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# Nonclassical photon pairs generated from a room-temperature atomic ensemble

## Abstract

We report experimental generation of non-classically correlated photon pairs from collective emission in a room-temperature atomic vapor cell. The nonclassical feature of the emission is demonstrated by observing a violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Each pair of correlated photons are separated by a controllable time delay up to $`2`$ microseconds. This experiment demonstrates an important step towards the realization of the Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller scheme for scalable long-distance quantum communication.

PACS numbers: 42.50.Gy, 03.67 Hk

Implementation of quantum communication and computation is of large current interest . Recently, significant interests arise in using atomic ensembles for realization of spin squeezing , quantum memory , and quantum information processing . A significant result in this direction is a scheme proposed by Duan, Lukin, Cirac and Zoller (hereafter “DLCZ”) which gives a promising approach to realization of scalable long-distance quantum communication . This scheme overcomes the photon attenuation problem and can communicate quantum states over arbitrarily long distance with only polynomial costs based on a clever implementation of the quantum repeater architecture . In the DLCZ scheme, one generates and purifies entanglement between distant atomic ensembles by interfering and counting single-photons emitted from them. The same setup can also be used to prepare maximally entanglement states between many such ensembles . The challenging and important enabling step for these schemes is to demonstrate quantum correlation between the emitted single-photons and the long-lived collective atomic excitations. In this experiment, we realize this important step by observing non-classical correlation between them in a room-temperature atomic vapor. The collective atomic excitation is transferred subsequently to a photon in experiments, so actually we observe nonclassical correlation between two successively emitted photons.

Very recently, two other experiments have been reported contributing to the realization of the DLCZ scheme . In particular, Kuzmich et al. have reported striking results on generation of nonclassical photon pairs in a sample of cold atoms. Compared with those experiments, our experiment is distinctive by the following features: (i) We observe nonclassical correlation between photon pairs generated from a room-temperature atomic vapor cell. The observed correlation is comparable to that reported in Ref. , but our setup of room-temperature atoms is much cheaper compared with the magnetic-optical trap used for cold atoms , and the use of cheaper setups could have advantage in future full realization of the DLCZ scheme where many such basic setups are required. The experiment in Ref.  is also based on the use of an atomic vapor cell, however, it is not performed in the single-photon region as required by the DLCZ scheme. (ii) Compared with instantaneous photon pairs produced previously in atomic cascades  or in parametric down conversion , the atomic ensemble experiments are distinct in that the correlated photon pairs generated in this system can be separated with a controllable time delay, which is in principle only limited by the single-photon storage time in the atomic ensemble. In our experiment, we demonstrate a time delay of $`2`$ microseconds between the pair of non-classsically correlated photons, which is considerably longer than the $`400`$-nanosecond time delay reported before . It is important to experimentally improve this storage time to facilitate the full realization of the DLCZ scheme which requires quantum memory .

The basic idea behind this experiment can be understood by considering a sample of three-level atoms in a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ type configuration as illustrated in Fig. 1b. Most of the atoms are initially prepared in the state $`|a`$ through optical pumping. A write laser pulse is then sent through the atomic ensemble which couples off-resonantly to the atomic transition $`|a|e`$. This pulse induces a Raman scattering, bringing a small fraction of the atoms into the level $`|b`$ by emitting Stokes photons from the transition $`|e|b`$. The write pulse is controlled to be weak so that the average Stokes photon number scattered into the specified forward propagating mode $`\psi _w\left(𝐫\right)`$ is much smaller than $`1`$ for each pulse . We detect the photon in this mode, and upon a detector click, one atom will be excited to the collective atomic mode $`s^{}`$ defined as

$$s^{}=\left(1/\sqrt{N_a}\right)\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_a}{}}|b_ia|,$$
(1)
where $`N_a`$ is the total involved atom number. It has been predicted that there will be a definite correlation between the photon number in the forward propagating mode $`\psi _1\left(𝐫\right)`$ and the atom number in the collective mode $`s`$ , and this correlation is critical for all the applications based on this setup, including the implementation of quantum repeaters. To experimentally confirm this correlation, we transfer the collective atomic excitation to a photonic excitation after a time delay $`\delta t`$ by shining a read laser pulse on the ensemble which couples to the transition $`|b|e`$. This read pulse will bring the atom back to the state $`|a`$ by emitting an anti-Stokes photon in a specified forward-propagating mode $`\psi _r\left(𝐫\right)`$. We can then detect the photon coincidences in the write and the read modes $`\psi _w\left(𝐫\right)`$ and $`\psi _r\left(𝐫\right)`$. The mode function $`\psi _r\left(𝐫\right)`$ is determined by the spatial shapes of the write and the read pulses, the geometry of the atomic ensemble, and the mode structure of $`\psi _w\left(𝐫\right)`$ . In experiments, one can choose the waists of the write and the read laser beams so that $`\psi _w\left(𝐫\right)`$ and $`\psi _r\left(𝐫\right)`$ largely overlap with the spatial shapes of these pumping beams. The Stokes and anti-Stokes photons in these modes are coupled into single-mode fibers, which direct them to single-photon detectors for coincidence measurements.

In our experiment, we use an optically thick ensemble of 87Rb atoms. The basic element is an isotopically pure 87Rb atomic vapor contained in a silica cell. There is also some buffer gas (Ne, $`30`$ Torr) inside the cell which is used to increase the spin relaxation time of the 87Rb atoms. The number density of 87Rb atoms is estimated to be around $`1.3\times 10^{10}`$ cm-3 under room temperature. The silica cell is placed in a three-layer permalloy box for shielding magnetic fields. The residue magnetic field inside the box is estimated to be below $`1`$ mG. The desired ground states $`|a`$ and $`|b`$ are chosen respectively as the hyperfine states $`|5S_{1/2},F=1`$ and $`|5S_{1/2},F=2`$ of the 87Rb atoms, and the excited state $`|e`$ is provided by the hyperfine states in the $`|5P_{1/2}`$ manifold.

The schematic set up for this experiment is shown by Fig. 1a. The write and the read pulses are from two different semiconductor lasers working at a wavelength about $`795`$ nm, with the frequency difference of $`6.8`$ GHz matching the hyperfine splitting of the 87Rb atoms. These pumping laser beams are shined from different sides of the first polarization beam splitter PBS1 so that they have orthogonal polarizations when going through the silica atomic vapor cell. After the cell, we need to separate the weak signal of Stokes or anti-Stokes photons from the strong write and read laser pulses, and this is done through both polarization and frequency selection. Right after the cell, the second polarized beam splitter PBS2 will separate the signal from the pumping laser beams with an extinction ratio of about $`7\times 10^3`$. Further frequency filtering is achieved by the glass cells F1 and F2, each containing Rubidium atoms initially optically pumped to the hyperfine levels $`|5S_{1/2},F=1`$ and $`|5S_{1/2},F=2`$, respectively. As in Ref. , the residual write (read) laser pulses after the PBS2 will be strongly attenuated $`\left(>10^5\right)`$ by the atomic cells F1 (F2) through resonant absorption while the signal Stokes (anti-Stokes) photons transmit with a high efficiency due to the large hyperfine detuning. After the filters, both of the Stokes and anti-Stokes photons are split by a $`50\%50\%`$ beam splitter, and then coupled into single-mode fibers, which direct them to the four single photon detectors (PerkinElmer Model SPCM-AQR). With this setup, we can measure both the auto-correlations and cross-correlations between the Stokes and the anti-Stokes photons.

The experiment goes as follows: we first optically pump the 87Rb atoms in the silica cell to the ground state $`|5S_{1/2},F=1`$. Then the write pulse, with about $`5\times 10^3`$ photons, is sent through the atomic ensemble. The duration of the write pulse is about $`1\mu s`$. With this pulse, the probability to generate a Stokes photon in the spatial mode collected in this experiment is estimated to be about $`p_w0.14`$. The Stokes photons are detected by the single photon detectors $`D_A`$ and $`D_B`$. After a controllable time delay $`\delta t`$, which is typically $`2`$ $`\mu s`$ for our experiment, we send the read pulse through the atomic ensemble. This pulse has the same duration as the write pulse, but is stronger in intensity than the latter by a factor of $`10`$. This read pulse transfers the collective atomic excitations back to anti-Stokes photons, with the retrieving probability of about $`0.32`$ estimated from our experimental data (including the half polarization loss due to the unpolarized ensemble). The anti-Stokes photons are registered through the single-photon detectors $`D_C`$ and $`D_D`$. To reduce noise, before the detectors $`(D_A,D_B)`$ and $`(D_C,D_D)`$, we apply two gates with the time window of about $`1`$ $`\mu s`$, synchronized respectively with the write and the read pulses. The time sequences of the write and the read pulses together with the gating windows are shown by Fig. 1c. The above steps form a full duty cycle (one trial), and this cycle is repeated at a rate of $`5`$ kHz.

In experiments, the detectors for the Stokes and anti-Stokes photons typically have count rates of $`220`$ s-1 and $`70`$ s-1, respectively. The outputs of these four single photon detectors are sent to a time interval analyzer (TIA) for measuring the coincidence between any chosen pair of detectors. This coincidence can be measured by using the output from one detector as the start signal of the TIA and recording the arrival time of the output from the other detector. The coincidence between $`(D_A,D_B)`$, $`(D_C,D_D)`$, and $`(D_A,D_C)`$ (or $`(D_B,D_D)`$) are denoted in the following by $`n_{1,1}(t),`$ $`n_{2,2}(t),`$ and $`n_{1,2}(t)`$, respectively. The experimental results for these coincidences are shown by Fig. 2a (the left column). The first peak represents the coincidence within the same duty cycle (say $`i`$), and the following peaks are coincidences between the $`i`$th trial and the following trials. In Fig. 2b (the right column), by expanding the time axis, we show the detailed time shape $`n_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau )`$ of the first peak as well as the average time shape $`m_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau )`$ of the seven following peaks, where $`\alpha ,\beta =1,2`$, and $`\tau `$ denotes the shifted arrival time whose width is smaller than $`1\mu s`$ as set by the gating window. The average shape $`m_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau )`$ of the coincidence rates from different trials are defined as $`m_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau )=\left(1/7\right)_{j=1}^7`$ $`n_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau +j\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=200\mu s`$ is the time interval between subsequent duty cycles.

From these measured time resolved coincidences, we can confirm the nonclassical (quantum) correlation between the Stokes and the anti-Stokes fields. As the anti-Stokes field is transferred from the collective atomic mode, this also confirms the nonclassical correlation between the collective atomic mode and the forward propagating Stokes mode. To confirm the nonclassical feature of the correlation between the Stokes and anti-Stokes fields, as in Ref.  we make use of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. As has been pointed out by Clauser  and discussed in detail in ref. , the normalized auto and cross correlations functions $`g_{1,1},`$ $`g_{2,2},`$ and $`g_{1,2}`$ between two arbitrary classical fields 1 and 2 need to satisfy the following Cauchy-Schwarz inequality (here “classical” means that there exists P-representation for these fields with a positive distribution )

$$\left[g_{1,2}\right]^2g_{1,1}g_{2,2}.$$
(2)
The auto and cross correlation functions between the Stokes filed 1 and the anti-Stokes filed 2 can be directly obtained from the measured coincidence rates $`n_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau )`$ and $`m_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau )`$ $`\left(\alpha ,\beta =1,2\right)`$. Let $`N_{\alpha ,\beta }`$ and $`M_{\alpha ,\beta }`$ represent the total number of coincidences within the time gating window for the same trial and different trails, respectively, so they actually represent respectively the time integrals of $`n_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau )`$ and $`m_{\alpha ,\beta }(\tau )`$ over the whole peak, i.e., they are determined by the areas of the corresponding peaks. By definition, the normalized auto and cross correlation functions $`g_{1,1},`$ $`g_{2,2},`$ and $`g_{1,2}`$ between the Stokes and anti-Stokes fields are given respectively by $`g_{1,1}=N_{1,1}/M_{1,1}`$, $`g_{2,2}=N_{2,2}/M_{2,2}`$, and $`g_{1,2}\left(\delta t\right)=N_{1,2}/M_{1,2}`$, where $`\delta t=2`$ $`\mu s`$ denotes explicitly the time delay between the Stokes and ani-Stokes fields.

The integrated coincidence rates $`N_{\alpha ,\beta }`$ and $`M_{\alpha ,\beta }`$ in our experiment are shown by Fig. 2c, from which we calculate the correlations $`g_{1,1}=1.764\pm 0.026,`$ $`g_{2,2}=1.771\pm 0.028,`$ $`g_{1,2}(\delta t)=2.043\pm 0.031.`$ One can see that $`\left[g_{1,2}^2(\delta t)=4.17\pm 0.09\right]>\left[g_{1,1}g_{2,2}=3.12\pm 0.08\right]`$, so the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality (2) is manifestly violated by our experiment. This clearly demonstrates that up to a delay time of $`2`$ $`\mu s`$, we still get non-classically (quantum) correlated photon pairs from our experiment.

In the ideal case, if there are no noise and imperfections, the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality could be violated to a much larger extent. If the excitation probability of the collective atomic mode is $`p`$ for each write pumping pulse, we could get a violation of the inequality (2) with $`\left[g_{1,2}^2/g_{1,1}g_{2,2}\right]\left[(1+p)/\left(2p\right)\right]^2`$ in the ideal case. In our experiment, the excitation probability $`p`$ is estimated to be between $`0.1`$ and $`0.2`$, which in principle could allow a significantly larger violation. In practice, however, several sources of noise and imperfection degrade the extent of violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Firstly, in a room-temperature atomic vapor, due to the atomic motion and the Doppler broadening, the atomic excitation can be diffused from the collective atomic mode to some other modes, and vice versa. Such a diffusion will significantly reduce the cross-correlation between the Stokes and anti-Stokes fields. Secondly, there are significant background fields due to imperfect filtering. The background fields are uncorrelated and they will also reduce the cross-correlation between the Stokes and anti-Stokes fields. Unlike the cold atom ensemble , the optical thickness of the atomic vapor cell is pretty large, so we estimate that uncorrelated spontaneous emission is not a dominant source of noise in our case . The signal-to-noise ratio of this experiment probably could be improved by increasing the detuning of the pumping laser, by improving the filtering ratios, by reducing the power of the write beam, or by adjusting the configuration of the atomic cell to prolong the spin relaxation time.

In summary, we have observed generation of non-classical photon pairs from a room-temperature atomic vapor cell. Each pair of correlated photons can be separated by a controllable time delay which is limit only by the coherence time in the atomic ground state manifold. Up to a delay time of $`2`$ $`\mu s`$, we still clearly demonstrate non-classical correlation between the Stokes and anti-Stokes fields from the room-temperature atomic vapor. Compared with the cold atom experiment, the setup involved here are much cheaper. This experiment shows the prospect that such a cheap system could be used as a basic element for realization of quantum repeaters and long-distance quantum communication.

Acknowledgment: We thank Shu-Yu Zhou and Yu-Zhu Wang (Shanghai Institute of Optics) for their enormous help on this experiment. We also thank Alex Kuzmich and Jeff Kimble for the helpful discussions. This work was funded by National Fundamental Research Program ( 2001CB309300), National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Innovation funds from Chinese Academy of Sciences, the outstanding Ph. D thesis award and the CAS’s talented scientist award.


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# A close look at the state transitions of Galactic black hole transients during outburst decay

## 1. Introduction

X-ray observations of Galactic black holes (GBH) indicate that they are found in several distinct spectral states (Tanaka & Lewin, 1995; McClintock & Remillard, 2003). These states are generally determined by the relative strength of two different emission components: soft blackbody-like radiation from an optically thick, geometrically thin accretion disk and a harder component showing a power-law spectrum believed to originate from Compton upscattering of soft seed photons from the disk by a hot electron corona. Often a relation between the X-ray luminosity of the source and spectral states also exists. When the soft component dominates the spectrum, the 2–10 keV luminosity is relatively high ($`10^{37}`$ ergs/s), and therefore this state is called the “high/soft state” (HS). When the hard component dominates, then usually the 2–10 keV luminosity is low ($`10^{37}`$ ergs/s), and this state is called the “low/hard state” (LS). This dependence shows that the mass accretion rate plays an important role in determining the spectral states. These states also differ in terms of their short-term timing properties. The HS is often characterized by lack of or a very low level of variability, whereas the LS shows very strong variability ($``$30% rms in 0.04–4 Hz). Recently, changes in the radio properties are also associated with the spectral states. In the LS, compact, optically thick jets are observed (Fender et al., 2001). During state transitions optically thin outflows are detected (Corbel et al., 2001), and during the HS the radio emission is quenched (Fender et al., 2001). There are also cases for which both spectral components are present at comparable strength, characterized by parameters that are intermediate between those of the HS and the LS. For such a case, if the source flux is lower than the HS flux, the state is often called the “intermediate state” (IS), and if the flux is higher than the HS flux, it is called the “very high state” (VHS). We note that the classification of these states is not rigorously defined and is still an active topic of debate.

Most of the GBHs are observed during outbursts caused by a sudden, dramatic increase of mass accretion rate onto the black hole. Fig. 1 shows several examples of outburst light curves discussed in this report (see Kalemci 2002 for all of the ASM light curves.). Because of the dependence of spectral states on the mass accretion rate, a GBH transient often follows a specific sequence of spectral states. It is usually observed in the LS at the beginning of the outburst. As flux increases, it makes a transition to the HS or the VHS. As the source decays towards quiescence, a transition to the LS is usually observed. Some transients might follow a more complicated sequence of states, and some stay in the LS throughout the outburst. It is generally believed that the state transitions involve large restructuring of the accretion geometry of GBHs (Esin, McClintock & Narayan, 1997; Zdziarski et al., 2002). Therefore, analysis of these sources during state transitions may probe the dynamics of their accretion structure. Although the mass accretion rate is a very important parameter determining the spectral states, it is unlikely that the states and transitions are solely determined by this parameter. Some sources show hysteresis of the transition luminosities (the luminosity of transition from LS to HS during the beginning of the outburst is much higher than the luminosity of the transition from HS to LS during the outburst decay, Miyamoto et al., 1995; Nowak, 2002), and for some sources, a second, independent parameter seems to be required to explain the complexity of transitions. It is not clear what this second parameter is. It can be the position of the inner edge of the accretion disk, but this parameter may not be completely independent from the mass accretion rate (e.g. Esin, McClintock & Narayan 1997; Meyer, Liu & Meyer-Hofmeister 2000). Based on the behavior of the 1998 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564, Homan et al. (2001) claimed that the second independent parameter may be the size of the corona. The transitions may also be a result of an overall change in the type and the geometry of the corona. Zdziarski et al. (2002) explains the different states in Cyg X-1 by the change of an accretion structure which consists of a hot inner accretion flow surrounded by an optically thick disk truncated far away from the minimum stable orbit in the LS, to one that consists of flares and active regions above an accretion disk extending close to the minimum stable orbit in the so-called “soft state”. We note that for Cyg X-1, the soft state is more similar to the IS of GBH transients rather than the HS. According to the hybrid model of Coppi (2000), the state transitions may be explained by a change of size and electron energy distribution of the corona. In the LS, the inner part of the disk puffs up and becomes the hot corona, dominated by thermal electrons. Non-thermal electrons may also be present. In the HS, the edge of the cool accretion disk is close to the minimum stable orbit, and a small, non-thermal corona is also present. In this case, Compton scattering of disk photons by the non-thermal electrons is responsible for the steep power-law observed in the spectra of GBHs in the HS. It has also been claimed that this steep power-law component is a manifestation of Compton up-scattering of disk photons by a converging inflow of material inside the last stable orbit (Laurent & Titarchuk, 2001, and references therein). Then the transition might be related to the type of Comptonization: bulk motion in the HS versus thermal (or hybrid) in the LS.

The transition to the LS not only results in sharp changes in the X-ray spectrum, but also creates a physical environment that shows strong broad-band variability and quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO). The changes in the spectral parameters close to the state transition might provide important clues to understand how this transition is occurring and the driving force of the observed variability. Our group has been observing GBH transients during outburst decays in X-rays with the *Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer* (*RXTE*) and in radio. We have quantified the evolution before, during and after the transition to the LS for various sources (Kalemci et al., 2001; Tomsick, Corbel & Kaaret, 2001; Kalemci et al., 2003; Tomsick et al., 2003). In Section 3.1, we combine results of spectral and temporal analyses of the *RXTE* data from individual sources during outburst decay using our observations as well as the archival data, and investigate the evolution of the spectral index ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$), the inner disk temperature ($`T_{in}`$), the power-law flux, the disk-blackbody (diskbb) flux and the power-law fraction (PLR, ratio of the power-law flux to the total flux in 3–25 keV band) to obtain a global understanding of the physical environment before and during the state transition.

Another important topic is the evolution of spectral parameters after the state transition, which provides an understanding of the dynamics of the accretion systems in the LS. In addition to the spectral evolution, the evolution of the temporal parameters is another valuable tool in the LS. Thus, in Section 3.2, we analyze the evolution of spectral and temporal parameters of GBH transients after the state transition. The temporal parameters we use are the characteristic frequencies of the Lorentzian components in the power-spectral-density (PSD) fits and the rms amplitude of variability.

## 2. Observations and Analysis

We analyzed the PCA/*RXTE* (Proportional Counter Array, see Bradt, Rothschild & Swank 1993 for a description of *RXTE*) data from all GBH transients that have been observed with *RXTE* between 1996 and 2001 that made a state transition during outburst decay. Eight sources in eleven outburst decays obey these source selection criteria. These sources and outburst years are : XTE J1650$``$500 in 2001, GRO J1655$``$40 in 1996, XTE J1748$``$288 in 1998, XTE J1755$``$324 in 1997, GX 339$``$4 in 1998 (decayed in 1999), 4U 1630$``$47 in 1998, 1999 and 2001, XTE J1550$``$564 in 1998 and 2000 and XTE J1859$`+`$226 in 1999. Although XTE J1755$``$324 obeys the criteria, it has very poor coverage and results from this source are not included in this work. This decreases the number of sources to seven, and the number of outbursts to ten. Note that XTE J1859$`+`$226 did not make a “traditional” transition to the low/hard state, however it showed timing noise for some observations during the decay (see Kalemci 2002 and references therein for the properties and observation times of each source).

For all of the spectral analysis, we fit the data in the 3–25 keV band using the response matrix and the background model created using the standard FTOOLS (version 5.2) programs. We added a 1% systematic error to the spectra to account for uncertainties in the PCA response. We used a multi-component spectral model consisting of a power-law, a multi-color disk blackbody (diskbb in XSPEC, Makishima et al., 1986), a broad absorption edge (smedge in XSPEC, Ebisawa et al., 1994) with interstellar absorption (phabs in XSPEC). This model has been commonly used for the spectral analysis of GBHs in the LS (Tomsick & Kaaret, 2000; Sobczak et al., 2000). For all observations, the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ is between 0.5 and 1.5. For some observations, in order to reach acceptable $`\chi ^2`$ values, a Gaussian iron line feature was needed. However, the parameters of the iron line have not been used in the analysis. For some of the outbursts, we used published spectral fit parameters if the same model was applied for the fit (Tomsick & Kaaret 2000 for 4U 1630$``$47 in 1998, and Tomsick, Corbel & Kaaret 2001 for XTE J1550$``$564 in 2000). All PCA fluxes in this report are unabsorbed model fluxes to remove source to source variations due to different absorption column densities. The details of spectral fit models and parameters for each source can be found in Kalemci (2002).

For the temporal analysis, we were as uniform as possible in terms of choosing energy bands, time resolution and segmentation of light curves for all of our sources. However, since some of this work is based on the analysis of the archival data, we were limited to the choice of data modes by the PI of the original proposal. For most of the observations we used 2–26 keV energy band, a Nyquist frequency of 256 Hz and 256 s light curve segments. Although there may be slight differences from source to source in terms of energy band, and highest and lowest PSD frequencies, these differences are not critical since we look for trends rather than absolute values.

Historically, the PSD of GBHs during the low state has been modeled by a broken power-law (or power-laws with more than one break) plus narrow Lorentzians to fit the QPOs (Nowak et al., 1999; Tomsick & Kaaret, 2000; Kalemci et al., 2001). However, recent papers successfully fit several GBH and neutron star PSDs with broad Lorentzians for the continuum and narrow Lorentzians for the QPOs (Belloni, Psaltis & van der Klis, 2002; van Straaten et al., 2002; Pottschmidt et al., 2003; Kalemci et al., 2003). Following this approach, we fit all our PSDs with Lorentzians of the form:

$$L_i(f)=\frac{R_i^2\mathrm{\Delta }_i}{2\pi [(ff_i)^2+(\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }_i)^2]}$$
(1)
where subscript $`i`$ denotes each Lorentzian component in the fit, $`R_i`$ is the rms amplitude of the Lorentzian in the frequency band of -$`\mathrm{}`$ to +$`\mathrm{}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ is the full-width-half-maximum, and $`f_i`$ is the resonance frequency. A useful quantity of the Lorentzian is the “peak frequency” at which the Lorentzian contributes maximum power per logarithmic frequency interval:

$$\nu _i=f_i\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2}{4f_i^2}+1\right)^{1/2}$$
(2)
Fig. 2 shows an example LS power spectrum of XTE J1650$``$500 in the form of PSD $`\times `$ frequency, along with broad and narrow Lorentzians fit components. In this figure, the Lorentzians peak at $`\nu _i`$, demonstrating the easy identification of characteristic frequencies as peak frequencies of Lorentzian components. Some of our observations contain a Lorentzian that is narrow (with quality value $`Q_i=f_i/\mathrm{\Delta }_i>2`$, as compared to $`Q<1`$ for broad Lorentzians) which we call a QPO. In this work, for each observation, the term “characteristic frequency” represents the resonance frequency of the fundamental QPO111The peak frequency and the resonance frequency differ by $`<`$3% for QPOs with $`Q>`$2. if present, and otherwise the lowest peak frequency of the broad Lorentzian components in the PSD222The lowest peak frequency is nearly equivalent to the “break frequency” if broken power-law modeling is adopted, see Belloni, Psaltis & van der Klis (2002) for a detailed discussion.. Note that since the QPO frequencies and the Lorentzian peak frequencies are all shown to be correlated (Belloni, Psaltis & van der Klis, 2002), it does not matter which one we use to characterize the evolution. The rms amplitudes are calculated over a frequency band from zero to infinity.

Mostly due to our group’s monitoring program of GBHs with *RXTE* during outburst decay, we obtained very good coverage for 3 sources, in 6 different outbursts (1998, 1999 and 2001 outbursts of 4U 1630$``$47, 1998 and 2000 outbursts of XTE J1550$``$564, and the 2001 outburst of XTE J1650$``$500 with almost daily monitoring). GRO J1655$``$40 and GX 339$``$4 are excluded from the discussion of the changes before and during the transition in Section 3.1 since they have poor coverage ($``$10 days between observations). XTE J1748$``$288 with observations every $``$5 days is included in the discussion of the evolution to the state transition, however is not included in the discussion of the changes during the transition. Results from these sources are included in the discussion of the evolution after the transition for which very good coverage is not necessary. All the data used in this report are available on-line as a machine-readable table.

## 3. Results

In this work, we define the state transition in terms of sharp changes in variability properties rather than sharp changes in spectral properties. All of our sources with good coverage showed sharp, distinct changes in terms of variability in less than two days, but this was not the case for the spectral properties. Most of the transitions occurred from the HS to LS, and for those cases the transition was marked by a very large increase in the total rms amplitude of variability as shown in Fig. 3a. For most of the cases, the transition was from a featureless, Poisson noise dominated PSD with only a few % rms amplitude upper limit to a PSD showing well defined broad-band variability. In other words, the variability “appeared” on a few days timescale for these systems. Fig. 2 represents this appearance of variability, as the observation in the HS (top panel, with $`<`$4% rms upper limit variability) and the observation in the LS (bottom panel, with $`>`$12% rms variability with well defined Lorentzian components and a QPO) in this figure are only two days apart. Since the HS PSD is often featureless and has very low or no rms amplitude of variability, it is not possible to discuss the evolution of characteristic frequencies before the transition for none of our sources except the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564, which showed a complex pattern. It was in the IS, with rms amplitude variability of $``$13%. During the IS, it showed a QPO with constant frequency at $``$9 Hz. Then it showed a large drop in variability to an amplitude of $``$7%. We marked this change as the transition. Two days later, the rms amplitude of variability jumped again to levels of 15%. The morphology of the PSDs was different in the IS, LS, and during the time that the rms amplitude showed a drop (Kalemci, 2002). Despite the complexity of some individual cases, it is possible to infer global patterns of evolution for different parameters before, during and after the state transition.

### 3.1. Changes in spectral properties that lead to state transitions

First, we characterize the changes in spectral properties before the state transition. The evolution of the photon spectral index ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$), and the inner disk temperature ($`T_{in}`$) close to the transition are shown in Fig. 3b and c respectively. The evolution of the PLR, power-law flux and the diskbb flux are shown in Fig. 4. In most sources, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ (Fig. 3b) is approximately constant until 3-5 days before the timing transition at which point it begins to decline. For some sources, there is a distinct drop in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ at the beginning of the decline. Except for the 1998 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564, $`T_{in}`$ (Fig. 3c) either decreases or stays constant before the transition. The power-law flux (Fig. 4b) shows a complex behavior (see also Fig. 5), and the diskbb-flux (Fig. 4c) decreases for majority of the outbursts, or stays constant. The cumulative effect of the power-law and diskbb-flux evolution for the majority of the outbursts is an increasing PLR (Fig. 4a) before the transition.

We established that the transition occurs in a few days time scale for GBH transients. The change in variability properties (usually, the appearance of variability) that defines the transition should be a response to the change of one or more spectral parameters. To understand which parameter drives the transitions and appearance of variability, we compared the two observations just before and after the transition (observations just before and after the dashed lines in Figs. 3 and 4). We specify that a spectral parameter is showing a sharp change during the transition if either the slope of the parameter as a function of time changes sign or the percentage change in the value of the parameter compared to the previous observation is at least three times that of the previous observation. With this definition, two parameters show a sharp change for the majority of the outbursts: the power-law flux (see Fig. 5) and the PLR333GX 339$``$4 during its recent decay from the outburst showed a large increase in the PLR, and by using this information, we were able to estimate when the transition would occur and scheduled a successful *RXTE* observation to catch the beginning of the transition.. The PLR is not an independent parameter, and in this case its increase is mostly driven by the increase in the power-law flux. For both the 1999 and the 2001 outbursts of 4U 1630$``$47, there is no sharp change in any of the spectral parameters between those two observations, yet one observation shows no variability and the next one shows variability. However, for both, the evolution of the power-law flux shows a change in the slope an observation earlier. The situation is more complicated for the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564. There is a large increase in the power-law flux and PLR during the transition, but this change corresponds to a decrease in the rms amplitude (Kalemci, 2002).

Analysis of PCA data from GBH transient XTE J1859$`+`$226 during its outburst decay revealed interesting behavior in terms of variability and spectral evolution and provided another case for the relation between the power-law flux and variability. XTE J1859$`+`$226 did not show a traditional transition, but showed variability for some of the observations during the decay. In 1 day timescale, the power-law flux almost doubled and variability appeared, and when the power-law flux dropped below a threshold value, variability disappeared. Except the PLR, which is tied to the power-law flux, no other spectral parameter showed a sharp change between observations that show variability, and those that do not show variability for this source (Kalemci, 2002).

#### 3.1.1 A discussion of transition fluxes

It is important to get an idea of when the transition happens during the decay for effective monitoring of the sources with pointed instruments. Often the sources are not monitored frequently enough (i.e., once a day) with pointed observations, but the ASM measures the flux in 3 energy bands very frequently, which provides an opportunity to detect transitions without re-pointing the satellite. (See Fig. 1 for the ASM light curves of some of our sources.) The transition is often detected by a sudden increase in the hardness ratio 2 (HR2, the ratio of 5–12 keV flux to 1.5–3 keV flux). A few days just before and after the transition may manifest the most interesting behavior. A relationship between the peak flux and the transition flux (1.5 – 12 keV flux for the observation that shows variability) had been realized earlier (Tomsick, private communication). We plot this relation for all of the outbursts that show a state transition in Fig. 6. Except the 1998 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564, which showed one of the strongest flares in the *RXTE* history, the transition flux increases with the peak flux. The Spearman’s rank order correlation coefficient for this data set (excluding the 1998 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564) is 0.90, pointing out a correlation. On the other hand, the linear correlation coefficient is 0.52, indicating a relation which is not strictly linear.

Some outbursts have the usual “fast-rise-exponential-decay” (FRED) shape (such as XTE J1748$``$288), and some have a very complicated shape (such as 4U 1630$``$47 in 2001). The complicated ones may show a plateau before the final decay (like GRO J1655$``$40, and XTE J1550$``$564 in 2000 in Fig. 1). For these sources, we also plotted the plateau ASM flux along with the peak flux. Replacing the peak flux by the plateau flux for these sources improves the linear correlation for the whole sample to $`r`$ of 0.706. The linear correlation is not very strong, but it allows for an estimate of when the transition might happen, which is useful for planning observations to study the transition.

### 3.2. Evolution of spectral and temporal parameters after the transition

The evolution of spectral and temporal parameters after the transition is shown in Figs. 345, and 7. For XTE J1650$``$500, GX 339$``$4 (not shown in Figs. 345 because of poor coverage), 4U 1630$``$47 in 1998 and XTE J1550$``$564 in 2000, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ decreases after the transition. For other outbursts, it is either constant or shows irregular behavior. The power-law flux decreases for all of the outbursts except XTE J1650$``$500 (see Figs. 4 and 5). For most cases, the diskbb-flux and $`T_{in}`$ either decrease, or are unobservable after the transition. It is hard to constrain the evolution of $`T_{in}`$ for the 1998 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564 and the 2001 outburst of 4U 1630$``$47. For all outbursts, the diskbb component is unobservable within 15 days of the state transition. For XTE J1650$``$500 and the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564, the PLR first increases and then stays constant. For all other outbursts, the PLR is very close to unity and does not vary.

The evolution of the characteristic frequencies after the transition is shown in Fig. 7. Except a single observation at the beginning of the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564, all characteristic frequencies decrease after the transition. There are only two observations that show variability in the 1999 and 2001 outbursts of 4U 1630$``$47, and even for those cases, the later observations have smaller characteristic frequencies. The behavior of the rms amplitudes are more complicated (see Fig. 3a). The 1998 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564 and XTE J1748$``$288 show a decreasing trend. The rms amplitudes for XTE J1650$``$500, the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564 and the 1998 outburst of 4U 1630$``$47 increase and level off. For GRO J1655$``$40, the rms amplitudes are consistent with being constant. For GX 339$``$4 on the other hand, the rms amplitude increases Kalemci (2002).

## 4. Discussion

### 4.1. State transition and appearance of variability

First, we discuss possible reasons for the state transition and appearance of variability based on our results above. Suppose almost all of the variability we observe is due to the photons coming from the power-law component presumably originating in the corona, and the disk photons are providing mostly Poisson noise. This idea is supported by the fact that very little or no variability is observed during the HS when the diskbb dominates, and strong variability is observed when the power-law component dominates in the LS. The anti-correlation between the diskbb flux and the rms amplitude observed both in XTE J1650$``$500 (Kalemci et al., 2003) and the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564 (Kalemci et al., 2001) is also potentially consistent with this scenario. It is conceivable that the Poisson noise dominated diskbb flux reduces the rms amplitudes of variability to unobservable levels. Then the PLR would be a good indicator of when the variability will be observed, since the higher the PLR, the lower the diskbb flux compared to the total flux. For all of our sources, no variability is observed if the PLR$`<`$0.45. However, the value of the PLR cannot be the sole determinant of when the variability will be observed. For most of the sources the PLR has to be greater than 0.8 for the variability to appear, although it can be as low as 0.45 for XTE J1859$`+`$226 (Kalemci, 2002). To test the argument that the diskbb flux might reduce the rms amplitudes to unobservable levels, we conducted very simple simulations. We added various levels of Poisson noise to the light curve of an observation of GRO J1655$``$40 taken on August 14, 1997, and compared the resultant PSD with the original PSD. We chose this observation since it has a complex structure, and no diskbb flux, so all the emission is coming from the corona. The results are shown in Fig. 8. Although this figure clearly shows that the rms amplitude of the PSD depends on the PLR, it also shows that even for a PLR of 0.3, the variability is clearly observed. There is no large change in the PSD shape. Moreover, lack of diskbb emission does not guarantee broad-band variability even if a hard component exists. There is strong emission in the 6–15 keV band for most of the sources before the transition, and spectral analysis shows that only a few percent of the emission in this band is from the soft component. Nonetheless, although completely power-law dominated, these observations do not show variability. Note that, these simple simulations do not take into account the effects of strong disk emission on the corona. The two emission components are not independent of each other, because Compton cooling of the corona by the diskbb emission can affect the temperature and density structure of the corona. The amount of diskbb radiation cannot be ruled out as an important parameter in determining when the variability will be observed.

The power-law emission dominates the LS when the variability is observed but its presence alone is not enough to create broad-band variability. These findings suggest several possibilities for the presence of variability in the LS. The origin of the power-law component in the LS and the other states might be completely different. The passage from the IS to the LS (as observed for GX 339$``$4 and the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564) might be due to a change of the form of the corona from active regions above the accretion disk to an inner accretion flow (Zdziarski et al., 2002). The power-law component in the HS may be a result of Comptonization of disk photons by non-thermal electrons (Coppi, 2000), or bulk motion Comptonization (Laurent & Titarchuk, 2001), whereas in the LS, it may be due to thermal Comptonization. However, if the form or the composition of the corona is changing during the transition, one would expect a sharp change not only in power-law flux, but also in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, especially if the change is from bulk motion Comptonization to thermal Comptonization. There are two ways to increase the power-law flux: increasing the number of seed photons; and/or increasing the area of the corona that intercepts the seed photons. It is unlikely that the number of seed photons are increasing, the corona is believed to be optically thin, and an increase in the soft flux should be observed (unless most photons have energies below the PCA range). Therefore, our findings are consistent with the idea that, during the transitions, the size of the corona increases to a threshold value for variability, which would be consistent with the idea that the second independent parameter determining the spectral states is the size of the Comptonizing region (Homan et al., 2001). The strongest support for this explanation comes from the behavior of XTE J1859$`+`$226. Variability appeared for this source whenever the power-law flux is higher than a threshold value. No other spectral variable shows a significant change between observations with and without variability (Kalemci, 2002). The only caveat of this scenario is the resemblance of the variability properties of XTE J1859$`+`$226 to the IS observations of GX 339$``$4 and the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564, rather than to the LS properties.

An increase in the power-law flux does not always correspond to the appearance of variability. The 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564 behaved differently; the rms amplitude of variability decreased as the the power-law flux increased sharply. But in a couple of days after the first transition, another transition happened and strong variability that is usually associated with the LS appeared. The 1999 and the 2001 outbursts of 4U 1630$``$47 did not show a sharp change in any of the spectral properties at the transition (see Figs. 3 and 4), but both showed a change in the slope of the evolution of the power-law flux an observation earlier (see Fig. 5). This suggests the possibility that for some cases the appearance of variability (in the case of XTE J1550$``$564, variability associated with the LS) is delayed. The transition for these cases may be happening slower than that of other cases, and during the restructuring of the accretion geometry, the coherence could be lost for all timescales and the timing signatures could be suppressed for a few days.

### 4.2. Evolution of spectral and temporal parameters

Two important observations about the transitions to the LS can be made by analyzing the evolution of spectral parameters before the transition. First, the PLR increases for the majority of the outbursts. The corona (again assumed to be the source of the power-law flux) must dominate for the transition to happen, the PLR is greater than 0.65 for all sources after the transition to the LS. The PLR was as low as 0.45 for XTE J1859$`+`$226 when the variability was observed, but it never made the transition to the canonical LS, and returned back to the HS when the PLR dropped (Kalemci, 2002). Second, the spectral indices for some of the sources show a step function-like decrease 3-5 days before the transition (see Fig. 3b). This may be interpreted as the time of spectral transition, which would indicate that the transition in timing properties lags the transition in spectral properties. Then, the change in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ may be a sign of changing the form of the corona as discussed in the previous section, and the lag between the change in the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the appearance of variability is the time for the corona to reach a threshold volume. However, some sources do not show any drop in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, but still show a sharp change in temporal variability (Fig. 3a), making the transitions much easier to identify.

After the transition, the evolution of the inner disk temperature, the diskbb flux, the power-law index and especially the characteristic frequencies of the variability are consistent with the idea of the inner disk retreat. In the basic formulation of Makishima et al. (1986), the optically thick disk has a temperature profile that decreases with increasing radius. Therefore, if the inner disk evaporates as part of the transition, it is expected that both $`T_{in}`$ and diskbb flux decrease. Most sources show a decrease in diskbb flux, and at least four sources show a decrease in $`T_{in}`$. The drop of spectral index may also be a sign of increasing inner disk radius. As the disk is closer to the black hole, its temperature and flux are higher, causing effective cooling of the corona, increasing the spectral index (Zdziarski et al., 2002). Four sources show a decreasing $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. It is intuitively expected that the characteristic frequencies decrease as the inner disk radius increases. The dynamical timescale (the fastest timescale) in the accretion disk is shorter close to the black hole, and it is expected that higher frequency variability is created in this region. As the inner disk radius retreats (or the inner disk evaporates) the dynamical timescale (at the inner edge) increases, and therefore the characteristic frequencies in the PSD decrease. The exact relation between the characteristic frequencies and the dynamical timescales is not clear yet. All sources show a decreasing behavior in terms of characteristic frequencies, except for one observation. The overall evolution of both spectral and temporal properties therefore indicates that the inner edge of the accretion disk retreats as the system progresses in the LS, in accordance with the model of Esin, McClintock & Narayan (1997). In the exceptional case, the QPO frequencies in the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564 first increased and then decreased after the transition (see Fig. 7). This behavior is consistent with the prediction of the “accretion ejection instability” QPO model (Tagger & Pellat, 1999) if the inner accretion disk is close to the marginally stable orbit during this observation. This possibility is discussed in detail in Rodriguez et al. (2002) and Kalemci (2002).

The interpretation of the behavior of the rms amplitudes is more complex. We showed the relation between the PLR and the rms amplitudes earlier (see Fig. 8). The “Poissonic” nature of the disk component causes a decrease in the rms amplitudes at lower energies due to the diskbb energy spectrum peaking at those energies. This might explain the increase and leveling of the rms amplitudes in XTE J1650$``$500 and the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564. Although the rms amplitudes seem to be decreasing after the transition for the 1998 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564, it might be a result of not constraining the high frequency part of the PSD. The first observation requires two Lorentzians to fit, and results in a high PSD amplitude, whereas for the remaining observations, the second Lorentzian, although statistically not required, cannot be excluded (Kalemci, 2002). The fits are better for XTE J1748$``$288 and it also shows a decreasing behavior. The interpretation of the rms amplitudes of XTE J1748$``$288 is complicated due to the high absorption column density. The Galactic ridge emission may also be affecting the rms amplitudes at low flux levels by supplying additional Poissonic emission. The rms amplitude of GX 339$``$4 increases after the transition although there is no diskbb flux in the 3-25 keV band. Overall, there is no definite trend of evolution for the rms amplitudes after the transition.

## 5. Summary

An important goal of black hole binary research is to understand the accretion structure and nature of variability of these systems. This work addresses these goals by analyzing the X-ray temporal and spectral properties of a relatively large subset of GBHs during outburst decay. We characterize the evolution of spectral and temporal properties before and after the transitions, and also work on the changes right at the transition to understand the appearance of broad-band variability.

For this study, a total of seven *RXTE* sources in ten outbursts are analyzed. Thanks to our group’s monitoring program, the coverage close to the transition is significantly improved, and for the first time allows us to determine the physical changes that drive the transitions in detail. The first problem we work on is the evolution of spectral parameters before the state transition and appearance of broad-band variability at the state transition. We show that the changes in variability properties (a sudden increase or decrease in the rms amplitude of variability) are sharper than changes in spectral properties, and it is easier to identify a transition with the temporal properties. A change in the spectral index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is shown to be the pre-cursor of the transition showing a decrease 3-5 days before for most of our sources. We also show that the PLR increases close to the transition for all sources. The hard power-law component must dominate the spectrum for the transition to happen. Very frequent monitoring observations ($``$once a day) allow us to determine the power-law flux (and consequently the PLR) as the parameter showing a sharp change during the transitions which may indicate a threshold volume for the corona for the appearance of variability.

We also investigate the evolution after the state transition. For most of the cases, the $`T_{in}`$ and the diskbb flux decrease after the transition, and they are unobservable with PCA within fifteen days of the transition for all outbursts. The characteristic frequencies of all except one observation of the 2000 outburst of XTE J1550$``$564 decrease after the state transition. These spectral and temporal changes are consistent with the idea that the inner accretion disk retreats after the state transition. The rms amplitude of variability does not show any global trend with time after the transition, and its behavior is consistent with the emission from the soft component having no or very little temporal signature.

E.K. acknowledges useful discussions with David Smith, Ali Alpar and Ünal Ertan. The majority of this work was done at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS) at UCSD as part of E.K.’s dissertation. E.K. acknowledges the support of the Astrophysics Forum at Sabancı University where a portion of this work was prepared, and also acknowledges partial support of TÜBİTAK. The authors would like to thank all scientists contributed to the Tübingen Timing Tools. J.A.T. acknowledges partial support from NASA grant NAG5-13055. K.P. was supported by grant Sta 173/25-1 and Sta 173/25-3 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. P.K. acknowledges partial support from NASA grant NAG5-7405. This work was also supported by NASA contract NAS5-30720.


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# The Factorization Method for Monte Carlo Simulations of Systems With a Complex Action

## 1 INTRODUCTION

There exist many interesting systems in high energy physics whose action contains an imaginary part, such as QCD at finite baryon density, Chern-Simons theories, systems with topological terms (like the $`\theta `$-term in QCD) and systems with chiral fermions. This imposes a severe technical problem in the simulations, requiring an exponentially large amount of data for statistically significant measurements as the system size is increased or the critical point is approached. Furthermore, the overlap problem appears when standard reweighting techniques are applied in such systems and it becomes exponentially hard with system size to visit the relevant part of the configuration space. In  it was proposed to take advantage of a factorization property of the distribution functions of the observables one is interested to measure. This approach can in principle be applied to any system and it eliminates the overlap problem completely. In some cases it is possible to use finite size scaling to extrapolate successfully to large system sizes where it would have been impossible to measure oscillating factors directly. The method has been applied successfully in matrix models of non perturbative string theory (IKKT) , random matrix theory of finite density QCD (RMT)  as well as the 2d $`\mathrm{CP}^3`$ model, the 1d antiferromagnetic model with imaginary $`B`$ and the 2d compact U(1) with topological charge .

In this paper we present our results  for IKKT and RMT. In the first case we study the space–time dimensionality hoping to dynamically recover our 4d space–time and in the second to test the factorization method against known analytical results. In all cases we will be dealing with a system defined by a partition function $`Z=𝑑A\mathrm{e}^{S_0}\mathrm{e}^{i\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ and the corresponding phase quenched model $`Z_0=𝑑A\mathrm{e}^{S_0}`$ where $`S=S_0i\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the action of the system with its real and imaginary parts. $`A`$ represents collectively the degrees of freedom of the model and in our case it corresponds to a set of $`N\times N`$ matrices. In case we are interested in measuring some observable $`𝒪`$, we consider the distribution functions $`\rho _𝒪(x)=\delta (x𝒪)`$ and $`\rho _𝒪^{(0)}(x)=\delta (x𝒪)_0`$, where $`\mathrm{}_0`$ refers to $`Z_0`$. Then we define the fiducial system $`Z_{𝒪,x}=𝑑A\mathrm{e}^{S_0}\delta (x𝒪)`$, the weight factor $`w_𝒪(x)=\mathrm{e}^{i\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{𝒪,x}`$ and the distribution $`\rho _𝒪(x)`$ factorizes $`\rho _𝒪(x)=\frac{1}{C}\rho _𝒪(x)w_𝒪(x)`$ where $`C=\mathrm{e}^{i\mathrm{\Gamma }}_0`$. Then $`𝒪=\frac{1}{C}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑xx\rho _𝒪^{(0)}(x)w_𝒪(x)`$. The $`\delta `$–function constraint is implemented in our simulations by considering the system $`Z_{𝒪,V}=𝑑A\mathrm{e}^{S_0}\mathrm{e}^{V(𝒪)}`$ where $`V(z)=\frac{1}{2}\gamma (z\xi )^2`$ and $`\gamma ,\xi `$ are parameters which control the constraining of the simulation. The results are insensitive to the choice of $`\gamma `$ as long as it is large enough. Then we have that $`w_𝒪(x=𝒪_{i,V})=\mathrm{e}^{i\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{i,V}`$. The distribution of $`𝒪`$ in $`Z_{i,V}`$ has a peak $`\overline{x}`$ and the quantity $`V^{}(\overline{x})`$ is the value of $`f_𝒪^{(0)}(x)=\frac{d}{dx}\mathrm{ln}\rho _𝒪^{(0)}(x)`$ at $`x=\overline{x}`$. The function $`\rho _𝒪^{(0)}(x)`$ can be obtained by integrating an analytic function to which we fit the $`f_𝒪^{(0)}(x)`$ data points.

By applying this method we force the system to sample configurations which give the essential contributions to $`𝒪`$, something that would be increasingly difficult with system size in the phase quenched model, eliminating this way the overlap problem. This already allows us get close to the thermodynamic limit with modest computer resources. Furthermore we obtain direct knowledge of $`w_𝒪(x)`$ and $`\rho _𝒪(x)`$ which allows us to understand the effect of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. This is important for understanding the properties of the system when $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ plays a crucial role. Using the generic scaling properties of the weight factor $`w_i(x)`$, one may extrapolate the results obtained by direct Monte Carlo evaluations to larger system size. Such an extrapolation is expected to be particularly useful in cases where the distribution function turns out to be positive definite. In those cases we can actually even avoid using the reweighting formula by reducing the question of obtaining the expectation value to that of finding the minimum of the free energy, which is (minus) the log of the distribution function. Here, the error in obtaining the scaling function propagates to the final result without significant magnifications. Therefore, the extrapolation can be a powerful tool to probe the thermodynamic limit from the accessible system size.

## 2 NON–PERTURBATIVE STRING THEORY

The so–called IKKT matrix model  has been conjectured to be a definition for non–perturbative string theory. A particularly interesting feature of the model is that the eigenvalues of the bosonic matrices $`A_\mu `$ generate space-time dynamically. In our case we work with a reduced model where $`\mu =1,\mathrm{},6`$. The observables that we study are the normalized eigenvalues $`\lambda _1/\lambda _1_0>\mathrm{}>\lambda _6/\lambda _6_0`$ of the space–time “moment of inertia” $`T_{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{N}\mathrm{Tr}A_\mu A_\nu `$. An interesting scenario to investigate would be that the O(6) symmetry is spontaneously broken with some of the eigenvalues (possibly 4) grow large and the rest remain small, providing a mechanism for dynamical compactification of extra dimensions.

Fig. 1: $`\mathrm{log}\rho _5(x)`$ for N=128, n = 16.

The IKKT model is a good example where finite size scaling for the oscillating factor $`w_i(x)`$ works well (the index $`i`$ corresponds to $`\lambda _i/\lambda _i_0`$). For $`i>1`$ we find fast convergence to a scaling function $`\mathrm{\Phi }_i(x)`$, where $`w_i(x)=\mathrm{exp}\{N^2\mathrm{\Phi }_i(x)\}`$ . We compute $`\mathrm{\Phi }_i(x)`$ for small matrix size $`n20`$ and the phase quenched distribution function $`\rho _i^{(0)}(x)`$ for larger size $`N`$. Then the factorization formula can be used in order to compute $`\rho _i(x)`$. Note that in the computation of $`\lambda _i`$ the errors do not propagate exponentially with system size since $`\lambda _i`$ can be determined from the minimum of the “free energy” $`F_i(x)=\frac{1}{N^2}\mathrm{log}\rho _i(x)`$. In Fig. 1 we show our results for $`\rho _5(x)`$ for $`n=16`$ and $`N=128`$. A double peak structure of $`\rho _5(x)`$ is evident and it is expected that the peak for small $`x`$ will increase with system size . One hopes that this peak will be dominant for $`i=5,6`$ and that the large $`x`$ peak will be dominant for $`i=4,3,2,1`$ and this will realize the SSB scenario. Note the heavy suppression of the $`x=1`$ region caused by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ which is the peak of the phase quenched model distribution of $`\lambda _i`$.

Fig. 2: $`\rho _R(x)`$ and $`\rho _I(x)`$ for $`\mu =0.2`$.

## 3 RMT OF FINITE DENSITY QCD

We consider RMT with one quark flavour and zero quark mass . The model is chosen in order to study the correctness and effectiveness of the factorization method, since one can compare results with known analytical solutions even for finite $`N`$. The observable we measure is the “quark number density” $`\nu `$ as a function of the chemical potential $`\mu `$, and we consider the distribution functions $`\rho _i(x)`$, where $`i=R,I`$ corresponds to the real and imaginary parts of $`\nu `$ respectively. Notice that the effect of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is dramatic, causing a discontinuous transition in $`\nu `$. In  our results nicely reproduce the exact results known for finite $`N`$ and we are able to achieve large enough values of $`N48`$ to obtain the thermodynamic limit. Unfortunately, the function $`w_R(x)`$ is not positive definite and the important contributions come from the region where it changes sign. As expected, we find that finite size scaling does not work as well as in the case of the IKKT model (although we obtain agreement up to order of magnitude for the values of $`N96`$ that we explored). We also find it very difficult to explore the crossover region near the phase transition point $`\mu _c=0.527\mathrm{}`$ for $`N>8`$ since $`|w_i(x)|`$ becomes very small. Since RMT is a schematic model of finite density QCD, we expect that the factorization method will be useful to explore the phase diagram of QCD.

Fig. 3: $`\nu `$ for $`N=8`$.


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# Multi-color observations of Young Star Clusters

## 1. Models & Applications

We have further refined the Göttingen evolutionary synthesis code GALEV by including the effect of gaseous emission. The emission contributes significantly to the integrated light of stellar populations younger than $`3\times 10^7`$ yr (Anders & Fritze - v. Alvensleben 2003). The updated models are available from http://www.uni-sw.gwdg.de/$``$galev/panders/.
The tool to compare large model grids with multi-color broad-band observations was tested extensively using artificial clusters (Anders et al. 2003a) and broad-band observations of star clusters in NGC 3310 (de Grijs et al. 2003a).
Here we focus on the dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 1569, in which we detect and analyse a sample of star clusters significantly larger than done before. Our derived cluster properties are consistent with literature values. We find a surprising dependence of the (cluster) mass function on cluster ages (Anders et al. 2003b).

## 2. References

Anders, P., Fritze - v. Alvensleben, U. 2003, A&A, 401, 1063
Anders, P., Bissantz, N., Fritze - v. Alvensleben, U., de Grijs, R. 2003a,
MNRAS, submitted
Anders, P., de Grijs, R., Fritze - v. Alvensleben, U., Bissantz, N. 2003b,
MNRAS, submitted
de Grijs, R., Fritze - v. Alvensleben, U., Anders, P., Gallagher, J. S., Bastian, N., Taylor, V. A., Windhorst, R. A. 2003a, MNRAS, 342, 259


text:
# Gemini-South + FLAMINGOS Demonstration Science: Near-IR Spectroscopy of the 𝑧=5.77 Quasar SDSS J083643.85+005453.3Based on observations obtained at the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (United Kingdom), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), the Australian Research Council (Australia), CNPq (Brazil) and CONICET (Argentina).

## 1 Introduction

Quasars are amongst the most luminous objects known in the Universe, visible at immense lookback times corresponding to when the universe was less than a tenth its current age. They provide ideal probes of the conditions of the early universe, showing, for instance, that the universe was optically thick to Ly$`\alpha `$ at $`z\mathrm{}>6`$, likely evidence of a neutral universe seen prior to an epoch of reionization (Becker et al. 2001; Djorgovski et al. 2001; Kogut et al. 2003). For the most distant quasars, however, cosmological redshifting and the effects of foreground hydrogen absorption make these sources largely invisible at optical wavelengths: the most distant quasar known currently, SDSS J114815.64$`+`$525150.3 at $`z=6.43`$, shows essentially no emission blueward of 9000 Å (Fan et al. 2003). Furthermore, for these most distant systems, optical observations are largely restricted to the rest-frame ultraviolet light around Ly$`\alpha `$. Ly$`\alpha `$ is a notoriously fickle line, vulnerable to absorption from small amounts of gas and dust; redshifts derived from Ly$`\alpha `$ alone are systematically overestimated, though no better feature is typically available from the discovery optical spectra.

Near-IR observations of the highest-redshift quasars provide the opportunity to observe complete rest-frame ultraviolet spectra of these systems, probing out to Mg 2 $`\lambda `$2800 for the most distant quasars. Such observations are essential for deriving accurate redshifts, which, in turn, are necessary for molecular line searches (e.g., Bertoldi et al. 2003) and studies of the proximity effect. For instance, Iwata et al. (2001), based on ten days of observations with the Nobeyama Millimeter Array, report a non-detection of CO ($`J=65`$) emission in the quasar SDSS J104433.04$``$012502.2, assuming the redshift of $`z=5.80\pm 0.02`$ derived from the optical spectrum (Fan et al. 2000). Near-IR observations of C 4 $`\lambda `$1549 with the Keck telescope revised the redshift of this quasar to $`z=5.74`$ (Goodrich et al. 2001), implying that the Iwata et al. (2001) observations missed the frequency range in which CO ($`J=65`$) emission would be expected. Near-IR spectroscopy of the highest-redshift quasars also allows estimates of the central black hole mass in these systems (e.g., Vestergaard 2002; Barth et al. 2003; Willott, McLure, & Jarvis 2003). Creating black holes with masses $`\mathrm{}>10^9M_{}`$ within a Gyr of the Big Bang remains an outstanding astrophysical challenge (e.g., Kauffmann & Haehnelt 2000; Wyithe & Loeb 2002).

On UT 2002 November 5$``$6 and 8$``$11, we used FLAMINGOS (Elston 1998; Elston et al. 2002) on the Gemini-South 8m telescope at Cerro Pachon to demonstrate the infrared spectroscopic capabilities of this unique instrument. FLAMINGOS — the FLoridA Multi-object Imaging Near-infrared Grism Observational Spectrometer — is a combination wide-field near-IR imager and multi-object spectrometer (MOS) built by the University of Florida. Central to the design of FLAMINGOS is a liquid nitrogen-cooled MOS wheel, holding up to 11 MOS plates, which can be thermally cycled in less than six hours. FLAMINGOS is the world’s first fully-cryogenic, near-IR MOS spectrometer; it was designed to be a peripatetic visitor instrument, traveling between observatories such as Kitt Peak National Observatory, the Multiple Mirror Telescope, and the southern Gemini Observatory. At Gemini the 2048 $`\times `$ 2048 science-grade Hawaii-II HgCdTe array has a plate scale of 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$078 pix-1, providing a 2.5′ $`\times `$ 2.5′ field of view. In MOS mode it achieves spectral resolving powers of $`R450`$ for 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$47 wide slits, covering $`J+H`$ bands or $`H+K`$ bands simultaneously.

During this Demonstration Science run, an emphasis was placed on the MOS mode of FLAMINGOS, though we also observed several brighter single-slit sources to exercise the instrument. In this Letter, we report on observations of the high-redshift quasar SDSS J083643.85+005453.3 (hereafter SDSS J0836+0054; Fan et al. 2001). At the time of our observations, SDSS J0836+0054, reported to be at $`z=5.82`$, was the third highest redshift quasar in the refereed literature. With a $`1.11\pm 0.15`$ mJy unresolved counterpart in the 20cm FIRST radio survey (Becker, White, & Helfand 1995) and a Galactic absorption-corrected $`0.52.0`$ keV flux of $`F_{0.52.0}=1.03\times 10^{14}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Brandt et al. 2002), SDSS J0836+0054 is also amongst the most distant X-ray sources known currently and remains the most distant radio source in the literature. Additional results from this Demonstration Science observing run will be reported by Hall et al. (in preparation).

## 2 Observations and Data Reductions

We observed SDSS J0836+0054 on UT 2002 November 9 using FLAMINGOS on the Gemini-South 8m telescope. The night was photometric and reported 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$8 seeing. We used a 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$468 wide slit, the $`JH`$ grism, and the $`JH`$ filter, providing low-resolution ($`R=450`$) spectroscopy over the wavelength range of $`1.01.8\mu `$m. The quasar was initially centered in the slit using $`JH`$ imaging. At the time of our observing run, Fowler sampling was not functional for the FLAMINGOS instrument, leading to excessive readnoise. For imaging, where the bright near-IR sky provides background-limited data with short exposure times, this was not a problem. However, for spectroscopy, the effect was deleterious in the $`J`$ and $`H`$ bands. In order to achieve background-limited data, we observed SDSS J0836+0054 for three dithered 1500 s integrations, unusually long exposure times for near-IR observations. The total integration time was 4500 s and the observations were obtained at moderate ($`1.45`$) airmass.

Data reductions were done with a modified version of the BOGUS slitmask reduction software111BOGUS-IR is available at http://zwolfkinder.jpl.nasa.gov/$``$stern/bogus.html. within the IRAF environment, and followed standard near-IR slit spectroscopy procedures. After multiplying by the gain of 4.1 e- DN-1 and subtracting dark frames from the science and calibration data, the science frames were flattened using a median-filtered, normalized quartz lamp spectrum taken immediately subsequent to our science observations. Cosmic rays were then identified and masked out. We did a first-pass, pairwise sky subtraction by subtracting the average of the alternate, dithered science frames from each individual science frame. As the near-IR sky varied substantially over the 4500 s time frame that our data was taken in, a second-pass sky subtraction was necessary, using a low-order fit along the spatial axis. The two-dimensional data, which provided good background subtraction and background-limited data, were then combined and the spectrum of SDSS J0836+0054 was extracted. We wavelength calibrated the data using observations of Ar lamps obtained thru the slit immediately subsequent to the science frames, and adjusted the wavelength zeropoint based on telluric emission lines.

We flux calibrated the SDSS J0836+0054 spectrum using spectra of the bright AOV Hipparcos stars 113982, 112179, and 28112 obtained at low ($`1.1`$) airmass. The first of these stars was observed on the same (photometric) night as SDSS J0836+0054. The latter two stars were observed on UT 2002 November 10, a photometric night which suffered from high winds and associated variable and poor seeing. The resultant slit losses were substantial and variable; we therefore normalized these data to the UT 2002 November 9 spectrum of Hipparcos 113982, using them to define the shape, but not the amplitude, of the sensitivity curve. We interpolated across the Paschen absorption features in the A0V spectra in order to create the final sensitivity curve, which was then used to calibrate the spectrum of SDSS J0836+0054, shown in Fig. 1. We note that due to observational limitations, all spectra were obtained at a position angle of zero degrees, not the parallactic angle. For optical spectroscopy, atmospheric differential refraction will cause such a strategy to yield erroneous measurements of spectral energy distributions, particularly for narrow slits. In the near-infrared, however, this is not nearly as severe a problem. Following Filippenko (1982), we find that atmospheric differential refraction will compromise our observations of the broad-band, near-infrared color of SDSS J0836+0054 at only the 2$``$3% level across the $`1.01.8\mu `$m wavelength region.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 emission

Our near-IR spectrogram provides a more accurate redshift determination for SDSS J0836+0054 than was possible from the discovery optical spectrum, which, based on heavily-absorbed Ly$`\alpha `$ emission and Ly$`\beta `$/O 6 $`\lambda `$1035 emission, provided a redshift of $`z=5.82`$ (Fan et al. 2001). The C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 line is particularly useful for this endeavor as it is a strong line close to the systemic redshift. Vanden Berk et al. (2001) note that, unlike Ly$`\alpha `$ and C 4 $`\lambda `$1549, C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 shows little object-to-object variation amongst over 2200 Sloan digital sky survey (SDSS) quasar spectra they analyze. As a counterexample, C 4 $`\lambda `$1549 occasionally shows blueshifts of several thousand $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Richards et al. 2002). Fitting the C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 line with a Gaussian profile and correcting for the typical C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 velocity blueshift of 224 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ relative to \[O 3\] $`\lambda `$5007 (Vanden Berk et al. 2001), we calculate a redshift of $`z=5.77`$ for SDSS J0836+0054. We also cross-correlated our infrared spectrum with the SDSS composite quasar spectrum, finding a redshift of $`z=5.774\pm 0.003`$ for SDSS J0836+0054. As discussed in §1, accurate redshifts are essential for molecular line searches and studies of the proximity effect. The revised redshift implies that a substantial fraction of the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line is absorbed.

Our near-IR spectrum shows a strong detection of the C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 line at 1.2910 $`\mu `$m, with a strength of $`3.0\times 10^{15}`$ $`\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$. Vanden Berk et al. (2001) present a composite quasar spectrum derived from over 2200 Sloan digital sky survey spectra. In this composite, C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909, which is slightly blended with Si 3\] $`\lambda `$1892 and several Fe 3 transitions, has an equivalent width of $`21.2`$ Å, and has a velocity width of 3700 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (FWHM). SDSS J0836+0054, with a C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 rest-frame equivalent width of 19 Å and a velocity width of 6300 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, has comparable values. Also, SDSS J0836+0054 clearly has substantial N 5 $`\lambda `$1240 emission (Fan et al. 2001). These results, though not unique for high-redshift quasars (e.g., Goodrich et al. 2001), are quite remarkable: the emission-line gas of quasars seen when the universe was less than a Gyr old has a similar metallicity to low-redshift quasars. This gas, calculated to have solar or higher metallicity (e.g., Hamann & Ferland 1999; Dietrich et al. 2003), requires substantial and rapid enrichment.

Assuming that the broad-line region (BLR) gas dynamics is dominated by gravitational forces, combining the radius of the BLR ($`R_{\mathrm{BLR}}`$) derived from reverberation mapping studies with the velocity of the emission line gas derived from the spectrum ($`v_{\mathrm{BLR}}`$), one can derive a virial estimate of the central black hole mass, $`M_{}=G^1R_{\mathrm{BLR}}v_{\mathrm{BLR}}^2`$. Reverberation studies find a correlation between $`R_{\mathrm{BLR}}`$ and continuum luminosity (Kaspi et al. 2000), so that black-hole mass estimates are possible from single-epoch spectroscopic data. However, since reverberation mapping studies have traditionally targeted lower-redshift, brighter sources, this relation was initially calibrated for H$`\beta `$ which is inaccessible at high redshift. Recently, McLure & Jarvis (2002) and Vestergaard (2002) have calibrated the relationship for Mg 2 $`\lambda `$2800 and C 4 $`\lambda `$1549, respectively, allowing black-hole mass estimates at higher redshifts. No C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 calibration is currently available, unfortunately, while our C 4 $`\lambda `$1549 detection is of insufficient signal-to-noise to make a meaningful black-hole mass measurement. We note that Mg 2 $`\lambda `$2800 resides at 1.90 $`\mu `$m at the redshift of SDSS J0836+0054, an inaccessible wavelength for ground-based observations, residing between the $`H`$ and $`K`$ bands.

### 3.2 Red continuum

The most striking aspect of the near-IR spectrum of SDSS J0836+0054 is its red color. Fitting the spectrum over $`\lambda \lambda 1.01.7\mu `$m (rest-frame $`\lambda \lambda _014802510`$ Å) with a power law $`f_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$, we derive a power law index of 1.55, significantly redder than the $`\alpha =0.44\pm 0.1`$ continuum power-law index derived by Vanden Berk et al. (2001) for the SDSS composite quasar for rest-frame wavelengths $`\lambda \lambda _013005000`$ Å and redder than the $`\alpha =0.57\pm 0.33`$ derived by Pentericci et al. (2003) for a sample of 45 high-redshift SDSS quasars imaged in the near-infrared. Some of this difference derives from Fe 2 emission at $`\lambda \lambda _022002600`$ Å mimicking a strong continuum. Indeed, Freudling, Corbin, & Korista (2003) have recently reported detection of Fe 2 emission in SDSS J0836+0054 based on very low-resolution ($`R200`$) Hubble Space Telescope near-IR spectroscopy. We note that their spectrum is also noticeably redder than the composite quasar spectrum it is plotted against, as well as shows C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 blueshifted relative to the composite, plotted for $`z=5.82`$. Our spectrum shows an upturn at 1.5 $`\mu `$m associated with Fe 2. Fitting the Vanden Berk et al. (2001) composite over the rest-frame wavelength range available for SDSS J0836+0054, we find a spectral slope of 0.8 — significantly bluer than the spectral slope of SDSS J0836+0054. We infer that despite some contribution from Fe 2 emission, SDSS J0836+0054 clearly has an unusually red spectrum (Fig. 1).

What is the physical significance of a red spectral slope in a high-redshift quasar? Reddening is the obvious implication, requiring substantial dust in the quasar environment, at an early cosmic epoch. The necessary processing of primordial hydrogen and helium has also been inferred from the strong C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 emission feature. Comparing the spectrum of SDSS J0836+0054 with the SDSS composite spectrum reddened with an SMC-like dust-reddening law (Prevot et al. 1984), we estimate a color excess of $`E(BV)=0.09\pm 0.01`$ at the quasar redshift. This implies an absorption of $`1.36\pm 0.15`$ mag at 1550 Å. Richards et al. (2003) investigates the reddening of a sample of 4576 quasars from the SDSS, finding that only $``$ 6% of quasars from the optically-selected SDSS show comparable levels of dust reddening.

Baker & Hunstead (1995) report on UV/optical spectral slope variations between various radio-loud quasar classes, placing the results in the context of orientation-driven unification schemes. They find that core-dominated, radio-loud quasars have bluer spectral slopes ($`\alpha =0.5`$), albeit with very strong Fe 2 emission. Such quasars are thought to be viewed along the radio-jet axis. Lobe-dominated, radio-loud quasars have redder optical spectra ($`\alpha =1.0`$) with weak Fe 2 emission, suggesting large column densities of dust obscure quasars viewed at larger inclinations to the radio-jet axis. Compact, steep-spectrum (CSS), radio-loud quasars, however, do not fit easily into this scheme: their compactness would suggest they are viewed along the radio-jet axis, but they have very red optical spectra ($`\alpha =1.4`$) with no discernible 3000 Å Fe 2 bump, suggesting substantial extinction of the central nucleus. SDSS J0836+0054 is a radio-loud quasar with an unresolved morphology in the 20cm FIRST survey. Its optical spectral slope is similar to that for the CSS composite, though the weak Fe 2 detection suggests perhaps a lobe-dominated system. At present, neither multi-frequency nor higher-resolution radio data are available for SDSS J0836+0054.

## 4 Conclusions

We have presented a $`J+H`$, low-resolution spectrum of the high-redshift quasar SDSS J0836+0054, obtained during the Demonstration Science commissioning run of the FLAMINGOS multi-object, near-IR spectrograph at Gemini-S observatory. We detect broad C 3\] $`\lambda `$1909 emission, which we use to derive a more accurate redshift of $`z=5.774\pm 0.003`$ for this quasar. We also find a rest-frame ultraviolet spectral slope significantly redder than lower-redshift quasar composites, implying significant dust reddening of this system. Similarly, Bertoldi et al. (2003) have recently reported observations of dust in the host galaxy of a quasar at $`z=6.42`$. For the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe cosmology (Spergel et al. 2003), the universe is slightly less than 1 Gyr old at redshift $`z=5.77`$. Our observations of SDSS J0836+0054 require substantial enrichment of the quasar environment, even at times only a billion years after the Big Bang.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank his Royal Highness, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, for visiting the observatory on UT 2002 November 7 and inspiring us with his regal presence. We thank X. Fan for the optical spectrum of SDSS J0836+0054 and A. Barth for informative discussion. FLAMINGOS was designed and constructed by the IR instrumentation group at the University of Florida Department of Astronomy with support from NSF grant AST97-31180 and Kitt Peak National Observatory. We wish to acknowledge the many astronomers who assisted in planning the MOS aspect to this project. For the Chandra Deep Field-South MOS program, we thank B. Mobasher, A. Koekemoer, D. Schade, R. Webster, K.L. Wu, A. Zirm, and members of the GOODS team. For the Hubble Deep Field-South MOS program, we thank Ramana Athreya, David Crampton, D. Garcia Lambas, Leopoldo Infante, Paul Martini, Dante Minniti, Hernan Quintana, Marcin Sawicki and Russell Smith. The work of D.S. was carried out at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. P.B.H. acknowledges financial support from a Fundación Andes grant. L.F.B.’s research is partially funded by Centro de Astrofísica FONDAP.