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# On the Widespread Occurrence of the Inverse Square Distribution in Social Sciences and Taxonomy

## Abstract

The widespread occurrence of an inverse square relation in the hierarchical distribution of sub-communities within communities (or sub-species within species) has been recently invoked as a signature of hierarchical self-organization within social and ecological systems. Here we show that, whether such systems are self-organized or not, this behavior is the consequence of the tree-like classification method. Different tree-like classifications (both of real and truly random systems) display a similar statistical behaviour when considering the sizes of their sub-branches.

Taxonomy is one of the major classification schemes in use in all natural and social sciences. The main underlying assumption driving a taxonomic class partition is that the entities under study are hierarchically organized: for example, in biology four different species (e.g. lions, tigers, lynxes and cats) can be grouped into two genera (lions and tigers into Pantherinae, lynxes and cats into Felinae), which in turn belong to the same family (Felidae); in social sciences different sub-communities can be grouped in the same community and so on: supporters of different soccer teams can be grouped, at a higher level, as soccer fans that in turn, together with fans of other disciplines, can be grouped as sports fans and so on. Therefore, taxonomic trees carry information about the laws of organization of organisms and communities. In addition, in the last decade much work has been devoted to the study of the statistical features of taxonomic trees, in the hope that they could reveal some general patterns of organization. Interestingly, when looking at the statistical distribution of the sizes of sub-trees (which correspond to the sizes of subspecies within species, of subcommunities within communities) an inverse square power-law relation has been foundBur ; Bur2 ; Loreto . Subtree sizes are best viewed by Fig.1, where we show a tree and label every node by the size of its corresponding subtree. It is worth noticing that such scheme corresponds to the statistics of drainage basins area in the river network studiesrinaldo . The presence of a power-law in the size distribution of sub-tree sizes has been hailed as a consequence of some self-organization (possibly critical) of the system under consideration. Actually, and even more interestingly, the robustness of such a law across different taxa and kingdoms (in ecology) and for different social contexts and definitions of community (in social sciences) points to some universal property of these systems.

Here we show that, although self-organization is surely present in ecological and social systems, its presence is not revealed by the above mentioned inverse square relation, which instead is an unescapable consequence of the tree-like nature of classification scheme. Moreover, the robustness of the inverse square relation emerges simply as a universal consequence of the tree-building algorithm.

Community detection within a society is not a simple and perfectly defined task. Indeed, the definition itself of a community is not clear-cut, and even for a given definition the procedure to identify communities might not be easy to implement. Quite recently Girvan and Newman (GN) have proposed an algorithm that, on test cases (where the communities are already known) seems to perform quite effectively GN . The algorithm relies on a simple intuition: communities are groups of individuals tightly connected with each other, and less connected to the rest of the social network. Therefore, by identifying a suitable parameter that quantifies such degree of connectedness, it is possible to devise a procedure to fragment the social network in communities. GN use the edge betweenness freeman  index to estimate how much an edge of the network is important to keep it connected: in general edges within a community have a low betweenness value, since the global connectivity is anyway ensured by the large amount of edges linking individuals in the community. Edges between two different communities, on the other hand, should exhibit high betweenness values, since there should be a few of them, sustaining all the social relations between the two communities. The GN algorithm recursively prunes the network by cutting the edge with the largest betweenness, checking whether the network has split in two fragments, and repeating the procedure untill the network is made of disconnected nodes. Any time there is a splitting, the taxonomic tree of communities is updated: the community that has split into two subcommunities gives rise to two offsprings. The algorithm therefore builds a binary tree that encodes the community structure of the social network. More recently, other algorithmsnewmann ; Loreto  have been proposed that run faster than the GN one by relying on local quantities, such as the edge clustering (the computation of the betweenness is costly since it is a global quantity). Yet, the common feature is that the algorithm still produces binary taxonomic trees. As mentioned above, all these algorithms correctly identify communities in selected test cases, and all exhibit an inverse square law behavior in the community size distribution, sometimes used as evidence of a self-organized hierarchical structure in the system. Yet, the structure, encoded in a taxonomic tree, is hierarchical by construction, and also the inverse square power behavior is an inescapable outcome of the construction.

It has been analytically shown recently that the sub-tree size distribution (the community size distribution in the social context) of a random tree is always power-law distributed, $`P(s)s^\gamma `$, with the exponent $`\gamma `$ that can be equal to $`3/2`$ in the case of critical random trees harris  (a critical random tree is a tree where nodes have, on the average, just a single offspring), and $`2`$ in the more common case of supercritical trees (the average number of offsprings is larger than one)delos . To check whether this result applies in general to the detection algorithm, we have applied the one based on the edge clustering coefficient to a simple Erdos-Renyi network made of $`3000`$ nodes and with an average degree equal to $`10`$. As shown in Fig.2, the community size distribution shows an inverse power-law behavior for almost two decades. Yet, the network is completely random, and there is no self-organization whatsoever in the communities identified by the algorithm. The application of the betweenness based GN algorithm gives similar results (data not shown). In Fig.2 we have logarithmically binned the data: this is helpful to improve the quality of the plot, although not essential to reveal the power-law in the community size distribution (the non binned data are just slightly noisier). The cumulated distribution, instead, wouldn’t have shown any of these features, as Fig.2 clearly shows: this is a caveat in the use of cumulated distributions, that can sometimes heavily distort the results, to the point that by their use the universality of the inverse square power relation could have been missed.

The inverse square-law behavior also emerges from real data and from sets of real data after some randomization. As an example we examine data from plant taxonomy, which is a particular case of biological classification. We have considered a number of plants ecosystems belonging to different climatic and geographical environments around the world, each one represented by the taxonomic classification tree. For all these trees the study of the statistical distribution of the sizes of subtrees shows a very good inverse power-law distribution with an exponent $`\gamma 1.9\pm 0.2`$. As all the plants species in each tree belong to a same ecosystem, this result could be viewed as a sign of some self-organization of the ecosystem itself. Yet, in this case a simple experiment shows that community statistics do not reveal any structure (although the details of the community partition do). We have studied two different kinds of subsets of the above ecosystems: geographical subsets made of groups of species that live toghether in a restricted area flora  and give rise to a small ecosystem, and some other completely random subsets. The statistical distribution of the sizes of subtrees shows an inverse square power-law behavior for both kinds of subsets (see Fig.3). Finding this behavior both in homogeneous data from the same ecosystem, and in a random subsets of species where no correlations are present, shows once more that the inverse square-law is simply a consequence of the tree-like nature of the taxonomic classification. It is worth observing, in this case, that Fig.3 shows the cumulated distribution, that in this case preserves its power-law features (this is further evidence that, if the cumulated distribution is a power-law then the original is power-law too, whereas the inverse is not necessarily true, for example if data are quite noisy).

In conclusion we have shown that the presence of an inverse square-law relation for the distribution of the sizes of communities and species does not mark any significative organization within the system under consideration, but rather it is an inevitable consequence of the classification scheme. More generally we point out that such power-law behavior should be expected whenever the classification scheme used to organize a set of data is based on the construction of a hierarchical tree. This should also apply to classical taxonomy, where the appearance of power-laws in the distributions of subspecies within species has been linked to some intrinsic fractality in the way species are organized. The degree of correlation and organization of the system under study should be instead tied to the quality of the scaling rather than to its bare presence. These subtle relations are yet to be discovered. In some cases, the community size distribution has shown power-law scaling with exponent $`3/2`$, rather then $`2`$Guimera : since it is known that the only ingredient necessary to find such a scaling for random trees is their criticality (number of offsprings equal to $`1`$), we speculate that it is not the presence of scaling itself that points to some peculiarities in these systems, but rather the specific value of the exponent (and we stress that no other exponents different from $`2`$ and $`3/2`$ could be found).

We thank the EU FET Open project IST-2001-33555 COSIN, the OFES-Bern under contract 02.0234.


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# Particle Identification for Physics beyond the LHC

## 1 Introduction

Charged particle identification has been, and still is, crucial for detecting new signals and performing precision measurements at collider experiments. At LEP and SLC the identification of leptons has been essential. That of hadrons has proven to be beneficial to carry out the physics program in full.

The focus on heavy flavour physics and the study of CP violation in the $`B`$ sector further underlines the need for kaon and proton tagging. $`B`$ experiments are all equipped with Cherenkov detectors to tackle problems such as the discrimination of penguin-mediated $`bs`$ transitions from tree-level $`bu`$ processes. At the Lhc proton collider, the hadron identification capabilities are similarly emphasised by the specialised experiments. Lepton identification is an essential component in the design of multi-purpose experiments, from the Level-1 trigger stage.

The Lhc is expected to provide a major breakthrough in particle physics, by probing the Higgs sector and testing new physics beyond the Standard Model (SM), possibly manifesting the existence of Supersymmetry. But to understand the mechanism of origin of mass and electro-weak symmetry breaking, neither the study of the Higgs profile nor the search for additional Higgs particles will be completed at the Lhc . Some measurements are limited in accuracy while others may not be feasible at all. In particular, understanding Supersymmetry requires to identify and measure all the supersymmetric particle partners. More generally, given a set of signals at Lhc , their nature and properties may not be unambiguously determined, unless additional data is provided by a new generation of particle colliders. This paper addresses some of the issues in particle identification which emerge from the anticipated physics programs of future colliders, with emphasis on $`e^+e^{}`$ linear colliders.

## 2 Accelerator Designs and Opportunities

There are several alternative paths for reaching the high energy frontier, beyond the Lhc . The luminosity in proton collisions can be increased. The Lhc can be upgraded to provide collisions at 1035 cm-2s-1. Such upgrade (SLhc ) could extend the mass reach to new particles by about 30%, provided the ATLAS and CMS detectors can be re-fitted to cope with the higher particle fluxes. But past $`10^{35}`$ cm-2s-1, the Lhc detector performance greatly degrades, even with major upgrades . At these luminosities, particle identification techniques such as transition radiation detectors appear to be not applicable. An increase in $`\sqrt{s}`$ should be significantly easier to be exploited by the experiments. This makes a very large hadron collider (VLhc ) a possible long-term option for accelerator HEP . A large $`\sqrt{s}`$ increase from the Lhc energy has to be supported by very significant R&D for magnets and vacuum. An $`e^+e^{}`$ linear collider (LC), providing collisions at energies from the $`Z^0`$ pole up to approximately 1 TeV with luminosity in excess to 1034 cm-2s-1, is presently considered as the best motivated option for the next large scale project in accelerator particle physics. The linear collider R&D is reaching the time at which a decision on the technical feasibility of the project and an informed choice of the most advantageous technology can be taken . Such collider would not directly test the energy range beyond the Lhc , but it will complement its data with the accuracy characteristic of lepton colliders. Through the collision of point-like particles with tunable energies, the democratic production of particles, including those interacting only weakly, and the possibility to modify their polarisation, as well as to replace $`e^+e^{}`$ with $`\gamma \gamma `$ and $`e^{}e^{}`$ collisions, the high energy linear collider offers a unique opportunity. Lepton collisions are not limited to the TeV frontier. Active R&D programs are already addressing the challenges offered by multi-TeV collisions with electrons (CLIC) and, in a longer perspective, possibly also with muons, and providing conceptual designs. Hadron and Lepton Colliders give an healthy complementarity of approaches and technological challenges which are being addressed by a significant, continued world-wide R&D effort.

## 3 Physics Program and Particle Identification

The details of the physics program for the next generation of particle colliders will be defined by the exploration of the TeV frontier by the Lhc . Our present understanding indicates that the study of the Higgs sector will require efficient flavour tagging, to determine its quark couplings, efficient lepton identification for mass, spin and gauge couplings measurements. Several models of new physics which address the hierarchy problem are characterised by a rich spectroscopy of new states, with abundance of multi-lepton signatures.

The SLhc will requires major tracker rebuilds to maintain jet tagging capabilities and fully benefit from the higher luminosity. Moving to higher energies poses problems which become particularly severe in the forward regions where jet and lepton tagging are essential.

In this environment lepton identification needs to be guaranteed as multi-lepton signatures will represent an important handle in isolating signals of new physics. A good example is offered by $`WW`$ and $`ZZ`$ vector boson scattering. If no elementary Higgs boson exists, electroweak symmetry breaking should happen dynamically. The effects from strong boson scattering should become observable at the SLhc with good statistical significance analysing the leptonic decays of the gauge bosons. These studies will have to rely on efficient and well modelled response functions for lepton identification in the high luminosity environment.

The $`e^+e^{}`$ linear collider offers more benign experimental conditions to consider advanced particle identification techniques with a wide array of physics opportunities and aims at high precision measurements. It thus offer important options for characterising the particle identification needs of collider physics beyond the LHC. Electron identification can be obtained from the response of the finely segmented electromagnetic calorimeter. Muons are identified in the instrumented return flux iron. Plastic streamer tubes, or RPC detectors, can be used to provide multiple samplings since rates are low. The typical momentum of leptons in muons in jets is $``$ 20 GeV, corresponding to a lateral spread of $``$ 2 cm after 7 $`\lambda `$, which sets the scale of the needed position resolution. Assuming a solenoidal magnetic field of 4 Tesla, the muon momentum cut-off is $``$ 5 GeV for a coil located at 4 m from the interaction region.

Charged particle identification offers crucial sensitivity to new phenomena and provides redundancy in discriminating signals for precision measurements. In principle, it would be advantageous to provide the LC experiment with both lepton and hadron tagging capabilities. However, analysing the multi-jet final states requires excellent parton energy and direction reconstruction. This can be best achieved with the energy flow technique, which combines tracking and calorimetric information. There is a need to minimise the material in front of the electro-magnetic calorimeter which imposes some compromises. In absence of a clear case for hadron identification with good purity, current detector designs are relying on the information which can be obtained from specific ionization, dE/dx, in the Main Tracker device for hadron identification. Both a large volume Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and a Si tracker are being considered. The TPC design included in the TESLA proposal has 240 points/track with micro-pattern gaseous detector read-out. A dE/dx resolution of $``$ 4 % is achievable, corresponding to a $``$ 2.0 $`\sigma `$ $`\pi `$/$`K`$ separation in the kinematic region of 1.5 GeV $`<p<`$ 20 GeV (see Figure 1.

Together with the excellent mass resolution afforded by the accurate momentum determination, this would ensure a good separation of processes such as $`B\pi \pi `$ at a Giga-$`Z`$ factory. A discrete Si Tracker may provide dE/dx measurements in Si, as pioneered by DELPHI and Belle. However, the resolution is much poorer, due to limited number of samplings available, and hadron tagging would only be possible in the $`1/\beta ^2`$ region, since the relativistic rise saturates.

Further specifications for hadron identification may come from physics at the $`W^+W^{}`$ threshold where some of the elements of the CKM mixing matrix could be directly determined, with interesting accuracy if $`c`$ and $`s`$ jets can be efficiently tagged. Such direct measurements will be free from the theoretical uncertainties and model dependence which affect the determination derived from partial decay widths. This would call for good $`K`$ identification over a wide momentum range. However, at higher energies benefits from $`c`$ and $`s`$ tagging in $`W^\pm `$ boson decays, appear to be marginal. The study of $`W_LW_L`$ production represents a good test case. An increase of longitudinally polarised $`W`$ pair production in high energy $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions is predicted some models, including technicolor. The helicity of $`W`$ bosons can be best measured in mixed $`e^+e^{}WW\mathrm{}\nu c\overline{s}`$ decays where the lepton charge and the flavour of the $`c`$ quark can be used as analysers. Charged kaon identification enhances the tagging quality. But including realistic performances dilutes such improvement to only $``$ 20 % . However, we should remain aware that the most exciting part of the physics program at future colliders may come from physics which we cannot anticipate today. Therefore the detector concepts should ensure that some redundancy in the tagging capabilities is kept.

The case for excellent lepton identification is easily made, since it is instrumental to some of the most fundamental processes on the linear collider agenda. The study of the Higgs boson through the signature process $`e^+e^{}Z^0H^0`$ relies on tags of the leptonic $`Z^0`$ decay to perform studies independent on the Higgs decay properties. Since these leptons are quite energetic, their identification is ensured through the electro-magnetic, hadronic calorimeter and muon chamber response. But other cases are less straightforward. A detailed study of Higgs boson couplings to fermions and gauge bosons, requires the use of inclusive four jet events. Here semi-leptonic $`b`$-quark decays giving will distort the $`M_{JJ}`$ invariant mass distribution. It is thus important to tag soft leptons in jets to apply appropriate corrections. If new physics exists, to cancel the effect of heavy Higgs mass in electroweak observables, its mass $`M_H`$ can be significantly heavier than the $``$ 210 GeV limit derived from present data. In this case it would become interesting to search for $`e^+e^{}H^0e^+e^{}Xe^+e^{}`$ at high energies, which has a large cross section and allows model-independent analyses to be performed by tagging the forward electrons. The $`ZZ`$ fusion analysis needs to identify electrons and precisely measure their energy and direction, down to $``$ 100 mrad, close to the bulk of the $`\gamma \gamma `$ background.

If Supersymmetry is realised in nature, the $`e^+e^{}`$ collider is also expected to complement the Lhc to determine its fundamental parameters and establish whether the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is indeed responsible for dark matter (DM) in the Universe. In particular, the LC will produce and measure accurately the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{}}`$ sleptons and gauginos, including the LSP, properties. The recent WMAP satellite determination of DM density constrains the phase space of supersymmetric model parameters. In a constrained MSSM these data indicates that the supersymmetric spectrum is likely to have small slepton-LSP mass differences, corresponding to rather soft spectra of the lepton produced in $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{}}`$ decays .

The slepton and neutralino masses can be accurately determined from the endpoints of the lepton momentum distribution in the two-body decay. But at the upper tip of the cosmologically interesting region, where the two particles are almost degenerate, the lower lepton energy edge may be located at about 1 GeV (see Figures 2 and 3). This raises the issue of lepton tagging capabilities extending to such low energies matched with efficient event selection in presence of accelerator-induced backgrounds.

A similar scenario arises in a particular class of models with extra dimensions. Extra dimensions are being actively explored as an alternative solution to the hierarchy problem. Most realisations are expected to give spectacular signals at future colliders. Universal extra dimension (UED) models have all SM particles propagating in one or more compact extra dimensions. Kaluza Klein partners of SM particles have masses $`nR^1`$, where $`R`$ is the compactification radius, and identical spin and couplings to SM particles. The mass degeneracy of particles of the same KK-level $`n`$ is only broken by radiative corrections and KK-parity conservation guarantees that the lightest KK state, generally the photon or neutrino excitation, is stable. So UED also offers a viable CDM candidate in the form of its lightest KK particle . This scenario can be tested in details at a LC of sufficient energy through processes where lepton KK excitations are pair produced to decay into ordinary leptons and stable lightest KK states. This closely resembles the slepton production and decay process in Supersymmetry, except that here the mass splitting is always small and measuring the lower lepton energy edge requires tagging soft muons and electrons.

Studying $`e^+e^{}f\overline{f}`$ at $`\sqrt{s}`$ 1 Tev will provide a window on New Physics at scales of order 10 TeV and more, which are much beyond those directly reachable at the next generations of colliders. But to ensure sensitivity to new phenomena through the electro-weak fits, it will be important to perform accurate forward-backward asymmetry measurements for both leptons and quarks, which ensure the best sensitivity at the upper scale edge . The reaction $`e^+e^{}t\overline{t}`$ at multi-TeV energies offers an interesting case. Here the charge of the quark can be determined from that of the lepton produced in the leptonic $`W`$ decay. Therefore, indirect sensitivity to the 10 TeV scale will rely on efficient tagging of relatively soft leptons.

New particles may also appear in the form of heavy stable particles, directly detectable with particle identification and time of flight (TOF). At a radius of 2 m the time-of-flight of a $`\beta =1`$ particle is 6.7 ns which can be measured with $`50`$ ps accuracy. Since data is integrated over several bunch crossings in a train and, depending on RF chosen technique, the bunch spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_b`$ is in the range 1-300 ns, TOF must deal with ambiguities. The TPC may be used to resolve the bunch crossing by extrapolating to the collision point. An example is offered in the context of Supersymmetry by Gauge-mediated Supersymmetry Breaking Models (GMSB), where the gravitino, $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ is the LSP. Due to its weak coupling, the next lightest particle (NLSP) is long-lived. The $`\stackrel{~}{\tau }`$ NLSP scenario with $`\stackrel{~}{\tau }\stackrel{~}{G}\tau `$ can be investigated in $`\stackrel{~}{\tau }`$ pair production. The signature is a pair of heavy long-lived charged particles traversing the detector. Their existence can be revealed through TOF and specific ionization, if not dedicated particle identification detectors, using a technique pioneered at Lep (see Figure 4. Care needs to be taken to ensure that the resulting large ionization signals are preserved by the dynamic range of the read-out electronics.

## 4 Conclusion

The future of particle physics depends on the availability of new generations of colliders after the Lhc . The $`e^+e^{}`$ linear collider is the next large scale project under consideration. While hadron identification does not appear to have a major impact on the LC physics capabilities, identification of leptons, and also of new heavy stable hadrons, will be instrumental to many of its key physics processes. Examples from the main lines of investigations expected at present, indicate the challenging requirements from the wide range of kinematics offered by anticipated physics signatures.


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# HI absorption in a gravitational lens at 𝑧∼0.7645

## 1 Introduction

The $`z2.2`$ radio-loud quasar PMN J0134$``$0931 is an exceedingly interesting object. Its radio continuum consists of at least 6 components, with a maximum image separation of $`700`$ mas (Winn et al. (2002) (W02); Winn et al. (2003) (W03)). Five of these images (A – E) have the same spectral index and a curved arc of emission is seen between A and B. These properties caused W02 to argue that the object is a gravitationally lensed system. Similarly, Gregg et al. (2002) used the multiplicity of components in a near-IR image as well as the high inferred source luminosity as evidence for lensing. Interestingly enough, PMN J0134$``$0931 is only the second lens of galactic mass to show an image multiplicity greater than four; the other such lens is the six-component system towards CLASS B1359+154 (Rusin et al. (2001)).

CaII H and K lines have been detected towards PMN J0134$``$0931, at $`z=0.76451\pm 0.00016`$ (Hall et al. (2002)); the lens is thus likely to be at this redshift. The CaII absorption is very strong, with rest frame equivalent width $`5.3`$ Å, similar to that seen in the lens B0218+357 (Browne et al. (1993)). Further, the quasar is highly reddened in optical wavebands, with $`BK11`$ (Gregg et al. (2002)); this suggests the presence of large amounts of dust, either in the host galaxy of the quasar or in the lensing galaxy. While the differential extinction of the quasar images suggests that at least some of the reddening is due to dust in the absorber, it has so far not been possible to conclusively determine the location of the dust. Assuming the dust is at $`z=0.7645`$ implies $`E(BV)=1.315`$, i.e. a visual extinction $`A_\mathrm{V}=3.85`$ (Hall et al. (2002)). In conjunction with the strong CaII lines, this would suggest that the lens is a gas-rich, late-type galaxy.

More recently, Keeton & Winn (2003) have come up with the first quantitative model of the lensing system that explains most of its observed properties. The background source is assumed to have two components and the lensing system to consist of two galaxies. The observed 5 components A – E are then the images of one of the background sources and component F is an image of the second, with the remaining two images of the latter source too faint for detection. The model is supported by new high-resolution radio and optical observations (W03), which found that F has a different spectral index from images A – E. These observations also showed that the observed large sizes of components C and E are not intrinsic but instead arise due to scatter broadening at the lower frequencies. Finally, W03 find marginal evidence for a detection of the two lens galaxies in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of the system; Keeton & Winn (2003) predict these to be spiral galaxies, each with a velocity dispersion of about $`120`$ km s-1, and a projected separation of $`0.4^{\prime \prime }`$.

We present, in this Letter, Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) observations of HI 21cm absorption at $`z0.7645`$ towards PMN J0134$``$0931. The usual association of dust with high column densities of neutral gas confirms that the dust is likely to be concentrated in the intervening lens system. We describe the WSRT observations and data analysis in section 2; the spectra, results and models are presented and discussed in section 3.

## 2 Observations and data analysis

PMN J0134$``$0931 was observed with the UHF-High band of the WSRT on March 28 and 31 and July 5 and 7, 2003, with the DZB correlator as the backend. A single 5 MHz IF band was used on all occasions, sub-divided into 1024 channels and centred at an observing frequency of 805 MHz; this yielded a frequency resolution of $`4.88`$ kHz, i.e. a velocity resolution of $`1.8`$ km s-1. The standard calibrators 3C48 and 3C147 were used to calibrate the absolute flux density scale at all observing epochs; their adopted flux densities are on the scale of Baars et al. (1977). The system bandpass was calibrated with observations of 3C48, 3C147, 3C454.3 or 3C138. All fourteen WSRT antennas were available for the observations in all observing runs. The total on-source time was 17.6 hours.

The data were converted from the telescope format to FITS and then analyzed in classic AIPS, using standard techniques. Data from the March and July runs were analyzed separately and self-calibrated independently. Spectra from the two epochs were corrected to the heliocentric frame outside AIPS and then averaged together. The flux density of PMN J0134$``$0931 was measured to be $`590\pm 2`$ mJy on all observing runs.

We note that two strong, narrow RFI spikes were found to be present not far from the expected location of the redshifted 21cm line; these were seen in both the March and July runs, at the same observing frequencies (i.e. shifted heliocentric frequencies). The high initial spectral resolution of the observations limited the effect of these spikes on neighbouring channels; the data were also Hanning smoothed in frequency, to further reduce spectral ringing.

## 3 Discussion

### 3.1 The 21cm spectrum and derived quantities

The final WSRT HI 21cm spectrum towards PMN J0134$``$0931 is shown in figure 1; this has been boxcar smoothed by three channels (and re-sampled) and has a velocity resolution of $`10.8`$ km s-1 and an RMS noise of $`4.1`$ mJy. The redshift of the CaII lines (Hall et al. (2002)) is shown below the spectrum, with error bars.

Two deep features can be immediately identified in the spectrum of Fig. 1, with their peak optical depths at heliocentric frequencies of $`804.898\pm 0.03`$ and $`805.455\pm 0.03`$ MHz, i.e. heliocentric redshifts of $`0.76470\pm 0.00006`$ and $`0.76348\pm 0.00006`$ respectively. The redshift of the first of these features agrees with that of the CaII lines, within the errors. This is also the deeper of the two HI components, with a peak optical depth of $`0.047\pm 0.007`$; the second feature has a peak optical depth of $`0.039\pm 0.007`$. The HI absorption is extremely wide, with a total velocity spread (between nulls) of $`500`$ km s-1. This is similar to the width of the CaII lines, which have $`\sigma _\mathrm{v}=220\pm 40`$ km s-1 (Hall et al. (2002)).

The equivalent width of the 21cm profile is $`\tau _{21}dV=7.06\pm 0.08`$ km s-1. This is is higher than that measured in either of the other gravitational lenses in which HI absorption has so far been detected, B0218+357 ($`EW=2.94\pm 0.02`$ km s-1; Kanekar et al. 2003) and PKS 1830$``$21 ($`EW=5.8\pm 0.4`$ km s-1; Chengalur et al. 1999). The large equivalent width implies a very HI column density $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}=2.6\pm 0.3\times 10^{21}\left(T_\mathrm{s}/200\mathrm{K}\right)\left(1/f\right)`$ cm-2 (e.g. Kanekar & Chengalur 2003), where $`f`$ is the covering factor of the absorber and $`T_\mathrm{s}`$, its spin temperature; this is well into the range observed in damped Lyman-$`\alpha `$ systems (e.g. Wolfe et al. 1986). We note that a spin temperature of $`200`$ K is typical of spiral galaxies, both locally (Braun & Walterbos (1992)) and at low redshift (Kanekar & Chengalur 2003 ). Of course, the above estimate of $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ gives the sum of HI column densities towards all the different source components giving rise to the 21cm absorption; it is not possible to measure the column density towards individual source components with the available data.

The extremely high estimated HI column density implies a high dust content in the $`z0.7645`$ lens and explains the observed reddening in the optical images (Gregg et al. (2002); W03). Assuming that the molecular hydrogen column density is roughly equal to $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$, the total hydrogen column density $`N_\mathrm{H}=2N_{\mathrm{H}_2}+N_{\mathrm{HI}}7.8\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 (again assuming $`T_\mathrm{s}=200`$ K and a covering factor of unity). This implies $`E(BV)1.35`$, using a Galactic dust to gas ratio; further assuming a Galactic extinction law ($`R_\mathrm{V}=3.1`$; Binney & Merrifield (1998)) results in a visual extinction $`A_\mathrm{V}4.15`$. Of course, it is likely that the 21cm absorption profile (and hence the estimated column density) contains contributions from more than one line of sight, with variable optical depth and kinematics across the complex lensing image; it is thus not possible to estimate the visual extinction towards individual source components.

### 3.2 Modelling the absorption

The lens towards PMN J0134$``$0931 creates a complex radio image of six image components (A – F), with a maximum angular separation of $`681`$ mas (W02). Components A and B are seen to connect in a section of lensing arc at faint levels in the 1.7 GHz VLBA image (W03). Components C and E appear to be strongly scatter broadened at frequencies below 5 GHz and are almost undetected in VLBA images at 1.7 GHz (W02,W03), as they are over-resolved by even the shortest baselines of the VLBA. Note, however, that their flux must be present in the integral flux density measured in our spectrum at 805 MHz; further, they provide additional lines of sight through the $`z0.7645`$ absorber. Next, while component F has a significantly steeper spectrum than the other five components, its total flux density is only $`11\pm 1`$ mJy at 1.7 GHz; it is thus quite unlikely to have sufficient flux density at 805 MHz to give rise to either of the two main 21cm components. Further, while it is possible that the some of the wide, weak absorption arises against this component, this would require a fairly high optical depth ($`\tau 0.5`$). The 21cm absorption is thus most likely to arise against the brighter components A, B, C and D (and perhaps the arc of radio emission between A and B), each of which have flux densities $`100`$ mJy at 1.7 GHz. We note that component A also shows evidence for scatter broadening at frequencies below 5 GHz while D is the most strongly reddened of the source components; on the other hand, B is the bluest of all components and shows no evidence for scatter broadening in the VLBA images (W03). This suggests that there is relatively less dust and gas along the line of sight to component B; the two main 21cm features thus appear most likely to arise from absorption against components A and D.

We have explored these possibilities with a simple kinematic model using a differentially rotating disk absorber. The modelling does not produce a unique result, but rather succeeds in demonstrating that a single, massive galaxy could indeed be responsible for the 21cm absorption profile. If a more complex, multi-galaxy system were to be invoked, there would be ample free parameters to fit the integral spectrum reported here. Further observational progress will require radio interferometry to separate the absorption along different lines of sight.

The philosophy of modelling the 21cm profile shape is based on the assumption that narrow absorption features occur in the spectrum when a compact, high-surface brightness image of the background radio source “selects” a small patch from an extended, smooth velocity field of a rotating galaxy. Thus, the two main narrow 21cm features of Fig. 1 are expected to be associated with specific source components of the background source, once VLBI observations are conducted in the 21 cm line. The modelling uses the source structure obtained from the 1.7 GHz VLBA maps of W03 for the compact radio components, with a scaling in flux to both match the relative flux densities of the components in the higher frequency bands, and still produce the integral flux density measured at 805 MHz by our WSRT observations. The more extended components C and E had to be supplemented with diffuse gaussian components to account for the flux missing from the VLBA map.

The two models discussed here (and shown in Fig. 2\[B\]) are representative of two broad classes which can reproduce the observed 21cm profile. It should be emphasized, however, that neither class is able to account for all the observations simultaneously, including the scatter broadening and reddening of different source components. Both models are axially symmetric, planar systems with rotation curves that are flat at $`V_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ in the outer regions, with a linear rise from the centre to $`R_\mathrm{c}`$. The systemic velocity of the galaxy is offset from 805 MHz ($`z=0.76448`$) by $`V_{\mathrm{off}}`$, and the galaxy centroid is specified by the projected positional offsets $`\mathrm{\Delta }X`$ (west), $`\mathrm{\Delta }Y`$ (north) relative to image D. The HI optical depth profile for each pixel is broadened by a velocity dispersion of $`\sigma _\mathrm{v}=7`$ km s-1 before computing that pixel’s contribution to the integral absorption spectrum.

#### 3.2.1 Model I

Models belonging to class I are motivated by the need to inflict heavy reddening on image D without reddening B, coupled with accounting for the scatter broadening of A and C. However, this model does not account for the scatter broadening of image E. The model parameters are: position angle of the receding major axis $`p=50^{}`$ ($`+p`$, measured east from north), inclination to sky plane $`i=85^{}`$, $`V_{\mathrm{rot}}=230`$ km s-1, $`R_\mathrm{c}=1.4`$ kpc, exponential gas scale height $`h=0.7`$ kpc, $`V_{\mathrm{off}}=35`$ km s-1, and galaxy position at $`\mathrm{\Delta }X=490`$ mas, $`\mathrm{\Delta }Y=370`$ mas. In this highly inclined model, the HI column density measured perpendicular to the galaxy plane is only $`3\times 10^{19}(T_\mathrm{s}/100)`$ cm-2 in the region that covers components A and C, but it rises to $`3\times 10^{20}(T_\mathrm{s}/100)`$ cm-2 for B and D. The high disk inclination increases the line of sight column densities by an order of magnitude. The 21cm spectrum resulting from this model is shown in fig. 2\[A\]. Here, the two narrow features arise from absorption against A and D; the extended weak absorption wing out to $`+300`$ km s-1 is achieved by tipping the intervening disk to a high inclination and thickening the HI layer with a scale height of $`700`$ pc (in the spirit of Briggs et al. (1985) and Prochaska and Wolfe (1997)).

#### 3.2.2 Model II

The second, somewhat orthogonal, class of models (of which Model II is an example) has an infinitesimally thin disk, oriented to cast a shadow on images A, B, C, and E, thereby accounting for the observed scatter broadening of A, C, and E, but implying that all would be vulnerable to reddening in contradiction with B being the bluest and D being the reddest of the images. The model parameters are: $`p=+52^{}`$, $`i=72.5^{}`$, $`V_{\mathrm{rot}}=250`$ km s-1, $`R_\mathrm{c}=0.8`$ kpc, (gas scale height $`h=0`$ kpc), $`V_{\mathrm{off}}=15`$ km s-1, and galaxy position at $`\mathrm{\Delta }X=535`$ mas, $`\mathrm{\Delta }Y=290`$ mas. This model has an exponential radial decline in HI column density, with scale length 1.5 kpc, from a central peak of $`1.5\times 10^{21}(T_\mathrm{s}/100)`$ cm-2 measured perpendicular to the disk plane. The spectrum resulting from the above orientation is shown in fig. 2\[C\]. Here, the two narrow features arise against images A and B, while the broad shoulder at positive velocities stems from absorption against image C and the radio arc connecting A and B.

## 4 Summary

The 21cm absorption line profile at $`z0.7645`$ towards PMN J0134$``$0931 has two primary components and a broad weak trough, It has a total velocity width of $`500`$ km s-1 and the largest HI equivalent width so far detected in a gravitational lens system. The extremely high estimated HI column density $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}=2.6\pm 0.3\times 10^{21}\left(T_\mathrm{s}/200\mathrm{K}\right)\left(1/f\right)`$ cm-2 suggests that the reddening of the quasar is due to dust in the $`z0.7645`$ lens.

None of the galaxy models that assume a single disk-like absorber have succeeded in accounting for all the observations, although the models can roughly reproduce the observed 21cm absorption profile. Specifically, Model I in Sect. 3.2 does not account for the observed scatter broadening of component E while Model II fails to reproduce the fact that D is the reddest and B, the bluest, of all images. Of course, the large 21cm velocity width of $`500`$ km s-1 could also arise if the absorption occurs in two separate galaxies. This is in agreement with the suggestion of Keeton & Winn (2003) that the lensing system consists of two spiral systems. Further, it is consistent with the HST image of W03 showing marginal detections of two galaxies, the northern one close to images A, C and E and the southern one near image D. For example, the northern “galaxy” in the HST image might cause the main 21cm feature and most of the broad, weak absorption, arising against images A, C, E and the radio arc, while the southern “galaxy” causes the secondary (blue-shifted) feature (and perhaps some of the broad trough), through absorption against image D. The present 21cm data do not warrant a detailed modelling of such a two-galaxy absorption system as the number of free parameters is far larger than the number of observational constraints (especially given that the observed 21cm profile can be reproduced with a single disk galaxy model). High resolution radio interferometric observations at 805 MHz will help refine the kinematic models and shed more light on the nature of the intervening lens system.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank Rene Vermeulen for much help with the planning and scheduling of these WSRT service observations. We are also grateful to Josh Winn for providing the 1.7 GHz VLBA image and CC file for use in our modelling. The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope is operated by the ASTRON (Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy) with support from the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research (NWO).