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# The Network Topology of the Interbank Market 1footnote 11footnote 1 The views expressed in this paper are stritcly the views of the authors and do in no way commit the OeNB. Correspondence to: Stefan Thurner; Complex Systems Research Group, HNO, AKH-Wien, University of Vienna; Währinger Gürtel 18-20; A-1090 Vienna, Austria; Tel.: ++43 1 40400 2099; Fax: ++43 1 40400 3332; e-mail: thurner@univie.ac.at

## Abstract

We provide an empirical analysis of the network structure of the Austrian interbank market based on a unique data set of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB). We show that the contract size distribution follows a power law over more than 3 decades. By using a novel ”dissimilarity” measure we find that the interbank network shows a community structure that exactly mirrors the regional and sectoral organization of the actual Austrian banking system. The degree distribution of the interbank network shows two different power law exponents which are one-to-one related to two sub-network structures, differing in the degree of hierarchical organization. The banking network moreover shares typical structural features known in numerous complex real world networks: a low clustering coefficient and a relatively short average shortest path length. These empirical findings are in marked contrast to interbank networks that have been analyzed in the theoretical economic and econo-physics literature.
JEL: C73, G28
PACS: 89.65.Gh, 89.75.Hc, 89.65.-s,

Over the past years the physics community has largely contributed to the analysis and to a functional understanding of the structure of complex real world networks. A key insight of this research has been the discovery of surprising structural similarities in very different networks, such as Internet, the World Wide Web, collaboration networks, biological networks, communication networks, electronic circuits and power grids, industrial networks, nets of software components and energy landscapes. See dormen03  for an overview. Remarkably, most of these real world networks show degree distributions which follow a power law, feature a certain pattern of cliquishness, quantified by the clustering coefficient of the network, and exhibit the so called small world phenomenon, meaning that the average shortest path between any two vertices (”degrees of separation”) in the network can be surprisingly small watts . Maybe one of the most important contributions to recent network theory is an interpretation of these network parameters with respect to stability, robustness, and efficiency of an underlying system, e.g. barabasi00 .

From this perspective financial networks seem a natural candidate to study. Indeed in the economic literature financial crises that have hit countries all around the globe have led to a boom of papers on banking-crises, financial risk-analysis and to numerous policy initiatives to improve financial stability. One of the major concerns in these debates is the danger of so called systemic risk: the large scale breakdown of financial intermediation due to domino effects of insolvency hardeb00 ; sum03 . The network of mutual credit relations between financial institutions is supposed to play a key role in the risk for contagious defaults. Some authors in the theoretical economic literature on contagion algal00 ; freparroc00 ; thurner03  suggest network topologies that might be interesting to look at. In algal00  it is suggested to study a complete graph of mutual liabilities. The properties of a banking system with this structure is then compared to properties of systems with non complete networks. In freparroc00  a circular graph is contrasted with a complete graph. In thurner03  a much richer set of different network structures is studied. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the actual empirical network topology of mutual credit relations between financial institutions. To our best knowledge the network topology of interbank markets has so far not been studied empirically.

The interbank network is characterized by the liability (or exposure) matrix $`L`$. The entries $`L_{ij}`$ are the liabilities bank $`i`$ has towards bank $`j`$. We use the convention to write liabilities in the rows of $`L`$. If the matrix is read column-wise (transposed matrix $`L^T`$) we see the claims or interbank assets, banks hold with each other. Note, that $`L`$ is a square matrix but not necessarily symmetric. The diagonal of $`L`$ is zero, i.e. no bank self-interaction exists. In the following we are looking for the bilateral liability matrix $`L`$ of all (about $`N=900`$) Austrian banks, the Central Bank (OeNB) and an aggregated foreign banking sector. Our data consists of 10 $`L`$ matrices each representing liabilities for quarterly single month periods between $`2000`$ and $`2003`$. To obtain the Austrian interbank network from Central Bank data we draw upon two major sources: we exploit structural features of the Austrian bank balance sheet data base (MAUS) and the major loan register (GKE) in combination with an estimation technique.

The Austrian banking system has a sectoral organization due to historic reasons. Banks belong to one of seven sectors: savings banks (S), Raiffeisen (agricultural) banks (R), Volksbanken (VB), joint stock banks (JS), state mortgage banks (SM), housing construction savings and loan associations (HCL), and special purpose banks (SP). Banks have to break down their balance sheet reports on claims and liabilities with other banks according to the different banking sectors, Central Bank and foreign banks. This practice of reporting on balance interbank positions breaks the liability matrix $`L`$ down to blocks of sub-matrices for the individual sectors. The savings banks and the Volksbanken sector are organized in a two tier structure with a sectoral head institution. The Raiffeisen sector is organized by a three tier structure, with a head institution for every federal state of Austria. The federal state head institutions have a central institution, Raiffeisenzentralbank (RZB) which is at the top of the Raiffeisen structure. Banks with a head institution have to disclose their positions with the head institution, which gives additional information on $`L`$. Since many banks in the system hold interbank liabilities only with their head institutions, one can pin down many entries in the $`L`$ matrix exactly. This information is combined in a next step with the data from the major loans register of OeNB. This register contains all interbank loans above a threshold of 360 000 Euro. This information provides us with a set of constraints (inequalities) and zero restrictions for individual entries $`L_{ij}`$. Up to this point one can obtain about $`90\%`$ of the $`L`$-matrix entries exactly.

For the rest we employ an estimation routine based on local entropy maximization, which has already been used to reconstruct unknown bilateral interbank exposures from aggregate information uppwor02 ; shemau98 . The procedure finds a matrix that fulfills all the known constraints and treats all other parts (unknown entries in $`L`$) as contributing equally to the known row and column sums. These sums are known since the total claims to other banks have to reported to the Central Bank. The estimation problem can be set up as follows: Assume we have a total of $`K`$ constraints. The column and row constraints take the form

$$\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}L_{ij}=b_i^ri\text{and}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}L_{ij}=b_j^cj$$
(1)
with $`r`$ denoting row and $`c`$ denoting column. Constraints imposed by the knowledge about particular entries in $`L_{ij}`$ are given by

$$b^lL_{ij}b^u\text{for some }i,j\text{.}$$
(2)
The aim is to find the matrix $`L`$ (among all the matrices fulfilling the constraints) that has the least discrepancy to some a priori matrix $`U`$ with respect to the (generalized) cross entropy measure

$$𝒞(L,U)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}L_{ij}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{L_{ij}}{U_{ij}}\right).$$
(3)
$`U`$ is the matrix which contains all known exact liability entries. For those entries (bank pairs) $`ij`$ where we have no knowledge from Central Bank data, we set $`U_{ij}=1`$. We use the convention that $`L_{ij}=0`$ whenever $`U_{ij}=0`$ and define $`0\mathrm{ln}(\frac{0}{0})`$ to be $`0`$. This is a standard convex optimization problem, the necessary optimality conditions can be solved efficiently by an algorithm described in fanrajtsa97 ; bligra97 . As a result we obtain a rather precise (see below) picture of the interbank relations at a particular point in time. Given $`L`$ we plot the distribution (pdf) of its entries in Fig. 1(b). The distribution of liabilities follows a power law for more than three decades with an exponent of $`1.87`$, which is within a range which is well known from wealth- or firm size distributions solomon ; axtell .

To extract the network topology from these data, there are three possible approaches to describe the structure as a graph. The first approach is to look at the liability matrix as a directed graph. The vertices are all Austrian banks. The Central Bank OeNB, and the aggregate foreign banking sector are represented by a single vertex each. The set of all initial (starting) vertices is the set of banks with liabilities in the interbank market; the set of end vertices is the set of all banks that are claimants in the interbank market. Therefore, each bank that has liabilities with some other bank in the network is considered an initial vertex in the directed liability graph. Each bank for which this liability constitutes a claim, i.e. the bank acting as a counterparty, is considered an end vertex in the directed liability graph. We call this representation the liability adjacency matrix and denote it by $`A^l`$ (l indicating liability). $`A_{ij}^l=1`$ whenever a connection starts from row node $`i`$ and leads to column node $`j`$, and $`A_{ij}^l=0`$ otherwise. If we take the transpose of $`A^l`$ we get the interbank asset matrix $`A^a=(A^l)^T`$. A second way to look at the graph is to ignore directions and regard any two banks as connected if they have either a liability or a claim against each other. This representation results in an undirected graph whose corresponding adjacency matrix $`A_{ij}=1`$ whenever we observe an interbank liability or claim. Our third graph representation is to define an undirected but weighted adjacency matrix $`A_{ij}^w=L_{ij}+L_{ji}`$, which measures the gross interbank interaction, i.e. the total volume of liabilities and assets for each node. Which representation to use depends on the questions addressed to the network. For statistical descriptions of the network structure matrices $`A`$, $`A^a`$, and $`A^l`$ will be sufficient, to reconstruct the community structure from a graph, the weighted adjacency matrix $`A^w`$ will be the more useful choice.

There exist various ways to find functional clusters within a given network. Many algorithms take into account local information around a given vertex, such as the number of nearest neighbors shared with other vertices, number of paths to other vertices, see e.g. wasserman94 ; ravasz02 . Recently a global algorithm was suggested which extends the concept of vertex betweenness freeman77  to links girvan02 . This elegant algorithm outperforms most traditional approaches in terms of mis-specifications of vertices to clusters, however it does not provide a measure for the differences of clusters. In zhou03\_b  an algorithm was introduced which - while having at least the same performance rates as girvan02  \- provides such a measure, the so-called dissimilarity index. The algorithm is based on a distance definition presented in zhou03\_a .

For analyzing our interbank network we apply this latter algorithm to the weighted adjacency matrix $`A^w`$. As the only preprocessing step we clip all entries in $`A^w`$ above a level of 300 m Euro for numerical reasons, i.e. $`A_{\mathrm{clip}}^w=\mathrm{min}(A^w,300\mathrm{m})`$. The community structure obtained in this way (Fig. 1a) can be compared to the actual community structure in the real world. The result for the community structure obtained from one representative data set is shown in Fig. 2. Results from other datasets are practically identical. The algorithm identifies communities of banks which are coupled by a two or three tier structure, i.e. the R, VB, and S sectors. For banks which in reality are not structured in a hierarchical way, such as banks in the SP, JS, SM, HCL sectors, no strong community structure is expected. By the algorithm these banks are grouped together in a cluster called ’other’. The Raiffeisen sector, with its substructure in federal states, is further grouped into clusters which are clearly identified as R banks within one of the eight federal states (B,St,K,V,T,N,O,S). In Fig. 2 these clusters are marked as e.g. ’RS’, ’R’ indicating the Raiffeisen sector, and ’S’ the state of Salzburg. Overall, there were 31 mis-specifications into wrong clusters within the total $`N=883`$ banks, which is a mis-specification rate of 3.5 %, demonstrating the quality of the dissimilarity algorithm and - more importantly - the quality of the entropy approach to reconstruct matrix $`L`$.

Degree Distributions: Like many real world networks, the degree distribution of the interbank market follow power laws for all three graphs $`A^l`$, $`A^a`$, and $`A`$. Figure 3 (a) and (b) show the out-degree (liabilities) and in-degree (assets) distribution of the vertices in the interbank liability network. Figure 3 (c) shows degree distribution of the interbank connection graph $`A`$. In all three cases we find two regions which can be fitted by a power. Accordingly, we fit one regression line to the small degree distribution and one to the obvious power tails of the data using an iteratively re-weighted least square algorithm. The power decay exponents $`\gamma _{tail}`$ to the tails of the degree distributions are $`\gamma _{tail}(A^l)=3.11`$, $`\gamma _{tail}(A^a)=1.73`$, and $`\gamma _{tail}(A)=2.01`$. The size of the out degree exponent is within the range of several other complex networks, like e.g. collaboration networks of actors (3.1) albert2000 , sexual contacts (3.4) liljeros2001 . Exponents in the range of 2 are for example the Web (2.1) albert99  or mathematicians’ collaboration networks (2.1) barabasi2002 , and examples for exponents of about 1.5 are email networks (1.5) ebel2002  and co-autorships (1.2) newman01 . For the left part of the distribution (small degrees) we find $`\gamma _{small}(A^l)=0.69`$, $`\gamma _{small}(A^a)=1.01`$, and $`\gamma _{small}(A)=0.62`$. These exponents are small compared to other real world networks. Compare e.g. with foodwebs (1) montoya2001 . We have checked that the distribution for the low degrees is almost entirely dominated by banks of the R sector. Typically in the R sector most small agricultural banks have links to their federal state head institution and very few contacts with other banks, leading to a strong hierarchical structure, which is also visible by plain eye in Fig. 1a. This hierarchical structure is perfectly reflected by the small scaling exponents trusina2003 .

Clustering Coefficient: To quantify clustering phenomena within the banking network we use the so-called clustering coefficient $`C`$, defined by

$$C=\frac{3\times \text{(number of triangles on the graph)}}{\text{number of connected triples of vertices}}.$$
(4)
It provides the probability that two vertices that are connected to any given vertex are also connected with one another. A high clustering coefficient means that two banks that have interbank connections with a third bank, have a greater probability to have interbank connections with one another, than will any two banks randomly chosen on the network. The clustering coefficient is only well defined in undirected graphs. We find the clustering coefficient of the connection network ($`A`$) to be $`C=0.12\pm 0.01`$ (mean and standard deviation over the 10 data sets) which is relatively small compared to other networks. In the context of the interbank market a small $`C`$ is a reasonable result. While banks might be interested in some diversification of interbank links keeping a link is also costly. So if for instance two small banks have a link with their head institution there is no reason for them to additionally open a link among themselves.

Average Shortest Path Length: We calculate the average path length for the three networks $`A^l,A^a,A`$ with the Dijkstra algorithm gib85  and find an average path length of $`\overline{\mathrm{}}(A^l)=\overline{\mathrm{}}(A^a)=2.59\pm 0.02`$. Note the possibility that in a directed graph not all nodes can be reached and we restrict our statistics to the giant components of the directed graphs. The average path length in the (undirected) interbank connection network $`A`$ is $`\overline{\mathrm{}}(A)=2.26\pm 0.03`$. From these results the Austrian interbank network looks like a very small world with about three degrees of separation. This result looks natural in the light of the community structure described earlier. The two and three tier organization with head institutions and sub-institutions apparently leads to short interbank distances via the upper tier of the banking system and thus to a low degree of separation.

Our analysis provides a first picture of the interbank network topology by studying a unique dataset for the Austrian interbank market. Even though it is small the Austrian interbank market is structurally very similar to the interbank system in many European countries including the large economies of Germany, France, and Italy. We show that the liability (contract) size distribution follows a power law, which can be understood as being driven by underlying size and wealth distributions of the banks, which show similar power exponents. We find that the interbank network shows – like many other realistic networks – power law dependencies in the degree distributions. We could show that different scaling exponents relate to different network structure in different banking sectors within the total network. The scaling exponents by the agricultural banks (R) are very low, due to the hierarchical structure of this sector, while the other banks lead to scaling exponents also found in other complex real world networks. Regardless of the size of the scaling exponent, the existence of a power law is a strong indication for a stable network with respect to random bank defaults or even intentional attack barabasi00 . The interbank network shows a low clustering coefficient, a result that mirrors the analysis of community structure which shows a clear network pattern, where banks would first have links with their head institution, whereas these few head institutions hold links among each other. A consequence of this structure is that the interbank network is a small world with a very low ”degree of separation” between any two nodes in the system. A further important message of this work is that it allows to exclude large classes of unrealistic types of networks for future modeling of interbank relations, which have so far been used in the literature.

We thank J.D. Farmer for valuable comments to improve the paper and Haijun Zhou for making his dissimilarity index algorithm available to us. S.T. would like to thank the SFI and in particular J.D. Farmer for their great hospitality in the summer of 2003.


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# Masers : High resolution probes of massive star formation

## 1. Introduction

Masers are one of the most readily observable signposts of massive star formation and they possess characteristics that mean they have the potential to be very powerful high-resolution probes of these regions. Towards massive star forming regions strong masers are frequently observed from the main-line transitions of OH (Caswell, Haynes & Goss 1980), the 22 GHz transition of $`\text{H}_2\text{O}`$ (Comoretto et al. 1990) and the 6.7 GHz (Menten 1991) and 12.2 GHz (Batrla et al. 1987) transitions of methanol. They are more rarely observed from SiO (see Greenhill et al. these proceedings), $`\text{H}_2\text{CO}`$ (Hoffman et al. 2003) and $`\text{NH}_3`$ (Mauersberger Wilson & Henkel 1986) and from other transitions of OH, $`\text{H}_2\text{O}`$ and methanol.

The presence of maser emission indicates that the physical conditions within the region lie within a certain range. However, despite the fact that the first masers were discovered towards star forming regions nearly 40 years ago (Weaver et al. 1965) the precise physical conditions that give rise to the various maser transitions in massive star forming regions are still not understood. There are two fundamental reasons for this, the first is that the pumping of the masers is an intrinsically complex and non-linear process. The second reason is that aside from information obtained directly from observations of the maser itself (such as intensity, brightness temperature, line width and polarization properties) there is typically little or no complementary information available at resolutions comparable to the size of the masers. Towards some star formation regions multiple different OH maser and/or methanol maser transitions are detected. If these transitions arise from the same region of gas then this places significant additional constraints on maser pumping schemes. To date multi-transition observations of OH (Cesaroni & Walmsley 1991, Gray et al. 2001) and methanol (Cragg et al. 2001, Sutton et al. 2001, Ellingsen et al. 2003) masers have only been made towards a small number of sources. Refinements in observational techniques and maser modeling offer the possibility that future multi-transitional observations may yield vital information on the physical conditions in star-formation regions at high-resolution.

The most common OH, water and methanol maser transitions have been detected towards hundreds of massive star forming regions within the Galaxy and many regions show emission from all three species. The exact relationship between the various maser molecules, and the environment and evolutionary phase that they each trace is currently understood at only a very superficial level. Studies of the relationship between OH and water masers has found that in regions where these two transitions coexist they arise in nearby (separations of less than a few arcseconds), but different locations (Forster & Caswell 1989). A detailed study of methanol and water masers by Beuther et al. (2002) found a similar relationship for these two species. In contrast towards many high-mass star forming regions there is a close association between the presence and location of OH and methanol masers and initially most methanol masers were discovered towards known OH masers. High resolution studies have found that in many cases the clusters of OH and methanol masers are coincident at the sub-arcsecond level (Caswell 1997), but individual OH and methanol maser spots arise at differing locations (Menten et al. 1992). However, there are many methanol and water maser sites which are not associated with OH masers and untargetted searches for methanol masers have detected many not associated with known star formation regions (Ellingsen et al. 1996). In addition, centimetre radio continuum observations towards a large sample of methanol masers have also failed to detect emission stronger than 1 mJy towards the majority (Phillips et al. 1998, Walsh et al. 1998), although all are associated with millimeter continuum sources (Beuther et al. 2002). The generally accepted current picture is that water and methanol maser emission commences prior to the formation of a detectable ultra-compact Hii (UCHii) region, with the OH masers arising after the commencement of fusion in the core. There is a period during which all three species can coexist, but relatively soon after the formation of a detectable UCHii the methanol masers are destroyed, followed by the water masers with the OH masers surviving until later in the evolutionary process. A more detailed discussion of the relationship between the various maser species in star formation regions is given in Caswell (2002) and Beuther et al. (2002)

## 2. Masers - the ultimate high resolution probes

As stated above, the presence of a maser within a star forming region indicates the existence of particular physical conditions. In most regions where masers are detected it is likely that there are large volumes of gas in the right physical condition to mase, but we only observe a maser where by chance there is a long path which exhibits a large degree of velocity coherence along our line of sight. Under this picture there is nothing special about our particular line of sight and observers along different lines of sight will just detect maser emission from different locations within the larger masing region. It also explains why the masers are intrinsically small. Being both small and bright means that it is possible to image masers using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and as they are spectral lines we are able to obtain both the relative position and light of sight velocity of the different maser spots. It is often possible to determine the positions of the different maser spots within a region to sub milli-arcsecond (mas) accuracy relative to a chosen reference maser spot or to some nearby background continuum reference source. To put this in perspective, for a massive star formation region at a distance of 2 kpc an angular resolution of 1 mas corresponds to a linear resolution of 0.3 AU. The small size of the masers and the high accuracy to which their relative positions can be determined means that it is possible to measure proper motions of the masers on time-scales as short as weeks, but more typically on time-scales of years (e.g. Genzel et al. 1981a). This makes masers very powerful probes of the kinematics in the regions where they exist. To date, it is as probes of the kinematics that masers have made the most striking contribution to our understanding of massive star formation at high-angular resolution and section 4 discusses some specific examples of this.

Masers are also able to yield information on the magnetic fields within the regions where they form. The OH molecule is paramagnetic and this means that it undergoes significant Zeeman splitting in the presence of interstellar magnetic fields. The Zeeman splitting causes OH masers to be highly circularly polarized, sometimes up to 100%. VLBI observations can be used to identify Zeeman pairs (left and right-hand circularly polarized OH masers with different velocities that are coincident at the milli-arcsecond level) and the total magnetic field strength in the masing region can then be determine from the velocity difference between the two orthogonal polarizations (see for example Caswell (2002)). The size of the velocity separation for the Zeeman pairs depends upon the Lande-g factor for the transition and differs for each OH maser transition. The excited OH transitions at 6030 and 6035 MHz have both smaller Zeeman splitting and generally simpler spectra than the main-line transitions which means that it is possible to confidently identify orthogonal polarization pairs from single dish spectra alone, particularly when observations are made of more than one transition (Caswell 2003).

## 3. Masers - the Bart Simpson of star formation research

If as outlined in the previous section masers are such powerful probes, then it is reasonable to ask why they are not more prominent in the field of star formation research? Studies of masers play a prominent role in studies of AGB and post-AGB stars and maser observations have been the key to a number of new and exciting discoveries relating to active galaxies. So why is it that for star forming region, masers (like Bart Simpson) are under-achievers? I believe that the most important factor is that in contrast to AGB stars and active galaxies there is relatively little complementary high-resolution information at other wavelengths available for star formation regions. The earliest stages of high-mass star formation take place deep within cold, dense clouds of gas and dust which are often optically thick at wavelengths as long as 20 $`\mu `$m. In addition, high-mass stars form in clusters and so high resolution observations are essential to disentangle the different phenomena associated with stars of a variety of masses at a various evolutionary phases. High resolution observations in the mid and far-infrared and sub-millimeter regimes are only now becoming a reality and these are set to revolutionize our understanding of massive star formation. Far-infrared and sub-millimeter images of high-mass star formation at arcsecond resolution will help to resolve the confusion of the cluster environment and characterise the region in which the masers arise. I believe that a better understanding of the environment in which the masers form will unlock their potential as probes of high-mass star formation, much as it has for AGB stars and active galaxies.

## 4. Masers as high resolution probes

There are a number of sources where studies of the proper motion of masers in high-mass star formation regions have made a significant contribution to our understanding of the kinematics. The rest of this paper will detail some of the best examples of masers as kinematic probes.

### 4.1. Water masers in Cepheus A

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the first VLBI proper motion observations of water masers were undertaken towards sources like Orion KL and W51 (Genzel et al. 1981a,b). A relatively common feature of water maser spectra in massive star forming regions is strong emission at the systemic velocity and weaker emission at velocities offset by $`\pm `$50-200 $`\text{km s}^1`$. The observations of Genzel et al. revealed that the systemic velocity features typically show large proper motions, while the high-velocity features show much smaller proper motion. This is readily explained if the water masers arise in regions of post-shocked gas. If the direction of propagation of the shock is close to the plane of the sky then the line of sight velocity will be approximately the systemic velocity, but the transverse velocity and hence the proper motion will be large. Conversely if the shock is propagating in a direction close to the line of sight then the velocity of the maser emission will be offset from the systemic velocity of the region, but the proper motion will be small. The path length through the post-shocked gas is also much smaller in this case which explains why the high-velocity maser features are weaker than those at the systemic velocity. Proper motion experiments enable the three-dimensional velocity distribution of shocks and outflows in high-mass star formation regions to be traced. However, the maps of maser water maser emission and proper motions of Genzel et al. and others show that in practice the overall distribution of masers is complex and since location of protostars, YSO etc. in the regions is typically unknown, interpretation of the maser proper motions is difficult.

There are a small number of water maser sources where it has been hypothesised that the emission arises in a circumstellar disk. Finding unambiguous evidence for maser emission in a disk (the equivalent of NGC4258 for active galaxies), is something of a holy grail for researchers studying masers in star formation regions. There is good evidence for the existence of disks around high-mass stars from infra-red and thermal molecular line observations (see for example papers by Padgett and Wilner in these proceedings). Masers offer the possibility of revealing detailed information on the disk dynamics which could be used to infer disk dimensions, whether it is warped by instabilities, accretion rates etc. To date none of the purported disks in star-forming regions are as convincing as that observed towards the nucleus of NGC4258 (Miyoshi et al. 1995), but proper motion observations of a possible disk associated with Cepheus A HW2 by Torrelles et al. (2001) have discovered an even more intriguing object.

The tale of Cepheus A HW2 is a theme common to high resolution observations of masers from a variety of transitions. Observations with arcsecond resolution with a connected element interferometer (in this case the VLA) showed a flatten structure perpendicular to a radio continuum jet with a velocity gradient and this was hypothesised to be a disk (Torrelles et al. 1996). To test the hypothesis further observations using a VLBI array with milli-arcsecond resolution (in this case the VLBA) were made, however, rather than confirming the original hypothesis the higher resolution observations instead revealed greater complexity. Torrelles et al. found that what appeared to be single maser spots at arcsecond resolution were in many cases very narrow linear and curved structures, often showing proper motion perpendicular to the major axis. One of the maser spots slightly resolved at arcsecond resolution is revealed to be a remarkable arc of water masers. The arc of masers extends over 0.1 arcseconds (72 AU at a distance of 725 pc), fits a circle with an accuracy of 1 part in 1000 and is expanding with a velocity of 9 $`\text{km s}^1`$. The radius of the circle is 62 AU and it has a dynamical age of 33 years (Torrelles et al. 2001). Recent observations with the VLA have detected a weak radio continuum source coincident with the centre of the expanding circle of masers, although it has not yet been possible to identify the nature of this source (Curiel et al. 2002). The highly circular appearance of the arc of masers is strongly suggestive of spherical expansion and the masers are thought to be due to either spherical episodic ejection from a protostar or; the initial expansion of an Hii region from a B3 or B4 star. Either way further study of this object seems set to yield new information on the formation of high-mass stars and their interaction with their natal environment.

### 4.2. Methanol masers in NGC7538

One advantage of observations of class II methanol masers such as the 6.7 and 12.2 GHz transitions is that unlike OH and water masers that are associated with a range of astrophysical environments, methanol masers are only found towards high-mass star formation regions (Minier et al. 2003). Early arcsecond resolution images of class II methanol masers found that many of them exhibited a simple linear or curved spatial morphology, often with a monotonic velocity gradient along the line. The most popular hypothesis for this observation was that the methanol masers traced an edge-on circumstellar disk (Norris et al 1993, 1998). However, as with the water masers in Cepheus A, the milli-arcsecond resolution images while consistent with the arcsecond resolution images frequently reveal more complex structures which are not easily explained as edge-on disks (e.g. Minier, Booth & Conway 2000, De Buizer et al. 2002). These and other observations and arguments suggest that the vast majority of methanol masers do not arise in edge on disks, but are more likely to be associated with shocks (Lee et al. 2002). Although clearly lower velocity and less energetic shocks than those that produce water masers.

Despite this there are some sources for which the milli-arcsecond resolution images are most easily explained as an edge-on disk. The best example is that of NGC7538 which has a shows a single very narrow emission feature which in the 12.2 GHz transition is approximately 45 mas (110 AU) long with a monotonic velocity gradient along it (Minier, Booth & Conway 1998). Assuming Keplarian rotation, a measurement of velocity gradient along still has a dependency between the binding mass and the radius of the emission. If a plausible high-mass protostellar mass is assumed for NGC7538 (10 M$``$) then the implied radius of the disk is of the order of 940 AU (Minier et al. 2000). This implies that either the methanol maser emission traces only a very small fraction of the total disk or that the disk is not that of a high-mass protostar. In general low implied masses or small disk fractions are a plausibility issue for many potential methanol maser disk sources (Minier et al. 2000).

### 4.3. OH masers in W3(OH)

Like water masers, OH masers are associated with a range of astrophysical objects, including evolved stars, SNR/molecular cloud interfaces and high-mass star formation regions. OH masers were first discovered towards star formation regions and the best studied region is W3(OH) which exhibits OH maser emission from a wide variety of transitions, some of which haven’t been observed towards any other sources (Cesaroni & Walmsley 1991). The OH masers (and the class II methanol masers) lie in a number of clusters projected in front and just beyond the edge of an ultracompact HII region (Reid et al. 1980, Menten et al. 1992). As with many/most OH masers there is little or no apparent internal structure to the clusters. Proper motion observations of the OH masers by Bloemhof, Reid & Moran (1992) find the masers to be in slowly expanding (3 $`\text{km s}^1`$) gas. This observation supports the generally accepted picture that the OH masers arise at the interface between the ionized and molecular gas.

An exciting recent development is the detection by Argon, Reid & Menten (2003) of weak OH maser emission associated with the Turner-Welsh (TW) object near W3(OH). The TW object is a high-mass protostar offset approximately 6 arcseconds from the W3(OH) UCHii region which has associated water masers and synchrotron jets. The OH maser emission arises at the end of the water maser emission and may indicate that OH masers found towards star formation regions which are not directly associated with radio continuum emission, may trace outflows. They also offer the possibility of probing the jets from the TW object and other similar objects at high-resolution in more than one regime (as the OH maser emission appears to arise further out in the jet than the water masers).

## 5. Conclusions

For a small, but growing number of sources observations of masers are enabling high-mass star formation regions to be studied at sub-arcsecond resolutions. The examples above demonstrate that VLBI proper motion studies are a powerful method for probing the kinematics within the star forming regions, the challenge we currently face is to understand exactly what part of the star formation process the masers are associated with. Multi-transition studies of OH and methanol masers, are currently in their infancy, but offer the prospect of being able to tightly constrain the physical conditions which produce the masers and which will greatly enhance the information obtained from kinematic studies. Combined with complementary high-resolution studies of high-mass star formation regions in the millimeter through to mid-infrared wavelength ranges there appear to be good prospects that in the near future masers will play a much more prominent role in studies of high-mass star formation than is presently the case.

## Acknowledgements

This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System.

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text:
# A HYBRID MODEL FOR 𝛾^∗𝑝 SCATTERING AT SMALL BJORKEN-x

## 1 Introduction

The recent decade of investigating deep inelastic scattering at small Bjorken $`x`$ at HERA has provided precise data for the $`F_2`$ structure function or equivalently for $`\sigma _{tot}^{\gamma ^{}p}`$ at large center-of-mass energies. Many phenomenological analyses have been performed in order to fit the data. One group of models tries to fit the data using the so-called dipole representation. In this approach, initiated in Ref., one fits parameters of the dipole-nucleon interaction  as a function of the transverse $`q\overline{q}`$ distance.

The fits in the dipole representation take into account only a simple quark-antiquark Fock component of the photon. However, the higher Fock components seem to be important to understand the diffraction . The first theoretical step in going beyond the $`q\overline{q}`$ component has been undertaken only recently . However, no quantitative estimates exist up to now. On the phenomenological side, the jet production in virtual-photon-proton scattering, especially at small photon virtuality, shows clearly the presence of the resolved photon component (see e.g. ). The resolved photon component seems also crucial for understanding the world data for the $`F_2^p(x,Q^2)F_2^n(x,Q^2)`$ . All these arguments put into question the simple fits to the total photon-nucleon cross section with the colour dipole component alone, and call for a multi-component parametrization.

## 2 Formulation of the model

It is known that the LO total $`\gamma ^{}N`$ cross section in the so-called dipole or mixed representation can be written in the form

$$\sigma _{tot}^{\gamma ^{}N}=\underset{q}{}𝑑zd^2\rho \sigma _{T,L}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\gamma ^{}q\overline{q}}^{T,L}(Q,z,\rho )|^2\sigma _{(q\overline{q})N}(x,\rho ).$$
(1)
In this paper we take the so-called quark-antiquark photon wave function of perturbative form . As usual, in order to correct the photon wave function for large dipole sizes we introduce an effective (anti)quark mass ($`m_{eff}=m_0`$).

The dipole representation (1) has been used in recent years to fit the virtual photon - nucleon total cross section . The best fit has been achieved in the saturation model of Golec-Biernat-Wüsthoff . In their approach the dipole-nucleon cross section was parametrized as

$$\sigma (x,\rho )=\sigma _0\left[1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\rho ^2}{4R_0^2(x)}\right)\right],$$
(2)
where the Bjorken $`x`$ dependent radius $`R_0`$ is given by $`R_0(x)=\frac{1}{1GeV}\left(\frac{x}{x_0}\right)^{\lambda /2}`$. Model parameters (normalization constant $`\sigma _0`$ and parameters $`x_0`$ and $`\lambda `$) have been determined by the fit to the inclusive data on $`F_2`$ for $`x<`$ 0.01 .

In the GBW approach, the dipole-nucleon cross section is parametrized as a function of Bjorken $`x`$. As discussed in , it would be useful to have rather a parametrization in the gluon longitudinal momentum fraction $`x_gx`$ instead of the Bjorken $`x`$. Having $`x_g`$ instead of Bjorken-x better reflects the kinematics of the process and is consistent with the standard approach to photon-gluon fusion. This involves the following replacement in Eq.(2) $`\sigma (x,\rho )\sigma (x_g,\rho )`$ which means also a replacement of $`x`$ by $`x_g`$ in $`R_0`$. As discussed in , an exact calculation of $`x_g`$ in the dipole representation is, however, not possible, and we approximate $`x_g(M_{qq}^2+Q^2)/(W^2+Q^2)`$, where $`M_{qq}^2=m_q^2/(z(1z))`$.

We intend to construct a simple two-component model. One component of our phenomenological model is the dipole $`q\overline{q}`$ component, while the other one is meant to represent the nonperturbative resolved photon component explicitly. Trying to keep our model as simple as possible we have tried to check if the standard vector dominance model (VDM) contribution can be a reasonable representation of the resolved photon. The cross section for the VDM component is calculated in the standard way

$$\sigma _{\gamma ^{}N}^{VDM}(W,Q^2)=\underset{V}{}\frac{4\pi }{\gamma _V^2}\frac{M_V^4\sigma _{tot}^{VN}(W)}{(Q^2+M_V^2)^2}(1x).$$
(3)
We take the simplest diagonal version of VDM with $`\rho `$, $`\omega `$ and $`\varphi `$ mesons included. Other details can be found in .

## 3 Fit to the HERA data

In the previous section we presented formulae for the virtual photon - nucleon cross section. We transform the structure function data from  to $`\sigma _{tot}^{\gamma ^{}N}`$. Then we perform two independent fits to the HERA data. In fit 1, only dipole nucleon interaction is included (see Eq.(1))

$$FIT1:\sigma _{tot}^{\gamma ^{}N}=\sigma _{dip}^{\gamma ^{}N}.$$
(4)
In fit 2 in addition we include the resolved photon component in the spirit of the vector meson dominance model (see Eq.(3))

$$FIT2:\sigma _{tot}^{\gamma ^{}N}=\sigma _{dip}^{\gamma ^{}N}+\sigma _{VDM}^{\gamma ^{}N}.$$
(5)
In these fits we limit to 0.15 GeV2 $`<Q^2<`$ 10 GeV2. The upper limit is dictated by the simplicity of our model. The maximal Bjorken $`x`$ in the data sample included in our fit is 0.021, and minimal W = 17.4 GeV.

The region of small $`Q^2`$ is sensitive to the value of the effective quark mass. A good quality fit can be obtained in the broad range of $`m_0`$. The value of $`\chi ^2`$ in fit 2 (dipole+VDM) is smaller than that in fit 1 (dipole only). This can be taken as the evidence for resolved photon component.

The quality of the fit can be judged by inspecting Fig.1. Since there is a rather weak dependence of the cross section on $`W`$, therefore in the figure both theoretical curves and experimental points are rescaled by an extra factor 2n. Careful comparison of fit 1 and fit 2 shows the superiority of the fit 2 in the region of small $`Q^2`$ and large energies . In presenting the results we have made an arbitrary choice of $`m_0`$. The results for other sets of parameters (different $`m_0`$) are almost indistinguishable in the range of the fit. They differ somewhat, however, outside the range of the fit where no experimental data are available. The theoretical curves with dipole component only underestimate somewhat the low $`Q^2`$ data.

Having shown that a good-quality two-component fit to the HERA data with very small number of parameters is possible, we wish to show a decomposition of the cross section into the two model components. In Fig.2, as an example, we show separate contributions of both components as a function of $`W`$. While at low energy the VDM contribution dominates due to the subleading reggeon exchange, at higher energies they are of comparable size. The VDM contribution dominates at small values of photon virtualities, while at larger $`Q^2`$ the dipole component becomes dominant.

Up to now we have concentrated on very low-$`x`$ region relevant for DIS at HERA. It is interesting to check what happens if we go to somewhat larger Bjorken $`x>`$ 0.05. In this region one cannot neglect the valence quark contribution to the cross section. Then the cross section is a sum of three components:

$$\sigma _{tot}^{\gamma ^{}N}(W,Q^2)=\sigma _{dip}^{\gamma ^{}N}(W,Q^2)+\sigma _{VDM}^{\gamma ^{}N}(W,Q^2)+\sigma _{val}^{\gamma ^{}N}(W,Q^2).$$
(6)
We have found a good quality description of the fixed target data .

## 4 Conclusions

Recent fits to the total $`\gamma ^{}p`$ cross section in the literature include only the $`q\overline{q}`$ component in the Fock decomposition of the photon wave function. It is known from the phenomenology of the inclusive and exclusive reactions that the vector dominance model in many cases gives a good estimate of the effects characteristic for resolved photon. We have analyzed if a two-component model, which includes the $`q\overline{q}`$ component and the more complicated components replaced by the standard VDM, can provide a good description of the HERA data for $`\gamma ^{}p`$ scattering.

In order to quantify the effect of the resolved photon we have performed two different fits to the HERA data. In fit No.1 we include only the dipole component. We have parametrized the dipole-nucleon cross section in terms of a variable which is closer to the gluon longitudinal momentum fraction $`x_g`$ than to the Bjorken $`x`$. In fit No.2, in addition we include the VDM component while keeping the same functional form of parametrization for the dipole-nucleon interaction. At small $`Q^2`$ and large energies a better fit is obtained if the resolved photon component is included. When going to slightly larger Bjorken $`x>`$ 0.05, the model must be supplemented for valence quark contribution. If this is done, the model describes also the fixed target data quite well.


text:
# Interstellar Dust Scattering Properties

## 1. Introduction

The scattering properties of dust provide a unique view into the physical properties of dust grains. This view is different from other probes of dust grains (eg., extinction, polarization due to differential extinction, abundances) as it allows their absorption and scattering properties to be separated. The scattering properties of dust grains are indicators of the size and composition of dust grains.

The scattering of photons by dust grains can be described by a single scattering albedo, $`a`$, and a scattering phase function, $`\mathrm{\Phi }(\alpha )`$, where $`\alpha `$ is the scattering angle. In most studies, $`\mathrm{\Phi }(\alpha )`$ is approximated by the single parameter Henyey-Green (1941) phase function

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{HG}(\alpha )=\frac{\left(1g^2\right)}{4\pi \left(1+g^2+2g\mathrm{cos}\alpha \right)^{3/2}}$$
(1)
where

$$g=\mathrm{\Phi }(\alpha )\mathrm{cos}\alpha d\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{cos}\alpha .$$
(2)
The $`g`$ parameter is referred to as the scattering phase function asymmetry and varies from -1 (complete back scattering) to 0 (isotropic scattering) to 1 (complete forward scattering). This Henyey-Greenstein phase function is a good approximation for dust grains, except possible in the far-ultraviolet (Witt 1989). Other analytic forms of the scattering phase function have been proposed (e.g., Cornette & Shanks 1992; Draine 2003b), but have yet to be used in dust scattering studies.

There are three astrophysical objects which are suited for studies of Milky Way interstellar dust scattering properties. These are reflection nebulae, dark clouds, and the Diffuse Galactic Light (DGL). These objects consist of either high-density or diffuse dust illuminated by sufficiently strong sources to permit the detection of scattered light. Reflection nebulae usually consist of a single or small number of stars illuminating their natal cloud. Dark clouds are isolated dust clouds which are usually illuminated by the interstellar radiation field. The DGL is the sum of the light of the stars in the Milky Way scattered by dust in the Galaxy. Other objects which do show scattering light, but which are not suitable for such studies are circumstellar disks, H II regions, and external galaxies. These objects have dust which is newly formed, processed, or non-Milky Way dust.

Each of these three astrophysical objects have different strengths and weaknesses with respect to determining dust scattering properties. The strengths of reflection nebulae are that they are bright, have simple, wavelength independent illuminator geometries, and are illuminated by a single or handful of stars. Their weaknesses are that they often have strong emissions in the red (Extended Red Emission \[ERE\]) and near-infrared (non-equilibrium, thermal small particle emission). In addition, they usually probe high density regions ($`R_V>3.1`$) making the results harder to compare to most dust grain models. The strengths of dark clouds are that they have simple, wavelength independent illuminator geometries and are externally illuminated by the interstellar radiation field and/or a small number of stars. Dark clouds share the same weakness as reflection nebulae as they also probe high density regions ($`R_V>3.1`$) and, in addition, they are difficult to observe as they are faint. The strength of the DGL is that it probes the diffuse interstellar medium ($`R_V=3.1`$). The weaknesses of the DGL are that the illuminator geometry is wavelength dependent and the dust geometry is complex having a disk density distribution with embedded dust clouds. In addition, DGL observations are challenging as observations of the faint DGL signal are needed over a fairly large region of the sky, especially a range of galactic latitudes, to allow for accurate measurements of $`a`$ and $`g`$. The combination of the results from all three astrophysical objects should give a good view of dust scattering properties without undue uncertainties resulting from each object type’s weaknesses.

This review will concentrate on published studies of interstellar dust scattering properties in the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared. The topic of X-ray scattering by dust is covered elsewhere in these proceedings. A great deal of work has taken place in this area since the review of dust scattering properties at the last dust meeting (Witt 1989). At that time, only a handful of studies existed which made quantitative determinations of dust scattering properties (ie., actually determined values for $`a`$ and $`g`$). Since the last dust meeting, a number of studies have specifically been addressed to this issue.

Brief summaries of these studies, usually in the form of plots of $`a`$ and $`g`$ as a function of wavelength, have been presented in the literature (eg., Gordon et al. 1994; Mathis 1996; Li & Greenberg 1997; Witt & Gordon 2000; Draine 2003a, 2003b). One drawback to these reviews has been the inclusion of all literature results without consideration of the quality of each study. This has lead to a misplaced notion that our knowledge of dust scattering properties is quite uncertain in some wavelength regions. This has been especially pronounced in studies of the DGL in the far-ultraviolet (around 1500 Å). In a handful of these studies, preliminary analyses have been revised in later papers resulting in significantly higher determinations of both $`a`$ and $`g`$. Thus, it is important to apply a uniform set of criteria when reviewing dust scattering studies to ensure the basic quality of the results. This has been done in this review.

## 2. Literature Results

The literature was searched for determinations of dust scattering properties in objects possessing Milky Way interstellar dust. Astrophysical objects which satisfy this constraint are reflection nebulae, dark clouds, and the DGL.

For inclusion in this review, each study had to satisfy four criteria. These criteria are:

1. *Determine albedo & g*: This requires that specific values be quoted for the two quantities. Studies which were only sensitive to one of the two quantities were included as long as a realistic range of the other quantity was probed. Usually, the albedo ($`a`$) was the quantity determined with calculations performed for $`g`$ values between zero and one. While this criteria means that the large number of early studies which only put limits on $`a`$ and/or $`g`$ are neglected, their limits are usually consistent with the values determined from later studies.
2. *Determine uncertainties*: The importance of this criteria cannot be understated. The uncertainties presented here are either the uncertainties quoted in the original paper or reflect the range of $`a`$ & $`g`$ values allowed by models presented in each study. This can mean that multiple models (with different assumptions) have been combined into a single measurement with larger uncertainties than a single model.
3. *Refereed Publication*: This ensures that the full details of the work have be presented. In addition to the usual journals (eg., ApJ, AJ, A&A, PASP, MNRAS, etc.), theses were counted as refereed publications.
4. *Not be superseded by other work*: A number of studies are superseded by newer work which usually used better radiative transfer models (especially the case for DGL studies). This usually results in significantly different determinations of $`a`$ & $`g`$.

The studies satisfying the first three criteria are listed in Table 1, separated by astrophysical object studied. These tables give the study reference, a brief description, a model code, and whether the study satisfied the fourth criteria and, as such, was included in Figs. 1-4. Each model code is explained in Table 2 where the method of calculation, sources, and dust geometry are summarized. Ideally, the model used to interpret the observations of a specific object would include realistic illuminators (location and spectrum), a realistic dust distribution, and calculate the full multiple scattering of photons. This ideal is unlikely to be fully met by any specific model, but models which come closest have the best chance of producing good dust scattering properties. The original study reference should be consulted for the full details of each study.

The $`a`$ and $`g`$ values for the studies which satisfy all four criteria are plotted separate in Figs. 1-3 for reflection nebulae, dark clouds, and the DGL. In addition, predictions for different dust grain models are included in these figures (see §3.1. for model details). The results have been divided between object classes to highlight their differences. It would not be surprising to find real differences in the $`a`$ and $`g`$ values between object classes. For example, reflection nebulae and dark clouds possess, on average, larger dust grains than the DGL. This is seen from the different $`R_V`$ values measured for these objects as $`R_V`$ is a rough measure of the average grain size. Examining the results separately also allows for the impact of the different strengths and weaknesses of each object on the derived scattering parameters to be examined. The final reason to separate the results is to check if the assumptions in the modeling based on object type significantly affect the resulting scattering values. All of the $`a`$ and $`g`$ values have been plotted together in Fig. 4 to check the consistency of determinations between the three astrophysical object types.

## 3. Discussion

The brightness and relative compactness of reflection nebulae have led to determinations of dust scattering properties with a finer wavelength sampling and smaller uncertainties than in either dark clouds or the DGL (see Fig. 1). Due to the usual presence of strong emissions (ERE and non-equilibrium emission), reflection nebulae have only provided scattering information in the ultraviolet and blue-optical. While dark clouds are faint, their relative compactness and usual lack of strong emissions has made them valuable as probes of dust scattering properties in the red-optical and near-infrared (Fig. 2). The one drawback to both reflection nebulae and dark cloud studies is that they probe higher density media than diffuse interstellar medium. This leads to questions to the general applicability of reflection nebulae and dark clouds results.

The faintness and large extent of the DGL makes it the most challenging object to both observe and model. The importance of measuring dust scattering properties in the diffuse interstellar medium and determinations of the extragalactic background has resulted in considerable effort being expended on the study of the DGL. Determinations of DGL dust scattering properties in the blue-optical and near-ultraviolet have been fairly uncontroversial, while such determinations in the far-ultraviolet have been quite controversial. This controversy is highlighted by the back-to-back reviews on the ultraviolet background in which it was argued that the majority of the ultraviolet background is from dust scattered light (Bowyer 1991) or extragalactic light (Henry 1991). The difficulties in both observing and modeling the DGL in the far-ultraviolet has led to studies in the literature with conflicting results, either low $`a`$ and $`g`$ values or high $`a`$ and $`g`$ values. This is the area which was most affected by the fourth criteria (not superseded by a more recent study). A number of initial analyses giving low $`a`$ and $`g`$ values were superseded by subsequent studies using more sophisticated models which found higher $`a`$ and $`g`$ values. As a result, the scatter in the plots of $`a`$ and $`g`$ for the DGL (Fig. 3) is now within the quoted uncertainties. The values of $`a`$ and $`g`$ derived from DGL measurements are similar to those derived from reflection nebulae and dark clouds.

By examining Figs. 1-3, it can be seen that the $`a`$ and $`g`$ values derived for each object type are internally consistent. For example, the measurements of $`a`$ and $`g`$ from different reflection nebulae all are consistent with a single wavelength dependence. When examing these figures, it is important to remember that they include results from broad-band filters along with those derived from spectroscopy. Comparing the results for all three object types in Fig. 4, it can be seen that the same may be true in general and not just internal to an object type. The only area where the data from different object types may disagree is in the far-ultraviolet region for $`a`$ measurements only. The uncertainties are large enough to make a strong statement either way difficult. The high level of agreement between object types implies that their different strengths and weaknesses as well as model assumptions are not severely biasing our view of dust scattering properties. This result goes a long way in answering the concerns raised by Mathis, Whitney, & Wood (2002) about possible biases in reflection nebulae measurements of the dust albedo caused by ignoring the known clumpiness of dust.

In fact, it is not unreasonable to say that the current data (see Fig. 4) indicates the wavelength dependence of the albedo is $``$0.6 in the near-infrared/optical with a dip to $``$0.4 for 2175 Å bump, a rise to $``$0.8 around 1500 Å, and a drop to $``$0.3 by 1000 Å. The wavelength dependence of $`g`$ is simpler with a monotonic rise from 0.6 to 0.8 from 10000 to 1000 Å. The uncertainties do allow for significant real variation in the $`a`$ and $`g`$ values around these qualitative averages of at least 0.1.

The study of dust scattering properties has shed light on the nature of the 2175 Å bump and the far-ultraviolet rise features of extinction curves. Early work on the 2175 Å bump indicated that it was likely an absorption feature with no scattered component (eg., Lillie & Witt 1976). Subsequently, evidence for a scattered component in the 2175 Å bump was found in two reflection nebulae, CED 201 and IC 435, by Witt, Bohlin, & Stecher (1986). This results was found to definitely be spurious for IC 435 when much more sensitive observations were taken and analyzed by Calzetti et al. (1995). By inference, the observations of CED 201 are also likely to be spurious. As a result, all evidence currently supports a 2175 Å extinction bump which is only due to absorption. Similarly, examining the results of reflection nebulae (see Fig. 1) gives good evidence that a significant portion of the far-ultraviolet rise in extinction curves (1700 Å and shorter wavelengths) is due to absorption.

### 3.1. Comparisons with Dust Grain Models

One way to synthesize our knowledge of dust is to fit different observations of dust to a dust grain model. The main observational constraints for dust grain models are usually the diffuse ISM dust extinction curve and dust abundances (Weingartner & Draine 2001; Clayton et al. 2003). In addition, some dust grain models also fit the dust polarization (Kim & Martin 1994; Li & Greenberg 1997) and infrared emission spectrum (Zubko et al. 2003; Li & Draine 2001). Some dust grain models also have been fit to the denser dust extinction curves (Kim, Martin, & Hendry 1994; Weingartner & Draine 2001). No dust grain models have used the measured dust scattering properties as fitting constraints, but most do use the scattering properties as a consistency check.

In Figs. 1-4, predictions for $`a`$ and $`g`$ from recent dust grain models are plotted. The Zubko et al. (2003) model plotted is described as BARE-NC-B. All but one of the five model predictions plotted are for diffuse ISM dust ($`R_V=3.1`$) and are then only directly comparable to the DGL dust scattering results. As can be seen from Fig. 3, the dust grain models are in fairly good agreement with the results for $`g`$, but most of the models underpredict $`a`$ for most wavelengths. All the models have a small dip in $`a`$ at the 2175 Å bump, but the dip is not as large as indicated by the DGL measurements. The models all predict lower far-ultraviolet albedos than have been measured in the DGL.

The one dust grain model for denser dust (Weingartner & Draine; $`R_V=5.5`$) is directly comparable to the dust scattering measurements in reflection nebulae (Fig. 1) and dark clouds (Fig. 2) as these objects have similar $`R_V`$ values. Similar to the DGL comparison, the $`g`$ values predicted by the model are in reasonable agreement for reflection nebulae and dark clouds, except possible in the optical for dark clouds. The model predictions for $`a`$ agree with the measurements for dark clouds which mainly probe the optical and near-infrared. The $`a`$ predictions for reflection nebulae are generally too high in the optical and too low in the far-ultraviolet. The albedo dip at 2175 Å is much smaller in the model than the well measured values indicate. Basically, the recovery of the albedo at around 1500 Å is not seen in any of the dust grain models.

## 4. Summary and Future

This review of dust scattering determinations has concentrated on giving a critical examination of results presented in the literature for reflection nebulae, dark clouds, and the DGL. Unlike previous such reviews, each study was required to pass four simple criteria for inclusion in this review. There were a total of 23 studies passing the four criteria with 7 on reflection nebulae, 7 on dark clouds, and 9 on the DGL.

A great deal of progress has been made since the last review of this area (Witt 1989). The uncertainty in far-ultraviolet albedo from DGL studies has been resolved with the help of better observations and more sophisticated modeling. The 2175 Å bump has been shown to be an absorption feature; earlier indications of scattering in the bump have been traced to bad data. The measurements in reflection nebulae, dark clouds, and the DGL are roughly consistent alleviating earlier worries about the effects of the modeling assumptions specific to the object being studied (eg. reflection versus the DGL).

While much progress has been made in measuring dust scattering properties, there are a number of questions which are outstanding.

1. Does the assumption of the Henyey-Greenstein single parameter scattering phase function significantly bias the resulting dust scattering parameters ($`a`$ and $`g`$)? This question is probably best answered with models of images of reflection nebulae and dark clouds which include either more complicated analytical phase functions (eg., a double Henyey-Greenstein phase function; eq. 4 of Witt 1977) or scattering phase functions computed from dust grain models.
2. What are the $`a`$ and $`g`$ values in the near-infrared? Currently, there is only $`a`$ measurements for a single dark cloud and no $`g`$ measurements. The $`a`$ and $`g`$ values in the near-infrared probe the larger dust grains, information about which is difficult to determine from extinction curve measurements alone.
3. What are the $`a`$ and $`g`$ values in the red-optical and near-infrared for reflection nebulae? Is it even possible to determine $`a`$ and $`g`$ in reflection nebulae for these wavelengths? There are reflection nebulae in which ERE has not been detected (Witt & Boroson 1990). Are there nebulae without near-infrared, non-equilibrium emission?
4. Is it possible to measure dust scattering properties in the red-optical and near-infrared from DGL measurements?
5. What does it mean to measure dust scattering properties in objects without ERE or near-infrared, non-equilibrium emission if the diffuse ISM has been shown to have ERE (Gordon, Witt, & Friedmann 1998) and probably also has near-infrared, non-equilibrium emission.
6. Is it possible to use the full multiwavelength appearance of reflection nebulae and dark clouds to alleviate lingering concerns about the geometrical assumptions inherit in modeling such objects? Specifically, the inclusion of ultraviolet through far-infrared would provide direct measurements of the direct, scattered, and re-emitted light and thus require many fewer assumptions.
7. Is it feasible to consider using the full multiwavelength appearance of the DGL to reduce number of assumption necessary to model the DGL? Or is this still too complex of a problem, especially in light of the need for accurate 3D star positions of all stars important for the DGL (eg., hot stars in the ultraviolet and cooler stars at longer wavelengths)?
8. What are the real differences between dust scattering properties in reflection nebulae, dark clouds, and the DGL? The current evidence indicates they are consistent with each other at the $``$20% level.
9. Are the dust scattering properties in other galaxies different than those derived for Milky Way dust? The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds offer environments which have lower metallicities and high star formation rates than the Milky Way. In addition, dust extinction curves in the Magellanic Clouds have been measured to be quite different from Milky Way extinction curves (Gordon et al. 2003).

Finally, the author would like to encourage readers who find studies which have not been included in this review to email them to the author (currently kgordon@as.arizona.edu). The author is committed to continuing to update the web-based version of this review<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1currently at http://dirty.as.arizona.edu/$``$kgordon/Dust/Scat\_Param/scat\_data.html.

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