 3`$ matrix $`_i^{^{}}\rho _i^{^{}}`$ must be real and equal to one. Note that this reduces to the vanishing trace condition if we were to break $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ to an abelian subgroup.

To see just how demanding these three rules are consider even the simplest Non-Abelian finite group $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=S_3D_3`$. The order is g = 6 and the available irreducible representations are $`\rho =1,1^{},2`$. The only choice satisfying Rules 1 and 2 is 4 = $`(1^{^{}},2,1)`$ and this satisfies Rule 2 because $`2`$ is an $`SU(2)`$ matrix which necessarily has determinant equals one.

$`𝒩=0`$ Embeddings of Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in SU(4) and O(6).

The consistency requirements for Non-Abelian embedding to give $`𝒩=0`$ are similar to but different from those given for $`𝒩=0`$ and may be stated as the two new rules:

1. No component of the 4 of $`SU(4)`$ may be the identity of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. That is,

4 = ($`_i^{^{}}\rho _i^{^{}}`$) where the $`\rho _i^{^{}}`$ are irreducible representations (not the identity) of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ satisfying $`d_i^{^{}}=4`$.

2. Written as a block-diagonal matrix the determinant of the $`4\times 4`$ matrix $`_i^{^{}}\rho _i^{^{}}`$ must be real and equal to one.

To check how these rules work, consider again the simplest Non-Abelian finite group $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=S_3D_3`$. The only choice satisfying Rules 1 and 2 is 4 = (2, 2). Therefore $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=S_3`$ can be used to obtain either an $`𝒩=1`$ or an $`𝒩=0`$ quiver gauge field theory. \[The only other consistent embeddings of $`S_3`$ in $`SU(4)`$ are 4 = $`(1,1,1^{^{}},1^{^{}})`$ which leads to $`𝒩=2`$ and the trivial embedding which leaves $`𝒩=4`$.\]

Summary and Discussion.

Let us summarize the consistency conditions for the four cases considered:

Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$; $`𝒩=1`$.

$`A_4=0`$ (mod p) and $`A_1+A_2+A_3=0`$ (mod p).

Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$; $`𝒩=0`$

$`A_1+A_2+A_3+A_4=0`$ (mod p).

Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$; $`𝒩=1`$

1. Exactly one component of the 4 of $`SU(4)`$ must be the identity of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

2. The determinant of the $`3\times 3`$ matrix $`_i^{^{}}\rho _i^{^{}}`$ must be real and equal to one.

Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$; $`𝒩=0`$

1. No component of the 4 of $`SU(4)`$ may be the identity of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

2. The determinant of the $`4\times 4`$ matrix $`_i^{^{}}\rho _i^{^{}}`$ must be real and equal to one.

Fortunately, these consistency conditions are respected by most of the earlier work on Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. For example, the TeV unificiation model in  which provides an alternative to SUSYGUTs is consistent. Most of the Abelian models in  are consistent but 7 of the 60 which are called non-partition are not. Even though the embeddings of these seven models are inconsistent, the models are themselves consistent gauge theories and of interest in their own right. Despite the fact that they are not derivable from orbifolding $`AdS\times S^5`$, they have many of the features of orbifolded $`AdS\times S^5`$ models, $`e.g`$., vanishing first-order (and perhaps higher order) $`\beta `$ functions, similar boson-fermion counting providing $`𝒩=1`$ SUSY, etc. It can be shown that these are the only models besides the partition models with a real $`\mathrm{𝟔}`$, and that they fall into three classes. Recall first that the $`𝒩=1`$ partition models for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=Z_p`$ can be written as $`M_{p_1,p_2,p_3}^p`$ where $`p_1+p_2+p_3=0(modp)`$. In this notation the nonpartition models are $`M_{p,p,2p}^{3p},`$ $`M_{p,2p,4p}^{6p},`$ and $`M_{p,4p,7p}^{9p}`$. Along with their own phenomenological interest, these models can probably be used in comparison with properly embedded partition orbifolded models to investigate violation of conformal invariance, etc. In the $`𝒩=0`$ case, again one finds partition models $`M_{p_1,p_2,p_3,p_4}^p`$ with $`p_1+p_2+p_3+p_4=0(modp)`$ are properly embedded. But again there exist improperly-embedded, but phenomenologically-interesting, non-partition models with complex $`\mathrm{𝟒}`$ and real $`\mathrm{𝟔}`$.

For Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ the most extensive work is in our earlier paper . The only phenomenologically-acceptable model out of the many considered in  was for the choice $`\mathrm{\Gamma }24/7`$, in the notation of Thomas and Wood for $`D_4\times Z_3`$. The embedding used is $`\mathrm{𝟒}=(1\alpha ,1^{^{}},2\alpha )`$ and this satisfies Rules 1 and 2 for Non-Abelian $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`𝒩=0`$. It is therefore a quiver gauge theory which arises from a consistent embedding of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in $`AdS_5\times S^5/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

Acknowledgements

TWK thanks the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UNC Chapel Hill and PHF thanks the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University for hospitality while this work was in progress. This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy under Grants No. DE-FG02-97ER-41036 and No. DE-FG05-85ER40226.


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# CASSIOPEIA A AND ITS CLUMPY PRESUPERNOVA WIND

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The supernova remnant Cas A (Cassiopeia A) gives us our best view of the outcome of the explosion of a massive star. Spectral imaging with Chandra at X-ray wavelengths (Hughes et al. 2000) and HST at optical wavelengths (Fesen et al. 2001) has shown the complex structure of the ejected heavy elements. The Chandra image also revealed a central compact X-ray source (Tananbaum 1999), probably a neutron star, and lines of the radioactive isotope 44Ti have been detected (Iyudin et al. 1994). Despite these many developments, the evolutionary status of Cas A remains uncertain. The most common assumption is that the supernova is interacting with a constant density interstellar medium (Gull 1973b; Gotthelf et al. 2001; DeLaney & Rudnick 2003), or perhaps with a molecular cloud (Keohane, Rudnick, & Anderson 1996). Interaction with a circumstellar shell has also been suggested (Chevalier & Liang 1989; Borkowski et al. 1996). The immediate environment of a massive star is expected to be strongly influenced by mass loss, and the pervasive, high-velocity, heavy element ejecta in Cas A indicate that the star underwent strong mass loss before the explosion.

Here, we propose that the supernova is interacting with the slow wind from the progenitor star, with a $`\rho _wr^2`$ density profile. The resulting model can be compared to the width and expansion of the shocked region (§ 2), giving constraints on the basic parameters. Implications of the model for inhomogeneities in the the wind, for the supernova, and for a surrounding HII region and HI knots are discussed in § 3.

## 2 WIND INTERACTION MODEL

The distance to Cas A has been determined from the fast knot expansion to be $`3.4_{0.1}^{+0.3}`$ kpc (Reed et al. 1995). Ashworth (1980) claimed an observation of the Cas A supernova by Flamsteed in 1680, but that claim has been controversial (Stephenson & Green 2002). On the basis of very fast knots that show little sign of deceleration, Thorstensen et al. (2001) determined an explosion date of $`1671.3\pm 0.9`$. We take an explosion date of $`1675\pm 5`$. The outer shock front has been clearly observed in Chandra images to have a radius of 153′′ (Gotthelf et al. 2001), or $`7.8\times 10^{18}`$ cm at a distance of 3.4 kpc. The position of the reverse shock front is less clear, but was determined by Gotthelf et al. (2001) from the inner edge to the bright ring of emission at X-ray and radio wavelengths; they found a ratio of the forward shock radius to that of the reverse shock of $`r_f/r_r=1.5`$ with a variation of 14% around the remnant.

The youth of Cas A has enabled studies of its expansion from proper motion studies. DeLaney & Rudnick (2003) have recently measured the expansion of the forward shock in X-rays from Chandra observations over 2000–2002 and found it to be in the large range $`0.020.33`$ % yr-1, with a median of $`0.21`$ % yr-1. The median corresponds to an expansion parameter $`m_f=d\mathrm{ln}r_f/d\mathrm{ln}t`$ of $`0.68`$. The bright ring of X-ray emission has previously been found to be expanding at $`0.20\pm 0.01`$ % yr-1 from Einstein and ROSAT observations covering 1979–1996 (Koralesky et al. 1998; Vink et al. 1998), or $`m=0.62\pm 0.03`$. The bright radio ring is approximately co-extensive with the X-ray one. Agüeros & Green (1999) studied the minima in the visibility plane at 151 MHz over the period 1984–1997 to determine a timescale for the bulk ring expansion of $`460\pm 30`$ years, or $`m=0.69\pm 0.05`$. While this result is consistent with the X-ray expansion, other radio studies have yielded a slower expansion; Anderson & Rudnick (1995) find an expansion age of $`7501300`$ years ($`m=0.33\pm 0.11`$). DeLaney & Rudnick (2003) recently examined the motion of the radio ring with an emphasis on angle-averaged emissivity profiles and found an expansion of $`0.07\pm 0.03`$ % yr-1 ($`m=0.22\pm 0.09`$). DeLaney & Rudnick suggested the difference is due to the more rapid flux drop of the ring compared to the plateau, but this is not definitively established. We regard the current situation on the radio ring expansion to be uncertain; more observations are needed.

We have carried out simulations of supernova interaction to compare to these observations of the shock dynamics. The explosion of Cas A appears to have been that of a massive star core, even though there was some H near the surface (Fesen & Becker 1991). We thus use the model of Matzner & McKee (1999) for the density distribution resulting from the explosion of a massive star with a radiative envelope. We concentrate on interaction with a stellar wind from the progenitor star with density $`\rho _w=Ar^2`$, although we also briefly consider a constant density environment. For a steady wind, $`A=\dot{M}/4\pi v_w`$, where $`\dot{M}`$ is the mass loss rate and $`v_w`$ is the wind velocity. The outer part of the Matzner & McKee (1999) profile has the form $`\rho _{sn}r^{10.12}`$. The self-similar solutions of Chevalier (1982) show that when such a profile interacts with a wind, both reverse and forward shocks expand with $`m=0.88`$ and the thickness of the shocked region is $`r_f/r_r=1.26`$. The observed shock parameters indicate that the reverse shock wave has propagated in from the power law region.

In order to calculate the further evolution of the shock fronts, we used the VH-1 hydrodynamics code to compute the 1-dimensional evolution of the wind interaction flow. In order to take advantage of the scaling that applies to this problem (Gull 1973a; Truelove & McKee 1999), we used the dimensionless variables $`r^{}=r/R^{}`$, $`v^{}=v/V^{}`$, and $`t^{}=t/T^{}`$, where $`R^{}=M_{ej}/(4\pi A)`$, $`V^{}=(2E/M_{ej})^{1/2}`$, $`T^{}=R^{}/V^{}`$, $`M_{ej}`$ is the ejecta mass, and $`E`$ is the explosion energy. We have $`R^{}=3.16\times 10^{19}M_1A_5^1`$ cm, $`V^{}=3160E_{51}^{1/2}M_1^{1/2}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, and $`T^{}=3160E_{51}^{1/2}M_1^{3/2}A_5^1`$ yr, where $`M_1`$ is the ejecta mass in units of $`10M_{}`$, $`E_{51}`$ is the energy in units of $`10^{51}`$ ergs, and $`A_5`$ is $`A`$ in units of $`10^5M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1/(4\pi 10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1)`$. Fig. 1 shows that $`r_f/r_r=1.5`$ when $`t^{}=1.56`$ in the scaled variables. At this time, the forward shock has an expansion parameter $`m_f=0.76`$ and the reverse shock has $`m_r=0.68`$; the forward shock radius is $`r_f^{}=1.48`$. In a computation with constant density ejecta, we found similar values of the $`m`$ parameters when $`r_f/r_r=1.5`$; the sensitivity to the supernova density profile is weak. Using the Matzner & McKee (1999) supernova density profile, we have also carried out a computation for expansion in a uniform (interstellar) medium. In this case, when $`r_f/r_r=1.5`$, the forward shock has an expansion parameter $`m_f=0.50`$ and the reverse shock has $`m_r=0.27`$.

For the forward shock motion, the wind model gives an expansion rate of 0.235 % yr-1, while the uniform model gives 0.153 % yr-1. The wind value appears to better represent the observations, which have a median value of 0.21 % yr-1 (see Fig. 3 of DeLaney & Rudnick 2003). As discussed above, there is ambiguity in the motion of the bright ring, which is identified as gas that has passed through and is bounded by the reverse shock. The X-ray data and some radio data are consistent with the wind interaction model, while other radio data (expansion of 0.07 % yr-1 found by DeLaney & Rudnick 2003) are consistent with a constant density surroundings. In the wind model, the small rate of expansion of compact radio features and parts of the forward shock front may be due to interactions with dense inhomogeneities in the wind like the QSFs (quasi-stationary flocculi; Van den Bergh 1971b). Despite the current small rate of expansion for some segments of the forward shock, the shock is fairly circular overall (Gotthelf et al. 2001), suggesting that the slowing is due to recent interaction with clumps.

The radial emissivity profiles are another difference between the models. Compared to the uniform density case, the shocked ejecta are concentrated into a higher density region surrounded by a region of near constant density wind in the wind case (Fig. 2). The ejecta shell in the wind case is broadened by a factor $`3`$ by hydrodynamic instabilities (see Fig. 8 of Chevalier, Blondin, & Emmering 1992), which will be crucial for interpreting the spatial distribution of X-ray emission from Cas A. Radial profiles of radio and Si emission (Fig. 4 of Gotthelf et al. 2001) show an outer plateau of emission, but more detailed investigations of the observations, together with multidimensional hydrodynamic models are needed to provide firm results.

Adopting the wind model, we can apply two known properties of Cas A, its age $`t=320`$ yr and outer shock radius $`r_f=7.8\times 10^{18}`$ cm, to determine relations between the 3 model parameters. We find $`M_1=0.16M_{}E_{51}`$ and $`A_5=1.3E_{51}`$. The uncertainties in the shock positions give an uncertainty in the numerical coefficients of $`50`$% and additional physical effects that could affect the hydrodynamics, such as cosmic ray pressure or clumpiness, increase the uncertainty. As an example, we take $`E_{51}=2`$, leading to an ejecta mass of $`3.4M_{}`$ (mostly heavy element core material) and a mass loss rate of $`2.6\times 10^5M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ for a wind velocity of $`10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The current mass of shocked wind material is $`6.4M_{}`$ and the shocked ejecta mass is 1.9 $`M_{}`$. Including a neutron star mass of $`1.4M_{}`$ brings the core mass to $`4.8M_{}`$, corresponding to a main sequence mass of $`17M_{}`$.

Another constraint on the models comes from the X-ray luminosity, which is related to the X-ray emitting mass. Mass estimates include $`15M_{}`$ from Einstein data (Fabian et al. 1980), $`14M_{}`$ from ASCA data (Vink, Kaastra, & Bleeker 1996), and $`10M_{}`$ from XMM-Newton data (Willingale et al. 2002). The model described above is approximately consistent with these results. The model cannot be expected to yield improved values for the ejecta mass and explosion energy. The main point is that the dynamics and emission suggest that the supernova is interacting with a moderately dense stellar wind, considerably denser than the wind expected from a Wolf-Rayet star, which typically have $`\dot{M}10^5M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ and $`v_w10^3\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, but consistent with the wind from a red supergiant star.

## 3 IMPLICATIONS

### 3.1 Wind Inhomogeneities

The presence of QSFs was one of the reasons that Chevalier & Liang (1989) used to argue for a dense circumstellar shell. The optical emission from QSFs indicates that it is from radiative shock fronts with velocities $`v_q100200\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The velocity of the forward shock front is $`v_f=5800\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, so the preshock density in the QSFs is $`n_qn_0(v_f/v_q)^2=3\times 10^3n_0`$, where $`n_0`$ is the smooth wind density; in our model, the density at the shock front is currently $`1`$ H atom cm-3. The high density contrast is suggestive of a shell, but the positions of the QSFs are not restricted to the bright emitting shell of Cas A (see Fig. 3 of Lawrence et al. 1995 and Fig. 10 of Fesen 2001). This implies that the QSFs are dense clumps within a smoother wind with the properties given above. The presence of wind inhomogeneities is also indicated by the irregular outline of the forward shock front observed in X-rays (Gotthelf et al. 2001).

The maximum shock velocity in the QSFs may be determined by the cooling time in the postshock region. A similar situation may be present in the remnant of SN 1987A, and Pun et al. (2002) estimate the postshock cooling time as $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}2.2(2\times 10^4\mathrm{amu}\mathrm{cm}^3/\rho _q)(v_q/250\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1)^{3.8}`$ yr over the shock velocity range $`100600\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Converting from $`\rho _q`$ to the ambient preshock density, $`\rho _0`$, the ram pressure relation above gives $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}v_q^{5.8}`$. Substituting the current conditions for the blast wave yields $`v_q=280(t_{\mathrm{cool}}/100\mathrm{yr})^{0.17}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. For higher velocities, the shocks are nonradiative, which explains why this is approximately the upper limit of the shock wave velocities in the QSFs. There may be faster shock waves moving into lower density inhomogeneities, which are not visible optically.

The origin of high contrast knots in the circumstellar wind is not clear, but they have probably been observed on other objects. In SNe IIn (Type IIn supernovae), there is moderately narrow line emission, probably from shocked clumps, as well as broad line emission; for example, SN 1988Z showed broad H$`\alpha `$ with velocities to $`20,000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ as well as a narrower $`2000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ component (Stathakis & Sadler 1991). Radiative shocks are present at higher velocities than in Cas A because of the higher ram pressure at early times in the supernova evolution. SN 1995N is another SN IIn with an intermediate width H$`\alpha `$ component as well as narrow lines that appear to be from clumps in the preshock circumstellar medium (Fransson et al. 2002).

### 3.2 The Supernova

The presupernova star apparently had little H at the time of the explosion, but did have some (Fesen & Becker 1991; Fesen 2001). This implies that the supernova may have been more closely related to Type IIn and IIb supernovae than to Type Ib and Ic supernovae, which are probably the explosion of Wolf-Rayet stars, and that the dense circumstellar wind around Cas A may have extended down to close to the stellar surface. The Type IIn SN 1995N showed evidence for interaction with a dense, H-rich wind, but also for emission from fast, O-rich ejecta near the reverse shock, showing that the explosion occurred with little H at the surface of the star (Fransson et al. 2002).

The Type IIb SN 1993J also had little H at the time of the explosion and expanded into a dense wind. Radio and X-ray observations imply a mass loss rate of $`4\times 10^5M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ for a wind velocity of $`10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Fransson, Lundqvist, & Chevalier 1996), comparable to our estimate for Cas A. In addition, the main sequence mass of the progenitor star is estimated at $`1316M_{}`$ (Woosley et al. 1994), close to our estimate for Cas A. Houck & Fransson (1996) estimated that the bulk of the H/He envelope mass of SN 1993J lies between $`850010,000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$; although most of the knots in Cas A do not show H lines, Fesen & Becker (1991) found a H knot with a velocity $`9000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. He enrichment is found in both the QSFs (Chevalier & Kirshner 1978) and in the H envelope of SN 1993J (Houck & Fransson 1996). A possible problem is that some models for SN 1993J require a massive star companion, which survives the supernova (Woosley et al. 1994); there is no evidence for a massive star near the explosion center of Cas A (Thorstensen et al. 2001). However, it may be possible for a star to undergo this evolution as a single star.

If the dense wind initially extended in to close to the stellar surface, it can help to explain a puzzling feature of the fastest knots. Fesen & Becker (1991) find N and H rich knots moving at $`10,000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, which is surprising because the outer supernova ejecta are expected to be shocked to a high temperature and have a long radiative lifetime. These knots must have crossed the reverse shock early in the life of the supernova remnant. In the dense, slow wind, the early evolution is given by a self-similar solution, with $`r_f/t=30,000E_{51}^{0.44}M_1^{0.32}A_5^{0.12}(t/\mathrm{day})^{0.12}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. For the typical parameters, ejecta moving at $`10,000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ crosses the reverse shock at an age of $`25`$ years, when the preshock density is $`2\times 10^{21}`$ g cm-3. The smooth, H-rich ejecta are not radiative at this time, but a moderate degree of clumping can lead to radiative cooling and knot formation. The absence of a dense wind would lead to hotter, lower density ejecta and would make it difficult to produce cool ejecta knots at this early time.

### 3.3 The Outer Wind

A early photograph of Cas A taken by Minkowski, reproduced in van den Bergh (1971a), gives evidence for a patchy HII region surrounding Cas A, extending out 7 from the remnant (see also Fig. 10 of Fesen 2001). Spectral observations of the nebulosity on the E side of Cas A by Fesen, Becker, & Blair (1987) showed it to be a low-ionization HII region or shock-heated gas; we advocate the HII region interpretation here. Peimbert & van den Bergh (1971) estimated an intrinsic emission measure $`2500`$ pc cm-6, leading to an electron density $`n_e15`$ cm-3 for a radius of 5.7 pc. The corresponding mass is several $`100M_{}`$, which is too high for the material to be stellar mass loss. However, the emission is patchy, and we suggest that the emitting gas is in clumps with $`n_e300`$ cm-3, reducing the mass by a factor $`20`$. The recombination time for the gas is $`300`$ years, so it is possible that it was ionized at the time of the supernova shock breakout; the current X-ray luminosity of Cas A is not sufficient to provide the ionization. As with the photoionized gas around SN 1987A (Lundqvist & Fransson 1996), the dominant density component that is observed is the densest one that has not already cooled and recombined. Peimbert & van den Bergh (1971) estimated that an energy in ionizing radiation of $`1\times 10^{50}`$ ergs was needed to ionize the gas. This is larger than expected during shock breakout. With our reduced mass, the energy requirement drops to $`5\times 10^{48}`$ ergs, which can be attained at shock breakout for an extended star with a low mass envelope (Matzner & McKee 1999).

In this scenario, the patchy HII region represents mass lost from the progenitor during a red supergiant phase. At $`10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, the wind can reach 6.9 pc (7 at 3.4 kpc) in $`7\times 10^5`$ yr. This is approximately the expected age of the red supergiant phase for a $`1520M_{}`$ mass star. The extended red supergiant wind is apparently also observed around SN 1987A, although by a dust echo in this case (Chevalier & Emmering 1989). The wind ends in a patchy shell of radius 4.5 pc. A termination shell might also be present around Cas A.

Knots in the preshock wind may have also been detected as HI compact absorption features towards Cas A (Reynoso et al. 1997); the knots have sizes $`<0.1`$ pc and show spatial substructure. Their densities are presumably $`300`$ cm-3 so that the H can recombine. The knots have radial velocities in the range $`10`$ to $`17\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ relative to the systemic velocity of Cas A (Reynoso et al. 1997). In the present model, these velocities represent the velocity of the presupernova wind and are consistent with the wind of a red supergiant star.

In summary, we have shown that the dynamical properties of Cas A are consistent with interaction with the dense wind from a red supergiant progenitor star. The wind interaction supports a Type IIb or IIn supernova designation, which is also indicated by the presence of high velocity hydrogen (Fesen & Becker 1991). The basic emission features of the supernova remnant, fast ejecta (fast moving knots), intermediate velocity shocks (quasi-stationary flocculi), and narrow line emission (surrounding ionized clumps), have also been identified as emission features in Type IIn supernovae. The ability to spatially resolve the complex interaction in Cas A may provide a useful guide to the interpretation of the distant supernova emission. Finally, we note that some of the points of view advocated here, including interaction with a red supergiant wind and the possible importance of wind interaction for the formation of fast knots, have recently been discussed by Laming & Hwang (2003).

We are grateful to John Blondin for assistance in using the VH-1 code, to Rob Fesen for comments on the manuscript, and especially to Larry Rudnick for a helpful referee’s report. This research was supported in part by NSF grant AST-0307366.


text:
# Transport properties of incipient gels

## I Introduction

When a system of polyfunctional molecules is crosslinked, the transport properties such as the shear viscosity and the diffusivity can be dramatically affected. In particular, the diffusivity decreases as the number of crosslinks is increased and the shear modulus increases, diverging at the critical point at which a gel is formed. The diffusivity remains finite as the system gels since monomers and small clusters can diffuse through the tenuous structure that characterizes the amorphous solid close to the critical point. Although gels have been studied for many years Adam and Lairez (1996), their critical behavior remains poorly understood. In particular the question of whether or not there exist universality classes into which different materials can be grouped remains largely unanswered.

In this article, we report on extensive molecular dynamics simulations of a simple model for a gel. We study the system on the fluid side of the gel point from the simple liquid limit into the critical region. We investigate the structural properties of clusters and calculate both the shear viscosity $`\eta (p)`$ and the mass-dependent diffusion constant $`D(m,p)`$ as function of the crosslink density $`p`$. We find that as $`pp_c`$, $`\eta (p)(p_cp)^s`$ with $`s0.65`$, a value somewhat smaller than that conjectured by de Gennes de Gennes (1979) on the basis of an analogy with a random superconductor network and also predicted recently by Broderix et. al. Broderix et al. (1999) for a Rouse-like model network. The mass-dependent diffusion constant $`D(m,p)m^{0.69}`$ for a range of $`p`$ near the critical point and $`3m50`$. This behavior is consistent with earlier results for $`p=p_c`$ Jespersen (2002) and rather close to a prediction de Gennes (1979) made on the basis of a simple scaling argument. On the other hand, our value for $`s`$ is somewhat lower than the one found by Küntzel  et. al. in a recent article Küntzel et al. (2003) in which $`s=0.8`$ is found by a theoretical analysis of the Zimm model. The diffusion coefficient $`D(m,p)\mathrm{const}.`$ as $`pp_c`$ for $`m`$ at least as large as 10 but displays critical behavior in the next leading term. It is also worth noting that, in contrast to simple liquids, the product $`D(p)\eta (p)`$ is not a constant but rather reflects the divergence of $`\eta `$ at the gel point.

The structure of this article is as follows. In section II we describe our model and the computational details. Section III contains a discussion of the geometric properties of the clusters and the nature of the percolation transition. The shear viscosity calculation and results are described in section IV and results for the diffusion constants are found in V. We conclude with a short discussion in section VI.

## II  Model

The model is similar to the one employed in Jespersen (2002), but we include the details below for completeness. Our system is composed of $`N=L^3`$ ($`L=10,13,15,20`$ and $`30`$) particles interacting pairwise through the shifted Lennard-Jones potential

$$U(𝐫)=\{\begin{array}{cc}U_{LJ}(r)U_{LJ}(2.5\sigma ),\hfill & r2.5\sigma \hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise,}\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
where $`U_{LJ}(r)=4ϵ((\sigma /r)^{12}(\sigma /r)^6)`$. All of our simulations are $`3D`$ constant energy molecular dynamics (MD) simulations corresponding to an average temperature of $`k_BT/ϵ1`$ and density $`\mathrm{\Phi }=0.8\sigma ^3`$. These choices ensure that the system is in the liquid-phase region of the phase-diagram Smit (1992); Felicity et al. (1997). We use periodic boundary conditions and a time step of magnitude $`dt=0.005\tau `$, where $`\tau =\sqrt{m\sigma ^2/ϵ}`$ is the reduced Lennard-Jones time. From a typical equilibrium state of this liquid we let the particles form a specified number $`n`$ of permanent chemical bonds if they come closer than $`r_c=2^{1/6}\sigma 1.12`$, coinciding with the minimum of $`U(r)`$. The bond interaction is a harmonic oscillator potential $`U_{\text{harm}}(r)=1/2kr^2`$: in our simulations we take $`k\sigma ^2/ϵ=2.0`$ (different from Jespersen (2002)). Note that this way of adding bonds violates energy conservation; indeed we actually pump energy into the system when adding bonds. To compensate we cool down the system again after having established the required number of bonds. With this bonding procedure cross linking is very fast — the average distance between the particles is comparable to $`r_c`$, so a large number of particles are available for bonding at any given instant. Each particle can bond to a maximum of $`f=6`$ other particles (excluding itself), and the cross link density $`p`$ is then given in terms of the number of bonds $`n`$ as $`p=2n/fN`$. Any number of particles, if fulfilling the conditions above, can be cross linked per time step, but we halt the bond formation when $`p`$ reaches a predetermined value.

## III Geometric properties

Before discussing the dynamic properties of this model, we need some basic information about the static properties. In this section we determine the geometrical percolation point $`p_c`$ as well as the two critical exponents $`\nu `$, the correlation length exponent, and $`\gamma `$ the exponent characterising the divergence of the weight average cluster mass (of finite clusters). We follow a similar procedure to the one used and outlined in Jespersen (2002); Plischke et al. (2002); Vernon et al. (2001). In order to find $`p_c`$ we calculate numerically the fraction $`W(L,p)`$ of percolating systems of size $`L^3`$ with a bond density $`p`$. This function is plotted in Fig. 1 for all five system sizes. The crossing points of the different curves seem to coincide, and the corresponding value of $`p`$ is thus a good estimate of $`p_c`$ Jespersen (2002); Ziff and Newman (2002): From the figure we determine $`p_c=0.2565`$ as in Jespersen (2002).

Finite size scaling theory predicts that $`W(L,p)`$ does not depend on $`L`$ and $`p`$ separately but only on the combination $`L/\xi `$ (and the sign of $`pp_c`$) where $`\xi =|pp_c|^\nu `$ is the correlation length and $`\nu `$ the correlation length exponent Stauffer and Aharony (1992). Thus we may write

$$W(L,p)=f(L^{1/\nu }(pp_c)),$$
(2)
where $`f(x)`$ is a scaling function.To test this hypothesis we replot the data for $`W(L,p)`$ from Fig. 1 in Fig. 2 as a function of $`L^{1/\nu }(pp_c)`$ with $`p_c=0.2565`$ as determined above and $`\nu =0.9`$.

The collapse is very good confirming the correctness of the values for $`p_c`$ and $`\nu `$.

To compare with percolation theory we need one more exponent, and here we consider the behavior of the weight average cluster mass $`M_w`$. In the thermodynamic limit the expected behavior is $`M_w(p)|pp_c|^\gamma `$ Stauffer and Aharony (1992): Therefore we compute $`M_w`$ as a function of $`p`$ for different system sizes, and in Fig. 3 we plot the results in the form $`M_w/L^{\gamma /\nu }`$ versus $`L^{1/\nu }(p_cp)`$ with $`\gamma =1.8`$ being the expected $`3D`$ percolation value and $`\nu `$ and $`p_c`$ as determined previously. Again there is a very nice data collapse, and we therefore conclude that here as in Jespersen (2002); Plischke et al. (2002); Vernon et al. (2001) our system is consistent with the $`3D`$ percolation universality class in so far as static properties are concerned.

## IV Viscosity

We measure the shear viscosity $`\eta (p)`$ by using the appropriate Green-Kubo formula Allen and Tildesley (1992); Hansen and McDonald (1976):

$$\eta =\frac{1}{Vk_BT}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑t\sigma _{xy}(t)\sigma _{xy}(0),$$
(3)
where $`V`$ is the volume and $`\sigma _{xy}(t)`$ the $`xy`$ component of the stress tensor:

$$\sigma _{xy}(t)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}mv_{x,i}v_{y,i}+\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{j<i}{}(y_iy_j)f_{x,ij}.$$
(4)
In this equation $`f_{x,ij}`$ is the $`x`$ component of the force from particle $`j`$ on particle $`i`$, and the meaning of the remaining terms is self explanatory. In the simulations we average over several hundred samples for each $`p`$ and over three off-diagonal components ($`xy,yz`$ and $`zx`$) of the stress tensor to obtain slightly better statistics. It is important to note that we have discarded any sample containing a spanning cluster since for such a system the viscosity is not defined, i.e. the right hand side of Eq. (3) diverges. Although we have simulated very long runs (up to $`t=750\tau `$) the stress correlator $`C_{\sigma \sigma }(t)\sigma _{xy}(t)\sigma _{xy}(0)`$ has still not decayed completely, and it is necessary to add by hand an additional contribution, in particular for $`p`$ close to $`p_c`$. A stretched exponential $`C_{\sigma \sigma }(t)=a\mathrm{exp}(bt^c)`$ with $`0.1<c<0.3`$ seems to fit the data well for long times, and there are also theoretical reasons Broderix et al. (2001) to believe that this is the appropriate form. See Vernon et al. (2001) for a thorough discussion of this point.

In Fig. 4 we have plotted the resulting values for the viscosity for different systems sizes and at different stages of the cross linking. We note the clear power law behavior outside the critical region, and a fit to the $`L=10`$ data in this region yields $`s=0.65`$. The line $`\eta (p_cp)^{0.65}`$ has also been drawn on the plot, and it is apparent that the data are consistent with this exponent. For large $`p`$, $`p>0.23`$, there are larger error bars and this will also affect the scaling plot. Since the viscosity diverges at the critical point with an exponent $`s>0`$, the finite size scaling form is

$$\eta (p,L)=L^{s/\nu }g(\xi /L)p<p_c,$$
(5)
where $`g`$ is a scaling function with the limits

$$g(x)\{\begin{array}{cc}x^{s/\nu }\hfill & x0\hfill \\ \text{const.}\hfill & x\mathrm{},\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
and $`\xi (p_cp)^\nu `$ is the correlation length, c.f. Sec. III. Therefore we plot in Fig. 5 $`\eta L^{s/\nu }`$ versus $`L^{1/\nu }(p_cp)`$, and the collapse is quite good outside the critical region with $`s=0.65`$, whereas there is a larger scattering of the points for $`p`$ closer to $`p_c`$.

de Gennes has suggested de Gennes (1979) a value of $`s0.7`$ based on an analogy between gelation and conductance in a random mixture of normal and superconducting elements, and nice agreement with this was found in a related model in Vernon et al. (2001). Here we have observed a slightly smaller value for $`s`$.

## V Diffusion

In this section we extend our earlier study Jespersen (2002) on the diffusion of clusters. Previously we were concerned mainly with the behaviour of the diffusion constant $`D(m,p)`$ as a function of cluster mass $`m`$ at the gelation point $`p=p_c`$. Here we address the $`p`$ dependence of $`D`$ for different clusters and the validity of the Stokes-Einstein relation $`D(p)k_BT/\eta (p)`$ for a given cluster mass. We restrict our attention to the $`L=20`$ system.

To determine the diffusion constant we use the Einstein relation:

$$\frac{1}{6t}(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2\stackrel{t\mathrm{}}{}D(m,p),$$
(7)
where $`r_m(t)`$ is the center-of-mass position of a cluster of mass $`m`$ at time $`t`$, for a given value of $`p`$ (for clarity of the presentation we omit the explicit dependence on $`p`$ in the notation). When calculating the diffusion constant numerically we have averaged over all clusters of a given mass $`m`$ and over several hundred crosslinkings, and we have discarded any percolating samples. This has been done mainly for consistency when comparing with $`\eta `$, but in any event we do not expect this to affect the diffusion of any but the very largest clusters.

First we examine the convergence of Eq. (7) by plotting in Fig. 6 the behavior of $`(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2/6t`$ for $`m=1`$ (monomers) as a function of time and for three different values of $`p`$.

From these curves we clearly see the existence of long-time tails in the velocity auto-correlation function. Consider the “Green-Kubo” formula corresponding to Eq. (7):

$$\frac{(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2}{t}=_0^t𝑑s𝐯_m(s)𝐯_m(0)(1s/t).$$
(8)
The dominant contribution to $`(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2/t`$ at large times is

$$\frac{(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2}{t}=D(m,p)_t^{\mathrm{}}𝑑sC_{vv}^{(m)}(s).$$
(9)
where $`C_{vv}^{(m)}(s)=𝐯_m(s)𝐯_m(0)`$ is the velocity auto-correlator. Therefore, a power law tail $`C_{vv}^{(m)}(s)t^\alpha `$ in the velocity auto-correlation function will translate into a corresponding power law tail $`(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2/tD(m,p)+\text{const.}t^{1\alpha }`$ in the Einstein relation. In simple liquids a value of $`\alpha =3/2`$ is ubiquitous Hansen and McDonald (1976), and has also been observed for gelating systems in Vernon et al. (2001): here we find that the same power-law provides a very good fit to the data for all $`m`$, but in particular for the small clusters. In Fig. 6 we have also plotted these fits to the power-law $`a+bt^{1/2}`$, and the deviation from the simulation results at early times is barely visible. In figure Fig. 7 we have done the same for clusters of mass $`10`$, and we see the same behavior. The agreement is slightly worse, presumably due to poorer statistics of larger clusters.

We note the existence of a maximum in all of the curves (though not visible on Fig. 6 for $`m=1`$) for $`(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2/t`$. By differentiating Eq. (8) this can be shown to occur at $`t_m`$, where $`t_m`$ is the solution to

$$_0^{t_m}𝑑sC_{vv}^{(m)}(s)s=0.$$
(10)
An obvious consequence of the fact that for $`t>t_m`$ (using Eq. (9))

$$\frac{d}{dt}\frac{(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2}{t}C_{vv}^{(m)}(t)<0$$
(11)
is that $`C_{vv}^{(m)}(t)`$ becomes negative (anti-correlation) for large $`t`$ and stays negative thereafter. This means that the $`1/\sqrt{t}`$ tails in Figs. 67 correspond to a negative $`t^{3/2}`$ tail in $`C_{vv}^{(m)}(t)`$. We also note that $`t_m`$ is an increasing function of $`m`$ and a decreasing function of $`p`$.

The error made by taking $`D(m,p)`$ to be the value of $`(r_m(t)r_m(0))^2/6t`$ at the end of the simulation time $`t=120\tau `$ is neglibly small: for $`p=0.2`$ we have compared with simulations that are twice as long, and at least for the $`20`$ lightest clusters for which we had good enough statistics, the error was less than $`5\%`$. For the smallest $`m`$ where the statistics are very good, one can also obtain $`D(m,p)`$ from a power-law fit as mentioned above, and the outcome is still consistent with the statement just made (the error here is even much smaller than $`5\%`$).

In Jespersen (2002) we studied $`D(m,p_c)`$ and we found the power-law $`D(m,p_c)m^{0.69}`$. We have repeated this study up to clusters of size $`50`$, and we observe the same behavior over the entire range. For $`p<p_c`$, we see the same power law as a function of $`m`$, at least for small cluster sizes. The quality of the statistics for larger cluster sizes is insufficient to determine whether there is a cross-over or cut-off as $`mm^{}(p)`$, where $`m^{}(p)(p_cp)^{1/\sigma }`$ is the mass of the largest cluster, but it seems likely that there is. de Gennes has argued that for masses $`1<m<m^{}(p)`$, $`D(m)m^{(\nu +s)/(\beta +\gamma )}`$ on the basis of a Stokes-Einstein relation with a mass dependent viscosity de Gennes (1979). Here $`\beta `$ is the exponent that describes the decrease of the order parameter near percolation: $`x_{\text{gel}}(pp_c)^\beta `$, where $`x_{\text{gel}}`$ the fraction of particles on the spanning cluster and $`pp_c+`$. The other exponents have been introduced already. By using the appropriate scaling relations for $`3D`$ percolation Stauffer and Aharony (1992), the exponent can be rewritten so the prediction is $`D(m)m^{2(\nu +s)/(d\nu +\gamma )}`$, where $`d=3`$ is the Euclidian dimension. With our values for the remaining exponents we get:

$$D(m,p)m^{0.69}\text{for}1<m<m^{}(p).$$
(12)
This is in very good agreement with our simulation results within the observed power law regime. The theoretical prediction can be rewritten as $`D(R_g)R_g^{(1+s/\nu )}`$ where $`R_gm^{1/D_f}`$ is the radius of gyration and $`D_f`$ the fractal dimension. This form of the relation has sometimes (see for example Gado et al. (2000)) been used to infer $`s`$ from the scaling of $`D`$ with $`R_g`$, but to the best of our knowledge the present study presents the first direct verification of such a link.

However, even in this regime one would expect some additional $`p`$ dependence of the diffusion coefficient, a point not addressed in de Gennes (1979). To this end, we plot in Fig. 8 $`D(m,p)`$ as a function of $`p`$ for monomers, dimers and trimers, and we see that the diffusion constants decrease (almost linearly) as a function of $`p`$. Moreover the curves seem to fit nicely to the functional form $`D(p)=a(p_cp)^b+D_c`$, with a value of the exponent $`b=1.1`$.

In Fig. 9 we have made a similar plot for masses $`m=2\mathrm{}10`$, and the trends observed above appear to carry over to larger masses. The curves are roughly parallel, and therefore it is not unlikely that the value of $`b`$ is independent of $`m`$, but we are unable to confirm this from a fit to the data: the exact value of the exponent appears to be very sensitive to noise in the data.

Finally we demonstrate a striking violation of the Stokes-Einstein relation when approaching the gelation transition. The idea that $`D1/\eta `$ is used so widely that one may sometimes forget its lack of universal validity. In Fig. 10 however it is clear that $`D(m,p)\eta `$ increases significantly when $`pp_c`$.

This is consistent with our previous observations that whereas $`\eta `$ diverges at the gelation point, $`D(m,p)`$ approaches a non-vanishing constant even for large masses $`m`$. Further away from the gelation point $`p0.20`$ there does however seem to be an approximate proportionality between $`D(m,p)`$ and $`\eta `$. However, in Figs. 89 we saw indications that $`D(p)a(p_cp)^b+D_c`$ with $`b>1`$ whereas $`\eta (p_cp)^{0.65}`$, and so this apparent proportionality is at best only approximate.

## VI Conclusions

The main results of this study are the power law behavior of the mass dependent diffusion coefficient which seems to hold well away from the critical point, the failure of the Stokes-Einstein relation and the result $`s0.65`$ for the critical exponent of the shear viscosity. This last result, taken together with other recent results Vernon et al. (2001); Plischke et al. (2002) seems to support the conjecture that the gelation transition is not classifiable in terms of a single universality class: exponents in the range $`0.3s0.7`$ have been found for models that seem, on the surface, to be very similar. The experimental situation also does not provide much evidence for universality: both exponents near $`s=0.7`$ Adam et al. (1981, 1985); Durand et al. (1987) and in the range $`1.1s1.3`$ Lusignan et al. (1995); Martin and Wilcoxon (1988); Adolf and Martin (1990); Martin et al. (1991, 1988) have been reported. We sound a note of caution here: The determination of exponents through finite size scaling is not very precise, especially when quantities that are as difficult to calculate as the shear viscosity form the data set. However, it seems very unlikely that the errors are large enough that a factor of more than 2 in the exponent could be explained that way.

The mass-dependent diffusion coefficient in this model displays a power law behavior $`D(m,p)m^{0.69}`$ consistent with a scaling argument of de Gennes de Gennes (1979). Reexpressing this in terms of the radius of gyration of clusters through $`m=R_g^{D_f}`$ where $`D_f=2.5`$ is the fractal dimension of the percolating cluster, the scaling prediction is $`D(R_g,p)R_g^{(1+s/\nu )}`$. This yields an estimate $`s=0.65`$ for the viscosity exponent, in good agreement with the direct calculation from the Green-Kubo formula. Whether this connection between diffusion and viscosity is general or specific to the present model and whether there exist a similar relationship between diffusion and the elastic shear modulus in the solid phase remains a subject for further study. Using a quite different model, del Gado et al. Gado et al. (2000) have studied the self diffusion of crosslinked polymer clusters on a lattice by bond fluctuation dynamics. They have also used this scaling ansatz to infer the critical exponent of the shear viscosity and found $`s1.3`$. Their result translates to a mass dependence of the diffusion constant $`D(m,p)m^1`$, very different from that of the present model.

Finally, we have shown that as the fluid becomes more viscous there is a breakdown of the Stokes-Einstein law $`D\eta k_BT`$ that generally holds for simple liquids. For relatively small concentrations of crosslinks, this product varies only very little but for $`pp_c`$ the divergence of the viscosity begins to dominate the diffusion constant which seems to saturate for all cluster sizes studied at $`p_c`$.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors wishes to thank B. Jóos and D. Vernon for helpful discussions. Financial support from the Danish National Research Council grant $`21`$-$`01`$-$`0335`$ and from the NSERC of Canada is gratefully acknowledged.