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# Photorecombination and Photoionization Experiments at Heavy-Ion Storage-Rings and Synchrotron-Light Sources

## 1. Introduction

Photoionization (PI) and Photorecombination (PR) are basic atomic processes which govern the charge state balance in any plasma. Therefore, the accurate knowledge of these processes is a prerequisite for any plasma modeling and, hence, for any meaningful interpretation of many astrophysical observations. To date most PI and PR cross sections used in plasma modeling stem from theoretical calculations. Their accuracy is often difficult to asses and, therefore, experimental PI and PR cross sections and rate coefficients are vitally needed as benchmarks and guidelines for the development of the theoretical methods. Moreover, in the near future experiments will probably be the only reliable source for PR and PI cross sections of complex ions such as ions with an open M-shell (Schippers et al. 2002a; 2003a).

The measurement of PR and PI cross sections of atomic (and molecular) ions is experimentally challenging because the ion densities which can experimentally be prepared are very low — some 106 cm-3 (to be compared with $`10^{13}`$ cm-3 for gaseous and $`10^{22}`$ cm-3 for solid targets). Consequently, signal rates from electron-ion and photon-ion collision experiments are comparatively weak. In order to make up for the low ion density in such experiments an arrangement is chosen where the colliding particle beams are merged collinearly over a distance of the order of 1 m. The merged-beams arrangement (Phaneuf et al. 1999) provides a relatively large interaction volume, and the directionality of the ion beam facilitates the effective collection of the PI or PR reaction products, i. e., of ions which have changed their charge state due to either ionization or recombination. For the measurement of absolute PR and PI cross sections the merged-beams method was implemented at heavy-ion storage rings (Müller & Wolf 1997; Müller & Schippers 2001) and at synchrotron-light sources (West 2001; Covington et al. 2002), respectively.

## 2. Photorecombination of atomic ions

The basic procedure for producing plasma rate coefficients from PR measurements at storage rings was outlined by Müller (1999). Recent examples are the PR rate coefficients of the lithiumlike ions C iv (Schippers et al. 2001), O vi (Böhm et al. 2003) and Ni xxvi (Schippers et al. 2000). Figure 1 shows a comparison between measured and calculated C iv dielectronic recombination (DR) rate coefficients at low electron-ion collision energies. The two experimental results, which were obtained a two different storage-rings, agree with one another to within the 15% experimental error for the absolute cross section. This exemplifies the reliability of recombination measurements at storage rings. Mannervik et al. (1998) also calculated the C iv DR rate coefficient using relativistic many-body perturbation theory (RMBPT, Tokman et al. 2002). They pointed out that even for a light ion such as C iv, a relativistic treatment of the recombination process is necessary to reproduce the experimentally observed $`2p\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}l`$ DR resonance structure. Presently, RMBPT is only applicable to relatively simple systems and it is therefore instructive to see in how far more standard ”production” codes are able to reproduce low-energy resonance positions and strength. For C iv the Breit-Pauli R-Matrix results of Pradhan et al. (2001) are only up to 20 meV off the measured resonance positions (figure 1). It should be kept in mind, however, that there are pathological systems, e. g. Mg ix, where a mere 50 meV uncertainty of low-energy resonance positions can translate into a nearly one-order-of-magnitude uncertainty on the plasma rate-coefficient scale in a temperature range where the ion is expected to form in photoionized gases (Schippers et al. 2004). Such findings strongly emphasize the need for experimental benchmarks, especially for low-temperature PR rate coefficients.

Photorecombination measurements responding to astrophysical data needs were carried out for L-shell iron ions at the Heidelberg storage-ring TSR by Savin et al. (1997; 1999; 2002a; 2002b; 2003) who already published DR rate coefficients for the ions Fe xviii through Fe xxii. In a series of measurements with lithiumlike ions the influence of external electromagnetic fields on DR cross sections was thoroughly investigated by Bartsch et al. (1997; 1999; 2000), Böhm et al. (2001; 2002) and Schippers et al. (2000). This work is also of astrophysical interest. It was recently summarized by Müller & Schippers (2003).

## 3. Photoionization of atomic ions

More recently experiments aiming at measuring absolute PI cross sections of atomic ions and employing merged photon-ion beams were set up at 3rd generation synchrotron light sources. Measurements of astrophysical relevance were carried out e. g. for singly charged boron (figure 2, Schippers et al. 2003b), carbon (Kjeldsen et al. 2001), nitrogen (Kjeldsen et al. 2002a), oxygen (Covington et al. 2001; Kjeldsen et al. 2002a; Aguilar et al. 2003a), neon (Covington et al. 2002), magnesium (Kjeldsen et al. 2000; Aguilar et al. 2003b) and iron (Kjeldsen et al. 2002b) as well as for the multiply charged ions C iii (Müller et al. 2002), Ne iv (Aguilar 2003c), and Al iii (Aguilar et al. 2003b).

Finally, it should be mentioned that the possibility to relate the time-inverse processes of PI and PR via the principle of detailed balance can be exploited for consistency checks between PI and PR measurements (Müller et al. 2002) and to obtain more comprehensive results than from only one experiment alone (Schippers et al. 2002b, 2003a).

### Acknowledgments.

The experimental work summarized in this article was carried out in close collaborations with S. Böhm, C. Brandau, S. Kieslich, W. Shi, and A. Müller (Gießen), D. W. Savin (New York), G. Gwinner, M. Schnell, D. Schwalm, and A. Wolf (Germany), H. Danared, N. Eklöw, and R. Schuch (Stockholm), A. Aguilar, A. M. Covington, E. D. Emmons, M. F. Gharaibeh, and R. A. Phaneuf (Reno).

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# 1 Introduction and Conclusion

## 1 Introduction and Conclusion

There is a strong interest to the symmetry structure of M and related theories. The space-time supersymmetry algebra of M-theory, is ( ):

$`\{\overline{Q},Q\}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu P_\nu +\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mu \nu }Z_{\mu \nu }+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mu \nu \lambda \rho \sigma }Z_{\mu \nu \lambda \rho \sigma },`$ (1)
$`\mu ,\nu ,\mathrm{}`$ $`=`$ $`0,1,2,\mathrm{..10}.`$
where $`Q`$ is Majorana 32-component spinor, $`Z_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`Z_{\mu \nu \lambda \rho \sigma }`$ are membrane and five-brane charges. This algebra is of (super)-Poincaré type, i.e. its bosonic (tensorial Poincaré) subalgebra is a semidirect product of Lorentz and Abelian subalgebras, the latter is a sum of $`P_\mu `$, $`Z_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`Z_{\mu \nu \lambda \rho \sigma }`$. There are evidences, that this algebra can be extended. Already in the first works on extended supergravities at d=4 hidden non-linearly realized symmetries have been found , which later on appeared to be connected (,) with space-time symmetry algebra (1), and these observations particularly lead to suggestions on hidden space-time coordinates and symmetries of M-theory . In some yet unknown phase of M-theory with explicit conformal symmetry the latter is assumed (, earlier references are , ) to be an $`OSp(1|64)`$, ($`OSp(1|32),OSp(1|16),\mathrm{}`$ on lower dimensionalities) supergroup, which includes (1) as sub-superalgebra, just as usual Poincaré group $`SO(1,3)T_4`$ (at d=4) is a subgroup of conformal group SO(2,4). Generalized space-times are suggested  for a new formulations of supergravity/superstring/M-theory, with a particular purpose of making explicit hidden symmetries of these theories. The new formulation of higher spin theories is making use of some of these generalized space-times with $`OSp(1|2n)`$ symmetry , and equivalence to theories in a usual space-time, in the free case is shown. The recently discovered  non-linear realization representation of maximal supergravities - d=11 N=1, d=10 N=2a and 2b - make use of the new space-time algebras, most general of which is the newly introduced  ”very extended” $`E_{11}`$ algebra .

Correspondingly, the irreducible representations (irreps), particularly unitary irreps of these and connected algebras are attracting attention in modern literature.There are specially interesting representations among them, such as singletons of OSp (which appear in many circumstances), or preon representations of super-Poincaré, which correspond to maximally supersymmetric BPS branes ,, and others.

All that is making the investigation of properties of space-time symmetry algebras of type (1) interesting and promising, both for the purpose of clarifying properties of the theory, and for seeking new formalisms for it. In the present paper we will continue investigation ,  of the construction of unitary irreps of algebras (1) by applying Wigner’s method of little groups (induction from the little group) . The main focus of present paper will be the preonic orbits , , i.e. orbits (configurations of branes) with maximum fraction of surviving supersymmetry, some other orbits are considered in previous papers , . We find a complete list, at dimensions 2,3,..11 of little groups for the massless representations, i.e. for those preonic configurations, for which corresponding vector $`p_\mu `$ is massless, and all continuous invariants are also zero. All little groups are of the form of semidirect product of compact group on group of (d-2)-dimensional translations. These results are new for d=5,6 (for symplectic-Majorana spinors),7,8,9. For massive case we find complete answers for dimensionalities 5,8,9. In this case little groups are compact, since they should be a subgroup of those for massive particles, i.e. of SO(d-1). We also show that 11d spinor invariants are actually (12=2+10)d invariant.

There are many possible applications of present results. One is the determination of the brane content of branes , i.e. decomposition of irreps w.r.t. the different subalgebras. Among these algebras can be a tensorial Poincaré with less number of tensorial generators, or a usual Poincaré, so one can consider a spectrum of usual particle representations in a given brane representation. This approach provides  group-theoretic interpretation of the results of .

Another application can be the decomposition of different representation of OSp (which is a ”conformal” group for tensorial Poincaré) w.r.t. the tensorial Poincaré.

Next, one has to reconsider  the spin-statistics theorem, with the purpose of generalization of connection between statistics and spins. Now instead of spin we have a rich set of representations of little groups, particularly those from Tables 1 and 2, and one has to assign Fermi or Bose statistics to each of representations of little groups. Moreover, the preon case resemble strongly the usual two-dimensional situation, when there is no strong difference between fermions and bosons, both correspond to the same representation of Poincaré. Similarly, in the preon representation of super-Poincaré with tensor charges ((1), e.g.) the non-zero supercharge is neutral  w.r.t. the little group, supermultiplet has only two members, both in the same representation of tensorial Poincaré and one can expect the generalized statistics, similar to those in the two-dimensional case.

Last, but not least: one of the most interesting applications (and initial motivation) of construction of unitary irreps for different orbits of tensorial Poincaré is the construction of field theories with corresponding symmetry algebra. For d=2+q dimensional generalization of 1 (connected with the SO(2,10) hypothesis of ) the corresponding field theories are constructed for an orbit, which is a generalization of massless particle orbit and for lowest representations of corresponding little groups . For lowest representations of little groups of preonic orbits at dimensions 4, 6, … the free field theories, on the level of equations of motions, are actually constructed in , with different motivation, coming from higher spin theories in usual space-times. The first step towards interaction in these theories is done for 2+2 dimensional theory in .

In the next Section Wigner’s method is briefly described and applied to the present case. Main results - the little groups for massless case, more precisely, for the zero values of all invariants (if those exist) are combined into Table 1. The additional information on little groups with non-zero invariants is combined into Table 2.

## 2 Little groups of preons

Modern supersymmetry algebras can be represented in a form

$`\{\overline{Q}^{j\beta },Q_{i\alpha }\}`$ $`=`$ $`Z_{i\alpha }^{j\beta }`$ (2)
where supercharges $`Q_{i\alpha }`$ are subject to some constraints - Majorana,Weyl, Symplectic-Majorana etc., r.h.s. matrix $`Z`$ is the most generic matrix, that satisfies the same constraints. We shall consider the minimal algebras, i.e. spinors $`Q_{i\alpha }`$ will be the minimal possible in a given dimension, hence index i of the group of R-invariance either will be absent, or will be that of $`SU(2)`$ doublet, in the case of symplectic spinors. Matrix $`Z`$ can be expanded over gamma-matrices basis and in that form r.h.s of (2) will become a usual combination of momentum $`P_\mu `$ and ”central charges” tensors $`Z_{\mu \nu \mathrm{}}`$. The bosonic subalgebra is a semidirect product of Lorentz and R-symmetry group, from one side, and Abelian group of momentum and central charges tensors, from the other, so for construction of unitary irreps of that algebra Wigner’s method  can be applied. The construction includes the following steps: classification of orbits of action of Lorentz $`\times `$ R group on the numeric tensor $`Z`$, determination of a stabilizer (little group) of some (arbitrarily picked) point on the orbit, choice of any unitary irrep of little group and finally induction on the whole tensorial Poincaré group. The present paper is devoted to the discussion of preonic orbits, i.e. the orbits with rank one Z matrix. Such Z’s have a form $`Z=\lambda \lambda `$, where $`\lambda `$ is a numeric spinor, and stabilizer of Z is that of $`\lambda `$ plus transformations which change the sign of $`\lambda `$, (which is actually the property of full 360 degree rotation of spinor). Also, such configuration of $`Z`$ is providing the maximum number of surviving supersymmetries . So, we come to the problem of determination of orbits of action of Lorentz group on the space of spinors $`\lambda `$, and calculation of corresponding little groups.

The main results on little groups of preonic orbits are combined into Tables 1 and 2. For dimensions $`d=2÷11`$, with one time dimensions, we list the type of minimal spinor in corresponding dimension (i.e. (pseudo)Majorana=(P)M, (pseudo)Symplectic Majorana=PSM, Weyl=W, etc.), I - the number of independent invariants, which can be constructed from corresponding spinor, and the little group for the maximally non-compact case, more exactly, for the zero values of all invariants. The necessary additional information is the embedding of corresponding little group into the group of symmetry, i.e. the product of Lorentz and R-symmetry group (SO(3), if any). These embeddings are described below, as well as explicit expressions for invariants, except d=7 and d=11 cases, where we don’t know the complete minimal set of independent invariants. Nevertheless, in the last case we can claim, on the basis of some additional calculations, that these invariants are actually invariant w.r.t. the d=12=2+10 Lorentz group, which is well-known to be the automorphisms group of d=11 superalgebra. For obtaining all these results we use a combination of few methods: sometimes we calculate an algebra of stabilizer (little group) around an (arbitrary) given spinor, and calculate a dimensionality of orbit at that point by the evident formula dim (orbit)=(dim G) - dim (little group), where G is the product of Lorentz and R-symmetry groups. From this we can find the number of independent invariants, which can be constructed from a given spinor, obviously that is a codimension of an orbit in a spinor space, we denote that $`I`$ in the Tables. In few cases an algebraic and group-theoretic considerations are applied, particularly when considering the dimensional reductions of spinors. We use a ”mostly plus” metric, other notations and definitions of spinors and corresponding matrices are based on

Table 1. Massless preons’ little groups.

$$\begin{array}{cccccccccccccccccccc}d& \begin{array}{c}\mathrm{Spinor}\hfill \\ \mathrm{type}\hfill \end{array}& \begin{array}{c}\mathrm{I}\mathrm{invariants}^{}\hfill \\ \mathrm{number}\hfill \end{array}& \begin{array}{c}\mathrm{Little}\hfill \\ \mathrm{Group}\hfill \end{array}& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 2& \mathrm{MW}& 0& 1& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 3& \mathrm{M}& 0& T_1& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 4& \mathrm{M}& 0& T_2& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 5& \mathrm{PSM}& 1& SO(3)T_3& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 6& \mathrm{SMW}& 0& SO(4)T_4& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 7& \mathrm{SM}& 3& SO(4)T_5& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 8& \mathrm{PM}& 2& SU(3)T_6& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 9& \mathrm{PM}& 1& G_2T_7& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 10& \mathrm{MW}& 0& SO(7)T_8& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 11& \mathrm{M}& 7& SO(7)T_9& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \end{array}$$
(3)
Table 2. Massive preons’ little groups.

$$\begin{array}{cccccccccccccccccccc}d& \begin{array}{c}\mathrm{Spinor}\hfill \\ \mathrm{type}\hfill \end{array}& \begin{array}{c}\mathrm{I}\mathrm{invariants}^{}\hfill \\ \mathrm{number}\hfill \end{array}& \begin{array}{c}\mathrm{Little}\hfill \\ \mathrm{Group}\hfill \end{array}& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 5& \mathrm{PSM}& 1& SO(4)& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 8& \mathrm{PM}& 2& G_2& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \\ 9& \mathrm{PM}& 1& SO(7)& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & \end{array}$$
(4)
In the cases with $`I=0`$ the whole space of spinors (besides zero point) is an orbit of corresponding Lorentz $`\times `$ R-invariance group. Turning to the embeddings of little groups, we first mention that they are not simply the subgroups of direct product of Lorentz and R-symmetry groups (the later is trivial except the SM(W) cases when it is SU(2)), but actually they should be the subgroups of product of R-symmetry group with the little group of particles - $`SO(d2)T_{d2}`$ for massless and $`SO(d1)`$ for massive cases. It is obvious from the fact that in all these dimensions one can define the momenta $`p^\mu `$, corresponding to $`Z=\lambda \lambda `$: $`p_\mu \overline{\lambda }\gamma ^\mu \lambda `$, and since stabilizer of $`Z`$ evidently is stabilizer of $`p_\mu `$, statement follows. Taking into account that Table 1 contains little groups for the massless cases only (all invariants zero, see below), we should describe embeddings of groups in the Table 1 into $`R\times SO(d2)T_{d2}`$, which in turn has a well-known embedding in $`R\times SO(1,d1)`$. Additional remark is that non-compact factors $`T_{d2}`$ in Table 1 always coincide with corresponding factor in $`R\times SO(d2)T_{d2}`$, so we need to describe embeddings of compact factors, only. Precise embedding depends on a point on the orbit, we need to describe embeddings up to equivalence, i.e. up to similarity transformation in the group. The Table 2 contains results for massive cases, which are also described below.

Cases d=3, 4 are evident, the absence of invariants means that the whole space of spinors is one orbit, except the zero point. The answer for the little group can be obtained by direct calculation, for an arbitrary given spinor. The first non-trivial case is d=5, with pseudo-symplectic-Majorana spinors. The massless particle little group is SO(3), the same is R-symmetry, and SO(3) in the Table 1 is just a diagonal subgroup of their direct product. The only independent invariant is $`m=i\lambda _\alpha ^i\lambda _\beta ^jC^{\alpha \beta }ϵ_{ij}`$. Evidently, for any (non-zero) values of this invariant little groups are the same. Existence of this invariant means that the space of non-zero spinors is not a single orbit, as at d=4, but an infinite set of orbits, distinguished by the value of invariant. The above little group corresponds to the zero value of that invariant. One can show, that the mass of momenta $`p^\mu =\lambda _\alpha ^i\lambda _\sigma ^jC^{\alpha \beta }\gamma _\beta ^{\mu \sigma }ϵ_{ij}`$, corresponding to $`Z=\lambda \lambda `$, is exactly $`m`$: $`p_\mu ^2=m^2`$. For an orbit with non-zero $`m`$ the little group for preons is SO(4) (without any noncompact factor) and coincide with little group of massive particle, the only additional detail is that the embedding of this SO(4) into SO(3) of R-symmetry, which is actually a set of two embeddings of two SO(3) factors of SO(4) into SO(3), is non-zero, and depends on a particular point on an orbit.

For d=6 the compact factor of massless little group is $`SO(4)SO_L(3)\times SO_R(3)`$ and $`SO(4)`$ group in the Table 1 is $`SO_L(3)\times (SO_R(3)\times SO(3))_{diag}`$ where last $`SO(3)`$ is the group of R-symmetry.

At d=7 for the zero values of invariants (see discussion below for d=11 case) the (compact part of the) little group is SO(4) which is the same group described above for d=6, embedded in a natural way (e.g. as a 4x4 sub-matrix in a left upper corner of 5x5 matrix, there is no other, non-equivalent representation) into SO(5) group of massless particle at d=7.

At d=8 there are exactly two independent invariants: $`m_1=i\lambda _\alpha ^i\lambda _\beta ^jC^{\alpha \beta }ϵ_{ij}`$ and $`m_2=\lambda _\alpha ^i\lambda _\sigma ^jC^{\alpha \beta }\gamma _\beta ^{9\sigma }ϵ_{ij}`$. The momenta $`p^\mu =\lambda _\alpha ^i\lambda _\sigma ^jC^{\alpha \beta }\gamma _\beta ^{\mu \sigma }ϵ_{ij}`$ square into $`p_\mu ^2=(m_1^2+m_2^2)`$, so for massless case we should have both masses equal to zero. In that case the (compact part of the) little group in Table 1 is $`SU(3)`$, and is a natural subgroup of SU(4), which is isomorphic to the (compact part of the) massless particle little group SO(6). At massive case, i.e. when one or two of masses $`m_1,m_2`$ are non-zero, the little group is $`G_2`$. That can be shown as follows. The little group should be a subgroup of that of massive particle - SO(7). Acting by that group in a spinor representation on the Weyl part of spinor $`\lambda `$, which is an SO(7) spinor, we obtain the stabilizer $`G_2`$, since that is exactly (one of the) definition(s) of $`G_2`$. It is easy to show, that action of SO(7) on the anti-Weyl part of spinor $`\lambda `$ gives the same stabilizer, since Weyl and anti-Weyl parts of $`\lambda `$ are connected by (pseudo)-Majorana condition.

At d=9 situation is similar to d=5: there is one invariant $`m=i\lambda _\alpha \lambda _\beta C^{\alpha \beta }`$, the square of momenta $`p^\mu =\lambda _\alpha \lambda _\sigma C^{\alpha \beta }\gamma _\beta ^{\mu \sigma }`$ is given by $`p_\mu ^2=m^2`$. So the whole space of spinors is a set of orbits, with different $`m`$, and there are two kinds of orbits: the first one is massless, with $`m=0`$, the little group is $`G_2T_7`$ and $`G_2`$ in its fundamental 7-dimensional representation is embedded in SO(7), the compact factor of massless little group. Second one is massive, with little group SO(7), naturally a subgroup of the little group of massive particle, SO(8). It is clear from the triality: the problem of finding the stabilizer of a given d=1+8 PM spinor leads to the problem of finding a stabilizer of spinor under SO(8) (the stabilizer of its momenta $`p_\mu `$), which, in turn, due to the triality property is equivalent to finding a stabilizer of eight-dimensional Euclidean vector under an SO(8) rotations, which evidently is SO(7) subgroup.

At d=10 little group is SO(7) , embedded, in its spinor representation, into a fundamental representation of SO(8) .

Finally, at d=11 we have little group SO(7), embedded, as at d=10, in its spinor representation into SO(8), which, in turn, naturally is a subgroup of d=11 massless SO(9). We cannot present a complete set of independent invariants (although, of course, a lot of them can be easily constructed), but we can state, that all values of those invariants are zero for an orbit of Table 1 (in our representation of gamma-matrixes, that is an orbit of a spinor with unites at first and sixth places, zero otherwise). That follows from the fact that, from one hand, these invariants are some homogeneous polynomials over $`\lambda `$, and, from the other hand, we can find a Lorentz transformation, which simply rescales a given spinor on the orbit, so the non-zero value of these polynomials will be rescaled, which contradicts to their invariance. This argument actually works in other dimensions too. The interesting further remark on this d=11 case is the following. It is well-known, that d=11 algebra (1) can be represented in d=2+10=12 dimensional form, since corresponding Lorentz group SO(2,10) is an automorphisms group of (1). In that form momenta and second rank tensor combine into one d=12 second-rank tensor, and fifth-rank tensor $`Z_{\mu \nu \lambda \rho \sigma }`$ is interpreted as 12d self-dual sixth rank tensor, 11d Majorana supercharges become 12d Majorana-Weyl supercharges, and algebra receives the form:

$`\{\overline{Q},Q\}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mu \nu }P_{\mu \nu }+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mu \nu \lambda \rho \sigma \delta }Z_{\mu \nu \lambda \rho \sigma \delta }^+`$ (5)
$`\mu \nu ,\mathrm{}`$ $`=`$ $`0^{},0,1,\mathrm{}10`$
One can study orbits of the same spinor under the extended group SO(2,10). The remarkable fact is that the orbit has the same dimensionality, 25, as under the action of SO(1,10) group, so coincide with 11d orbit. That follows from the fact, that although corresponding little group has more complicated structure, but its dimensionality is 41, so dimensionality of orbit is dimensionality of Lorentz group (66) minus dimensionality of little group (41), i.e. 25. So, assuming this coincidence for any spinor, we conclude that the number of independent invariants is the same, 7, they are SO(2,10) invariant, and can also serve as SO(1,10) invariants, so they are exactly an 11d invariants, so we prove that 11d Majorana spinors invariants can be chosen in 12d invariant form. In other words, 7 invariants of 11d case of Table 1 can be written in a 12d invariant form, which is non-trivial statement and provide some support for ideas of 12d invariance of M-theory.

## 3 Acknowledgements

This work is supported partially by INTAS grant #99-1-590. We are indebted to R.Manvelyan for discussions. R.M. is indebted to D.Sorokin for discussion and to A.Sagnotti for discussions and for hospitality at ”Tor Vergata” University.


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# First principles simulations of direct coexistence of solid and liquid aluminium

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## Abstract

First principles calculations based on density functional theory, with generalised gradient corrections and ultrasoft pseudopotentials, have been used to simulate solid and liquid aluminium in direct coexistence at zero pressure. Simulations have been carried out on systems containing up to 1000 atoms for 15 ps. The points on the melting curve extracted from these simulations are in very good agreement with previous calculations, which employed the same electronic structure method but used an approach based on the explicit calculation of free energies .

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The calculation of melting properties of materials using computer simulations has a long history. Two main approaches have traditionally been used. The first is based on the direct simulation of solid and liquid in coexistence . The second on the calculation of the free energy of solid and liquid , with the melting point $`(p,T)`$ determined by the condition of equality of the Gibbs free energies of liquid and solid, $`G_{\mathrm{liq}}(p,T)=G_{\mathrm{sol}}(p,T)`$. The two approaches must clearly give the same answer once all the sources of errors have been brought under control. These works were originally carried out using classical model potentials, with parameters usually adjusted to reproduce some known experimental properties of the material, or fitted to ab-initio calculations. The advantage of using these classical potentials is that they are relatively simple, so that computer simulations could easily be carried out on large systems and for long time. The main disadvantage, however, is that the transferability of these potentials is not always guaranteed, so that the accuracy of the predictions is sometimes questionable. In 1995 Sugino and Car  showed that it was actually possible to use density functional theory (DFT)  techniques to calculate the melting temperature of materials truly from first principles, i.e without relying on any adjustable parameters. They chose the melting of silicon as a test case, and using the local density approximation (LDA) they calculated the Gibbs free energy of solid and liquid using thermodynamic integration. This is a well known statistical mechanics technique to compute free energy differences between two systems . The idea is to use a simple system for which the free energy is known as a reference system, and then compute the free energy difference between the ab-initio and the reference system, which is equal to the reversible work done in adiabatically switching the potential energy from one system to the other. An attractive feature of this method is that the final result is totally independent on the choice of the reference system. In practice, however, this method can only work if one is able to find a reference system which is as close as possible to the ab initio  system, so that the computational effort needed to calculate the free energy difference between the two systems is reduced to the minimum. Using this method, Sugino and Car found a zero pressure melting temperature about 20% lower than the experimental datum. This may seem not particularly good, but it has to be remembered that no adjustable parameters were inputed in the calculations, nor any experimental data other than the Plank’s constant and the mass and charge of the electron. Recently, we have argued  that this non-perfect agreement between LDA results and experiments is probably due to non-cancelling LDA errors between the solid and liquid. The reason is that the two phases have very different properties: the liquid is six-fold coordinated and the solid four-fold coordinated, the liquid is a metal and the solid an insulator, so it is not surprising that the LDA errors in the two phases may be different. We have repeated the LDA calculations of Sugino and Car using similar techniques and found the same melting temperature. However, we have also shown that if the generalised gradient corrections (GGA) are used, then the melting temperature of silicon comes out in much closer agreement with the experiments .

Since the work of Sugino and Car  a number of first principles based calculations of melting points and melting curves have followed. In some cases the free energy approach has been used , while other methods relied on fitting a model potential to first principles simulations and calculating melting properties with the model potential . The advantage of the free energy approach is that it is unbiased, provided all sources of technical errors are brought under control. A disadvantage of the method is that it is intrinsically complex. On the other hand, the coexistence approach is relatively simple to apply, but has the main disadvantage of relying on good quality fitting and, more importantly, transferability of the model for at least a simultaneous good description of solid and liquid. Recently, we have shown that provided that the model potential is reasonably close to the ab-initio system , it is possible to correct for the (small) differences between the model and the full ab-initio system using a perturbational approach to thermodynamic integration, and that once the corrections are applied the results coincide with those obtained using the free energy approach .

The coexistence approach has been used extensively in the past to calculate the melting properties of various materials. In the constant volume constant internal energy ($`NVE`$ ensemble) approach to the method it has been shown that liquid and solid can coexist for long time, provided $`V`$ and $`E`$ are appropriately chosen . The average value of the pressure $`p`$ and temperature $`T`$ over the coexisting period then give a point on the melting curve. Size effects have also been studied quite extensively, and it was shown that correct results can be obtained in systems containing more than 500 atoms .

Here I have exploited recent advances in computer power and algorithms developments to use direct DFT calculations for simulating solid and liquid aluminium in coexistence near zero pressure. This work combines the simplicity of the coexistence approach with the accuracy provided by DFT, and in some respect represents a shift of paradigm, whereby the main effort is transferred from the human to the computer. The temperature at which solid and liquid coexist are found to be in good agreement with our previous results obtained with the free energy approach , so that these results also provide additional evidence that our techniques to calculate free energies are sound.

The calculations have been performed with the VASP code , with the implementation of an efficient extrapolation of the charge density , ultrasoft pseudopotentials  with a plane wave cutoff of 130 eV, and generalised gradient corrections. The simulations have been performed in the $`NVE`$ ensemble on systems containing 1000 atoms ($`5\times 5\times 10`$ cubic supercell), with a time step of 3 fs and a convergency threshold on the total energy of $`2\times 10^7`$ eV/atom. With these prescriptions the drift in the microcanonical total energy was less than $`0.3`$ K/ps. The total length of the simulations were typically 15 ps. The volume per atom was chosen to be $`V=18.5`$ Å3, which is close to the average of the volumes of solid and liquid at the zero pressure melting point calculated in our previous work . Electronic excitations have been included within the framework of finite temperature DFT. The simulations have been performed using the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ point only, and spot checked with Monkhorst-Pack  ($`2\times 2\times 1`$) and ($`4\times 4\times 2`$) $`𝐤`$-point grids. Calculations with the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ point predict a small non-hydrostatic stress tensor with a difference of about $`p_z(p_x+p_y)/2=2`$ kB between the components of the stress parallel to the solid-liquid interface, $`p_x`$ and $`p_y`$, and that perpendicular to the interface, $`p_z`$. The pressure $`p=(p_x+p_y+p_z)/3`$ is essentially exact and the three off-diagonal components of the stress tensor fluctuate around zero average, so that there is no shear stress on the cell. With $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ the total energy is wrong by $`5`$ meV/atom, and it is likely that the error is almost equally shared by the liquid and the solid parts, so that the resulting error on the melting temperature is most probably negligible . A correction term of 2.7 kB due to the lack of convergency with respect to the plane wave cutoff has been added to the calculated pressures. The systems have been monitored by inspecting the average number density in slices of the cell taken parallel to the boundary between solid and liquid. In the solid region this number is a periodic function of the slice number, and in the liquid part it fluctuates randomly around its average value.

The zero pressure crystal structure of aluminium is face-centred-cube (fcc), so I have assumed that melting occurs from this structure. To prepare the system I have used the inverse power classical potential employed in Ref. . This model has been tuned to the same ab-initio system used here, so it is a good starting point for the present calculations. The preparation procedure follows Ref. . A perfect crystal is initially thermalized at 800 K, then the simulation is stopped, half of the atoms are clamped and the other half are freely evolved at very high temperature until melting occurs, then the liquid is thermalized back at 800 K . At this point the system is being freely evolved in the $`NVE`$ ensemble using DFT.

As explained in Ref. , for each chosen volume there is a whole range of internal energies for which different amount of solid and liquid are in coexistence. Provided that the energy is not too low (high) so that that the whole system freezes (melts), a whole piece of melting curve can be obtained for any fixed volume. In this work I have performed 3 simulations with 1000 atoms, all at the same volume but with different amounts of total energy, which therefore provide three distinct points on the melting curve. In all simulations coexistence was obtained for the whole length of the runs. In Fig. 1 I display the density profile, calculated by dividing the simulations cell into 100 slices parallel to the solid-liquid interface, corresponding to the last configuration of one of these simulations. Fig. 2 contains the calculated temperature (upper panel) and pressure (lower panel) for this particular simulation, and shows that they oscillate stably around their average values $`T820`$ K and $`p5.5`$ kB . In order to test the reliability of the lengths of these simulations I have performed additional runs on system containing 512 atoms ($`4\times 4\times 10`$ cubic supercell), which could be simulated for up to 40 ps. Temperature and pressure from one of these runs are displayed in Fig. 3. It is clear that all the information needed to extract useful values for $`p`$ and $`T`$ is contained in any time window of $`510`$ ps, which provides confidence that the simulations for the large systems are long enough. A more detailed inspection of the figures reveals the presence of anti-correlated oscillations in pressure and temperature, which correspond to fluctuations in the total amount of solid and liquid in the system. These fluctuations seem absent in the simulations with 1000 atoms, but they would probably develop if the runs could be extended. In any case, they do not affect the average value of $`p`$ and $`T`$.

It has been pointed out that non-hydrostaic conditions artificially raise the free energy of the solid, and therefore lower the melting temperature . To investigate the effect on the melting temperature due to the present non-hydrostatic conditions I have used the model potential used in Ref. . The model showed a difference $`p_z(p_x+p_y)/2=0.5`$ kB when simulated with the same cell as the ab-initio system with 1000 atoms. To estimate the systematic error on the melting temperature I have performed an additional simulation using a slightly elongated cell at the same volume, so that non-hydrostaticity was reduced to less than 0.1 kB. The decrease of melting temperature in this second simulation was less than 10 K. A similar effect is expected for the ab-initio system, so that I estimate a systematic error due to non-hydrostatic conditions to be at worse of the order of 20 K.

In Fig. 4 I report the values of $`p`$ and $`T`$ calculated here in comparison with the low end of the melting curve calculated in Ref.  The agreement between the present finding with 1000 atoms and the free energy approach results is extremely good. The results obtained from the simulations with 512 atoms display melting temperatures higher by about 50 K, although they are still compatible with the results obtained with the free energy approach within the combined error bars. In order to test if the cause of this size effect was due to inadequate k-point sampling, I have performed a simulation using a $`(2\times 2\times 1)`$ k-point grid on a system with 512 atoms for $`6`$ ps. The length of this simulation is too short to draw definite conclusions, but it indicates that the pressure may be underestimated by $`12`$ kB and the temperature over-predicted by $`20`$ K. This would bring the results in somewhat better agreement with those obtained with the larger system, and also with the calculations based on the free energy approach (which were fully converged with respect to size and k-point sampling) . Notice that these results do not agree perfectly with the experimental zero pressure melting temperature of aluminium (933 K) . We have argued in our previous work  that this disagreement is due to inadequacy of the GGA to predict the vibrational properties of the solid. We have also suggested that this inaccuracy can be rationalised in terms of the errors in the equation of state, and devised a simple way to correct for it. In Table 1 I report the calculated GGA lattice constant, the bulk modulus and the cohesive energy compared with the experimental data. Following Gaudoin et al. , I also report the experimental values adjusted for the absence of zero point motion effects, which is missing in the present calculated values. It is evident that the GGA predicts a zero pressure lattice constant for Al which is too large, or, which means that at the correct lattice constant GGA predicts a positive pressure of about 16 kB. It follows that the GGA zero pressure melting point is actually the melting point at a negative pressure of about -16 kB, which is about 120-130 K lower.

In summary, I have shown here that it has become possible to directly simulate solid and liquid in coexistence using density functional theory techniques. This method combines the advantages of being relative easy to use and provide DFT accuracy. It is inevitably computationally very intensive, and these calculations have only been possible thanks to an access onto the 3.5 Teraflop/s machine (IBM p690 Regatta with 1280 processors). The cost of each molecular dynamics step for the 1000 atoms system was between 3 and 4 minutes on 128 processors of the machine. However, as large computer resources become routinely available this method should find widespread applicability in the future. The present results are in very good agreement with our previous findings based on the direct calculations of free energies, and therefore also support the reliability of those techniques.

This work has been supported by the Royal Society and by the Leverhulme Trust. The author wishes to acknowledge the computational facilities of the UCL HiPerSPACE Centre (JREI grant JR98UCGI), and the early access to the HPCx computer facilities in Daresbury, granted by NERC through support of the Mineral Physics Consortium. The author is grateful to C. Wright for computational technical support and to M. J. Gillan and G. D. Price for discussions. The author also wishes to thank M. Pozzo for useful suggestions on the manuscript.


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# The Globular Cluster System of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 7814

## 1 Introduction

Globular clusters (GCs) — with their old ages, extended spatial distributions and uniform chemical compositions — are powerful tools with which to study the formation of galaxies. Since the late 1980s, the study of GC systems of external galaxies has developed into a full-fledged subfield of astronomy (see Ashman & Zepf 1998, Harris 2001), with most of the emphasis placed on using GCs to piece together the dynamical and chemical enrichment history of giant galaxies. Much of the observational effort has focused on the GC systems of elliptical galaxies, including detailed investigations of their inner regions with the Hubble Space Telescope (e.g., Kundu & Whitmore 2001, Larsen et al. 2001) and some new wide-field studies using mosaic CCD detectors on ground-based telescopes (Rhode & Zepf, 2001; Dirsch et al., 2003). But studies of the GC systems of spirals beyond the Local Group have lagged considerably behind those of ellipticals. A few HST studies of spirals have been done (Kissler-Patig et al. 1999, Goudfrooij et al. 2003), but their limited spatial extent prevents them from addressing the global properties of the galaxies’ GC systems. Most previous ground-based studies were carried out many years ago using either small-format CCDs or photographic plates.

As a result, fundamental issues remain about the comparison between the GC systems of spirals and ellipticals, due in large part to the fact that our knowledge of spiral galaxy GC systems depends almost solely on the Milky Way and M31. For example, although there is reasonable evidence that elliptical galaxies in general have more GCs per unit mass than spirals, how large this difference is and how it depends on properties like morphological type and environment of the host galaxy are uncertain (see, e.g., Ashman & Zepf 1998, Kissler-Patig, Forbes, & Minniti 1998). The question of why ellipticals have more GCs per unit mass or luminosity than spirals has motivated much of the work in this field, but further progress depends on establishing the detailed properties of the GC systems of both ellipticals and spirals.

In an attempt to remedy some of the weaknesses in the census of spiral GC systems, we are carrying out a wide-field survey of the GCs around a good-sized sample of spirals beyond the Local Group. Our overall objectives are to expand the database of well-studied spirals and to use the information we gather to gain insight into how galaxies form. One specific aim is to test the predictions of formation scenarios for ellipticals. For example, prompted in part by evidence that elliptical GC systems are more populous and have higher mean metallicity than those of spirals, Ashman & Zepf (1992; hereafter AZ92) suggested that ellipticals form via mergers of two or more disk galaxies and that GCs are formed in these mergers. One of the predictions of AZ92 is that if Es form in galaxy mergers, they should have GC systems with bimodal color distributions; this was later confirmed by observations (e.g., Zepf & Ashman 1993, Gebhardt & Kissler-Patig 1999, Kundu & Whitmore 2001, Larsen et al. 2001). Another consequence of the AZ92 model is that the mass-normalized number of blue, metal-poor GCs in spiral galaxies should be the same as in ellipticals. This is because the blue, metal-poor GC population comes directly from the progenitor disk galaxies and the red, metal-rich GCs are formed in the merger. More broadly, any difference in the number of metal-poor GCs as a function of galaxy type or environment would provide important clues to differences in the physical conditions in galaxies at early stages of their formation. These ideas can only be tested by establishing what these numbers are for a sample of spirals of different types.

Accordingly, we have obtained imaging data in three broadband filters for nine spiral galaxies, ranging in morphological type from Sab to Sc. All the targets are close to edge-on (with inclinations $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{_<}{^{}}`$80 degrees) so that the GCs can be more easily detected, and all have distances of 20 Mpc or less. Most have data available in the HST archive, which we use to help characterize background galaxy contamination in the GC samples. As part of the same survey, we have also observed a sample of early-type galaxies out to large galactocentric radii in order to better constrain their GC system properties. A brief description of the overall study (ellipticals and spirals) is given in Rhode & Zepf (2001; Paper I).

We chose to begin our investigation of spirals with the Sab spiral NGC 7814. This galaxy was studied by Bothun, Harris, & Hesser (1992; hereafter B92), who detected $``$120 GC candidates and estimated that the total number around the galaxy is $``$500$``$1000. B92 calculated a final specific frequency ($`S_N`$, the total number of GCs per unit luminosity of the host galaxy in units of $`M_V`$ $`=`$ 15) between 5.2$`\pm `$2.2 and 7.6$`\pm `$3.2, depending on the assumed distance to NGC 7814. These are very large numbers compared to the Milky Way and M31, which have $`S_N`$ $``$ 0.5$``$0.7 and 0.9$``$1.3, respectively (Ashman & Zepf, 1998; Barmby, 2003), and make NGC 7814 an obvious candidate for further study.

Here we present our findings for the GC system of NGC 7814. The next section describes our observations and initial data reduction steps. Section 3 describes the analysis of both the ground-based and HST data, and Section 4 gives the results. The paper ends with a discussion and summary of our results and their implications for spiral galaxy GC systems and galaxy formation models.

## 2 Observations and Initial Reductions

Images of NGC 7814 were obtained in 1998 December and 1999 October with the 3.5 m WIYN telescope111The WIYN Observatory is a joint facility of the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Yale University, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. at Kitt Peak National Observatory. The detector used was a 2048x2048 CCD (S2KB), which has 0.196′′-pixels and a field-of-view 6.7 on a side when mounted on WIYN. To observe as much of the galaxy halo and GC system as possible, we positioned the center of NGC 7814 in one corner of the CCD, which gives us radial coverage to $``$9, or $``$35 kpc. To help separate bona fide GCs from contaminating objects (foreground stars and background galaxies), images were obtained in three broadband filters (BVR). Multiple exposures were taken in each filter and the telescope was dithered between exposures to facilitate cosmic ray removal. Total integration times were 7200 s (four exposures) in $`B`$, 5400 s (three exposures) in $`V`$ and 5400 s (three exposures) in $`R`$. One $`B`$-band, one $`V`$-band, and the three $`R`$-band frames were taken under photometric conditions, and the rest of the images were taken on mostly clear, but not photometric, nights. Standard star fields (Landolt 1992) were observed during one night in 1999 October for use in the photometric calibration. The errors on the zero-point constants ranged from 0.003 to 0.005 magnitudes, indicating that the night was indeed photometric.

Preliminary reductions (overscan and bias level subtraction, flat-field division) of the WIYN images were accomplished using standard IRAF222IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which are operated by AURA, under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. tasks. Sky subtraction was performed on the individual images taken in each filter before they were scaled to a common flux level and combined. The background level was restored to the combined images and they were aligned and flipped to a north-up, east-left orientation. The resolution (point-spread function FWHM) of the combined images is 1.0′′ in B, 1.0′′ in V, and 1.3′′ in R.

In addition to the WIYN data, we also made use of data from the HST archive333Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute. STScI is operated by AURA, under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. for this study. Two Wide-Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) data sets were available in the archive. Images from program GO.8597 (PI: Regan) were positioned with the center of the galaxy on the PC chip, and images from program GO.6685 (PI: Huizinga) were positioned away from the galaxy center, to include more of the halo. The former, which we will call the galaxy pointing, consisted of two exposures in the F606W filter of length 160 s and 400 s. The latter data set, hereafter referred to as the halo pointing, consisted of two 400 s frames in F450W, one 600 s frame in F555W, and one 600 s frame in F814W. “On-the-fly” calibration was applied to the data sets when we requested them from the archive. Multiple images of a given pointing taken in the same filter were combined using the STSDAS task CRREJ. The HST data were used to help quantify the contamination level of the WIYN data, as well as to find GCs in regions close to the galaxy disk; further analysis of the HST images is described in Sections 3.6 and 3.8.

## 3 Data Analysis

The techniques we use to detect, select, and analyze GC candidates around our target galaxies are explained in detail in Paper I. Here we describe the basic analysis steps for NGC 7814; the reader should consult Paper I for additional information.

### 3.1 Source Detection

To remove the diffuse galaxy light and detect discrete sources around NGC 7814, the WIYN images were first smoothed with a circular median filter with a diameter 7 times the mean FWHM of point sources in the image. The smoothed image was subtracted from the original and a constant sky level was added to restore the background. The IRAF task DAOFIND was used to detect sources above a given signal-to-noise threshold in the galaxy-subtracted image. A total of 398 objects were detected that appear in all three filters.

### 3.2 Extended Source Cut

An extended source cut was applied to the WIYN source list in order to remove as many background galaxies as possible from the GC candidate list. The quality of the $`B`$ and $`V`$-band images was significantly better than that of the $`R`$ image, so the latter was not used for this step. The FWHM values of the 398 detected sources were measured in the $`B`$ and $`V`$ images and plotted versus their instrumental magnitudes. Figure 1 shows FWHM versus instrumental magnitude for the 398 objects in the $`B`$ and V images, with filled circles indicating objects that met our selection criteria for point sources and open circles marking objects that were deemed extended and thus eliminated. As with NGC 4472 (Paper I), the HST images were used to fine-tune the extended source cut at the faint end. We eliminated 228 objects that were extended in either the $`B`$ or $`V`$ frames, leaving 170 apparent point sources in the WIYN images. This is a relatively large proportion of extended objects (60%); only 20% of the sources were extended in the NGC 4472 study. Indeed, upon examination this excess of extended objects is immediately apparent in the WIYN images: there are a large number of faint background galaxies across the entire frame, forming what looks like a cluster or group of galaxies behind NGC 7814.

### 3.3 Photometry

Sixteen standard stars from four Landolt fields observed during the photometric night in 1999 October were used to derive photometric calibration coefficients (zero points and color terms). Photometry in an aperture of radius equal to the mean FWHM of the image was carried out in $`B`$, $`V`$, and $`R`$ on the 170 objects that passed the extended source cut. Calibrated total magnitudes were then calculated using aperture corrections and the photometric coefficients. The aperture corrections, which were derived in the same manner as for Paper I, are listed in Table 1. A galactic extinction correction, taken from the reddening maps of Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998), was applied to the final magnitudes; the corrections in the direction of NGC 7814 are $`A_B`$ $`=`$ 0.194, $`A_V`$ $`=`$ 0.149, and $`A_R`$ $`=`$ 0.120.

### 3.4 Color Selection

The final step in the GC candidate selection is to choose the subset of point sources with magnitudes and colors expected for GCs. We assumed that the brightest GC would have $`M_V`$ $`=`$ $``$11, based on the GCLF of the Milky Way and other galaxies (Ashman & Zepf, 1998). The distance to NGC 7814 has recently been determined via the surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) technique by Tonry et al. (2001), who find $`mM`$ $`=`$ 30.60$`\pm `$0.14. We adopt this distance for the rest of our calculations, unless noted otherwise. This yields an expected magnitude of $`V`$ $`=`$ 19.6 for the brightest GC around NGC 7814.

To select GC candidates by color, we used the McMaster catalog of Galactic GCs (Harris, 1996) to derive a linear relationship between $`BV`$ and $`VR`$ color for GCs. We then chose a range of $`BV`$ color for the selected GC candidates. The chosen range is 0.56 to 0.99, which corresponds to \[Fe/H\] between $``$2.5 and 0.0 for Galactic GCs. Our selection algorithm is as follows: objects with $`V`$ fainter than 19.6 and photometric errors in all three filters of less than 0.15 mag were retained. Then, taking into account their individual photometric errors, objects with $`BV`$ and $`VR`$ that put them within 2.5-sigma of the derived relation for Galactic GCs were accepted as GC candidates. This yielded a list of 42 sources.

Figure 2 shows the results of the color selection. All 170 point sources in the WIYN image are plotted in the BVR color-color plane, with rejected objects as open squares and GC candidates as filled circles. For illustrative purposes, the locations of galaxies of various types are shown as “tracks” the galaxies would follow in the BVR plane with increasing redshift. Paper I describes how the tracks were produced. GCs coincide in the BVR plane with late-type, low- to moderate-redshift galaxies, some of which will have been eliminated from the GC sample by the extended source cut. Three-color photometry enables us to eliminate significant numbers of contaminating objects from the GC candidate list, but some contamination still remains. Section 3.6 describes how we quantify the contamination level.

### 3.5 Completeness Testing

A series of completeness tests was carried out to establish the point source detection limit in the WIYN images. Fifty artificial point sources with magnitudes within 0.1 magnitude of a given brightness were added to each image, the same detection steps used on the original image were performed, and the fraction of artificial sources detected was recorded. Fifty to sixty such tests were executed on each image so that the completeness was calculated over a range of 5 to 6 magnitudes per filter. The data are 50% complete at $`B`$ $`=`$ 25.3, $`V`$ $`=`$ 24.8, and $`R`$ $`=`$ 23.9.

### 3.6 Quantifying and Correcting for Contamination

#### 3.6.1 Galaxies

HST resolves many faint background objects that can appear as point sources in ground-based images, so to estimate the galaxy contamination in the selected GC sample, we analyzed the archival HST data described in Section 2. Sixteen of the 42 WIYN GC candidates were located in at least one of the two HST pointings. We followed the method of Kundu et al. (1999) to determine which of these were true point sources. Photometry was performed with aperture radii of 0.5 pixels and 3 pixels and a sky annulus from 5 to 8 pixels. Objects in the PC chip with counts3pix/counts0.5pix $`<`$ 13 and those in the WF chips with counts3pix/counts0.5pix $`<`$ 10 were point sources and thus real GC candidates. Using these criteria (and confirming the results with visual inspection), we found that two of the 16 objects were actually galaxies.

To calculate the surface density of background galaxies in the GC sample, we first scaled the HST images to the same pixel scale as the WIYN images, aligned them to the WIYN pointing, and computed the total area covered by HST. The HST frames covered 4.41 square arc minutes around NGC 7814, yielding a density of 0.45 galaxies per square arc minute.

#### 3.6.2 Stars

We used the latest version of the Galactic structure code from Mendez and van Altena (1996) and Mendez et al. (2000) to estimate the amount of stellar contamination in the GC sample. The model allows the user to choose such parameters as the contribution to star counts from the Galaxy disk, thick disk, and halo, and the galactocentric distance and z-height of the Sun. Output includes the surface density of stars expected within a given magnitude and color range in a given direction on the sky. A selection in two colors was not easily implemented so we used only a $`BV`$ cut. The model predicts that in the direction of NGC 7814, the number density of stars with $`V`$ magnitude and $`BV`$ color in the range of our GC candidates is 0.11 stars per square arc minute. We varied the Galaxy parameters and the Sun’s location and found that the answer was the same each time. Applying both a $`BV`$ and $`VR`$ cut to our source list reduces the stellar contamination even more than selecting in just one color, so this is likely to be an overestimate of the stellar contamination.

#### 3.6.3 Radially-Dependent Contamination Correction

The fraction of contaminating objects in the GC sample increases with radial distance as the GC surface density falls off. To determine exactly how the contamination fraction varies radially, the 42 GC candidates in the WIYN sample were assigned to annuli of width 1, starting at the galaxy center and continuing to 7. The number of non-GCs expected in each annulus was calculated by multiplying the number density of contaminating objects (0.56 per square arc minute) by the effective area of the annulus (the portion where GCs could be detected; see Section 4.1). Finally, the contamination fraction in each annulus was calculated by dividing the number of contaminating objects by the number of GC candidates.

### 3.7 Determining the GCLF Coverage

An observed luminosity function (LF) was created by assigning the $`V`$ magnitudes of the 42 WIYN GC candidates to 0.3-mag-wide bins. The radially-dependent contamination correction was applied to the LF data. The total completeness in each LF bin was calculated using the method described in Paper I (i.e., the completenesses in all three filters are convolved to come up with a total value), and the number of GCs in each bin was divided by the total completeness to produce a corrected LF.

The sample of 42 GC candidates is too small for use in determining NGC 7814’s intrinsic GCLF. Instead we assumed the GCLF was a Gaussian with a given peak magnitude and dispersion and fitted this to the data, varying only the normalization of the function. Based on the GCLF of the Milky Way, we used a peak magnitude of $`M_V`$ $`=`$ $``$7.33 (e.g., Ashman & Zepf 1998), which translates to $`V`$ $`=`$ 23.27 at the distance of NGC 7814. We fitted Gaussians with dispersions of 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 magnitudes to the observed data. The fractional coverage fitting to the three Gaussians ranged from 0.41 to 0.46, with a mean value of 0.43$`\pm `$0.02.

Because there were so few GC candidates and we were fitting the LF data in the form of a histogram, we investigated the effect of the bin size on the fitting results. Changing the bin size can change the calculated fractional coverage by up to 4 percent. In Section 4.2 we quantify the effect of this and other uncertainties on the final numbers for NGC 7814’s GC system.

### 3.8 HST Sources in the Galaxy Disk and Inner Halo

The HST halo pointing was observed in three filters and was therefore useful for detecting GCs independently from the ground-based data. This provides a check on the WIYN results and gives radial coverage into the galaxy disk, where better resolution is especially useful for finding GCs. The halo pointing covers part of the disk and extends $``$2$``$3 into the halo.

GC candidates were located in the F555W and F814W images of the halo pointing using the method described in Kundu et al. (1999). DAOFIND was used to detect sources above a modest threshold (3 counts above the background). Aperture photometry was then performed on each detected source and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was computed using the counts in the aperture and the RMS scatter of the background. A total of 169 point-like objects were selected that had SNR $`>`$ 2.5 in both images. Aperture photometry at the locations of the 169 sources was performed in all three filters using radii of 3 pixels for the PC chip and 2 for the WF chips and background annuli from 5 to 8 pixels. Zero-points and aperture corrections for GCs at the distance of NGC 7814 were adopted from Kundu & Whitmore (2001) to calculate $`B`$, $`V`$, and $`I`$ magnitudes for each object.

To construct a sample of GC candidates, sources with $`V`$ magnitudes between 19.6 and 23.8 were selected. The faint magnitude cut was applied so the HST source list would be of similar depth to the WIYN list. It also eliminates the need for contamination corrections to the HST sample, since for magnitudes brighter than $`V`$ $``$ 24 the contamination level from background galaxies that would be unresolved in the HST images is negligible (Kundu et al., 1999). As before, we chose an acceptable $`BV`$ range of 0.56 to 0.99 for GCs. Then we selected objects having $`BV`$ and $`VI`$ colors and photometric errors that put them within 3-sigma of the $`BVI`$ color-color relation for Milky Way GCs. The slightly relaxed color criterion (3-sigma vs. 2.5 for the WIYN color selection) allowed for any differences between the HST and $`BVI`$ filters. We also visually inspected each source; several that turned out to be diffuse knots of emission in the galaxy disk were eliminated. The final list of HST GC candidates includes 23 objects. Eleven of the objects also appeared in the WIYN list and the rest were not detected by WIYN, e.g., because they were in a masked region near the galaxy disk or were below the WIYN detection threshold. A color-magnitude diagram showing the $`V`$ magnitudes and $`BV`$ colors of all the GC candidates is shown in Figure 3.

Simulations following the method described in Kundu & Whitmore (2001) were run to establish the completeness level of the HST images. Briefly, a total of 70,000 artificial point sources with GC-like colors and a range of magnitudes were added to the $`V`$ and $`I`$ images and the detection steps described above were executed. The 50% completeness limits are $`V`$ $`=`$ 25.1 and $`I`$ $`=`$ 24.1.

The GCLF fitting and fractional coverage calculation were executed in the same way as for the WIYN sample. The resultant GCLF coverage ranged from 0.48 to 0.53, with a mean value of 0.51$`\pm `$0.03.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Radial Distribution

To construct a radial distribution of GCs, the WIYN GC candidates were binned into annuli 1 wide, from the center of the galaxy out to 7. Portions of the WIYN images where GCs could not be reliably detected — namely, near the galaxy disk where the noise level is high and around bright stars where the CCD pixels are saturated — were masked out. An effective area was calculated for each annulus, which is equal to the area of the annulus minus the masked regions and the portion extending beyond the edges of the image.

The HST images used to detect GCs covered a smaller area around the galaxy than the WIYN frames, so to make full use of the data we binned the GCs into narrower annular regions. The 23 HST GC candidates were assigned to 0.5-wide annuli from 0 to 2. A small portion of the images, coinciding with a dust lane in the galaxy disk, was masked out. Effective areas were calculated in the same way as for the WIYN data.

To correct the WIYN data for contamination, the number density of contaminating stars and galaxies was subtracted from the number of GC candidates in each annulus. The contamination level in the HST sample was assumed to be insignificant, so no correction was applied. The number of GCs in each bin was then divided by the fractional GCLF coverage (0.43 for the WIYN data and 0.51 for the HST points). Finally, the radial profile was constructed by calculating a surface density of GCs for each annulus. The error on the surface density takes into account Poisson errors on the number of GCs and contaminating objects.

Because in some cases significant portions of the annuli were masked out or not observed (e.g., close to the galaxy disk and places where the annuli extend off the images), we calculated the mean distance of the unmasked pixels in each annulus and used that value to construct the profile. The profile is shown in Figure 4 and tabulated in Table 2. In the figure, filled circles are the WIYN points and open triangles are from HST. The top plot shows GC surface density versus radial distance in arc minutes and the bottom plot is the log of the surface density versus radius to the 1/4 power. The best-fit deVaucouleurs law is shown as a dashed line in the bottom plot and has the form log $`\sigma _{GC}`$ $`=`$ (2.86$`\pm `$0.46) $``$ (1.81$`\pm `$0.44) $`r^{1/4}`$, where $`\sigma _{GC}`$ is the surface density of GCs in number per sqare arc minute and $`r`$ is the projected radius. We also fitted a power law to the data; the best-fit line has the form log $`\sigma _{GC}`$ $`=`$ (1.03$`\pm `$0.06) $``$ (0.98$`\pm `$0.25) log $`r`$. Both the deVaucouleurs law and power law fit the data fairly well inside 3, intersecting (or nearly intersecting) the data points plus error bars. Beyond 3, the deVaucouleurs law is a better match to the data; in this region, the points and error bars fall systematically below both of the fitted lines, but the discrepancy is not as large for the deVaucouleurs law.

For the 3$``$4 annulus and beyond, the GC surface density is consistent with zero within the errors. This result illustrates the importance of obtaining wide-field data when studying GC systems. The low values for the GC surface density at radii of 3 and beyond are critically important for constraining the total number of GCs around NGC 7814, since the inner points can be fit by many profiles that have quite different outer profiles and therefore total number. The observation of very low or zero GC surface density in the outer annuli strongly suggests that we have observed the entire radial extent of this galaxy’s GC system. For the SBF distance modulus, 3 equals 11.5 kpc. For comparison, we note that if we projected the Milky Way’s GC system onto the $`Y`$-$`Z`$ plane (where $`Y`$ is the Galactocentric coordinate in the direction of Galactic rotation and $`Z`$ is the height above or below the plane) and calculated a radial distance for each GC, 82% of them would have radial distances of 11.5 kpc or less (Harris 1996).

### 4.2 Total Number and Specific Frequency

The information contained in the corrected GC radial profile can be used to calculate the total number of GCs around NGC 7814. Since we have combined HST data with wider-field WIYN data, we can directly determine the total number of GCs without the extrapolation from smaller radius that would have been necessary had we used HST data alone. There are two ways to compute the total number: one is to integrate the best-fit deVaucouleurs profile from $`r`$ $`=`$ 0 to an outer radius, and the other is to sum the actual data points, i.e., by multiplying the surface density at each point in the profile by the area of the associated annulus and summing over all radii. Both methods produce a total number of GCs for the galaxy, corrected for magnitude incompleteness, missing spatial coverage, and contamination from non-GCs. The best-fit deVaucouleurs law provides a good fit to the radial profile data between $``$0.8 and 1.7, and either slightly or significantly overestimates the data elsewhere. For this reason we have used both methods — integrating the profile and summing the actual data — to calculate the total number of GCs in NGC 7814. Because the GC surface density is consistent with zero from 3 outward, and the deVaucouleurs function consistently overestimates the data points beyond that radius, we stop the integration or summation at that point. (Below we discuss the possible impact of our choice of integration limit on the final results.) Summing the data points in the profile to 3 yields a total of 140 GCs for NGC 7814. Integrating the best-fit deVaucouleurs law from 0 to 3 yields 190 GCs.

The total number of GCs can be normalized by luminosity or mass of the galaxy in order to facilitate comparison of NGC 7814’s GC system to that of other galaxies. The specific frequency, $`S_N`$, is the number of GCs normalized by luminosity and is defined as

$$S_NN_{GC}10^{+0.4(M_V+15)}$$
(1)
(Harris & van den Bergh, 1981). The total, extinction-corrected, face-on magnitude for NGC 7814 is $`V_0^T`$ $`=`$ 10.20 (RC3; deVaucouleurs et al. 1991). Since $`R_{25}`$ for this galaxy is 2.75, virtually all of the galaxy light is located within $``$3. Therefore, integrating the GC profile to 3 and then using the total luminosity to calculate $`S_N`$ is a reasonable approach. Assuming the SBF distance modulus yields a total absolute magnitude of $`M_V^T`$ $`=`$ $``$20.40. Combining this with the total numbers of GCs from summing the data or integrating the deVaucouleurs profile yields, respectively, $`S_N`$ $`=`$ 1.0 or 1.3.

The primary source of uncertainty on $`S_N`$ is likely to be the galaxy magnitude, particularly since NGC 7814 is an edge-on spiral and correcting for extinction in such cases is difficult. The error on the total $`V`$ magnitude quoted in RC3 is 0.13 mag, so $`M_V^T`$ is at least that uncertain. If we assume that the actual total magnitude of NGC 7814 may be up to 0.3 mag brighter than the RC3 value, the result is a decrease in $`S_N`$ of $``$0.3. Another source of uncertainty is associated with the GCLF coverage calculation. Depending on the dispersion assumed for the GCLF, the estimated coverage changed by as much as 5%. The coverage also varied by 4% depending on the bin size of the data. Taking both of these into account, the fractional coverage is known to $``$6%. This translates to an uncertainty in $`S_N`$ of $``$0.1. The Poisson errors on the total numbers of GCs and contaminating objects results in an additional 0.1 uncertainty. Finally, there is uncertainty associated with the integration of the radial profile. One effect is that we stopped the integration at 3 (11.5 kpc), beyond which the GC surface density drops to zero. As mentioned, $``$18% the Milky Way’s GCs are located at radial distances beyond 11.5 kpc and it is possible that we have missed some portion of NGC 7814’s GC system at these larger radii. Increasing the total number of GCs in NGC 7814 by 18% would increase $`S_N`$ by $``$0.2. A second effect is that using a direct summation to 3 produces a $`S_N`$ value 0.3 lower than integrating the de Vaucouleurs fit over the same region. If we combine the above sources of uncertainty on $`S_N`$ in quadrature, we obtain a final value of $`S_N`$ of 1.3$`\pm `$0.4 for NGC 7814.

Normalizing the number of GCs by host galaxy mass makes it easier to compare the GC systems of galaxies with different star formation histories (such as spirals and ellipticals) and thus different mass-to-light ratios in their stellar populations. Zepf & Ashman (1993) suggest using a parameter called $`T`$, which they define as

$$T\frac{N_{GC}}{M_G/10^9\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}}$$
(2)
where $`N_{GC}`$ is the number of GCs and $`M_G`$ is the mass of the host galaxy. Following Zepf & Ashman (1993), we adopt a mass-to-light ratio $`M/L_V`$ $`=`$ 6.1 for an Sab spiral like NGC 7814. Combining this with $`N_{GC}`$ $`=`$ 140 yields $`T`$ $`=`$ 1.9, and using $`N_{GC}`$ $`=`$ 190 gives $`T`$ $`=`$ 2.5 for NGC 7814. The values derived for total number and specific frequency are summarized at the end of this section.

### 4.3 Mass-Normalized Number of Blue Globular Clusters

One of the main objectives of our overall study is to test a specific prediction of the AZ92 merger scenario for the origin of ellipticals. In this scenario, two (or more) disk galaxies with their own GC systems merge to form an elliptical. A metal-rich population of GCs forms from the colliding gas as the spirals merge. The metal-poor GCs in the progenitor spirals become the metal-poor population in the elliptical. The end result is an elliptical with bimodal color and metallicity distributions of GCs. As mentioned in the Introduction, a consequence of this scenario is that the mass-normalized number of metal-poor GCs in a typical spiral should be the same as in ellipticals. In this simple merger picture, the GCs created in the merger are formed from enriched gas (and are thus metal-rich), so even if a given elliptical has been formed from multiple disk galaxies, the mass-normalized number of metal-poor GCs ($`T`$ for the metal-poor population, which we will refer to as $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$) should stay fairly constant. We can directly test the AZ92 prediction by comparing $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ for NGC 7814 (assuming it to be a typical Sab spiral) to typical $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ values for ellipticals.

Table 3 shows that $`T`$ for NGC 7814’s entire GC system is within the range 1.9 to 2.5. To determine $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ we first need to select a subsample of GC candidates that is equally complete in all three filters. The reddest GC candidate in our list has $`BR`$ $`=`$ 1.64. The GC list is 90% complete at $`B`$ $`=`$ 24.3, so to construct a “complete sample”, we cut the 42-candidate list at $`R`$ $`=`$ 22.7. This yields 21 objects. One of the objects is extended in the HST images, so this leaves 20 objects.

Given sufficient numbers of GC candidates, one can derive robust values for the relative proportions of red and blue GCs in a galaxy. This is typically done by fitting multiple Gaussian functions to a color distribution made with a complete sample, e.g., using the KMM algorithm (Ashman, Bird, & Zepf, 1994). We did this in Paper I using 366 GC candidates in NGC 4472 and found that the color distribution was significantly bimodal, with a gap between the blue and red populations at $`BR`$ $`=`$ 1.23. The sample of 20 objects in NGC 7814 does not appear bimodal and is too small to use with KMM, which requires at least 50 objects to produce a reliable result. If we instead simply divide the sample in the way that NGC 4472’s GC population is divided (i.e., at $`BR`$ $`=`$ 1.23), we find that eight GC candidates are blue and 12 are red. With such small numbers the uncertainties on the overall proportions of blue and red GCs in the system are large. Moreover, there are possible systematic errors in play: some of the GC candidates are likely reddened due to internal extinction in NGC 7814, in which case more may actually belong in the blue category. (In fact, six of the 13 GCs with $`BR`$ $`>`$ 1.23 have radial distances within 2 of the center of NGC 7814, where the diffuse galaxy light is appreciable; reddening could very well be a factor for some of these objects.) Because of these uncertainties, we will adopt 40% as a lower limit on the percentage of blue GCs in the NGC 7814 system. Applying this percentage to $`T`$ $`=`$ 2.5 yields a mass-normalized number of blue GCs, $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$, of 1.0.

Even if several of the GC candidates in the complete sample are affected by reddening, it is unlikely that all of them actually belong in the blue category. To estimate an upper limit for the proportion of blue GCs, we look at the most well-known spirals, the Milky Way and M31. About 70% of the GCs in the Milky Way are part of the metal-poor, “halo” population (Harris 1996; Côté 1999). The fraction is similar in M31, at 66% (Barmby et al., 2000). If we assume that the proportion of blue GCs in NGC 7814 is also $``$70%, and that the total $`T`$ is 2.5, then $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ for this galaxy is 1.8.

By the above arguments, $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ for NGC 7814 is between $``$1 and 2. We will compare this range of values to that of other galaxies and discuss the implications for galaxy formation in Section 5.

### 4.4 Effect of Change in Distance on Specific Frequency

Since distances to individual galaxies have some uncertainty, we have explored the effect of changing the galaxy distance on the total number and specific frequency of GCs. The SBF distance used in this paper (m$``$M $`=`$ 30.60$`\pm `$0.14, or 13.2 Mpc) was only recently published (Tonry et al., 2001). Despite being an edge-on spiral, NGC 7814 does not have a published Tully-Fisher distance, so B92 used its radial velocity and a Virgocentric flow model to derive a distance of 12.5 Mpc (m$``$M $`=`$ 30.48). They also calculated results using a distance modulus 1 mag further, based on the fact that their GCLF changed appreciably depending on whether they treated one of their observed fields as background or GC system.

To illustrate the effect of distance on the derived properties of NGC 7814’s GC system, we will adopt a distance modulus of 30.95, which is the SBF value plus 2.5-$`\sigma `$. The larger distance increases the total number of GCs, primarily because the GCLF coverage is reduced, but the effect on $`S_N`$ is counteracted by a brighter absolute magnitude for the galaxy. The luminosity- and mass-normalized GC specific frequencies for NGC 7814 at this alternative distance are $`S_N`$ $`=`$ 0.8 and 1.0 (from summing the data and integrating the fit) and $`T`$ $`=`$ 1.4 and 1.9 (data and fit). Therefore, using a farther distance results in a slightly smaller specific frequency.

Table 3 lists the total numbers and specific frequencies for NGC 7814’s system for the two different distance moduli. Columns (1) and (2) give the assumed distance modulus and distance to the galaxy and column (3) the galaxy luminosity. Columns (4)—(6) are, respectively, the total number of GCs, the luminosity-normalized specific frequency $`S_N`$ and the mass-normalized specific frequency $`T`$ for the total system. The first number given in each of columns (4)—(6) comes from summing the data points in the radial profile and the second (larger) number from integrating the best-fit deVaucouleurs function.

## 5 Discussion

As stated in the Introduction, NGC 7814 was of particular interest to us as a possible example of a spiral galaxy with an extremely populous GC system. When we began our study, it was thought to have by far the largest GC specific frequency of any spiral (Harris, 1991; Ashman & Zepf, 1998). We find instead that NGC 7814 has $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{_<}{^{}}`$200 GCs and $`S_N`$ $``$ 1. This makes it comparable to our own Galaxy, which has $``$150 known GCs, an estimated total population of $``$180 and $`S_N`$ $``$ 0.5$``$0.7, and M31, with $`N_{GC}`$ estimated at $``$450 and $`S_N`$ $``$ 0.9$``$1.3 (Ashman & Zepf, 1998; Barmby, 2003).

In their study of NGC 7814, B92 detected $``$120 GC candidates and, correcting for areal and magnitude incompleteness and extrapolating the radial profile to both smaller and larger radius, concluded that it had a GC system with 500$``$1000 GCs. They used the technology available at the time, namely a CCD with 0.4′′-pixels, which made it more difficult to eliminate contaminating galaxies. Furthermore, they observed the galaxy in a single filter ($`V`$), so selecting GCs by color was not possible. They observed several fields around the galaxy to cover a substantial fraction of the GC system, as well as control fields away from the target to help correct for contamination. The latter should in theory work well, but as noted in Section 3.2 there appears (from our data) to be an overdensity of background galaxies in the direction of NGC 7814. If their control field did not have a correspondingly high density of background objects, they would have under-corrected for contamination, resulting in an overestimate of the number of GCs in NGC 7814. We note that for the Virgo elliptical NGC 4472, our techniques for reducing and correcting for contamination also resulted in a smaller $`S_N`$ value (Paper I) than previous estimates.

A major objective of our GC system survey is to test whether the mass-normalized total numbers of metal-poor GCs in spirals and ellipticals are the same, as expected, for example, in the AZ92 merger model for the formation of ellipticals. The numbers of GCs in ellipticals vary with the luminosity of the host galaxy, with more luminous galaxies generally hosting larger populations of globulars (e.g., Harris & Racine 1979, Djorgovski & Santiago 1992, Zepf, Geisler, & Ashman 1994). Therefore to fully test the AZ92 picture we need to compare $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ for spirals with ellipticals of varying luminosities. As part of our survey, we are studying the total GC populations of a sample of early-type galaxies with a range of luminosities. An example of a modest-luminosity elliptical is NGC 3379, an E1 with $`M_V`$ $``$ $``$21. We find that this galaxy has $``$270 GCs. Using the above $`V`$-band magnitude and a mass-to-light ratio $`M/L_V`$ of 10 for ellipticals (Zepf & Ashman, 1993), this translates to a total $`S_N`$ of 1.2 and $`T`$ $``$ 1.4 (Rhode & Zepf, in preparation; Paper III). Approximately 70% of the GC candidates in NGC 3379 are blue, so $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ $``$1. By comparison, in Section 4.3 we estimated that $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ for NGC 7814 is between 1 and 2. In the Milky Way and Andromeda, about 70% of the GCs are metal-poor, so for these galaxies $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ is, respectively, $``$0.9 and $``$1.2. These numbers indicate that it is possible to create the blue GC population of NGC 3379 simply by merging the GC systems of spirals like NGC 7814 or the Milky Way. Thus it appears that — in terms of the total numbers of GCs — a simple merger scenario can account for the GC system of a galaxy like NGC 3379 if one assumes, as AZ92 did, that the number of new GCs formed in the merger is roughly equal to the number originally contained in the spirals.

NGC 4472 is the brightest galaxy in Virgo (with $`M_V`$ $``$ $``$23) and is a good example of a giant cluster elliptical. In Paper I, we calculated a total number of GCs ($``$5900) and the proportions of red and blue GCs in NGC 4472 (40% and 60%, respectively). Again assuming a mass-to-light ratio $`M/L_V`$ of 10, we derived $`T`$ $`=`$ 2.6 for the blue, metal-poor GC population of NGC 4472. While $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ for NGC 7814 is larger than for the Milky Way and M31, at between $``$1 and 2, it does not appear to be large enough to fully account for the large blue GC population in a galaxy like NGC 4472. In this case our data suggest that a simple merger scenario along the lines of AZ92 cannot explain how massive ellipticals like NGC 4472 and their GC systems formed.

To reiterate, the results from our study so far indicate that the metal-poor GC populations of modest-luminosity, low-$`S_N`$ ellipticals can be accounted for by the merger of typical spirals, whereas $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ for a luminous, high-$`S_N`$ elliptical like NGC 4472 is larger than for any spiral studied to date. We note that other authors (e.g., Harris 1981; van den Bergh 1984; Harris 2001) have argued similarly, that the GC systems of giant cluster Es cannot have formed via simple spiral-spiral mergers. These previous arguments were typically based on comparisons of total $`S_N`$ for spirals and ellipticals rather than the specific frequency of the blue GCs alone. A final effect that needs to be accounted for in our discussion of $`T`$ is that mass-to-light ratios of ellipticals vary with galaxy luminosity. More luminous ellipticals are redder than lower-luminosity ones, and for all stellar populations models (e.g., Bruzual & Charlot 1993) this leads to higher stellar $`M/L_V`$ for higher-$`L`$ ellipticals. We will discuss the implications of this in more detail in Paper III. Models of this effect (e.g., Zepf & Silk 1996; see also Dressler et al. 1987) suggest that stellar population differences between ellipticals of different luminosities can account for up to about half of the increase in $`T`$ with increasing elliptical galaxy luminosity. Thus, even with variations in $`M/L_V`$ for ellipticals, there remain differences between $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ for spirals (and low-luminosity Es) compared to luminous Es. This seems to suggest that GC systems form or evolve differently depending on the luminosity of the host galaxy.

One possibility is that the number of old, metal-poor GCs is higher in more luminous ellipticals because there is less dynamical destruction of GCs in these galaxies compared to lower-luminosity ellipticals and spirals. Murali & Weinberg (1997a) modeled the evolution of the GC system of M87 and used scaling relations to translate their results to ellipticals of various luminosities. They suggest that ellipticals may have formed with similar GC specific frequencies but that GCs in lower-luminosity Es underwent more dynamical destruction due to their higher densities, resulting in a trend of higher $`S_N`$ with higher galaxy luminosity. Similarly, Vesperini (2000) modeled GC destruction in ellipticals with a range of masses and found that the fraction of surviving clusters increases with increasing galaxy mass. With regard to spirals, simulations exploring the effect of dynamical destruction on GCs in the Milky Way system (e.g., Murali & Weinberg 1997b; Vesperini 1998) suggest that, just as in low-luminosity ellipticals, it is likely that a significant fraction of the population has been destroyed over a Hubble time. Therefore, while this is certainly not required to be the case, there remains the possibility that spirals at high redshift had large enough metal-poor GC populations to account for what we see in luminous ellipticals today.

Recent work on hierarchical merging scenarios for galaxy formation (e.g., Beasley et al. 2002, Santos 2003) provides another possible explanation for the apparent luminosity-dependence of $`T_{\mathrm{blue}}`$. In these types of scenarios, metal-poor GCs are formed at high redshift in protogalactic fragments; the gas-rich fragments merge over time, producing metal-rich GCs and eventually resulting in the massive galaxies and GC systems that we see today. Santos (2003) proposes that metal-poor GC formation occured at redshifts prior to $`z`$ $``$ 7 before being suppressed by reionization. In this picture, the timing of the collapse of structures in the pre-reionization Universe is what determines how many blue GCs are contained in a given end-product galaxy. Massive galaxies like giant cluster Es collapsed earlier, which means that a larger fraction of their eventual mass was in place by the time reionization occurred. Less massive galaxies like spirals and field galaxies collapsed later, so fewer blue GCs were produced in them before GC formation was halted. The natural result is that more massive (and thus more luminous) galaxies will have more blue, metal-poor GCs per unit mass than less massive objects. Within the framework of this scenario, the observed spatial distributions of the metal-poor GCs can help place constraints on the redshifts at which the protogalactic fragments collapsed, as well as on the masses of the fragments. In hierarchical models, the most overdense fragments that collapse at the highest redshifts (and can begin to form GCs) are more centrally-concentrated than those with lower densities that collapse later. Likewise, fragments with more mass will also collapse earlier and be more concentrated toward the galaxy center. Santos has simulated this in detail for the Milky Way GC system, but has not yet produced testable predictions for the GC spatial distributions of other galaxies. In future, however, our observed GC spatial profiles for galaxies with a variety of masses and in different environments will provide valuable constraints for this theoretical work.

## 6 Summary

We have undertaken a wide-field CCD survey of the GC systems of a large sample of spiral and elliptical galaxies with the primary goal of testing models for the origin of ellipticals, including the idea that they are formed via spiral-spiral mergers. We have completed our study of NGC 7814, an Sab spiral that was found in past work to have an extremely high GC specific frequency. Our main results are as follows:

1. Our data provide radial coverage of NGC 7814’s GC system to $``$7 ($``$30 kpc) from the galaxy center. The surface density in the radial distribution of GCs is consistent with zero by $``$3$``$4 ($``$11$``$15 kpc) from the galaxy center, suggesting that we have observed the full extent of NGC 7814’s GC system.

2. NGC 7814 has a total population of $``$200 GCs and a luminosity-normalized specific frequency $`S_N`$ of 1.3 $`\pm `$0.4. NGC 7814 is not a high-$`S_N`$ spiral as previously claimed, but instead has a GC system that is comparable to those of the two most well-studied spirals, the Milky Way and M31.

3. A natural consequence of the fact that NGC 7814 has many fewer GCs than previously thought is that the number of metal-poor GCs must also be substantially reduced. We compare NGC 7814’s blue GC population to that of ellipticals from our study in order to test a prediction of the Ashman & Zepf merger model. We find that merging the blue GC populations of spirals like NGC 7814 is enough to account for the blue GCs in a moderate-luminosity field elliptical like NGC 3379, but not in a giant cluster elliptical like NGC 4472. This suggests that simple mergers may be able to explain the origins of typical-luminosity ellipticals but that some additional process is needed to account for the GC systems of more massive ellipticals.

Our findings for NGC 7814 significantly alter the overall picture of extragalactic GC systems. In Paper III of this series, we will present results for the remaining early-type galaxies in the sample and will specifically address predictions of the various scenarios for the formation of ellipticals, including (in addition to the merger model) multi-phase collapse (Forbes et al., 1997), collapse plus accretion (Côté et al., 1998), and hierarchical merging (e.g., Beasley et al. 2002, Santos 2003).

K.L.R. gratefully acknowledges financial support from a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Fellowship for this project. S.E.Z. acknowledges support for this work from the Michigan State University Foundation and NASA Long-Term Space Astrophysics Grant NAG5-11319. We are grateful to Arunav Kundu for his assistance with the HST data analysis, which included providing a list of detected objects in the HST halo pointing and running completeness tests on those data. We thank the staff at WIYN and Kitt Peak National Observatory for assistance during our observing runs. We also thank the anonymous referee for providing useful comments that improved the quality of the paper. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.