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# X-ray Evidence of the Common Envelope Phase of V471 Tauri

## 1 Introduction

The eclipsing Hyades binary V471 Tauri lies at a distance of $`47\pm 3`$ pc (Perryman et al. 1997) and comprises a cool main-sequence (MS) star (dK2) and a hot degenerate white dwarf (DA1.5) in an orbit with a period of 0.52 days. It is a detached binary in which neither star fills its Roche lobe, and has a separation of $`3.1R_{}`$ (Young & Nelson 1972). The system is evolving toward a cataclysmic variable phase in which the K dwarf will overfill its Roche lobe and transfer mass through accretion onto the white dwarf. As such, V471 Tau is a rare example of a nearby pre-cataclysmic system and presents a valuable opportunity to study the origin and evolution of this type of close binary.

Based on evolutionary time–scales, Vauclair (1972) argued that the current mass of the V471 Tau system is much lower than that expected from a progenitor system in which one component has reached the white dwarf phase. Moreover, the orbital separation is much smaller than the radius of the primary star during its red giant phase. It was therefore proposed that the system had gone through a common envelope (CE) phase, during which the initial orbital separation was sufficiently large that the secondary was only engulfed after the primary had attained red giant dimensions (Paczyński 1976). During a CE phase, friction leads to a rapid spiraling down of the orbit. If the CE is spun up sufficiently during this time, a substantial fraction can be ejected from the system thereby avoiding coalescence of the companion with the red giant core (Iben & Livio 1993).

Despite strong theoretical arguments in favour of this evolutionary scenario for V471 Tau and other systems in similar evolutionary stages, unequivocal observational evidence supporting the CE phase has so far been lacking. During a CE phase, some fraction of the red giant envelope should have been accreted by the K dwarf. This phase would therefore be betrayed by the presence of the products of interior nuclear burning dredged-up into the envelope of the red giant during the ascent of the giant branch.

During the MS evolution of a solar-type star, the central abundance of C decreases to about 5% of its initial value while the N abundance increases such that the total number of C and N nuclei remains approximately constant. The isotopic ratios 12C/13C and 16O/17O also decrease by about an order of magnitude. Determining the C and N abundances in the red dwarf from atomic lines in photospheric spectra is complicated by rotational smearing and the weakness of available lines of N I, and, to our knowledge, no such measurements yet exist for the dwarfs in pre-cataclysmic systems. Sarna et al. (1995) proposed using the CO bands near 1.59, 2.3 and 4.6 $`\mu `$m for determining the 12C/13C and 16O/17O abundance ratios. Dhillon et al. (2002; see also Catalán et al. 2001) analysed CO band spectra of V471 Tau and the cataclysmic variable SS Cyg and found some evidence for the 13C expected from the CN-cycle, though the results were inconclusive because of possible blending with neutral species.

In this paper, using Chandra Low Energy Transmission Grating spectrograph (LETGS) X-ray spectra of Ly$`\alpha `$ resonance transitions in C and N H-like ions, we determine for the first time the C/N abundance ratio in the K dwarf secondary of V471 Tau. We show that the secondary star has half the C/N ratio expected for the surface of an unevolved star, presenting the first definitive evidence of the CE phase in which substantial surface contamination by the red giant envelope of its companion occurred.

## 2 Observations and Analysis

V471 Tau was observed for approximately one day by Chandra using the Low Energy Transmission Grating and High Resolution Camera (LETGS) in standard instrument configurations, between 2002 January 24 UT 22:31 and January 25 UT 23:38. Observational data were obtained from the public Chandra Data Archive111http://asc.harvard.edu/cda, and pipeline-processed (CXC software version 6.3.1) photon event lists were reduced using the CIAO software package version 2.2. This latter processing included filtering of events based on observed signal pulse-heights to reduce background (Wargelin et al., in preparation). The resulting spectra had an effective exposure time of 87494s.

Spectra were analysed using the PINTofALE IDL222Interactive Data Language, Research Systems Inc. software suite (Kashyap & Drake 2000). The line strengths analysed here were measured by fitting “modified Lorentzian” functions of the form $`F(\lambda )=a/(1+\frac{\lambda \lambda _0}{\mathrm{\Gamma }})^\beta `$, where $`a`$ is the amplitude and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ a characteristic line width. For a value of $`\beta =2.4`$, it has been found that this function represents the line response function of the LETG+HRC-S instrument to the photometric accuracy of lines with of order a few thousand counts or less (Drake et al., in preparation).

The LETGS spectrum of V471 Tau is characterized at long wavelengths ($`>50`$ Å) by the strong thermal continuum from the white dwarf photosphere that is expected on the basis of earlier EUV and X-ray observations (e.g. Barstow et al. 1992). However, this continuum contributes no flux shortward of 50 Å, and at shorter wavelengths the spectrum is dominated by easily discernible emission lines that we interpret as coronal emission from the K dwarf. No modulation of the coronal emission with orbital phase was seen, such as might be expected if the UV radiation field of the white dwarf were influencing the corona facing it through modification of its underlying chromospheric structure (D. Garcia et al., in preparation).

The spectrum in the region between 23-36 Å that contains the Ly$`\alpha `$ resonance lines of H-like N and C is illustrated in Figure 1. We show in the same figure the Chandra LETGS spectra of the K2 dwarf $`ϵ`$ Eri and the K0III giant $`\beta `$ Ceti obtained from the public archive and processed in the same way as the V471 Tau observation. We draw particular attention to the different relative strengths of the C and N lines in these stars. It has recently been shown that the ratio of the strengths of these lines is essentially independent of temperature over the range $`6.35\mathrm{log}T7.4`$ (Schmitt & Ness 2002, Drake 2003a, Drake et al., in preparation). The ratio of their measured fluxes for active stars with dominant coronal temperatures $`2\times 10^6`$ K, such as the stars in Figure 1, therefore yields directly the C/N abundance ratio. That all three stars are indeed dominated by temperatures above $`2\times 10^6`$ K is underscored by the relative strengths of the H-like and He-like resonance lines of N at 24.78 Å and 28.79 Å, the latter of which is almost absent. Since all three spectra in Figure 1 were obtained with the same instrument, the variation in the relative C and N line strengths, $`I_C/I_N`$, can be interpreted directly in terms of the ratio of the C and N number densities, i.e.

$$\frac{N(C)}{N(N)}=\frac{I_Cϵ_N(T)}{I_Nϵ_C(T)};\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}6.35}\mathrm{log}T7.4$$
(1)
where $`ϵ_X(T)`$ is the photon emissivity of element X under coronal equilibrium conditions. In photon units, the PINTofALE emissivity ratio in equation 1, computed using the CHIANTI v3 (Dere et al. 2001) implementation of the collision strengths of Aggarwal & Kingston (1991), together with the ionization balance of Mazzotta et al. (1998), is $`ϵ_N/ϵ_C=1.84`$ (see also Drake 2003a).

The C and N lines of the unevolved dwarf $`ϵ`$ Eri and the giant $`\beta `$ Ceti were analysed recently by Schmitt & Ness (2002). These authors concluded that the C/N line strength ratio for $`ϵ`$ Eri was consistent with a solar, or “unevolved”, C/N abundance ratio. For the solar photospheric C abundance C/H=8.39 (Allende Prieto et al. 2002) and N abundance N/H=7.92 (Grevesse & Sauval 1998), the line intensity ratio is $`I_C/I_N=1.6`$. Schmitt & Ness (2002) measured a value for $`ϵ`$ Eri of $`2.1\pm 0.24`$. There appear to be no recent determinations of the photospheric N abundance in $`ϵ`$ Eri, though the C abundance is within 0.1 dex or so of the solar value (Takeda et al. 2001; Zhao et al. 2002). Allowing for an uncertainty of 0.1 dex in the photospheric ratio, this is then consistent with the coronal C/N line ratio.

In contrast, the Schmitt & Ness (2002) ratio for $`\beta `$ Ceti, whose surface composition has been modified by the dredged-up products of CN-cycling, is $`I_C/I_N=0.16\pm 0.05`$—an order of magnitude smaller. Based on the Drake (2003a) theoretical C/N line strength ratio for a solar C/N abundance ratio, the measured ratio for $`\beta `$ Ceti corresponds to an abundance ratio of \[C/N\]$`=1`$ relative to the Sun.333Except where stated, we adopt the common notation to express abundances in which X/H=$`\mathrm{log}_{10}[N(X)/N(H)]`$+12, where $`N(X)`$ is the number density of element X, and \[X/Y\] represents the logarithic X/Y abundance ratio relative to the solar value. We note that this is in good agreement with the photospheric measurement of Lambert & Ries (1981).

The V471 Tau C and N lines in Figure 1 are in a proportion intermediate between that of an unevolved composition exemplified by $`ϵ`$ Eri and the post-dredge-up surface composition of $`\beta `$ Ceti. A formal value for the C/N abundance ratio of V471 Tau is given by the observed spectral line flux ratio. Measured line strengths are listed in Table 1. The intensity ratio to abundance ratio conversion factor from equation 1, $`N(C)/N(N)=1.85I_C/I_N`$, leads directly to the result C/N$`=0.1\pm 0.15`$ (corresponding to $`N(C)/N(N)=1.22\pm 0.36`$), or \[C/N\]$`=0.38\pm 0.15`$.

Does this coronal value represent the composition of underlying atmospheric layers? A large body of observational evidence now exists demonstrating that the abundances of elements in the coronae of stars can differ substantially from their photospheric values (e.g. Drake 2003b). The differences appear to be driven predominantly by the element first ionization potential (FIP). In active stars, coronal abundances of very high FIP elements such as Ne and Ar appear enhanced relative to abundances of low FIP elements such as Fe, Mg and Si. Elements such as C, N and O appear to remain close to photosheric values. Drake (2003a) concluded that C and N are not fractionated to any significant extent in the corona of the active binary V711 Tau, as expected based on their very similar FIPs. While we cannot rule out relative fraction among C and N with certainty, this does not appear likely. We therefore consider our derived C/N abundance ratio to be directly applicable to the deeper regions of the V471 Tau K dwarf.

## 3 Discussion

### 3.1 Accretion during the CE phase

The duration of a CE phase is thought to range typically from $`10^2`$ to $`10^3`$yr, with a maximum of about $`10^4`$yr (Taam 1989; Iben & Livio 1993). Calculations by Hjellming & Taam (1991) indicate that the red dwarf can accrete some of the red giant envelope (0.01-0.2$`M_{}`$) during this time. Our C/N abundance ratio enables us to estimate this amount of accreted mass.

For the case of a typical intermediate mass star (2.5$`M_{}`$, $`Z=0.03`$), stellar evolutionary calculations predict a decrease in the surface C/N abundance ratio between the zero age main-sequence (ZAMS) and immediately prior to the first thermal pulse by a factor of 3.75 (e.g. El Eid 1994, Girardi et al. 1996). From Grevesse & Sauval (1998) and Allende Prieto et al. (2001, 2002), the C/N ratio for the Sun expressed in terms of mass fraction is 2.54 and the mass fractions of C and N are $`X_{}^C=0.00295`$ and $`X_{}^N=0.00116`$, respectively. Assuming both progenitors of the V471 Tau system had an initial C/N ratio similar to that of the Sun, our abundance ratio derived from the Chandra LETGS spectrum implies a reduction in the red dwarf C/N ratio by a factor of 2.4

During the CE phase, the red dwarf secondary effectively exists within the envelope of the red giant primary. The accreted material therefore has the chemical composition of a giant star. The material accreted during the CE phase will be mixed on a convective-mixing (dynamical) time-scale. The mass of the region that is mixed, $`M_{mix}`$, consists of the sum of the masses of the convective region of the original star, $`M_{conv}`$, and the accreted matter $`M_{acc}`$. The C/N abundance by mass fraction at the surface of the red dwarf in the post-CE phase, $`X_{rd}^C/X_{rd}^N`$, is then given by

$$\frac{X_{rd}^C}{X_{rd}^N}=\frac{M_{conv}X_{}^C+M_{acc}X_{giant}^C}{M_{conv}X_{}^N+M_{acc}X_{giant}^N}.$$
(2)
The accreted mass can then be written

$$M_{acc}=M_{conv}\frac{X_{}^C(X_{rd}^C/X_{rd}^N)X_{}^N}{(X_{rd}^C/X_{rd}^N)X_{giant}^NX_{giant}^C}.$$
(3)
Here, the C and N mass fractions for the giant phase are assumed to be the solar values modified such that $`X_{}^C/X_{}^N`$ is reduced by the factor of 3.75 predicted by evolutionary calculations, as noted above: $`X_{giant}^C`$=0.00197, $`X_{giant}^N`$=0.0029. The quantity $`M_{acc}`$ is illustrated as a function of the red dwarf initial mass in Figure 2. The convection zone mass, $`M_{conv}`$, has been taken from models computed using a standard stellar evolutionary code based on the Henyey-type method of Paczyński (1970), which has beeen adopted to low-mass stars (see Marks & Sarna 1998). The recent mass determination of O’Brien, Sion & Bond (2001), $`M=0.93\pm 0.07M_{}`$, leads to an accreted mass in the range 0.015-0.04$`M_{}`$, and a similar initial convection zone mass.

### 3.2 The 12C/13C ratio

Sarna et al. (1995) described how accretion during the CE phase changes the 12C/13C ratio on the surface of the red dwarf. Analogous to Equation 3, the accretion-modified 12C/13C ratio is given by

$$\frac{X_{rd}^{12}}{X_{rd}^{13}}=\frac{M_{conv}X_{}^{12}+M_{acc}X_{giant}^{12}}{M_{conv}X_{}^{13}+M_{acc}X_{giant}^{13}}$$
(4)
Using the values of $`M_{acc}`$ and $`M_{conv}`$ from §3.1, we obtain a mass fraction ratio $`X_{rd}^{12}/X_{rd}^{13}=30`$. This value is slightly larger than the tentative estimate of $`X_{rd}^{12}/X_{rd}^{13}=10`$ based on CO bands near $`2.35\mu `$m by Dhillon et al. (2002).

### 3.3 Lithium abundance

The Li in a late G or early K dwarf is expected to be highly depleted by Hyades age, with a value Li/H$`0`$ (e.g. Barrado y Navascués & Stauffer 1996; Zboril et al. 1997). However, for Hyades dwarfs in binaries, Li abundances are higher by up to 3 orders of magnitude; the largest abundances found are in dwarf members of short period binaries (Barrado y Navascués & Stauffer 1996). These high Li abundances have been interpreted in terms of inhibited mixing in these rapidly-rotating stars, both during the pre-MS and MS phases (e.g. Zahn 1994). V471 Tau has an abundance Li/H$`=2.3`$ (Martin, Pavlenko & Rebolo 1997; Barrado y Navascués & Stauffer 1996), which is not in itself conspicuously different to that of similar short period binaries. However, the CE scenario and white dwarf age imply that the close-binary nature of V471 Tau is only very recent. Prior to this current evolutionary phase it should have already lost its Li.

Martin et al. (1997) suggested that the K dwarf regained Li from a Li-rich red giant envelope during the CE phase and suggested that the rare Li-rich giants might be associated with a CE evolutionary phase. Li-rich giants have Li/H ranging from $`1.5`$-4.75, with a mean from 12 stars of Li/H=2.3 (De Medeiros et al. 1996). The expression for the present day Li mass fraction in a dwarf accreting from such a Li-rich giant is

$$X_{rd}^{Li}=\frac{M_{conv}X_{rd}^{Li}+M_{acc}X_{giant}^{Li}}{M_{conv}+M_{acc}}\frac{M_{acc}X_{giant}^{Li}}{M_{conv}+M_{acc}}$$
(5)
Based on the observed present day Li abundance and our values of $`M_{acc}`$ and $`M_{conv}`$, we can estimate the required Li abundance of the red giant envelope to be in the range Li/H$`=2.3`$-2.8 immediately prior to the CE phase. This result is in good agreement with typical values for Li-rich giants (De Mederios et al. 1996, 1997).

Charbonnel & Balachandran (2000) identify two distinct episodes of Li production which occur during RGB and early AGB phases, depending upon the mass of the star. In the case of V471 Tau, the progenitor of the white dwarf must have been more massive than the red giants now in the Hyades and presents an evolutionary problem (e.g. O’Brien et al. 2001 and references therein). Either it was born significantly later than other Hyades members—a scenario that cannot be ruled out with certainty—or else it gained a significant amount of mass. Iben & Tutukov (1999) and O’Brien et al. (2001) suggest the WD progenitor might be the evolved remnant of a merged close binary which formed a blue straggler. While Ryan et al. (2001) have shown that blue stragglers in binary systems are lithium-deficient, in this evolutionary scenario the Li currently observed would have been produced during the subsequent giant phase.

## 4 Conclusions

We have determined the C/N abundance ratio in the corona of the K dwarf component of V471 Tau based on the resonance lines of H-like C and N seen in Chandra LETGS spectra. The value we obtain, C/N$`=0.1\pm 0.15`$, or \[C/N\]$`=0.38\pm 0.15`$, is intermediate between that of an unevolved surface composition and the surface composition of typical red giants. This result provides the most direct observational evidence to date of the CE phase of V471 Tau. Our C/N abundance implies the K dwarf accreted $`0.015`$-$`0.04M_{}`$ from the envelope of the primary star during its red giant phase. This material was subsequently diluted by mixing with the convective envelope of the K dwarf. Our value for the accreted mass predicts a 12C/13C abundance ratio that is consistent with a recent observational estimate, and a surface Li abundance in agreement with observations in the scenario where the red giant envelope was Li rich during the CE phase.

We thank the NASA AISRP for providing financial assistance for the development of the PINTofALE package, and the CHIANTI project for making publicly available the results of their substantial effort in assembling atomic data useful for coronal plasma analysis. JJD was supported by NASA contract NAS8-39073 to the Chandra X-ray Center during the course of this research. MJS was supported through grant 5-P03D-004-21 of the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research.


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# Reply to the Comment by Sandvik, Sengupta, and Campbell on “Ground State Phase Diagram of a Half-Filled One-Dimensional Extended Hubbard Model”

In their Comment sandvik , Sandvik, Sengupta, and Campbell present some numerical evidences to support the existence of an extended bond-order-wave (BOW) phase at couplings $`(U,V)`$ *weaker* than a tricritical point $`(U_t,V_t)`$ nakamura ; sengupta  in the ground state phase diagram of the one-dimensional half-filled $`U`$-$`V`$ Hubbard model. They claim that their results do not agree with the phase diagram proposed in my Letter jeckelmann , which shows a BOW phase for couplings *stronger* than the critical point only. However, I argue here that their results are not conclusive and do not refute the phase diagram described in the Letter.

First, while the parameter $`U=4t`$ used in the Comment is smaller than the tricritical coupling $`U_t`$ found in Ref. sengupta , it is larger than other estimations of $`U_t`$ (see references in the Letter). Therefore, results for $`U=4t`$ only are not sufficient to determine the position of the BOW phase with respect to the tricritical point, which is the most important qualitative difference between the phase diagram in the Letter and those described in Refs. nakamura ; sengupta . To prove the existence of a BOW phase at couplings weaker than the tricritical point, one should use parameters $`U`$ smaller than any estimation of $`U_t`$.

Second, the finite-size-scaling analysis of the charge susceptibility $`\chi _c(q)`$ in Fig. 1(a) of the Comment is misleading. A correct analysis is to take the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ first and then look at the $`q0`$ limit. Sandvik, Sengupta, and Campbell takes both limits simultaneously ($`q=2\pi /N`$), which can lead to incorrect results. For instance, the function $`F_N(q)=1/(qN)`$ vanishes if the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ is taken first, but tends to a constant $`1/2\pi `$ if both limits are taken simultaneously. Thus, the results shown in the Comment are no proof of a continuous phase transition as a function of $`V`$ for $`U=4t`$.

Third, although I can not rigorously exclude the existence of an extended BOW region in the phase diagram, my results show that its width would certainly be much smaller than predicted in Ref. nakamura . The main features of the BOW phase (as compared to the competing Mott insulator phase) are (i) a long-range-ordered BOW (dimerization) and (ii) a spin gap. I have found a vanishing spin gap in the thermodynamic limit for the example presented in Fig. 1(b) of the Comment. In their previous work sengupta , Sengupta, Sandvik, and Campbell did not present any conclusive evidence for the opening of a spin gap in an extended region outside the charge-density-wave (CDW) regime. It is possible that the spin gap is too small to be detected in the finite systems investigated ($`N1024`$ sites), but it is as likely that finite-size effects and an arbitrary extrapolation to the infinite system limit are responsible for the rather small dimerization reported in the Comment. I consider that the existence of the BOW phase is demonstrated only in those cases for which numerical results are consistent. In particular, both the extrapolated spin gap and the extrapolated dimerization should be clearly larger than zero.

Fourth, the discrepancies between Sandvik, Sengupta, and Campbell results and my results are certainly not a failure of the DMRG method nor an effect of open boundary conditions. In the ground state, the staggered bond order of an open finite chain is always larger than in a corresponding periodic system because of the Friedel oscillations induced by the chain edges. For both types of boundary conditions the staggered bond order obtained with DMRG decreases with increasing numerical accuracy (i.e., an increasing number $`m`$ of density-matrix eigenstates kept). Thus, DMRG results for an open finite system systematically *overestimate* the dimerization of the infinite system. The likely cause of the discrepancies is the difficulty in extrapolating numerical results to the thermodynamic limit in the critical region $`U2V`$.

Finally, the most significant finding in my Letter is the presence of the BOW phase at couplings clearly stronger than the tricritical point. This fundamentally contradicts the theory nakamura  predicting an extended BOW phase only at couplings weaker than $`(U_t,V_t)`$. Nevertheless, Sandvik, Sengupta, and Campbell do not dispute this finding nor provide any explanation for this failure of the theory that they claim to confirm in their Comment.

In conclusion, none of the numerical results presented in the Comment refute the conclusions of my Letter. While the phase diagram presented in the Letter is partially based on some hypotheses, it is supported by reliable numerical results and a consistent theory.


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# INTEGRAL results on GRB030320: a long gamma-ray burst detected at the edge of the field of viewBased on observations with INTEGRAL, an ESA project with instruments and science data centre funded by ESA member states (especially the PI countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain), Czech Republic and Poland, and with the participation of Russia and the USA and on observations made with ESO telescopes at the La Silla Observatory under programme Id 71.D-0667(C)

## 1 Introduction

Since their discovery more than thirty years ago (Klebesadel (1973)) GRBs had evaded an understanding of their nature for about 20 years. This changed dramatically with the identification of the first GRB X-ray afterglow with a BeppoSAX observation (Costa et al. (1997)). Since then it has been shown that at least the sources of long GRBs (lasting longer than 2 s) are located at cosmological distances. The observed fluxes revealed the enormous energy release of these events (van Paradijs et al. (2000)) which is thought to be produced in asymmetric collapse of massive stars (Woosley (1993)).

Here we report the detection of such an event by the two main instruments of INTEGRAL (Winkler et al. (2003)) which have complementary performance characteristics. The imager IBIS (Ubertini et al. (2003)) has an excellent angular resolution, whereas the spectrometer SPI (Vedrenne et al. (2003)) is assigned to high-resolution spectroscopy, but has only modest imaging capabilities. The burst-detection capabilities of the INTEGRAL mission are achieved by the INTEGRAL burst alert system (IBAS: Mereghetti et al. 2003a , IBAS for SPI/ACS: von Kienlin et al. (2001)), which scans the satellite telemetry in near-real time for GRBs at the INTEGRAL Science Data Centre (ISDC; Courvoisier et al. (2003)).

## 2 Detection and Localisation

On March 20, 2003 at 10:11:40 UTC, during the Galactic Centre Deep Exposure, a long GRB ($`60`$ s) was detected at a large off-axis angle of $`15.5^{}`$. This is near to one corner of the squared shaped IBIS FoV: $`29^{}\times 29^{}`$ full width (SPI-FoV: $`35^{}`$ full width).

The GRB was detected by IBAS in near-real time in the data of ISGRI (Lebrun et al. (2001)), the low-energy detector of IBIS. As the trigger had a low significance due to the position of the source on the edge of the FoV (only 3.7% of the detector was illuminated by the GRB) no prompt alert was distributed. An offline interactive analysis of the data confirmed that the trigger was due to an astrophysical source and allowed to determine and distribute a preliminary position 6.25 hours after the event (IBAS Alert 343; Mereghetti et al. 2003b ). The preliminary derived position was $`\alpha _{\mathrm{J2000}}=`$ $`17^\mathrm{h}`$ $`51^\mathrm{m}`$ $`43^\mathrm{s}`$, $`\delta _{\mathrm{J2000}}=`$ $`25^{}`$ $`18^{}`$ $`34^{\prime \prime }`$ with an uncertainty of $`5^{}`$. In a further analysis of the entire GRB (UTC 10:11:36 - 10:12:40) in the 15-100 keV energy band the GRB was detected with a signal-to-noise ratio of S/N $`15`$. The derived error box had nearly the same centre $`\alpha _{\mathrm{J2000}}=`$ $`17^\mathrm{h}`$ $`51^\mathrm{m}`$ $`42^\mathrm{s}`$, $`\delta _{\mathrm{J2000}}=`$ $`25^{}`$ $`18^{}`$ $`44^{\prime \prime }`$ but a smaller radius of $`3^{}`$.

The GRB nature of the event was confirmed about one hour later by Konus, Mars Odyssey (HEND), and INTEGRAL/SPI-ACS via an IPN-annulus (Hurley et al. 2003a ). By adding the information from Ulysses, Mars Odyssey (GRS), Konus-Wind and RHESSI to the above mentioned data, a small IPN error box was derived one day later (Hurley et al. 2003b ).

SPI was only able to determine a rough position for the GRB in the energy interval between $`100\mathrm{keV}`$ and 1 MeV. At lower energies it was not possible to derive a position. One should notice that only 3 out of the 19 detectors of SPI’s camera showed a substantial increase of the count rate, caused by the illumination of the GRB. By selecting two time intervals around the prominent peaks of emission (see below) from UTC 10:11:55 to 10:12:05 and 10:12:30 to 10:12:36 (in total 16 s), the derived SPI position is $`\alpha _{\mathrm{J2000}}=`$ $`17^\mathrm{h}`$ $`53.4^\mathrm{m}`$, $`\delta _{\mathrm{J2000}}=`$ $`26^{}`$ $`2.8^{}`$ with an uncertainty of $`1^{}`$ (S/N 7.2). This agrees within the error with the positions found by IBIS/ISGRI and IPN. Fig. 1 shows a superposition of the IPN error box and the SPI- and IBIS/ISGRI-error circles.

The two monitoring instruments of INTEGRAL, the X-ray monitor JEM-X (Lund et al. (2003)) and the optical camera OMC (Mas-Hesse et al. (2003)), did not observe the event as it was outside their FoVs.

A search for an optical afterglow in the IBIS error circle was performed using the Wise-Observatory 1 m telescope 16.9 hours after the onset of the burst (Gal-Yam & Ofek (2003)). This follow-up observation did not reveal any optical counterpart. R-band imaging under poor conditions did not show any new source down to a limiting magnitude of $`R=17.5\mathrm{mag}`$.

We also performed two follow-up observations at ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT) using the SOFI camera. The first was made at 9.497 UT on the 21st of March ($``$ 23.3 hours after the GRB) with a Ks filter and had exposure of 30 min (see Fig. 2). The second was taken at 4.608 UT ($``$ 69.8 days after the GRB) on the 29th of May with the same filter and an exposure of 10 min. The difference image, although showing several variable sources, did not reveal a strong afterglow candidate.

The afterglow search was complicated by the burst location in the galactic plane. The foreground galactic hydrogen column density111http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/Tools/w3nh/w3nh.pl of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$=(1.4$`\pm `$0.1)$`\times `$1022 atoms/cm2 in the direction of the burst results in an extinction of $`A_\mathrm{V}=(10.5\pm 0.5)\mathrm{mag}`$ \[$`A_\mathrm{R}=(7.85\pm 0.35)\mathrm{mag}`$\]. This high extinction would have required an extraordinary intrinsically bright afterglow ($`R_{\mathrm{int}}<10\mathrm{mag}`$ at the time of the Wise observations) in order to be detectable. This would be more than 5 mag brighter than the very bright afterglow of GRB030329 (Burenin et al. (2003)) at the same time after the burst occurrence.

## 3 Temporal and Spectral Characteristics

Fig. 3 shows the lightcurve for all INTEGRAL detectors which have observed GRB030320. The lightcurves of ISGRI have been determined in two energy bands (15-60 keV and 60-300 keV) by using only the pixels that were illuminated by the GRB by at least half of their surface. The determination of a SPI lightcurve with a short time binning was only possible by using the 1 s count rates of the 19 Ge-detectors, which are normally used for science-housekeeping purposes. These values reflect the count rates of each detector in the broad SPI energy band from $``$ 20 keV up to $``$ 8 MeV. The SPI lightcurve in Fig. 3 was generated by summing the background-subtracted count rates. The background ($``$ 50 counts s-1 detector-1) was determined from the SPI data before the burst occurrence over a duration of 40 min. The alternative method, which uses the time-tagged photon-by-photon SPI mode, with energy information for each photon, yielded insignificant results. With the anti-coincidence shield (ACS) of SPI the GRB was observed as an increase of the overall veto count rate. The effective area of the ACS is very small for sources observed within the field of view (von Kienlin et al. 2003a ). For GRBs which occur outside the FoV of SPI the effective area of the ACS is however large, as it can be seen from the detection rate of $``$ 0.8 GRBs/day (von Kienlin et al. 2003b ). All lightcurves in Fig. 3 exhibit two prominent peaks during the $``$ 60 s of prompt emission. A third peak is visible in the low-energy range of ISGRI, which is less significant at higher energies.

Spectra were extracted for characteristic intervals of the GRB lightcurve. The GRB spectrum was in all cases well represented by a single power-law model. The photon index and the source flux in the 20–200 keV energy range are listed for ISGRI and SPI in Tab. 1. For both instruments, the response for a source position near-to-zero coding is not yet well understood. For ISGRI the closest Crab observation was used for the calibration of the spectra. Any deficiencies of the SPI response at $`15.5^{}`$ off-axis angle is possibly the result of a not fully-representative mass model. Currently the off-axis effects of the response are assessed by using Crab observations, recorded during the payload-verification campaign, but the drawback of this method is the lack of Crab observations at such large off-axis angles.

The photon indices and fluxes listed in Tab. 1 for SPI were obtained by binning the photon-by-photon single and multiple events into six equally-spaced logarithmic energy bins in the 20 keV to 2 MeV range, for each of the listed time intervals. Spectral extraction was performed using SPIROS (SPI Iterative Removal of Sources; Skinner & Connell 2003), which takes the SPI photopeak effective area into account. Spectral model fitting was performed using XSPEC 11.2 and the off-diagonal response of SPI (SPI-RMF), as shown in the line SPI$`{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{offd}.}{}_{11.2}{}^{}`$ of Tab. 1. For the background, all event data of the corresponding science window, with a duration of about 30 min, were used, but with the time of the GRB cut out (UTC 10:11:40 - 10:14:00). Tab. 1 lists the obtained photon indices and fluxes, when using XSPEC 11.2 only with a diagonal response (line SPI$`{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{diag}.}{}_{11.2}{}^{}`$) too. Naturally one obtains a softer spectral shape with this method.

For comparison, the data were analysed using an alpha-test version of the XSPEC 12.0 software. This approach is distinct from the SPIROS method, in that the full diagonal plus off-diagonal response matrix is computed for each detector (and for each pointing direction, although here the GRB is contained within a single pointing) (Sturner et al. (2003); also Shrader, Sturner & Teegarden (2000)). The detector-count spectra are then compared directly to the convolution of a photon model with, in this case, 19 response matrices, and a $`\chi ^2`$ minimisation is performed. This is, in principle, a more rigorous deconvolution procedure than the SPIROS method. However, the disadvantage is that the source and background must be simultaneously modelled whereas SPIROS reduces the problem to a single background subtracted spectrum and response matrix. A set of ancillary response functions (ARFs), containing the energy, detector and angle-dependent effective area, were constructed for the GRB position and the burst spectrum was modelled in XSPEC 12.0 by fixing the background (derived by using the non-burst part of the observation). The obtained photon indices and fluxes are listed in the line SPI12.0 of Tab. 1.

ISGRI single events have been used to derive photon indices and fluxes shown in the line “ISGRI” of Tab. 1. Thanks to the coded-mask design of the IBIS telescope, the source flux can be determined simultaneously with the background using the Pixel Illumination Function (PIF; Skinner (1995)). The spectra have been extracted in 128 linearly-spaced energy bins between 19 keV and 1 MeV and were rebinned to have a signal-to-noise ratio larger than 3 in each channel. The photon spectra have then been obtained with the technique described above. In addition to the time intervals shown in Tab. 1 it was possible to obtain for ISGRI values of the photon index for the time intervals listed below:

| Position: | Interval (UTC) | PhoIndex |
| --- | --- | --- |
| decay of the $`1^{\mathrm{st}}`$ peak: | 10:12:06-10:12:16 | 1.859 $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{0.10}{0.10}`$ |
| small peak in between: | 10:12:16-10:12:26 | 2.329$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{0.18}{0.23}`$ |
| rising of the $`2^{\mathrm{nd}}`$ peak: | 10:12:26-10:12:31 | 1.955$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{0.28}{0.25}`$ |
| decay of the $`2^{\mathrm{nd}}`$ peak: | 10:12:37-10:12:52 | 1.849$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{0.22}{0.22}`$ |

With these ISGRI data it was possible to track the spectral evolution over the whole emission period, showing a general hard-to-soft evolution for the first peak up to the small peak between the two main peaks (Fig. 3 lower panel). During the second peak the spectrum hardens again (yet being softer compared to the first peak), but showing no evolution. The obtained ISGRI fluxes are reasonably correlated with the light curve.

The photon indices obtained with XSPEC 12.0 for SPI agree within the errors with the results obtained with ISGRI for interval 2, 3, 5 and 6, but reveals no spectral evolution. In contrast to the time between interval 2 and 3 (between to two main peaks) and after the last interval 3 (decay of the $`2^{\mathrm{nd}}`$ peak), it was possible to extract for SPI a spectrum for interval 1, although SPI’s lightcurve did not show a rate increase. As expected the obtained photon index and flux do not agree well with the ISGRI values. A large discrepancy is observed for interval 4 (maximum of the $`1^{\mathrm{st}}`$ peak). SPI shows here a rather hard spectrum whereas for ISGRI the spectrum is even softer compared to interval 5. The SPI results have to be handled with care because for such a short 2 s interval, containing only a small number of counts in each energy bin, the determination of a spectrum is more difficult.

Comparing the results obtained with the three different methods used for the SPI data analysis, one can see that the XSPEC 12.0 derived photon indices yield the best agreement with the ISGRI data, although the same is valid for the SPIROS+XSPEC 11.2 results, using a diagonal response (line SPI$`{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{diag}.}{}_{11.2}{}^{}`$ of Tab. 1), but these have a much broader confidence range. Second it should be noted that XSPEC 12.0 is using an off-diagonal response, which should represent the instrument much better.

The burst had a 20–200 keV peak flux (over 2 s) of $`4.1\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{1.3}{1.4}10^7`$ erg cm-2 s-1 and $`5.410^7`$ erg cm-2 s-1 and a 25–100 keV peak flux of $`1.7\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{0.9}{0.7}10^7`$ erg cm-2 s-1 and $`3.010^7`$ erg cm-2 s-1 measured with SPI and IBIS/ISGRI, respectively. These peak fluxes would place GRB030320 in the top 25% of the BATSE peak flux distribution (Paciesas et al. (1999)).

The gamma-ray fluence in the 20–200 keV band measured with SPI is $`1.35\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{0.21}{0.26}10^5`$ erg cm-2, consistent with 1.1$``$10-5 erg cm-2 from IBIS/ISGRI. The 25–100 keV fluence was $`7.1\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{1.6}{1.8}10^6`$ erg cm-2 (SPI) and $`6.510^6`$ erg cm-2 (ISGRI). Peak flux and fluence agree within a factor of two with the results obtained with Ulysses (Hurley et al. 2003b ).

## 4 Conclusion

The analysis of GRB030320 showed that INTEGRAL is still able to detect GRBs at the edge of its FoV. For this GRB a photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.7`$ was derived for the prompt emission. The time resolved spectroscopy revealed a hard-to-soft transition of the spectrum during the 60 burst duration. Especially IBIS/ISGRI showed a good performance in localisation and in the determination of the spectral evolution. The difficulties observed with SPI will hopefully improve with a better understanding of the response at the edge of the FoV.

###### Acknowledgements.

The SPI project has been completed under the responsibility and leadership of CNES. We are grateful to ASI, CEA, CNES, DLR, ESA, INTA, NASA and OSTC for support. The SPI/ACS project is supported by the German ”Ministerium für Bildung und Forschung” through DLR grant 50.OG.9503.0.


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# Open Source software and peer review

## Two styles of software development

Let us first examine two famous os software: the typesetting system and the Linux kernel.

As is perhaps well known, was written by Don Knuth in the ’70s because he was fed up of the poor quality of the proofs from his publisher. He learnt the fundamentals of typesetting and font design, and produced and MetaFont.

At this point, there are no known bugs in either programme. Knuth promised a small monetary remuneration for each bug found, and not surprisingly the two programmes are supremely robust that do exactly what their author intended them to do.

The entire source for can be downloaded from any of the ctan archives. Knuth discusses the code in detail in : The program \[Knu86\]. It is likely that better versions of many of the algorithms used in are known today. However, as yet there exists no programme or package that provides an implementation as robust and versatile as . Commercial typesetting packages such as Adobe’s Acrobat Writer produce wonderful documents with great ease, however, they cannot beat at what it was designed to do. In particular, for mathematical typesetting there is nothing that comes even close to .

The Linux kernel was developed initially by Linus Torvalds from the minix kernel designed by Andrew S Tanenbaum. Torvalds initially developed the kernel for his own use, but its popularity spread rapidly and within a couple of years it had become a major volunteer project.

The Linux operating system, which is built around the Linux kernel, is now widely used. It is extremely popular in universities and in the Unix community. It has become something of a showcase for the os community.

As a programme it is not bug-free. In fact it is under active development, and major versions are brought out on a frequent basis. Major criticism of the kernel has centred around its not satisfying the definition of ‘a modern operating system kernel’, for instance being *monolithic* as opposed to being a *microkernel*, ie merely an arbiter for the interactions of various processes.

In any case, the Linux kernel has a solid presence in the world of computers. Its code is available free and in its entirety. Whereas many volunteers work on various bits of the kernel, a select few ultimately decide which of those percolate to the released version. The code is rigorously tested, and bugs are found quickly and usually eliminated.

In contrast to these programmes, we have the world of closed source, proprietary software. The contrast is primarily in the culture and the mechanism of development, though os advocates gleefully point to the poor quality of some very popular commercial software.

It should be unfair to pretend that all commercial software is bad. Some products, such as Adobe Writer and Rational’s Purify have a wide following and are held in high regard by their users. Therefore, the problem is not with the source code being closed to outside scrutiny per se.

Typical complaints against bad software are:

1. there is a big gap between advertised or perceived capability and actual capability,
2. the vendor did not fix common bugs even on repeated requests,
3. there are *obvious* bugs, ie bugs that could have been eliminated by minimal testing on the part of the vendor, and
4. poor reliability.

There are thus two main complaints: poor design and implementation, and the irresponsibility of the vendor in dealing with bug reports and customer problems.

Vendor irresponsibility depends on the social culture within the company and its market strength. We shall not discuss it here.

The design and the implementation on the other hand are the major concern. These depend primarily on the quality of developers hired by the vendor and their attitude to the product. This is something that the customer cannot control directly.

In this enviroment, the only instances when good design and robust implementation are enforced is when the vendor interacts closely with the customers, and respects and values their suggestions and needs. What this does is to make the customer a direct part of the testing, debugging and extension cycle. This is the best that can be done in the absence of open code scrutiny.

Therefore, in case of the closed source vendor, the quality of the product depends very substantially on the ability and integrity of the individual developers. There is no way of ensuring good design and implementation. This is the biggest weakness of the closed source system.

There is good reason to believe that closed source companies regard this situation as being very convenient. It permits them to charge premium prices for bug fixes and upgrades. It allows them to get away with not doing a good job. Considering that software downtime costs the world economy billions of dollars per annum, this is a serious situation.

## Publications and peer review

The standard paradigm for publication of new work in academia is submission to a refereed journal. An academic writes a paper, he then sends it to a journal in his field. The journal then has the article reviewed by experts who then inform the journal whether the paper is fit for publications. An article is regarded fit for publication in a research journal if it:

1. presents substantially new and original results, or
2. presents a substantially novel and useful interpretation or application of known results, or
3. is of an expository nature, and provides a summary or survey of the latest developments in a field.

So the purpose of peer review is to ensure the quality of published papers. The system as it exists has been criticised in recent times, there has been much debate over electronic versus print journals. It is felt by many that the system in practice is not very effective. However, no one disputes the necessity of peer review. In fact the biggest critics of the current system lament that in practice, adequate *review* is not provided by the system \[KKvdP03\]

The quality of papers in the best journals is witness to the efficacy of this system. Of course, much depends on the integrity and ability of the individual authors. Since every academic is not of the calibre of Grothendieck (who incidentally did not care to publish very much) or Feynman or Knuth, the academic world depends on peer review to maintain the quality of papers and to detect errors. In fact even great mathematicians make mistakes: a famous recent example is Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem. His initial proof had an error, which was caught by the referees. He then emended the error, and the new corrected proof was finally published in the *Annals*, about a year after the initial submission \[Wil95\].

## Software and peer review

The greatest strength of open source software is the peer review. The free and unrestricted availability of the source code leads to open scrutiny and debate. At the very minimum, it expands the tester base. The result is that the more popular or crucial an open source project is, the more likely it is to be scrutinised, and thus such projects tend to be robust, well designed, and have fewer bugs. Bugs are also more likely to be detected and eliminated.

Recently there has been a major push by some of the bigger companies based on the closed source model, to stifle testing and review. Not surprisingly, the first victims were researchers who pointed out major flaws in the design. Rather than being thanked they were threatened with arrest in one case, and actually arrested in another.

This kind behaviour is pernicious. It rewards poor design and practice. It will lead to the deployment of unreliable and insecure systems that will be easy pray for the maliciously inclined. At the very minimum they are going to cost the world economies huge losses.

## Conclusion

In this article I have equated the open source system to the system of peer review in academia. The advantages of the latter are clear to all, and the same advantages can be found in the case of open source software development.

The quality of closed source software is too dependent on the ability of the individual programmers. The software industry should be aiming to produce better and more robust software. It is perverse to think that the short term gain that companies make by dragging their feet over bug correction and testing, compensates for the huge losses made by the economy as a whole.


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# Formation of Semi-relativistic Jets from Magnetospheres of Accreting Neutron Stars: Injection of Hot Bubbles into a Magnetic Tower

## 1. INTRODUCTION

The mechanism of jet formation is one of the most important subjects of research in astrophysics. Blandford & Payne (1982) studied magneto-centrifugal acceleration along a magnetic field line threading an accretion disk. Uchida & Shibata (1985) and Shibata & Uchida (1986) showed by time-dependent magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations that bipolar jets are produced from an accretion disk threaded by open magnetic field lines.

Observational evidence indicate the presence of semi-relativistic jets in some galactic X-ray binaries (XRBs) such as SS433 (Hjellming & Johnston 1981), Cygnus X-3 (Martí et al. 2000, Mioduszewski et al. 2001), Sco X-1 (Fomalont et al. 2001a,b), and Circinus X-1 (Fender et al. 1998). The speed of jets in such XRBs indicates that the jets are launched close to the last stable orbit of the accretion disk. Therefore, we should include general relativistic effects around a compact object. In addition, the magnetic field of the compact object may play an essential role in the dynamics of the jets and the accretion flow. Recent observations of XRBs by the Very Large Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) revealed their energetic activities such as radio flares and radio jets. VLBI discovered the motions and variabilities of radio lobes in Sco X-1 (Fomalont et al. 2001a,b). According to their observations, radio lobes are ejected from the core of Sco X-1. After the radio flare of the core, the intensity of the advancing radio lobe increases. The correlation between the core flare and the lobe flare in Sco X-1 indicates that explosive events at the core transports energy to the lobe.

A plausible model of advancing lobes is the working surface of jets ejected from the core. However, the existence of large scale open magnetic fields assumed in the magneto-centrifugal model of jet formation is not evident in XRBs. Instead, we should take into account the magnetic interaction between the neutron star and its accretion disk.

Lynden-Bell & Boily (1994) studied the evolution of force-free magnetic loops anchored to the star and the disk. They obtained self-similar solutions for the evolution of the magnetic loops. They found that the loops are unstable against the twist injection from the rotating disk and that the loops expand along a direction of 60 degrees from the rotation axis of the disk. Lovelace et al. (1995) pointed out that the dipole magnetic field of the star deforms itself into an open magnetic field due to the differential rotation between the star and the disk. Subsequently, Lynden-Bell (1996; hereafter referred to as LB96) showed that a cylindrical magnetic tower is formed when the disk is surrounded by external plasma with finite pressure.

Hayashi, Shibata, and Matsumoto (1996; hereafter referred to as HSM96) carried out the first numerical calculations of magnetic interaction between a protostar and its accretion disk. By assuming Newtonian gravity and neglecting the rotation of the star, they showed that the magnetic interaction can explain the X-ray flares and outflows observed in protostars. Later, Goodson, Böhm, and Winglee; Goodson & Winglee (1999); hereafter referred to as GBW99 and GW99, respectively, showed that the recurring magnetic reconnection creates periodic outflow along the rotation axis of the disk. However, these works have not clearly shown the formation of a magnetic tower.

In this paper, we numerically studied the formation process of magnetic towers around a weakly magnetized neutron star. In §2 we present basic equations and models. Numerical results are shown in §3. §4 is devoted for discussion and conclusion.

## 2. SIMULATION MODEL

We solved resistive magnetohydrodynamic equations in cylindrical coordinates. For normalization, we use the Schwarzschild radius $`r_s=2GM/c^2=1`$ and the speed of light $`c=1`$. General relativistic effects in the innermost region of the accretion disk around the neutron star are taken into account by using the pseudo-Newtonian potential (Paczyńsky & Wiita 1980) $`\psi =1/[2(R1)]`$ where $`R=\sqrt{r^2+z^2}`$. The basic equations in conservative form are as follows:

$$\frac{\rho }{t}+\mathbf{}(\rho 𝒗)=0$$
(1)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}\left(\rho 𝒗\right)+\mathbf{}\left(\rho 𝒗𝒗{\displaystyle \frac{𝑩𝑩}{4\pi }}\right)=\mathbf{}\left(p+{\displaystyle \frac{B^2}{8\pi }}\right)\rho \mathbf{}\psi `$ (2)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}\left(ϵ+{\displaystyle \frac{B^2}{8\pi }}\right)+\mathbf{}\left[\left(ϵ+p\right)𝒗+{\displaystyle \frac{𝑬\times 𝑩}{4\pi }}\right]=\rho 𝒗\mathbf{}\psi `$ (3)
$$\frac{𝑩}{t}=\mathbf{}\times 𝑬$$
(4)
where $`ϵ=\rho v^2/2+p/(\gamma 1)`$ is the total energy of the gas ($`\gamma =4/3`$), $`𝑬=𝒗\times 𝑩+\eta 𝑱`$ and $`𝑱=(\mathbf{}\times 𝑩)/4\pi `$. The other symbols have their usual meanings.

The resistivity $`\eta `$ is assumed to be uniform in the entire computational domain and parametrized by the magnetic Reynolds number $`R_m=cr_s/\eta =1000`$, where we take the characteristic speed and length as $`c`$ and $`r_s`$, respectively. The resistivity is taken to be small enough to ensure the coupling between plasma and magnetic fields. The diffusion time scale of magnetic fields $`\tau _d𝒜/\eta =(𝒜/cr_s)R_m`$ ($`𝒜`$ is the area of the diffusion region) is much longer than the dynamical time scale except in the localized current sheet. In this paper, we assumed a uniform resistivity rather than an anomalous resistivity, which incorporates plasma instabilities due to kinetic effects, adopted in Hayashi et al. (1996). As we show later, essential results of Hayashi et al.’s simulation such as a topological change of magnetic field lines and ejection of plasmoids are reproduced by numerical simulations with small uniform resistivity.

The basic equations are solved by the 2-D axisymmetric MHD code (Matsumoto et al. 1996; Hayashi et al. 1996) based on a modified Lax-Wendroff scheme with artificial viscosity.

The initial rotating torus is obtained by assuming a polytropic equation of state $`p=K\rho ^{1+1/n}`$ where $`n=3`$ and the angular momentum distribution is $`l=l_0(r/r_0)^a`$ where $`l_0=r_0^{3/2}/[(r_01)\sqrt{2}]`$ and $`a=0.35`$. The subscript $`0`$ signifies the values at the density maximum of the torus $`r_0=13`$ and the density is normalized at this point. The initial density distribution of the torus is given by:

$$\rho _t=\rho _0\left(1\frac{\gamma }{v_{\mathrm{s},0}^2}\frac{\stackrel{~}{\psi }\stackrel{~}{\psi }_0}{n+1}\right)^n$$
(5)
where $`\rho _0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\psi }=\psi +(l/r)^2/[2(1a)]`$, and $`v_{\mathrm{s},0}`$ are the maximum density of the torus, the effective potential, and the sound speed of the torus, respectively. The thermal energy of the torus is parametrized by $`E_{\mathrm{th},0}=v_{\mathrm{s},0}^2/\gamma |\psi _0|`$.

Outside the torus, we assume a non-rotating, spherical, and isothermal hot corona in hydrostatic equilibrium. The density distribution of the corona is:

$$\rho _c=\rho _{}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\gamma }{v_{\mathrm{s},}^2}\left(\psi \psi _{}\right)\right]$$
(6)
The subscript $``$ signifies the values at the surface of the neutron star $`R_{}=2.8`$. The thermal energy of the corona is parametrized by $`E_{\mathrm{th},}=v_{\mathrm{s},}^2/\gamma |\psi _{}|`$.

The initial magnetic field of the neutron star is the dipole magnetic field described by the toroidal component of the vector potential $`A_\varphi =m_{}r/R^3`$. The strength of the magnetic field is defined by the magnetic dipole moment:

$$m_{}=r_{}^3\sqrt{\frac{2\pi \rho _{}}{\beta _{}}\frac{v_{s,}^2}{\gamma }}$$
(7)
parametrized by the value of the plasma $`\beta `$ defined as the ratio of gas pressure of the corona to magnetic pressure.

Initial conditions are determined by choosing the non-dimensional parameters $`\rho _{}/\rho _0=0.006`$, $`E_{\mathrm{th},0}=0.006`$, $`E_{\mathrm{th},}=0.21`$, and $`\beta _{}=2`$. We use $`600\times 600`$ non-uniform meshes. The grid size is uniform ($`\mathrm{\Delta }r=\mathrm{\Delta }z=0.025`$) in the region $`0<r<10`$ and $`0<z<10`$. Otherwise, it increases with $`r`$ and $`z`$ where $`r>10`$ or $`z>10`$. The size of the entire computational box is $`0r100`$ and $`0z100`$. At the inner boundary $`R=R_{}`$, we imposed an absorbing boundary condition. The deviation from the initial values are artificially decreased in the damping layer between $`R=R_{}`$ and $`R=R_{}+\mathrm{\Delta }R`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }R=0.2`$. We imposed a symmetric boundary condition at the equatorial plane and a reflecting boundary condition at the rotation axis. The outer boundaries are free boundaries where waves can transmit.

## 3. SIMULATION RESULTS

Figure 1 shows the time evolution of poloidal magnetic field lines (solid lines) and the distribution of $`T=\gamma P/\rho `$ (color contours). The arrows show the velocity vectors. In the upper panels, the time interval between each panel is about one rotation period $`\tau _{rot}350r_s/c`$ at $`r=r_0`$. The bottom panels enlarge the innermost region.

As the magnetic field lines connecting the neutron star and the disk are twisted due to the rotation of the disk, they begin to inflate in the direction 30-60 degrees from the rotation axis. The magnetic fields cease to splay out when the magnetic pressure balances with the ambient gas pressure. Afterwards, the expanding magnetic loops form a cylindrical tower of helical magnetic fields whose height increases with time. In previous MHD simulations of disk-star magnetic interaction (e.g., HSM96; GBW99 and GW99; Ustyugova et al. 2000), the tower structure was not so prominent because the ambient gas pressure was too low to confine the magnetic tower inside the computational box.

Numerical results indicate that the top interface between the tower and the external medium propagates with a speed $`0.1c`$. This propagation speed is consistent with that of the theory of magnetic towers (LB96). Disk materials are accelerated and launched along the magnetic tower. Inside the magnetic tower, current sheets are formed because magnetic field lines extend upward from the disk and then go downward to the star. Magnetic reconnection taking place in the current sheet injects hot plasmoids intermittently into the magnetic tower. In figure 1a, symbols ’B’, ’C’, and ’D’ denote such plasmoids created by magnetic reconnection. Region ’A’ is the hot region between the top of the magnetic tower and the jet terminal shock. Beside this working surface, the jet flow changes its direction away from the rotation axis and creates backflows. The radial interface between the magnetic tower and the ambient matter is stable for the growth of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability because magnetic fields stabilize the instability.

Figure 2a shows the time evolution of the distribution of toroidal magnetic fields. Figure 2b visualizes the three-dimensional structure of magnetic field lines at t=739.5. The magnetic field lines are strongly twisted due to the rotation of the disk. Note the similarity between this figure and the analytical model of magnetic towers (figure 2 of LB96.)

Figure 3a shows the trajectories of the working surface of the magnetic tower ’A’ and the bubbles ’B’, ’C’, and ’D’. The plasmoids are ejected intermittently with interval of the rotation period around $`510r_s`$. The maximum speed of the plasmoid moving inside the magnetic tower is about $`0.2c`$. The plasmoid ’B’ catches up with the working surface ’A’ at $`t800`$ and merges after $`t900`$.

Figure 3b shows the distribution of velocity, density, temperature, gas pressure, magnetic pressure, and the vertical energy flux \[kinetic energy flux $`(\rho v^2/2)v_z`$, enthalpy flux $`[\gamma p/(\gamma 1)]v_z`$, the Poynting flux $`(𝑬\times 𝑩)_z/4\pi `$\] at $`r=10`$ (inside the magnetic tower) and $`r=30`$ (outside the magnetic tower). The radius of the tower is about 20. The total pressure of the tower slightly exceeds the ambient gas pressure. It is clear that the Poynting flux dominates other fluxes inside the jets.

The density distribution has a minimum in the working surface ’A’. It corresponds to the region between the contact discontinuity (CD) and the jet terminal shock (JTS). We should remark that the bow shock ahead of the working surface is not visible because the sound speed of the ambient plasma ($`v_{\mathrm{s},}0.4`$) is larger than the propagation speed of the jet.

## 4. DISCUSSION

In this letter, we have demonstrated that highly collimated magnetic towers are formed along the rotation axis of the accretion disk surrounding a weakly magnetized neutron star. We also found that hot plasmoids created by the intermittent magnetic reconnections are injected into the magnetic tower (Figure 1). The magnetic towers are confined to the radius where the magnetic pressure of the expanding magnetic loops is comparable to the gas pressure of the ambient plasma.

Recently, Poynting jet, in which the energy and angular momentum are carried predominantly by the electromagnetic field, has been studied numerically by Romanova et al. (1998) and Ustyugova et al. (2000). The magnetic tower jet is a Poynting jet, because the Poynting flux dominates the energy flux of the bulk flow inside the jet in our simulation (Figure 3b). The electromagnetic extraction of angular momentum from the disk drives the accretion of the disk material. It is interesting to compare the amount of angular momentum extracted electromagnetically by the jet and the angular momentum transported inside the disk due to the magnetic turbulence driven by the magneto-rotational instability (MRI). We have to carry out three-dimensional MHD simulations to determine the MRI driven angular momentum transport rate self-consistently. We intend to report the results of such simulations in subsequent papers. Our simulation demonstrated the formation mechanism of a semi-relativistic Poynting jet around a neutron star.

We can identify the jet terminal shock (JTS) behind the working surface of the jet. Our numerical results show that a hot, low density region is created between the JTS and the discontinuity (CD) separating the jet material and the ambient plasma. The structure of the working surface of the jet is qualitatively consistent with those in previous MHD simulations of jet propagation assuming force-free magnetic fields initially uniform in the $`z`$-direction (e.g., Todo et al. 1992), although the detailed structure is different because our numerical simulations started with a dipole magnetic field.

We found that hot plasmoids are injected intermittently into the magnetic tower. The injection speed of the blobs is the order of the local Alfvén speed of the reconnection region ($`v_A0.2c`$), which is comparable to the rotation speed of the innermost region of the disk. Since this speed is faster than the propagation speed of the working surface of the jet, the blobs catch up with the working surface and release magnetic energy. Magnetic reconnection taking place in the core and in the working surface could generate high energy electrons which emit synchrotron radiation.

Let us discuss the correlation between the radio flare of the core and the lobe observed in Sco X-1. Magnetic reconnection taking place in the core will eject hot plasmoids, which subsequently release magnetic energy again at the working surface of the magnetic tower. This event can be observed as the lobe flares correlated with the core flares. In our simulations, however, the maximum speed of the hot plasmoids ($`0.2c`$) is smaller than the speed estimated from the time lag between the core flare and the lobe flare. This discrepancy may be resolved if the Alfvén speed inside the magnetic tower is faster than that attained in our simulation. This happens when the plasma density inside the magnetic tower is lower than the ambient plasma. Plasma heating due to magnetic reconnection helps increasing the Alfvén speed and ejection speed of hot bubbles.

We should point out the limitation of using non-relativistic MHD. Although we take into account general relativistic effects by using a pseudo-Newtonian potential, we solved Newtonian MHD equations by neglecting special relativistic corrections. By extending our work to fully general relativistic MHD, we will be able to simulate models having Alfvén speed closer to the light speed.

The work presented here is the first numerical simulation which clearly shows the formation process of the axisymmetric magnetic tower and semi-relativistic jets. We expect that semi-relativistic jets observed in some XRBs are driven by the magnetic interaction between the dipole magnetic field of a weakly magnetized neutron star and its accretion disk. 3-D simulations are necessary to study the stability of magnetic towers against non-axisymmetric perturbations. We would like to report the results of such simulations in the near future.

The authors would like to thank K. Shibata, S. Mineshige, and D. Meier for valuable discussions. One of us (YK) appreciate stimulating discussion with R. E. Pudritz in Les Houches Euro Summer School 2002. Numerical computations were carried out on VPP5000 at the Astronomical Data Analysis Center of the National Astronomical Observatory, Japan (myk18b). The work is supported in part by ACT-JST of Japan Science and Technology corporation and Grants-in-Aid of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (15037202, RM).


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# FINE STRUCTURE OF THE THERMAL AND NON-THERMAL X-RAYS IN THE SN 1006 SHELL

## INTRODUCTION

Since the discovery of cosmic rays, the origin and acceleration mechanism up to energies of $`10^{15.5}`$ eV (the “knee” energy) have been long-standing problems. A breakthrough came from the X-ray studies of SN 1006; Koyama et al. (1995) discovered synchrotron X-rays from the shells of this supernova remnant (SNR), indicating the existence of extremely high energy electrons up to TeV energies or more produced by the first order Fermi acceleration.

The mechanism for cosmic ray acceleration has also been studied for a long time and the most plausible process is a diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) (e.g. Bell, 1978). Apart from the globally successful picture of DSA, detailed but important processes, such as the injection and the reflection of accelerated particles, are not well understood. The spatial distribution of accelerated particles responsible for the non-thermal X-rays, may provide key information on these unclear processes. Previous observations, however, are too limited in spatial resolution for a detailed study on the structure of shock acceleration process and injection efficiency. Although many observations and theoretical models are made for SN 1006, these problems are still unsolved (e.g. Reynolds, 1998).

In this paper, we report on the first results of the spectral and spatial studies of the non-thermal shock structure in the North Eastern (NE) shell of SN 1006 with $`Chandra`$. We discuss the spectral analyses and determine the scale lengths of the structures for non-thermal electrons on the basis of a simple and a conventional DSA model. In this paper, we assume the distance of SN 1006 to be 2.18 kpc (Winkler et al. 2003).

## OBSERVATION

We used the $`Chandra`$ archival data of the ACIS on the NE shell of SN 1006 (Observation ID = 00732) observed on July 10–11, 2000 with the targeted position at (RA, DEC) = ($`15^\mathrm{h}03^\mathrm{m}51^\mathrm{s}.6`$, $`41^\mathrm{d}51^\mathrm{m}18^\mathrm{s}.8`$). The satellite and instrument are described by Weisskopf et al. (1996). CCD chips I2, I3, S1, S2, S3, and S4 were used with the pointing center on S3. Data acquisition from the ACIS was made in the Timed-Exposure Faint mode with the readout time of 3.24 s. The data reductions and analyses were made using the $`Chandra`$ Interactive Analysis of Observations (CIAO) software version 2.2.1. Using the Level 2 processed events provided by the pipeline processing at the $`Chandra`$ X-ray Center, we selected $`ASCA`$ grades 0, 2, 3, 4, and 6, as the X-ray events. High energy electrons due to charged particles, and hot and flickering pixels were removed. The effective exposure was $`68`$ ks for the observation. In this paper, we concentrated on the data of S3 (BI chip) because this chip has the best efficiency in soft X-rays required for the spectral analyses, and its on-axis position provides the best point-spread function required for the spatial analysis.

## RESULTS

### Image

Figure 1 shows the images for the NE shell of SN 1006. The images are contrasted in the 0.5–2.0 keV band (left) and in the 2.0–10.0 keV band (right) and binned to a resolution of 1 arcsec. The fine spatial resolution of $`Chandra`$ unveils extremely narrow filaments in the hard band. They are running from north to south along the outer edge of the NE shell, parallel to the shock fronts observed by H$`\alpha `$ emission line (Winkler and Long, 1997). The soft band image, on the other hand, has a larger scale length similar to the $`ROSAT`$ HRI image (Winkler and Long, 1997). Many clumpy sub-structures are also seen in this energy band.

### Inner Region

To resolve the thermal and non-thermal components, we made a spectrum from a bright clump found in the soft band image, which is located in the inner part of the NE shell ( “Inner region” with the dashed ellipse in Figure 2). The background region was selected from a region out of the SNR, as is shown in Figure 2 with the dashed lines.

The background-subtracted spectrum can be fitted with a thin thermal plasma model in non-equilibrium ionization (NEI) state calculated by Borkowski et al. (2001) plus a power-law component. The spectrum of the inner region clump is softer than any other regions in the NE shell, which indicates that the contribution of the thermal component is the largest. Nevertheless the thermal photons are only 0.02% of the non-thermal ones if we limit the energy band to 2.0–10.0 keV (the hard band). Therefore, in the following spatial analyses, we regard that all the photons in the hard band are non-thermal origin.

### The Filaments

The outer edge of the NE shell is outlined by several thin X-ray filaments. For the study of these filaments, we selected 6 rectangular regions in Figure 2, in which the filaments are straight and free from other structures like superimposed filament and/or clumps. These regions (solid boxes) are shown in Figure 2 right with the designations of No.1–6 from north to south. Since the SNR shell is moving (expanding) from the right to the left, we name the right and left hand sides of the shock downstream and upstream following the standard shock physics terminology.

Figure 3 shows the intensity profiles in the hard (2.0–10.0 keV) with the spatial resolution of 0.5 arcsec, where the horizontal axis ($`x`$-coordinate) runs from the east to west (upstream to downstream) along the line normal to the filaments. To estimate the scale length, we define a simple empirical model as a function of position ($`x`$) for the profiles;

$$f(x)=\{\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill A\mathrm{exp}|\frac{x_0x}{w_\mathrm{u}}|& \mathrm{in}\mathrm{upstream}\hfill & \\ \hfill A\mathrm{exp}|\frac{x_0x}{w_\mathrm{d}}|& \mathrm{in}\mathrm{downstream},\hfill & \end{array}$$
(1)
where $`A`$ and $`x_0`$ are the flux and position at the filament peak. We ignored the point spread function (PSF) of Chandra for simplicity. The scale lengths are given by $`w_\mathrm{u}`$ and $`w_\mathrm{d}`$ for upstream and downstream, respectively. The best-fit models are shown in Figure 3 with the solid lines. The mean and minimum values are 0.05 and 0.01 pc for $`w_\mathrm{u}`$ and 0.19 and 0.06 pc for $`w_\mathrm{d}`$, respectively.

## DISCUSSION

In this section, we interpret the scale length of hard band X-rays, $`w_\mathrm{u}`$ and $`w_\mathrm{d}`$. Blandford and Orstriker (1978) derived the distribution of accelerated particles to be flat in downstream for a steady state. However, we should consider the finite-time or energy loss effect in the SN 1006 case, where the accelerating particles must concentrate on around the shock. Therefore, we assume that the spatial distribution of non-thermal X-rays coincides with that of accelerated electrons. We consider so narrower regions than the background thermal plasma, then the magnetic field gradients can be ignored since it may be traced by the thermal emission shown in Figure 1. Here, we investigate the observed profiles based on a simple picture of DSA with the magnetic field parallel to the shock normal and a compression ratio of about 4, and estimate the physical quantities such as diffusion coefficient, magnetic field, and the maximum energy of the accelerated electrons. The scale lengths in the upstream side are the projected values of the possible sheet-like structure, hence real lengths should be smaller. Considering the PSF of Chandra also makes them smaller. We therefore adopted the minimum value of 0.01 pc. For the scale lengths in the downstream side, we used the mean value of 0.2 pc.

We assume that electrons emitting synchrotron X-rays are still accelerating on the shock front since the previous works suggest the magnetic field is rather small (e.g. Tanimori et al. 1998) then the effect of synchrotron radiation may be small. In this condition, the diffusion coefficients in upstream ($`K_\mathrm{u}`$) and in downstream ($`K_\mathrm{d}`$) are estimated from the relation $`w=K/u`$ as following;

$`K_\mathrm{u}`$ $``$ $`w_\mathrm{u}u_\mathrm{u}=w_\mathrm{u}u_\mathrm{s}=8.9\times 10^{24}[\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1],`$ (2)
$`K_\mathrm{d}`$ $``$ $`w_\mathrm{d}u_\mathrm{d}=w_\mathrm{d}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}u_\mathrm{s}=4.2\times 10^{25}[\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1],`$ (3)
where the shock speed $`u_\mathrm{s}`$ is assumed to be 2890 km s<sup>-1</sup> (Winkler et al. 2003). The acceleration time scale $`\tau _{\mathrm{acc}}`$ is then $`\tau _{\mathrm{acc}}=\frac{4}{u_\mathrm{s}^2}(K_\mathrm{u}+4K_\mathrm{d})`$ (Drury 1983);

$$\tau _{\mathrm{acc}}8.6\times 10^9[\mathrm{sec}]=270[\mathrm{years}]$$
(4)
The energy loss time scale ($`\tau _{\mathrm{loss}}`$) via synchrotron cooling should be longer than the acceleration time scale of about 300 year, hence using Eq. (4), we obtain;

$$6.3\times 10^2B_\mathrm{d}^2E_{\mathrm{max}}^18.6\times 10^9[\mathrm{sec}]$$
(5)
A probable region in the $`E_{\mathrm{max}}`$$`B_\mathrm{d}`$ space is then limited to the lower side of the dotted line in Figure 4.

The wide band spectra from X-ray to radio can be fitted with the $`srcut`$ model (Reynolds, 1998). The best-fit $`\nu _{\mathrm{rolloff}}`$ at the filaments is 2.6 (1.9–3.3)$`\times 10^{17}`$ Hz, which constrains the maximum energy of electrons $`E_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and downstream magnetic field $`B_\mathrm{d}`$;

$$E_{\mathrm{max}}B_\mathrm{d}^{0.5}=0.37_{0.06}^{+0.04}[\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{G}^{0.5}]$$
(6)
The allowed region in the $`E_{\mathrm{max}}`$$`B_\mathrm{d}`$ plane is between the two solid lines of Figure 4.

The downstream diffusion coefficient is given by Skilling (1975) as follows;

$$K_\mathrm{d}=\frac{1}{3}\xi _\mathrm{d}\frac{E_{\mathrm{max}}}{\mathrm{e}B_\mathrm{d}}c,$$
(7)
where $`\xi `$ is a non-dimensional parameter depending on the angle between the shock normal and the upstream magnetic field $`\theta `$ and the gyro factor $`\eta `$, which is the ratio of the mean free path of particles along the magnetic field to their gyro radius (Jokipii, 1987). Since we consider the case of $`\theta =0`$, $`\xi _\mathrm{d}`$ must be $`\eta _\mathrm{d}`$ and larger than 1. The dashed line in Figure 4 is the relation of Eq. (7) for $`\xi _\mathrm{d}=1`$ (Bohm limit). Therefore, a probable region in the $`E_{\mathrm{max}}`$$`B_\mathrm{d}`$ space is to the upper of the dashed line.

Using Eq. (5), (6), and (7), we thus constrain the most likely region in the $`E_{\mathrm{max}}`$$`B_\mathrm{d}`$ space to be in between the thick lines, where the magnetic field in downstream ($`B_\mathrm{d}`$) and the maximum electron energy ($`E_{\mathrm{max}}`$) are in the range of 30–40 $`\mu `$G and 30–40 TeV, respectively. The small $`\xi _\mathrm{d}`$ (the likely region is $`1\xi _\mathrm{d}1.6`$) indicates that the magnetic field is highly turbulent. Figure 4 also suggests that the synchrotron loss time scale is nearly equal to the acceleration one and electrons begin to loss their energy.

From Eq. (7), the ratio of the diffusion coefficient ($`\frac{K_\mathrm{u}}{K_\mathrm{d}}`$) is given by $`\frac{\xi _\mathrm{u}B_\mathrm{d}}{\xi _\mathrm{d}B_\mathrm{u}}`$. Observationally, the ratio is about 0.2 (from Eq. (2) and (3)), we thus obtain the relation of magnetic field and $`\xi `$ between upstream and downstream as

$$\frac{\xi _\mathrm{u}}{\xi _\mathrm{d}}0.2\frac{B_\mathrm{u}}{B_\mathrm{d}}$$
(8)
Since $`\frac{B_\mathrm{u}}{B_\mathrm{d}}=1`$ with $`\theta =0`$, and considering the large errors and many assumptions, we find that $`\xi _\mathrm{u}=\eta _\mathrm{u}`$ may be marginally acceptable only near to 1, while it might exist that other possible scenarios explaining observed thin filaments. For example, the “apparent” diffusion coefficients in upstream can be extremely small in the case of a nearly perpendicular magnetic field in this region as suggested by Jokipii (1987).

In this paper, we assumed the age-limited case. On the other hand, Figure 4 shows that the cooling process might be important and that we might have to consider the cooling-limited case. In such a case, protons might be accelerated to higher energy than electrons. This case is under investigation (Yamazaki et al. 2003).

Our constraint is more strict than determined from radio data by Achterberg et al. (1994), because the spatial resolution of Chandra is better than their data and the diffusion length determined by X-rays must be larger than that determined by radio. Since the current radio polarization data are spatially poor and limited mainly to the downstream region, fine structure observations, particularly at the very narrow region in the upstream side should be crucial. Of course our result is derived in a very indirect way with the many assumptions, and as a result has large uncertainty, then the DSA process might be able to explain marginally the observed results even in parallel magnetic field. However, we point out that another acceleration mechanism may be able to explain our results, the thin non-thermal filaments. For example, Hoshino and Shimada (2002) proposed the electron shock surfing acceleration mechanism. More quantitative study is necessary, whether the mechanism can accelerate particles up to 30 TeV in this system and whether the accelerated particles have the power-law spectrum.

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our particular thanks are due to M. Hoshino, T. Terasawa, T. Yoshida, and S. Inutsuka for their fruitful discussions and comments. We also thank the anonymous referee for helpful comments. A.B., M.U., and R.Y. are supported by JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists.

E-mail address of A. Bamba: bamba@cr.scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp


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# Effect of varying material anisotropy on critical current anisotropy in vicinal YBa2Cu3O7-δ thin films

## Abstract

The high $`T_c`$ cuprate superconductors are noted for their anisotropic layered structure, certain of these materials indeed tend toward the limit of a Lawrence-Doniach superconductor. However, YBa2Cu3O7-δ has a smaller anisotropy than would be expected from its interlayer spacing. This is due to the cuprate chains in the structure. To investigate the influence of the chain oxygen on transport properties critical current versus applied field angle measurements were performed on fully oxygenated and de-oxygenated YBa2Cu3O7-δ thin films and optimally oxygenated Y0.75Ca0.2Ba2Cu3O7-δ thin films. The films were grown on 10 mis-cut SrTiO3 substrates to enable the intrinsic vortex channelling effect to be observed. The form of the vortex channelling minimum observed in field angle dependent critical current studies on the films was seen to depend on film oxygenation. The vortex channelling effect is dependent on a angular dependent cross-over to a string-pancake flux line lattice. The results obtained appear to be consistent with the prediction of Blatter et al. \[Rev. Mod. Phys., 66 (4): 1125 (1994)\] that increased superconducting anisotropy leads to the kinked string-pancake lattice existing over a smaller angular range.

Among the cuprate high $`T_c`$ superconductors YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) is of particular interest due to its relatively low anisotropy parameter. For example while, $`d`$, the cuprate plane spacing is 1.2nm in YBCO as compared to 1.5nm in BSCCO Datta (1992), values for the superconducting mass anisotropy parameter $`\gamma ^2=(m_c/m_a)`$ are quoted as 5-7 for YBCO and 50-200 for Bi2Sr2Ca1Cu2O8+x Farrell et al. (1989); Chikumoto et al. (1992); Martinez et al. (1992); Blatter et al. (1994) (the large uncertainty in the Bi2Sr2Ca1Cu2O8+x value is due to the difficulty in measuring its $`c`$ axis transport properties).

The structure of YBCO contains ’cuprate chains’ inside the blocking layers between the cuprate planes associated with superconductivity. In most cuprate superconductors the blocking layers act as an insulating charge reservoir, in YBCO however, the cuprate chains also have superconducting properties Tallon et al. (1995). This is the feature of YBCO which leads to the lower anisotropy seen in YBCO as compared to that predicted on the basis of the interlayer spacing. The chain oxygen in YBCO is highly mobile, under doping or over doping of the material by moving the oxygenation away from $`\delta 0.08`$ is associated with a reduction in $`T_c`$. A reduced oxygenation level will, however, also increase the superconducting anisotropy of the material by disrupting the cuprate chains. Importantly the removal of oxygen from the chains does not increase pinning Christen and Feenstra (1991); Ossandon et al. (1992). However, there is a definite increase in superconducting anisotropy with $`\delta `$ at larger values Cava et al. (1990); Hou et al. (1994), indeed Deak et al. Deak et al. (1995) indicate that the anisotropy more than doubles for $`\delta >0.2`$.

Intrinsic vortex channelling along the $`a`$-$`b`$ planes has previously been reported in optimally doped YBCO films grown on mis-cut (vicinal) substrates Berghuis et al. (1997). The development of the channelling minima in these measurements has been attributed to the appearance of a kinked (string/pancake) vortex state as the angle, $`\theta `$, between the $`a`$-$`b`$ planes and the applied field is reduced. The pinning of vortex string elements against a Lorentz force directed parallel to the $`a`$-$`b`$ planes is relatively weak. By using a vicinal geometry thin film it is possible to arrange for a component of the Lorentz force to act along the $`a`$-$`b`$ planes. This leads to a marked reduction in the critical current when the magnetic field is applied parallel to the $`a`$-$`b`$ planes.

The kinked vortex state is intimately related to the anisotropy of the superconducting material. The variation of the structure of flux lines in YBCO as the angle, $`\theta `$, between the applied field and the $`a`$-$`b`$ planes varies has been discussed by Blatter et al. Blatter et al. (1994). For temperatures below $`T_{cr}`$, where $`T_{cr}`$ is defined by $`ϵ\xi _{ab}(T_{cr})=d/\sqrt{2}`$ ($``$80K in optimally doped YBCO), the critical angle between the applied magnetic field and the $`a`$-$`b`$ planes required for the development of a fully kinked string-pancake structure is given by:

$$\mathrm{tan}(\theta _2)=ϵ$$
(1)
where $`ϵ=1/\gamma `$ is the Ginzburg-Landau (G-L) anisotropy parameter. Between $`\theta _2`$ and a larger angle $`\theta _1`$ the flux lines exhibit a distorted structure while for $`\theta >\theta _1`$ they adopt the conventional rectilinear Abrikosov form. $`\theta _1`$ is defined as $`\mathrm{tan}(\theta _1)=d/ϵ_{ab}(T/T_c)`$. From this it can be deduced that an increasing G-L anisotropy parameter is predicted to lead to a smaller angular range of kinked structure.

In order to study the effect of material anisotropy on the vortex channelling effect vicinal YBCO films with different anisotropies were prepared. The YBa2Cu3O7-δ and Y0.75Ca0.2Ba2Cu3O7-δ thin films were prepared under identical conditions on 10 miscut vicinal (001) SrTiO3 substrates by pulsed-laser deposition Bäuerle (2000). The film were $`200nm`$ thick. In situ post-annealing of the films wa s performed at an oxygen pressure of 800 mbar and 0.7 mbar for the fully oxygenated and de-oxygenated YBCO films respectively. The Ca-substited film was annealed at $``$ 15 mbar for optimum critical temperature Delamare et al. (2002). Tracks were patterned onto the films using photolithography and Ar ion milling to give tracks 100$`\mu `$m by 10$`\mu `$m both parallel, L, and perpendicular, T, to the vicinal steps. Critical current values were determined from IV characteristics using a 0.55$`\mu `$V criterion, measurements were performed using a two-axis goniometer mounted in a 8T magnet. The experimental geometry is shown in Figure 1.

The resistive transition for both films was measured on both the T and L tracks. As discussed by Zahner et al. Zahner et al. (1998) it is possible to deduce the resistance anisotropy between the $`a`$-$`b`$ and the $`c`$ axes from the resistivity ratio between the T and L tracks, $`\gamma _{TL}`$: $`\gamma _\rho =[\gamma _{TL}\mathrm{cos}^2(\theta _v)]/\mathrm{sin}^2(\theta _v)`$, where $`\theta _v`$ is the vicinal mis-cut angle. The resistance temperature data shown in Fig. 2 indicates a resistivity anisotropy at 100K of 66 for the optimally oxygenated film and 1600 for the de-oxygenated film. These values are consistent with those observed in single crystal samples Datta (1992).

The $`T_c`$ values were 90 K and 51 K for the fully- and de-oxygenated films respectively. Although other factors apart from $`\delta `$ affect $`T_c`$ this value of $`T_c`$ suggests a $`\delta `$ value of about 0.4 Cyrot and Pavuna (1995) for the de-oxygenated film. From Eq. 1 and the relationship between $`\delta `$ and $`\gamma `$ found by Deak et al. Deak et al. (1995) this would predict, at $`t`$=0, a value for $`\theta _2`$ of 3 as compared to 11 for fully oxygenated YBCO. Furthermore $`T_{cr}`$ becomes closer to $`T_c`$ with increasing anisotropy, this means the channelling minimum should be visible in $`J_c(\theta )`$ measurements over a wider range of reduced temperature in the de-oxygenated sample.

Figure 3 shows the form of the vortex channelling effect at a magnetic field of 1 Tesla and various temperatures for the fully oxygenated and de-oxygenated films measured. The results obtained for the fully oxygenated sample are, as would be expected, very similar to those previously reported Berghuis et al. (1997).

From the data presented in Fig. 3 it is clear that there is a distinct change in the form of the channelling minima for the de-oxygenated film. As would be expected the angular range over which a departure from the conventional truncated $`1/cos\theta `$ force free behavior appears to be smaller for the case of the de-oxygenated film. As the films were grown under identical conditions, apart from the oxygen partial pressure during annealing, this change in the $`J_c(\theta )`$ behavior is reasonably associated with a change in the anisotropy of the sample studied.

Calcium doping has been extensively studied as a means of improving the properties of grain boundaries in YBCO. In the grain, however, in order to obtain a high $`T_c`$ a reduced chain oxygen occupancy is required as the Ca doping shifts the peak in the $`T_c`$ versus $`\delta `$ curve. 25% Ca-substituted YBCO with an oxygenation corresponding to optimum $`T_c`$ will therefore have oxygen vacancies in its cuprate chains and would be expected therefore to exhibit a stronger superconducting anisotropy.

A comparison of the $`J_c(\theta )`$ behavior of a Ca-doped film with a fully- and de-oxygenated film is shown in Figure 4. The Ca-doped film was grown in the same PLD system and under similar conditions, but with a 25% Ca-substituted target. It is interesting to note that the Ca-doped film exhibits broadly similar behavior to the de-oxygenated film. This is evidence that Ca-doped YBCO also exhibits an increased superconducting anisotropy and that this is due to the oxygen vacancies in the cuprate chain needed to obtain an optimum $`T_c`$.

From the measurements presented in this letter it is clear that the oxygenation of the cuprate planes strongly affects the superconducting anisotropy of the material. A variation of this anisotropy changes the way the structure of individual flux lines evolves as the applied magnetic field is rotated with respect to the cuprate planes. This anisotropy dependent change is reflected in the vicinal channelling effect observed in YBCO samples with differing chain oxygen concentration. This increased anisotropy is also apparent in Ca-doped YBCO which, for optimum $`T_c`$, must have a lower oxygenation than non Ca-doped YBCO.