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# Effect of quantum fluctuations on the dipolar motion of Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices

## Abstract

We revisit dipolar motion of condensate atoms in one-dimensional optical lattices and harmonic magnetic traps including quantum fluctuations within the truncated Wigner approximation. In the strong tunneling limit we reproduce the meanfield results with a sharp dynamical transition at the critical displacement. When the tunneling is reduced, on the contrary, strong quantum fluctuations lead to finite damping of condensate oscillations even at infinitesimal displacement. We argue that there is a smooth crossover between the chaotic classical transition at finite displacement and the superfluid-to-insulator phase transition at zero displacement. We further analyze the time dependence of the density fluctuations and of the coherence of the condensate and find several nontrivial dynamical effects, which can be observed in the present experimental conditions.

The study of Bose-Einstein condensates of ultracold atoms has been growing rapidly in recent years nature . Loading bosenic atoms into an optical lattice and enhancing the laser intensity, it is possible to strongly suppress the kinetic energy of the atoms resulting in a superfluid-to-Mott-insulator (SF-MI) quantum phase transition Jaksch ; Bloch : in the strong tunneling limit the condensate is in the superfluid phase with finite phase stiffness, while it is driven to the Mott-insulator phase and loses the phase coherence because of quantum fluctuations if the tunneling becomes small enough. Typical interference patterns obtained in time-of-flight experiments cannot provide sufficient information to see a sharp transition boundary Bloch ; roth .

In one-dimensional systems the condensate dynamics has been observed in a dipolar motion experiment shaking\_exp , where the center-of-mass (CM) of the condensate oscillates after a sudden displacement of the magnetic trap with respect to the optical lattice. This dynamics can be described by the meanfield Gross-Pitaveskii equations (GPE) in the strong tunneling regime shaking\_exp ; stringari . When the displacement is beyond a certain critical value, the condensate oscillations are overdamped mi\_exp  and the motion becomes completely decoherent, indicating a classical localization transition niu ; bishop . Such a transition was recently observed experimentally inguscio . It is plausible that as the quantum fluctuations increase, there is a smooth crossover between the quantum (SF-MI) and the classical transitions. However, we emphasize that the first one is a second order transition characterized by reversible phase coherence if the system is driven to the insulating phase and then back to the SF Bloch . On the other hand the classical transition is irreversible bishop  due to the chaotic excitations inside the condensate cloud.

Motivated by this interesting and important question, in this letter we investigate the quantum fluctuation effects on the CM motion of a condensate in a parabolic potential in a one-dimensional optical lattice using the truncated Wigner approximation (TWA). In the strong tunneling (or weakly interacting) regime, we reproduce the sharp dynamical transition of a meanfield calculation bishop  with a critical displacement proportional to the square root of the tunneling amplitude. When the tunneling is weak the quantum fluctuations strongly modify the dynamics of the condensate in the following ways: (i) the CM motion is damped even for an infinitesimal initial displacement; (ii) the oscillations become overdamped at a critical displacement, $`D_c`$, which is below the classical value at the same tunneling; (iii) the condensate dipolar motion is frictionless from one end to another with the period independent of damping, while the superfluid fraction and the phase coherence drop when the condensate passes through the center of the harmonic well. (iv) We further show that at a given damping, the loss of coherence is less for smaller displacements (or stronger quantum fluctuations). So as we increase quantum fluctuations the localization transition becomes more reversible. Our results hence suggest that there is a smooth crossover between the classical localization transition and the quantum superfluid-to-insulator (SF-IN) transition mott  as the displacement goes to zero.

The truncated Wigner approximation Walls  has been well known in quantum optics for a while. Recently, it was applied to the systems of interacting bosons TWA ; ap1 . In Ref. \[ap1, \] it was argued that TWA is equivalent to the semiclassical approximation and naturally appears in the quantum expansion of the time evolution of the system. The idea behind TWA is that the expectation value of an observable $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ can be found according to:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(t)𝑑\psi _0𝑑\psi _0^{}P(\psi _0,\psi _0^{})\mathrm{\Omega }_{cl}(\psi (t),\psi ^{}(t),t),$$
(1)
where $`\psi `$ and $`\psi ^{}`$ denote bosonic fields obeying classical discrete Gross-Pitaevskii equations of motion GPeq ; psg :

$$i\frac{\psi _j}{t}=J(\psi _{j1}+\psi _{j+1})+\frac{K}{2}j^2\psi _j+\frac{U}{2}|\psi _j|^2\psi _j$$
(2)
with the initial conditions $`\psi (t_0)=\psi _0`$ and $`\psi ^{}(t_0)=\psi _0^{}`$. The parameters $`J`$, $`K`$ and $`U`$ in Eq. (2) denote the tunneling constant, the harmonic trap curvature and the on-site interaction, respectively. The function $`P(\psi _0,\psi _0^{})`$ is a Wigner transform of the initial density matrix, and can be interpreted as the probability of having particular initial conditions note1 . Finally $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{cl}`$ is the Weyl symbol of the operator $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ evaluated on the classical fields $`\psi (t)`$ and $`\psi ^{}(t)`$. It is important to realize that TWA considerably improves Bogoluibov’s theory, especially if the classical dynamics becomes unstable ap1 . The way we implement TWA in this letter is outlined in Ref. \[ap1, \].

In a dipolar motion experiment, the condensate is initially ($`t<0`$) prepared in the superfluid ground state. At $`t=0`$ the trap position is suddenly displaced by the distance $`D_0`$ from the origin and the condensate starts to move. To find the Wigner transform $`P(\psi _0,\psi _0^{})`$ of the interacting ground state, we start from the noninteracting Hamiltonian ($`U=0`$), where the function $`P(\psi _0,\psi _0^{})`$ can be trivially computed, and then adiabatically increase $`U`$ to the actual value ap1 . We check that the increase of the interaction is slow enough so that the final result is not affected by this procedure. The further implementation of Eq. (1) is based on the Monte-Carlo averaging of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{cl}(\psi (t),\psi ^{}(t),t)`$ over the different initial conditions weighted by the probability $`P(\psi _0,\psi _0^{})`$.

In Fig. 1 we show the calculated dynamical phase diagram in terms of the inverse tunneling $`1/J`$ and the displacement $`D_0`$. The contours correspond to the constant damping of the CM oscillations, $`\gamma \mathrm{ln}(D_0/D_1)`$, where $`D_0`$ and $`D_1`$ are the CM positions at $`t=0`$ and $`t=T_1`$ (see the inset). The solid and the dashed lines correspond to the damping of $`\gamma =0.11`$ and $`0.36`$ respectively note\_frequencydamping . The top two curves correspond to the Gross-Pitaevskii result ($`D_c\sqrt{J}`$), where the transition is so sharp that they almost coincide. When we increase quantum fluctuations reducing the total number of bosons $`N`$ (but keeping the product $`UN`$ the same, which is equivalent to fixing the chemical potential chemicalpotential ), we find: (i) for a given $`J`$, the damping of the oscillations occurs at a smaller displacement than in the classical case, and the transition becomes broader for smaller $`N`$. (ii) If the tunneling is small enough (say $`J^1>10`$ for $`N=500`$), then even an infinitesimal displacement results in considerable damping of the CM motion. Although because of the time-consuming computation we are able to trace only $`\gamma =0.11`$ contour for $`N=500`$ to zero, it is clear that such a behavior should be generally true for any given $`\gamma `$, if $`J`$ becomes small enough. For the parameters chosen in Fig. 1, the SF-IN transition mott  occurs at $`J_c^1N_0/U10^3`$. This is much larger than the range of tunneling where we perform the calculations so that the results we obtained in this Letter within TWA are expected to be fairly reliable. We anticipate that contours of larger damping will terminate much closer to the SF-IN transition.

In Fig. 2 we show the damping of the CM motion as a function of the inverse tunneling at $`D_0=5`$. Due to the finite size effects, GP solution also has some finite damping close to the transition point ($`\gamma =\mathrm{}`$). Clearly the damping becomes broader and the transition point shifts to the lower tunneling when quantum fluctuations are enhanced. To affirm the quantum effects in the thermodynamic limit, we also show the results (dotted lines) for a twice as large system ($`KK/4`$ and $`N2N`$, keeping the same chemical potential chemicalpotential ). The displacement was also scaled by a factor of two in order to fix the same condensate maximum velocity. We find that the damping of the GP solution becomes a sharper function of the tunneling (but diverges at the same tunneling amplitude) while the quantum CM motion is destroyed at even larger tunneling! This result reflects the fact that the GP solution has only one length scale associated with the condensate size. In the quantum case there appears another scale, associated with generation of quasiparticles out of the condensate. Therefore, the finite damping of the CM motion shown in Figs. 1 and 2 exists even in the thermodynamic limit if the condensate velocity (proportional to $`D\sqrt{K}`$) is kept finite. In Fig. 2, we also show the dependence of the oscillation frequency note\_frequencydamping ($`\omega `$) on tunneling. Surprisingly we find that $`\omega `$ does not deviate from the GP result even for the relatively strong damping as long as the CM motion remains underdamped.

In Fig. 3 we show the standard deviation of the boson density, $`\delta nN^1\sqrt{_j\left(N_j^2N_j^2\right)}`$, and the phase coherence, $`C=N^1\mathrm{Max}_q[_{jl}\psi _j^{}\psi _l,e^{i(jl)q}]`$, as a function of time for $`N=1000`$, $`D_0=5`$ and different tunneling amplitudes. We first note that both $`\delta n`$ and $`C`$ only slightly depend on time if the condensate is near the turning points (i.e. at time/period=$`0.5,1,1.5,\mathrm{}`$), while they change significantly when the condensate has its maximum velocity at the center of the parabolic well (time/period=$`0.25,0.75,1.25,\mathrm{}`$). The sharp increase of the density fluctuations (and the sharp loss of the coherence) can be interpreted as fast generation of the incoherent quasi-particles

with a simultaneous decrease of the superfluid fraction. Combining this with the fact that the oscillation frequency does not deviate from its classical (GP) value even for the strong damping, we argue that the whole CM motion can be interpreted within Landau’s two-fluid model landau : the superfluid component oscillates frictionlessly and is well-described by GP equations, while the normal fluid component has a strong damping and becomes localized near the center of the parabolic well. The former ensures the same oscillation frequency as the classical (GP) value, while the latter causes the damping of the amplitude of the CM motion. The generation of quasi-particles continues in each cycle of the oscillations until the coherent motion stops (Fig. 3). If the initial superfluid fraction is too small due to the large quantum depletion, the quasi-particle generation can be so efficient that the CM motion becomes overdamped ($`\gamma =\mathrm{}`$).

We can qualitatively understand quantum effects on the dynamical transition using a schematic plot of the probability distribution of the phase difference between two nearest sites as shown in Fig. 4.

Given the same tunneling amplitude \[Fig. 4(a)\], the classical distribution of phase gradients peaks at the CM momentum, $`v`$. In the meanfield picture, the CM motion of the condensate is frictionless bishop  if $`v`$ is smaller than the critical value, $`v_c=\pi /2`$, while it is completely destroyed if $`v>v_c`$. If we include quantum fluctuations, then the local phase gradient distribution becomes broader, and therefore there is a finite probability to have a large phase difference in a given link even if $`v<v_c`$, which results in the finite damping of the CM motion. Similarly, at a given $`v`$ \[Fig. 4(b)\] smaller values of $`J`$ lead to a broader distribution of the phase gradient, and hence to larger damping.

Now let us look closer to the connection between the classical transition at finite displacement and the quantum SF-IN transition mott  at zero displacement. In Fig. 5, we show the phase coherence as a function of time for different initial displacements but at the same damping, $`\gamma =0.36`$. We note that the coherence saturates at a finite value, which is closer to the initial one for stronger quantum fluctuations (smaller $`J`$ and $`D_0`$) as shown in the inset. These results suggest that along the $`\gamma =\mathrm{}`$ contour the coherence loss should also approach zero if the displacement gets smaller note2 , indicating a smooth crossover between the dynamical irreversible transition at finite displacement and the reversible quantum phase transition at zero displacement. We note that such a dipolar motion can be also used to investigate the superfluid to Bose glass insulating phase when a bound random potential is applied disorder .

Our analysis also implies that in uniform systems quantum fluctuations lead to the damping of the condensate current state even if the velocity is below the GP critical value bishop . A similar effect was predicted for the current decay in quasi one-dimensional superconductors due to thermal fluctuations LA , and more recently for the atomic system with a moving defect buchler . We will investigate mechanisms of the current decay in uniform systems in separate publications. The results predicted in this letter can be directly tested experimentally. For example, it should be possible to observe the damping of the condensate motion at small displacements (Fig. 2) and the ladder-like structure in the coherence or in the number variance (Fig. 3) as a function of time.

In summary, we studied the effects of quantum fluctuations on the dynamical properties of atomic condensates in 1D optical lattices with a parabolic confinement potential. We showed that the quantum fluctuations are very important even far from the superfluid-to-insulator transition boundary. We further demonstrate that the dynamical localization transition, which has a purely classical origin, can be smoothly connected with the static quantum SF-MI phase transition. Our results give a number of predictions on the condensate dynamics which can be directly tested in experiments.

We acknowledge useful discussions with E. Altman, E. Demler, B. Halperin, M. Lukin, and P. Zoller. This work was supported by US NSF grants DMR-0233773, DMR-0231631, and DMR-0213805.


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# The Molecular Gas Distribution and Schmidt Law in M33

## 1 Introduction

The understanding of galaxy structure and evolution is ultimately linked to the understanding of the star formation process. Star formation within galaxies is commonly described by two relationships which are oversimplifications of complex interstellar processes taking place over a large range of spatial scales (Elmegreen 2002). The first is an empirical relationship between the star formation rate per unit area, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}`$, and gas mass surface density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{HI}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$,

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}^n$$
$`(1)`$
often referred to as the Schmidt law (Schmidt 1959; Kennicutt 1989; Wong & Blitz 2002). The value of the Schmidt index, $`n`$, and its variation with galaxy type and environment provide valuable clues to the physical processes that regulate star formation in galaxies. The second relationship simply states that there is a critical gas surface density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_c`$, below which star formation is suppressed (Kennicutt 1989; Martin & Kennicutt 2001). Since stars form within the cold, dense, molecular gas phase of the interstellar medium, the critical surface density may simply reflect the necessary local conditions at which molecules are sufficiently self-shielded from dissociating UV radiation. However, several studies have shown that the critical surface density is dependent upon the galaxy rotation curve (Kennicutt 1989; Martin & Kennicutt 2001) and relate $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_c`$ to the surface density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_Q`$, which parameterizes the gravitational instability associated with the Coriolis force (Toomre 1964),

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_Q=\frac{c\kappa }{\pi G}$$
$`(2)`$
where $`c`$ is the sound speed and $`\kappa `$ is the epicyclic frequency. Martin & Kennicutt (2001) demonstrate that $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_Q`$ provides an accurate gauge of the gas column density at which star formation is inhibited for most of the 32 galaxies in their sample.

Two galaxies in the sample of Martin & Kennicutt (2001) do not conform to the Toomre condition. M33 and NGC 2403 are small, low luminosity, low mass galaxies. Both systems are actively forming stars throughout their disks yet are sub-critical ($`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}<<\mathrm{\Sigma }_Q`$) over all radii (Kennicutt 1989; Martin & Kennicutt 2001). For both galaxies, this assessment is based upon limited imaging of the molecular gas component within the central region (Wilson & Scoville 1989; Thornley & Wilson 1995) or the major axis (Young et al. 1995). Using wide field imagery of CO emission presented in this study, Corbelli (2003) has confirmed the sub-critical nature of the M33 disk. Several studies have proposed that star formation in galaxies like M33, NGC 2403, and irregular galaxies with slowly rising rotation curves, may be regulated by gas instabilities modulated by the local shear rate (Hunter, Elmegreen, & Baker 1998; Martin& Kennicutt 2001; Corbelli 2003). The critical surface density may also be modulated by the additional gravity from either the stellar disk or the dark matter halo (Wang & Silk 1994; Hunter, Elmegreen, & Baker 1998; Corbelli 2003).

M33 is a nearby galaxy which shows no signs of interaction with other galaxies. Therefore, it constitutes an excellent laboratory to evaluate the degree to which physical processes regulate star formation in disk galaxies. In this paper we present the first, unbiased, filled aperture census of the molecular gas component in M33 from an imaging survey of CO emission with the FCRAO 14m telescope. A recent high resolution interferometric CO image of M33 is presented by Engargiola et al. (2003). The FCRAO data have been previously used to derive the radial distributions of molecular hydrogen, the rotation curve, and the gravitationally unstable region in the disk of M33 (Corbelli 2003). Here, we examine the relationship between the star formation rate and gas surface density as parameterized by equation (1). It is important to assess whether the star formation properties (Schmidt Law, star formation efficiency) in sub-critical galaxies like M33 are modified due to different modes and processes which enable the condensation of cold, dense clouds from the diffuse ISM. Moreover, as a low luminosity, molecular poor galaxy, M33 provides an important complement to the sample of CO-bright spiral galaxies used by Wong & Blitz (2002) to investigate the relationship between gas content and star formation.

In $`\mathrm{\S }`$2, the CO data collection, calibration, and processing procedures are described. The spatial distribution of the molecular gas is presented in $`\mathrm{\S }`$3. In $`\mathrm{\S }`$4, we derive the Schmidt law from HI, CO, and IRAS HiRes images and evaluate the role of pressure in regulating the molecular gas fraction.

## 2 FCRAO Observations

Observations of 12CO J=1-0 emission from M33 were obtained with the 14 meter telescope of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory ($`\mathrm{FCRAO}`$, full width at half maximum = 45″) in March 2000 and between October 2000 and March 2001 using the 16 element focal plane array receiver SEQUOIA. Typical system temperatures were 400 to 700 K. The backend was comprised of a set of 16 autocorrelation spectrometers operating at 80 MHz bandwidth with 378 kHz resolution sampled every 313 kHz. At the observing frequency of the 12CO line (115.2712 GHz), these spectral parameters correspond to a bandwidth of 208 km s-1 with a resolution of 0.98 km s-1 sampled at 0.81 km s-1. Since this bandwidth does not cover the kinematic extent of the galaxy, the velocity at which the spectrometer was centered varied along the major axis according to the HI rotation curve (Corbelli & Salucci 2000). For all observed positions within the field, the velocity shift due to rotation of M33 within the 6′ field of view of the SEQUOIA array is sufficiently small such that all molecular line emission is fully covered within the 80 MHz bandwidth with sufficient baseline window.

To image M33, the focal plane array was aligned along the major axis with a position angle of 22 (measured East of North) about the central J2000 coordinate, $`\alpha ,\delta `$=01h 33m 50.89s, 30 39 36.7′′. The data were taken on a 22.1″ grid which corresponds to near Nyquist sampling. Observations were taken in a position switching mode in which 4 consecutive source positions were shared with a single off-source position taken at the same elevation to ensure the most stable baselines. The spectra were calibrated every 20 to 30 minutes with a chopper wheel to switch between the sky and an ambient temperature. All reported intensities refer to main beam brightness temperature assuming a main beam efficiency of 0.45. In order to obtain more uniform noise across the image and to account for infrequent, inoperative pixels within the array, the footprints were staggered by half the size of the array along the major axis so that any position on the sky was observed by 2 or more pixels. Due to this staggering, the edges of the final image contain less integration time and therefore, increased noise levels with respect to the median rms value of the entire field. The images shown in §3 have been rotated back to the equatorial coordinate system, resampled to a 25″ grid and smoothed with a 22″ Gaussian kernel to achieve a final angular resolution of 50″. At this resolution the median sensitivity, defined here as the standard deviation of values within 1 km s-1 wide spectroscopic channels with no emission, is 0.053 K.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Molecular Gas Distribution

The projected, two dimensional distribution of CO emission from M33 as measured by these $`\mathrm{FCRAO}`$ observations is displayed in Figure 1. The image is constructed from a masked moment calculation of the M33 data cube to minimize the noise contribution from emission free channels when integrating over the full kinematic extent of M33 (-285 $`<`$ VLSR $`<`$ -90 km s-1) (Adler et al. 1992). Summing all of the emission in our map and assuming a CO to $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ conversion factor of 3$`\times `$1020 cm-2-(K kms-1)-1 (see Wilson & Scoville 1990), we derive a global $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ mass of 2.6$`\times `$108 $`M_{}`$ . This value likely underestimates the molecular mass of M33 as it ignores the metallicity gradient within the disk (McCarthy et al. 1995; Monteverdi et al. 1997; Vichez et al. 1988) for which a larger CO to $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ conversion factor may need to be applied in lower metallicity regions. Nor does it account for the regime in which $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ is still abundant but CO is dissociated into CI or CII products. The bulk of CO emission is widely distributed over the field to a radius of 15′. For the 50″ resolution image, the 3$`\sigma `$ detection limit for a GMC with full width half maximum line width of 10 km s-1 corresponds to an $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ mass of $``$8$`\times 10^4`$ M. The spatial resolution of the observations (200 pc) is insufficient to detect individual GMCs if their typical size is $`50`$ pc (Wilson & Scoville 1990; Engargiola et al. 2003; Rosolowsky et al. 2003). Rather, the extended features are likely cloud structures distributed along spiral arms or are bound associations of GMCs. The molecular mass is not uniformly distributed between the northern and southern halves. The northern section of the disk contains 10% more molecular gas than the southern section. The sense of this asymmetry is opposite to that measured from the HI distribution over the same area in which the ratio of atomic gas mass in the north is 80% of the atomic mass in the south (Deul & van der Hulst 1987).

The degree to which giant molecular clouds reside within spiral arms provides important clues to their origin and lifetime. High resolution images of CO emission in more distant galaxies typically reveal a strong concentration of molecular gas in spiral arms (Regan et al. 2001). In the local group, M31 exhibits a large arm to inter-arm contrast for the molecular gas component (Loinard et al. 1999; Guelin et al. 2000). While spiral structure of molecular gas in the Milky Way is more difficult to determine, in the outer Galaxy where line of sight confusion is minimized, spiral arms are the near exclusive domain of CO emitting clouds (Heyer & Terebey 1998).

The spiral structure of M33 has been more difficult to define owing, in part, to the warp of the outer disk. Modeling of the distribution and kinematics of the HI 21cm line emission demonstrates large scale warping for radii greater than 20′ (Rogstad, Wright, & Lockhart 1976; Corbelli & Schneider 1997). Similarly, Sandage & Humphreys (1980) describe a system of spiral arms from the blue light distribution in which the inclination and position angles vary from the central region to the outer disk. Near infrared imagery shows the two bright inner spiral arms and identifies an enhancement of stellar density along the innermost spiral arms labeled by Sandage & Humphreys as IS and IN (Regan & Vogel 1994). The distribution of HI 21cm line emission from M33 is considerably more complex (Newton 1980; Deul & van der Hulst 1986). The optically identified arms are coincident with regions of enhanced atomic gas column density. However, there are many radial spurs which, in projection, connect inner to outer spiral features.

Figure 2 shows the the distribution of CO emission, the Digitized Sky Survey image, HI 21cm line emission from Westerbork Radio Synthesis Telescope (Deul & van der Hulst 1986), and $`\mathrm{IRAS}`$ $`\mathrm{HiRes}`$ 60$`\mu `$m emission. The spiral pattern derived by Rogstad, Wright, & Lockhart (1976) is overlayed as a guide to associate the gas distribution with some plausible spiral structure in M33. While this two arm pattern with a wide opening angle provides a reasonable fit to the brightest HI and CO spiral arm segments, it is not a unique solution nor does it accurately describe all of the neutral gas emission. In particular, the HI and CO segments at offsets (-7′,-13′), (+4′,-7′), and the isolated, northern HI segment at (+10′,+16′) are well displaced from the model spiral arms. These are likely spiral features that do not conform to a global spiral pattern.

### 3.2 Molecular Gas Fraction

The gas component of disk galaxies is cycled between molecular, atomic, and ionized phases of the ISM. Molecular clouds condense from the reservoir of atomic gas in regions with sufficient column density to self-shield molecules from dissociating UV radiation. In regions of star formation where the UV radiation field is high, molecular material can be photo-dissociated or photo-ionized. The fraction of molecular gas relative to the atomic gas component and the radial profile of this ratio provides insight to the recycling process.

Corbelli (2003) has derived the radial profiles of the molecular and atomic gas surface densities in M33 from the $`\mathrm{FCRAO}`$ CO data and the Arecibo 21-cm data (FWHM resolution 3.9′) using a tilted ring model which best fit the atomic hydrogen distribution (Corbelli & Schneider 1997). The same tilted ring model is applied to the 21-cm Westerbork image of M33 (Deul & van der Hulst 1987) smoothed to the same spatial resolution (50″) to derive the radial dependence of the ratio of the atomic to molecular gas mass surface density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{HI}/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$. The Westerbork interferometer image recovers 64% of the HI flux within a radius of 20′ and 60% of the flux within a radius of 30′. Figure 3 shows the radial profiles of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}`$ using the Westerbork data with no correction for missing flux. Figure 4 shows the variation of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{HI}/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$ with radius. Errors on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{HI}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$ are computed according to the dispersion around the mean in each ring. The atomic gas component dominates the total gas surface density at all radii greater than 4′. The radial dependence for the HI/H2 ratio is reasonably described by the power law,

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{HI}/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}R^{0.6}$$
$`(3)`$
Annular averages derived using the Arecibo 21-cm data (Corbelli & Schneider 1997) provide a similar best fitting power law index and suggests that the fraction of flux recovered by the Westerbork interferometer does not vary with radius. The radial slope of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{HI}/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$ is shallower in M33 than in gas rich galaxies for which the power law index is $``$1.5 (Wong & Blitz 2002).

A point to point comparison of the CO and HI images show varying degrees of correlation. In the central 4′ of M33, there is bright CO emission but only low to moderate HI surface brightness indicating an efficient conversion from atomic to molecular gas. Outside of this central region, most of the detected CO emission is coincident with high brightness HI features. From a sample of high resolution VLA images of 11 nearby spiral galaxies, Braun (1997) describes the HI distributions as a network of high brightness emission and associates this material with the cold, neutral component of the ISM based on the observed narrow HI line widths. The correspondence between CO emission and high brightness HI filaments in the disk of M33 demonstrates the condensation of giant molecular clouds from the cold, atomic gas but with lower efficiency than is observed in the central 4′.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 The Schmidt Law in M33

The survey of CO emission from M33 presented in §3 provides the first unbiased, filled aperture census of molecular gas in this Local Group galaxy. Such accounting of the molecular gas phase is essential to construct accurate descriptions of the star formation process within the disk. The Schmidt Law provides a concise, albeit, oversimplified recipe for star formation within the disk of a galaxy. It is typically derived from the radial profiles of the gas surface density (atomic + molecular) and some measure of the star formation rate, typically, H$`\alpha `$ or $`\mathrm{IRAS}`$ far infrared flux densities (Kennicutt 1989). From a sample of 15 galaxies, Kennicutt (1989) determined the mean power law index, $`n`$, to be 1.3$`\pm `$0.3. Recent high resolution observations of galaxies derive a Schmidt Law index between 1.1 and 1.7 depending on the extinction correction applied to the H$`\alpha `$ (Wong & Blitz 2002). More importantly, Wong & Blitz (2002) note that the star formation rate surface density is more strongly correlated with the $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ surface density than the total gas surface density as one would expect given that stars condense from giant molecular clouds. This confirms previous studies of the face-on spiral galaxies M51 and NGC 6946 where the H$`\alpha `$ emission is strongly correlated with the distribution of molecular gas (Lord & Young 1990; Tacconi & Young 1990). However, at the highest resolution, the brightest HII regions are not coincident with CO emitting regions as the molecular gas is either photo-dissociated or ionized by the strong UV radiation from massive stars or evacuated by the attendant stellar winds.

Previous efforts to derive the Schmidt Law in M33 have considered the atomic gas exclusively or have been restricted to the central 3.5′ owing to the limited imaging of the molecular gas component. Madore et al. (1974) and Newton (1980) derived power law relationships between the surface density of HII regions and the atomic gas column density from interferometric HI 21cm line images. Newton (1980) found a nearly flat relationship between the two quantities in the inner regions of M33 ($`n`$0.6) and a steep power law ($`n`$2) in the outer regions (R $`>`$ 2.4 kpc).

To gauge the star formation rate in M33, we use the far infrared luminosity, $`L_{FIR}`$, derived from $`\mathrm{IRAS}`$ $`\mathrm{HiRes}`$ 60µm and 100µm images of M33. The far infrared emission provides an excellent tracer to star formation activity in galaxies as a substantial amount of the far infrared flux emitted by a galaxy is contributed by interstellar dust heated by massive, newborn stars. Moreover, the far infrared emission is optically thin throughout the disk making corrections for extinction unnecessary. The old stellar component of a galaxy may also contribute to the measured far infrared flux. For M33, this contribution has been estimated to be less than 30% (Devereux, Duric, & Scowen 1997).

Owing to the deconvolution process, the resolution of the $`\mathrm{HiRes}`$ images may vary across the field. For the central 30′ of the M33 $`\mathrm{HiRes}`$ field, the resolutions of the 60µm and 100µm images are directly estimated from the ancillary beam maps and found to vary between 4 and 10%. To assure uniform, circular point spread functions of the 60µm and 100µm images with which to compare the CO and WRST HI images, the far infrared data were smoothed to a final resolution of 120″ using gaussian kernels with full width half maxima of 98″ and 48″ respectively. The $`\mathrm{FCRAO}`$ CO and Westerbork HI images were similarly smoothed to this resolution.

The star formation rate, $`dM_{}/dt`$, within a given solid angle and averaged over a characteristic time is derived from the measured far infrared luminosity,

$$\frac{dM_{}}{dt}=6.3\times 10^{10}L_{FIR}M_{}yr^1$$
$`(3)`$
where

$$L_{FIR}=6\times 10^5D^2(2.58I_{60}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }+I_{100}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega })L_{},$$
$`(4)`$
D is the distance to M33 (0.83 Mpc), and a Miller-Scalo IMF is assumed (Thronson & Telesco 1986). The star formation rate per unit area, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}`$, is

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}=\frac{3.8\times 10^4D^2(2.58I_{60}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }+I_{100}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega })}{10^{12}D^2𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }}M_{}pc^2yr^1$$
$`(5)`$
$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}=3.8\times 10^{16}(2.58<I_{60}>_\mathrm{\Omega }+<I_{100}>_\mathrm{\Omega })M_{}pc^2yr^1$$
$`(6)`$
where $`<I_{60}>_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`<I_{100}>_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are the mean 60µm and 100µm intensities within a solid angle, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, respectively. Many studies use the annular method in which $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}`$ is tabulated within the solid angle subtended by the annulus of a de-projected tilted ring and the gas surface density is the mean surface density within this ring (Kennicutt 1989; Martin & Kennicutt 2001; Wong & Blitz 2002). A Schmidt Law is constructed by evaluating $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}`$ within successive rings at varying radii. The annular method provides a time averaged estimate of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}`$ as it does not consider local variations of the gas distribution and phase caused by the star formation process itself. Following Wong & Blitz (2002), errors to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}`$ are assigned to the standard deviation of values within the subtended area. The radial profile of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}`$ is shown in Figure 3.

The variation of star formation rate per unit area with both molecular and total gas surface densities in M33 is shown in Figure 5. Power laws are fit to each type of surface density and the amplitudes and power law indices are listed in Table 1. The fits are weighted by errors in both $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}`$. The steep relationship found for the total gas surface density is due to the near constant profile of the atomic gas component in the central 12′ which dominates the total gas surface density for all radii greater than 4 ′ (Corbelli 2003).

There is a strong correlation between the derived star formation rate per unit area and molecular gas surface density. This relationship even extends into the regime in which the neutral gas is mostly atomic. Such a correlation is not an artifact due to local heating of the molecular gas from an enhanced UV radiation field. An examination of the far infrared and CO emission from molecular clouds in the solar neighborhood show that most of the far infrared luminosity emerges from localized star forming cores that cover a small fraction of the cloud area. Beyond several pc, the UV radiation from young, massive stars provides little or no heating to the extended gas distribution from which most of the CO luminosity originates. Rather the measured correlation between $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{SFR}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$ is a testament that stars exclusively condense from clouds of molecular gas. This relationship suggests that the formation of molecular clouds is the essential prerequisite to star formation (see Engargiola et al. 2003). The molecular Schmidt index, $`n_{mol}=1.36\pm 0.08`$, is similar to values determined by Wong & Blitz (2002) when radially dependent extinction corrections are applied to their H$`\alpha `$ data. The star formation rates at all radii are sufficiently high that if sustained, the current reservoir of molecular gas would be depleted within 1-3$`\times `$108 years. The depletion time for the total gas content increases from 0.4 in the central regions to greater than 10 Gyr in the outer disk where the star formation rate is reduced. Such variations are commonly observed in other galaxies (Wong & Blitz 2002). To sustain such star formation rates in the inner disk of M33 beyond several Gyr requires funneling gas from the outer disk reservoir or a shallow initial mass function in which a larger fraction of massive stars are formed to replenish the interstellar medium.

### 4.2 The Transition from Atomic to Molecular Gas

The major difference between M33 and more luminous gas rich galaxies is the relationship between atomic and molecular gas. Galaxies in the sample of Wong & Blitz (2002) are molecular-rich such that the atomic to molecular gas ratio, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{HI}/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$, ranges between 0.05 and 0.4 and varies with galactocentric radius roughly as $`R^{1.5}`$. In M33, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{HI}/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}`$ varies between 1 and 10 with a radial dependence, $`R^{0.6}`$ (see Figure 4).

In order to explain this radial dependence, we consider the model proposed by Elmegreen (1993). This model is based on the assumption that the fraction of molecular gas is determined by the balance between the gas pressure, which regulates the $`H_2`$ formation rate, and the dissociating radiation. In particular the molecular gas fraction, $`f_{mol}`$, should depend upon the the ambient pressure, $`P`$, and radiation field, $`j`$, as

$$f_{mol}\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}}{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}}P^{2.2}j^1$$

To evaluate this interplay between the pressure and radiation field, the pressure of a disk in hydrostatic equilibrium is approximated as

$$P\frac{\pi }{2}G\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}+\frac{c_{gas}}{c_{star}}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{star}\right)$$
$`(7)`$
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{star}`$ is the star surface density of the disk which best fits the rotation curve (Corbelli 2003, Figure 5$`(b)`$). The velocity dispersion of the gaseous and stellar disk are $`c_{gas}=8`$ km s-1 and $`c_{star}=(\pi Gz_0\mathrm{\Sigma }_{star})^{1/2}`$, consistent with an isothermal disk of scale height $`z_0=0.5`$ kpc. Using $`j\mathrm{\Sigma }_{star}`$, we derive $`\alpha `$ that best fits the relation,

$$\frac{j}{j_0}f_{mol}=f_0\left(\frac{P}{P_0}\right)^\alpha $$
$`(8)`$
where $`f_0`$, $`j_0`$ and $`P_0`$ are the values of $`f_{mol}`$, $`j`$ and $`P`$ in the innermost ring. By minimizing the $`\chi ^2`$ value we find, $`\alpha =2.3\pm 0.05`$ where the quoted uncertainty is the 1$`\sigma `$ error on the best fitting value of $`\alpha `$ that takes into account $`f_{mol}`$ uncertainties only. The Pearson linear correlation coefficient is 0.97. The data in M33 are in good agreement with Elmegreen’s predictions and parameterization for galaxies with low molecular gas fractions. These empirically support the idea that pressure is playing a significant role in regulating the $`H_2`$ fraction in low luminosity galaxies, such as M33.

While M33 is quite distinct from the sample of galaxies studied by Wong & Blitz (2002) in terms of gas surface density, Q parameters, and molecular gas fraction, it adheres to a similar star formation recipe. That is, star formation is primarily limited by the condensation of giant molecular clouds from the diffuse interstellar medium. Once a GMC develops, star formation is rapidly initiated (Engargiola et al. 2003). If $`H_2`$ regulates the star formation rate, the high Schmidt index, $`n`$, relative to the total gas surface density, can be explained as a consequence of $`n_{mol}`$ and of the molecular gas fraction, $`f_{mol}`$. Following Wong & Blitz (2002), the Schmidt index, $`n`$, can be written as

$$n=n_{mol}\left(\frac{d\text{ln}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}}{d\text{ln}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}}\right)$$
$`(9)`$
From the annular averages we find $`d\text{ln}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{H_2}/d\text{ln}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{gas}=2.3\pm 0.05`$. Since $`n_{mol}=1.36\pm 0.08`$, the above equations predicts $`n=3.1\pm `$0.2. Within the errors, this two step model of star formation is consistent with the observed value $`n=3.3\pm 0.1`$. The atomic gas layer of the disk may ultimately provide the reservoir of material from which giant molecular clouds condense and form stars in M33 but it plays no obvious role in regulating star formation.

### 4.3 Radial Progression of Star Formation in M33

Comparisons of the molecular scale length with the disk scale lengths derived from the stellar light, HII regions, and OB associations provides coarse insight to the star formation history of a galaxy. Corbelli (2003) derived a molecular gas scale length of $``$11′ (2.6 kpc). The disk scale lengths of OB associations and HII regions are comparable but just interior to this CO scale length and attest to the strong coupling of the molecular gas and recent ($`<`$107 years) star formation activity. Star formation in the more distant past is reflected in the distribution of the stellar light within the disk of a galaxy. From J, H, K band imaging, Regan & Vogel (1994) derive a disk stellar scale length of order 6′. Thus, the disk stellar light, particularly, the older population of stars, is much more centrally condensed than the molecular gas. The broader distribution of CO in M33 with respect to old populations of stars is not typical of spiral galaxies. From the BIMA SONG, 4 of the 15 galaxies with measured profiles show CO scale lengths significantly (3$`\sigma `$) larger than the stellar scale length and one galaxy (NGC 628) with a difference as large as M33 (Regan et al. 2001). van den Bergh (2000) noted that the broader distribution of HII regions with respect to the starlight reflects an outward progression of star formation with time. As the molecular gas distribution provides a roadmap for both current and future star formation within a galaxy, the large molecular scale length with respect to the stellar light provides additional evidence for the outward progression of star formation activity in M33.

## 5 Conclusion

In this paper we have presented an image of 12CO J=1-0 emission from M33 and investigated the relationship between the star formation rate and the molecular and atomic neutral gas components. From our analyses, we derive the following conclusions.

1. The mass surface density of molecular gas is strongly correlated with the star formation rate per unit area even in regions that are dominated by atomic gas. This proportionality suggests that the formation of molecular clouds is the limiting step to the formation of stars within the disk of M33.
2. The Schmidt indices for the total and molecular gas surface densities are $`n=3.3\pm 0.1`$ and $`n_{mol}=1.36\pm 0.08`$ respectively. The large value for $`n`$ is a consequence of the variation of the star formation rate within the molecular gas substrate, ($`n_{mol}`$), and the condensation of molecular clouds from the atomic gas component ($`f_{mol}`$).
3. The pressure of the gaseous disk layer due to the weight of both gas and stars can account for the radial variations of the molecular gas fraction.
4. The distributions of molecular gas and current star formation activity are extended with respect to the old, stellar population and suggests an outward progression of star formation within the M33 disk.

We thank Thijs van der Hulst for providing us with the Westerbork HI 21cm line image. Insightful comments from Erik Rosolowsky and the referee are appreciated. This work was supported by NSF grant AST 02-28993 to the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory.


text:
# NIR Observations of the QSO 3C 48 Host Galaxy Based on observations with the VLT; proposal number 67.B-0019

## 1 Introduction

Revealing the physical properties of quasi stellar objects (QSOs) and their host galaxies is one key to understand how the overall galaxy structure affects the extreme activity in active galactic nuclei (AGN) and how in turn the QSO and its black hole influence the surrounding galaxy structure.

The host galaxy of the radio-loud quasar 3C 48 is an unusually large and bright object with excess far-infrared emission, $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}=5\times 10^{12}L_{}`$ (Neugebauer et al. 1985), showing a one-sided radio jet extending about 0.5″to the north, fanning out to the east to about 1′′ (Wilkinson et al. 1991). At its redshift of $`z0.3695`$ (Boroson & Oke 1984) 3C 48 is one rare member of the class of compact steep spectrum (CSS) radio sources with a radio-spectral index $`\alpha 0.9`$ (Tyul’bashev & Chernikov 2001). The quasar is rich in molecular gas, $`M_{\mathrm{H}_2}2.7\times 10^{10}M_{}`$, as CO(1-0) observations show (Scoville et al. 1993; Wink et al. 1997).

There is also morphological evidence for a recent merger event, like a possible double nucleus and a tidal tail extending several arcseconds to the northwest (Stockton & Ridgway 1991; Chatzichristou et al. 1999; Canalizo & Stockton 2000, and references therein). But it is still unclear, whether the brightness peak $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ northeast (NE) of the QSO is really the nucleus of the companion galaxy, as it could also be a region of interaction of the radio jet with the interstellar medium of the host galaxy, inducing star formation (Canalizo & Stockton 2000) or even both. Canalizo & Stockton (2000) found unusually high stellar velocity dispersions as well as very young stellar populations, possibly due to the interaction of the jet with the ambient medium (see also Chatzichristou et al. 1999). The merger morphology, its high FIR luminosity, and its large content of molecular gas put 3C 48 in an evolutionary scheme envisioned by Sanders et al. (1988). It fits nicely as an transition object between ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) and pure QSOs, being still dominated by its FIR excess but also displaying QSO features like its luminosity and rather flat spectral energy distribution.

The 3C 48 nucleus is an ideal target for high-resolution near infrared studies of AGN and their hosts, in order to study the influence of the nuclear activity as well as the ongoing merger on the host environment. 3C 48 also offers access to a unique set of diagnostic lines (Pa$`\beta `$, Pa$`\gamma `$, Si I, CO(6-3) and see Table 8) to study stellar populations, effects of extinction, varying metallicity and initial mass function.

A major advantage of the NIR is that contamination due to scattered light is much smaller than in the visible. Previous work did not take extinction due to molecular material into account, which must play a role in the dusty and gas rich host galaxy. Therefore it is likely that the patchy velocity and age distribution found by Canalizo & Stockton (2000) may be in part due to variations in extinction.

Section 2 of this article describes details of our new NIR observations, the data reduction procedures, and calibration in both imaging and spectroscopy. In Section 3 we present and discuss the results of photometry of the nuclear region, the 3C 48A potential second nucleus and the tidal tail, and we present the initial spectroscopic results. Section 4 gives a final discussion and summary.

## 2 Observations and Data Reduction

The data were acquired with the Infrared Spectrometer and Array Camera (ISAAC, Moorwood 1995) mounted at the Nasmyth B focus of Unit Telescope 1 (UT1, Antu) of the Very Large Telescope (VLT; ESO, Chile).

### 2.1 Imaging

The data cover the short wavelength range from 1.2 - 2.2 $`\mu `$m. Imaging was performed in the broad bands $`J`$, $`H`$ and $`Ks`$. The 1024x1024 pixel Hawaii Rockwell array detector provides a pixel scale of 0.1484″/pixel with a field of view of 152x152 arcsec2. Tables 1 and 2 list the observational parameters. The data were reduced with IRAF using standard procedures. Considering our data, we concluded by visual inspection, that the flat fields in all bands seem to be adequately flat with a variation smaller than 3% over the area of interest. The science object was also moved across the array, so that these variations are reduced due to the averaging of the individual exposures. Therefore no flat field correction was applied. Successive object and sky observations were used to produce sky subtracted images. Shifting all sky subtracted images with respect to one reference image and a median averaging results in the images displayed in Figure 1. All these resulting images were smoothed to a common seeing limited resolution of 0.5″. Calibration of our data relies on the observation of the three standard stars FS10 (Hawarden et al. 2001), S677D and S279-F (Persson et al. 1998). Airmass-corrected zero-points, ZPc, for the three bands, are presented together with the used apertures in Table 4. The extinction coefficients $`k`$ are mean values supplied by the ESO-Paranal web page. An average ZP in each band was computed and is used for the 3C 48 photometry. The ZP errors were calculated to be of the order of $`\mathrm{\Delta }J=\pm 0.03`$ mag in $`J`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }H=\pm 0.07`$ mag in $`H`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }Ks=\pm 0.05`$ mag in $`Ks`$.

### 2.2 Spectroscopy

In order to study the nucleus and host of 3C 48 we used slit spectroscopy to get spectra of a number of regions along the slit in bands $`H`$ and $`K`$. The slit was positioned such, that it provided a north-south cut through the galaxy including part of the disk, the active nucleus, and the boundary region of the potential second nucleus. As with imaging the sky was subtracted. Again, the flat fields are flat to within better than 3%, so that no correction was applied. The individual 2-dimensional spectra were geometrically corrected. After combining the shifted, double sky subtracted 2-dimensional spectra, 1-dimensional spectra were extracted using standard IRAF procedures. The integration time in both filters $`H`$ and $`K`$ was too short (because of the proposal being B-rated, only about 1 hour and 0.6 hours respectively have been acquired) to reveal many spectral features. These give upper limits for the $`H`$\- and $`K`$-lines in emission or absorption (see Section 3.2). We thus extracted only one spectrum per band from the nuclear region of the quasar. The FWHM of the 3C 48 trace is $`5`$ pixels in $`K`$ and $`10`$ pixels in $`H`$. This has to be compared with the FWHM of the calibration star traces which are about 11 pixels. While extracting the spectrum a sky is subtracted by sampling a region above and beneath the trace. Using the IRAF task *telluric* we also removed most of the atmospheric lines.

The continua of the resulting spectra of 3C 48 are quite flat. We used the flux111The flux is calculated from magnitudes via $`f_\lambda ^{}=f_\lambda \times 10^{0.4m_\lambda ^{}}`$ where $`f_\lambda ^{}`$, in units of W cm$`{}_{}{}^{2}\mu `$m-1, is the science object’s flux, using $`f_\lambda `$ for a 0mag-star as given in Table 3. of the nuclear region from our NIR imaging data to flux-calibrate the spectra. Using the facts of the flatness of the spectra and the absence of strong line features, one can distribute the imaging data flux, $`f_\lambda ^{}`$ in W cm$`{}_{}{}^{2}\mu `$m-1, over the filter-bandwidth222We assumed that the imaging and spectral filters are identical to first order, because the ISAAC spectroscopic filters are somewhat broader than the photometric ones.:

$$f_\lambda ^{}=\frac{\mathrm{counts}}{\mathrm{sum}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{counts}\mathrm{over}\mathrm{filter}\mathrm{bandwidth}}\times f_\lambda ^{}$$
(1)
where $`f_\lambda ^{}`$ in units of W cm$`{}_{}{}^{2}\mu `$m-1 is the new y-axis .

In the spectra there are very few features detectable from the overall noise in both spectra. The major reason for this seems to be the very short integration time. The $`H`$ spectrum has a RMS noise of about $`4\times 10^{23}`$ W cm$`{}_{}{}^{2}\mu `$m-1 and the $`K`$ spectrum one of about $`5\times 10^{24}`$ W cm$`{}_{}{}^{2}\mu `$m-1.

## 3 Results and Discussion

### 3.1 3C 48 Surface Photometry

To place the QSO and the host galaxy into a two-color diagram, photometry was carried out at several positions on the galaxy in the three bands $`J`$, $`H`$, and $`Ks`$.

#### Overall Colors:

Overall magnitudes of 3C 48 were determined using an aperture of a diameter of 10″(= 68 pixels) centered on the centroid of the brightness distribution. In this case one arcsecond corresponds to a linear scale of 4 kpc. These magnitudes are dominated by the unresolved active nucleus. Additionally two smaller apertures with diameters of 5″(= 34 pixels) and 1″(= 7 pixels) respectively have been applied, centered on the same position. A comparison allowed to estimate the stellar contribution to the AGN luminosity (see below).

The IRAF task *qphot* (centering and integrating the flux) has been used to determine the flux in ADUs in these apertures in the individual bands. Table 4 displays the resulting magnitudes using the above determined zero-points. The error is dominated by sky-noise, determined from the standard deviation within 5x5 pixel boxes at several positions on the sky. This yields a precision in magnitudes of about $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}\pm 0.1`$ in the individual bands.

From these magnitudes the $`HK`$ and $`JH`$ colors for the three apertures have been calculated (Table 5).

#### Colors of the Host Galaxy:

In order to obtain information on the nature of the host galaxy, it is necessary to carry out photometry at several positions on the host. Using for example models for color evolution (Bruzual A. & Charlot 1993; Hutchings & Neff 1997), one can estimate the age of the stellar content residing in the disk of the host galaxy. With surface photometry one can additionally investigate the importance of reddening due to (warm) dust. We therefore measured the flux at several positions across the galaxy, which are indicated in Figure 2. Altogether we choose 12 apertures of 1.2″(8 pixels) diameter at representative positions. Three apertures are lying in the south and two in the tidal tail region to the northwest. Five apertures lie around the active nucleus and cover the location of the potential second nucleus $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ to the northeast. Aperture number 12 lies at the position within an apparent counter tidal (Canalizo & Stockton 2000) reaching out to about 7″to the southeast (see Fig. 2). In our NIR images we do not see a tidal tail feature reaching out to about 8$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5 as proposed in Boyce et al. (1999).

#### $`JH/HK`$ two Color Diagram of 3C 48:

The two-color diagram in Fig. 3 shows (1) the overall colors, (2) the colors derived from the 12 distinct positions on interesting locations in the 3C 48 host (as discussed above) and (3) a model for color-evolution at a redshift of $`z=0.35`$ (of about the distance to 3C 48) (Hutchings & Neff 1997) and (4) the stellar contribution to the light measured within an aperture centered on the nucleus (see also Fig. 4).

(1) *Overall colors*. Considering only the overall colors (green dots), there is a trend of redder colors in $`HK`$ as well as in $`JH`$ for smaller apertures (10″down to 1″). This is in agreement with the idea, that in a large aperture there is a contribution of both the host galaxy (filled circles) and the active nucleus. In a smaller aperture, in contrast there only remains the nuclear contribution which is usually redder due to gas and dust the active core is embedded in. The dotted line in the two color diagram (Fig. 3) presents the influence of mixing the nuclear color, determined in the 1″aperture, with a stellar contribution, taking typical stellar colors at the 10 Gyr point333We have chosen this age, because the dominant, underlying stellar population is of about 10 Gyr (Canalizo & Stockton 2000) and is also typical for ’inactive’ stellar dominated galaxies. of the evolutionary curve and holding the flux in the Ks-band constant, so that the total flux is conserved for the start and end points. Starting with no stellar contribution at the point of the 1″(4 kpc) aperture and arriving at 100% stellar contribution at the 10 Gyr color point, the data points of the two larger apertures lie on this curve within the errors and correspond to a stellar contribution of about 15% for the 5″(20 kpc) aperture and about 30% for the 10″(40 kpc) aperture (see Fig. 4). The stellar contribution originates in the disk of the host galaxy. The 10″aperture covers essentially the whole galaxy. Therefore the stellar contribution of the underlying host galaxy to the light from the active nucleus is of the order of 30% at 2.2 $`\mu `$m. A consistent check for the stellar content can be the CO(6-3) absorption, a tracer for the stellar content (Origlia et al. 1993). One has to note that for the 1″aperture for the nuclear region a stellar contribution still has to be taken into account.

(2) *Colors from single apertures*. Colors derived from measurements of aperture 12 are unusually blue compared to the colors derived from other apertures on the host galaxy. Its colors are more typical for normal galaxies at redshifts close to zero (Frogel et al. 1978). This suggests that this feature ($`6.5^{\prime \prime }`$ to the southeast of the quasar nucleus), while being aligned with the apparent counter-tidal tail to the southeast, in fact is a foreground galaxy. This contravenes with the redshift derived in Canalizo & Stockton (2000) ($`z0.8112`$). As both results assume that this feature is not associated with 3C 48, further investigation is necessary. Furthermore recent multi-particle simulations (Scharwächter et al. 2003) indicate, that starting from an Antennae-like setup (e.g. Toomre & Toomre 1972) one can arrive at a 3C 48 look-alike due to different projection parameters. In the case of Scharwächter et al. (2003), the counter-tidal tail is extending from the SW towards a NE direction in front of the galaxy host. Based on their HST images Canalizo & Stockton (2000) already speculated on the presence of a tidal tail in a SE-SW direction. This extension of the host towards the SW is also visible in our J- and H-band maps (Fig. 1). But it could also belong to the tidal tail resulting from the multi particle simulations.

(2) and (3) *Color-evolution model*. The two crosses on the evolutionary curve in Fig. 3 show the loci of stellar populations at an age of 2 and 10 Gyr, respectively. Noticing that the color of the upper right end of the model curve corresponds to an age of 20 Gyr for the stellar population, a striking result is that all derived colors are considerably reddened in comparison to the model shown. Indicated in the figure is also the effect of reddening for a visual extinction of $`A_V=1`$ (as discussed in Glass 1999). This indicates, that extinction might play an important role in deriving the physical properties of the host galaxy. As already mentioned, Canalizo & Stockton (2000) did not take extinction into account in their calculations. They state that the underlying old population has an age of about 10 Gyr. Taking the median color of all our measurements on the host

$`\mathrm{Median}(HK)`$ $`=`$ $`0.6`$
$`\mathrm{Median}(JH)`$ $`=`$ $`0.8`$
we find that within the errors and including a visual extinction of $`A_V=1`$ (Rieke & Lebofsky 1985) this result is consistent with an age of 10 Gyr. But we also sample regions of active star formation (as indicated by Canalizo & Stockton 2000), i.e. regions with much younger stellar components. The authors find e.g. a young starburst population within the tidal tail at the position of our aperture 11. The $`JH`$ color is about 0.25 mag bluer than the median color of the host galaxy. Its position is shifted in $`HK`$ by about 0.2 mag to the red with respect to the evolutionary track shown in Fig. 3. This indicates a younger stellar population which may be associated with warm dust that contributes to the red $`HK`$ color in emission. Canalizo & Stockton (2000) quote an age of the corresponding stellar population of about 10 Myrs mixed with an underlying old stellar population of about 10 Gyr. Starburst populations with those ages lie at the lower (bluer) end of the color-evolution curve in the two color diagram. The presence of warm dust and the location of the aperture in the two color diagram, however, may indicate that a considerable reddening is at work. In this case the optical radiation would only be indicative of the properties of a fraction of the underlying stellar population.

(4) *The circum-nuclear region*. The flux from central regions of the host galaxy is still dominated by emission from the active nucleus. In order to get a more detailed view on the underlying host we subtracted the contribution of the active nucleus. Here we used the fact that the QSO-nucleus is unresolved, i.e. star like in extent. We have done the subtraction by taking a star within a distance of 1′to 3C 48 shifting its centroid with subpixel-accuracy onto the position of the 3C 48-centroid and subtracting it scaled to the flux of the active nucleus. One has to take care that no ’holes’ appear in the galaxy after this process. Ideally this should give a smooth brightness distribution in the central region after subtraction and primarily the host contribution should remain.

Figure 5 displays the core-subtracted images in the $`J`$-, $`H`$\- and $`K`$-bands and Table 6 lists the nuclear contributions which have been subtracted. After the subtraction there remains no really smooth brightness distribution but certain residuals. This is most probable due to psf-mismatching. It would be favorable to take a composite psf by measuring several stars, giving a more realistic sampling of the point-spread function, impossible in this case due to the restricted FOV of the science exposures. But a brightness excess region about 1″northeast of the QSO is clearly visible in the residual images as indicated in Figure 5.

Its peak position in all three bands is $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ north-east of the QSO-location, having a position angle of about 40 (as measured from north to east). This feature is most prominent in the Ks image whereas it gets fainter in the $`H`$ and $`J`$ images.

In order to estimate the amount of magnitudes with which 3C 48A exceeds the underlying host galaxy emission, we fitted a Gaussian to this emission region. After subtraction of a Gaussian with this scaling we recognized a circular symmetric residual emission from the central region as expected. On the opposite side of 3C 48 at the same distance as 3C 48A we determined the flux value of the host galaxy. The difference between these two values then gives an estimate of the 3C 48A contribution presented in Table 7.

$`JH`$ and $`HK`$ colors were determined by measuring the flux in $`J`$, $`H`$ and $`Ks`$ in apertures of the size of the FWHM of the Gaussian profile. Figure 4 displays the data in a two color diagram. The determined colors of 3C 48A have to be taken with care, because of the psf mismatch mentioned above. Additionally, the $`Ks`$ band image is quite noisy which makes the measurement process more complicated. Together this leads to a high degree of freedom in choosing an appropriate Gaussian fit of this region. The apertures have been chosen to be of the sizes listed in Table 7, i.e. rather small, in order to reduce the impact of the imperfect QSO-subtraction process, which did not result in a smooth brightness distribution and produced some ’holes’.

Figure 4 shows that the 3C 48A area is heavily reddened in the $`HK`$ direction. This indicates the presence of hot dust which usually shifts colors exclusively in the $`HK`$ direction as it influences predominantly the $`K`$ band (Glass & Moorwood 1985).

An overlay of the NIR images with a radio continuum map of Merlin and European VLBI data at 1.66 GHz (Wilkinson et al. 1991) shows an apparent alignment of the radio jet and the position of 3C 48A (Fig. 6). Such an alignment was also found by Stockton & Ridgway (1991). Together with the results of Scharwächter et al. (2003) there is still no definite answer on the origin of the excess brightness of 3C 48A. Probably it is a combination of both, a second nucleus and a jet-ISM interaction.

### 3.2 The $`H`$-band Spectrum

The most prominent features in the $`H`$ spectrum (Fig. 7) are the Pa$`\beta \lambda `$17561 and Pa$`\gamma \lambda `$14985 lines (cf. Table 8).

The baseline is subtracted using a straight line. A Gaussian fit to the Pa$`\beta `$ and Pa$`\gamma `$ lines gives line fluxes of

$`f_{Pa\beta }`$ $`=`$ $`1.0\times 10^{24}(\pm 20\%)\mathrm{W}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (2)
$`f_{Pa\gamma }`$ $`=`$ $`5.6\times 10^{25}(\pm 20\%)\mathrm{W}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (3)
The line ratio Pa$`\beta `$$`/`$Pa$`\gamma `$ can then be calculated:

$$\frac{\mathrm{Pa}\beta }{\mathrm{Pa}\gamma }=1.8(\pm 30\%)$$
(4)
When using line ratios for Menzel’s case B (see e.g. Glass 1999 or Osterbrock 1989), this result is consistent within its errors with temperatures of $`T=10^4`$ K and electron densities of $`\rho =10^4`$ cm-3, which are typically found for the atomic interstellar medium in QSO nuclei.

### 3.3 The $`K`$-band Spectrum

The $`K`$ spectrum (Fig. 8) is less noisy but there is hardly any feature to be recognized at its original spectral resolution of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =0.005\mu `$m. Therefore we smoothed the spectrum with a boxcar of a width of 4 pixels. There are two features appearing in the spectrum, one left of the indicated Si I line and one at a wavelength of about 2.3 $`\mu `$m. The latter one could not be identified. At this location there seems to be no prominent emission line. We suggest this to be a noise peak. The absorption feature shortward of the Si I line is most probably an atmospheric or stellar residual from the telluric-line removal and can therefore not be attributed to 3C 48. The noise per pixel of the smoothed spectrum is about half of the noise in the original spectrum

$$\sigma _{\mathrm{pixel}}=3\times 10^{24}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{cm}^2\mu \mathrm{m}^1.$$
(5)
We investigated the noise features at the CO(6-3) line at a redshifted wavelength of 2.217 $`\mu `$m (cf. Table 8). The CO(6-3) $`\lambda 1.6185`$ line is a tracer of the stellar content of a galaxy, as this line arises in the atmospheres of cool stars (Origlia et al. 1993). It is weak in early K- but strong in late M-type stars. We determined the line flux by using the triangular area above the absorption line. The flux and noise integrated over a wavelength interval of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =10`$ nm is

$`f_{\mathrm{CO}(63)}`$ $``$ $`2.43\times 10^{26}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (6)
$`\sigma _{\mathrm{integrated}}`$ $`=`$ $`2.46\times 10^{26}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{cm}^2`$
where the noise was determined by measuring the fluctuations throughout the spectrum except at the CO(6-3) wavelength. We thus have a $`1\sigma `$ detection of the line. The depth of the line is about 3% of the continuum level at that wavelength. According to Origlia et al. (1993) the typical depth of this line is about 15% of the continuum for a pure stellar contribution. Taking into account our photometrically determined stellar contribution of about 30% of the galaxy light, this leads to an expected CO(6-3) line depth of $`4\%`$. Accordingly our spectroscopic result seems to be consistent with the photometric results within the errors.

## 4 Summary

We have presented the most recent imaging and spectroscopy data on 3C 48 obtained with ISAAC at the ESO VLT UT1 (Antu). Based on these sensitive high angular resolution data for the first time we can identify the disputed secondary nucleus 3C 48A in the NIR. The location of 3C 48A in the $`JH/HK`$ diagram indicates the presence of warm dust, probably heated by starbursts or ongoing starformation discussed in Canalizo & Stockton (2000). Our NIR images do not allow us to decide whether 3C 48A is a true second nucleus (e.g. of a merging companion) or rather due to a jet-ISM interaction.

We have shown that the NIR colors of 3C 48 are reddened compared to a pure 10 Gyr-old stellar population and therefore extinction due to molecular gas and dust plays a role throughout the host galaxy. Measurement of the colors in the NW tidal tail indicate a younger (blue $`JH`$) but dust-associated (red $`HK`$) stellar population. However, a high visual extinction seems to be at work as un-reddened young main sequence populations are located further to the blue in Fig. 3. Therefore deep, high resolution NIR spectroscopy of the host galaxy is needed.

The QSO-subtracted colors compared to pure 10 Gyr stellar colors show a stellar contribution to the overall galaxy continuum light of about 30% in $`Ks`$, which is consistent with the 1$`\sigma `$ depth limit of the CO(6-3) absorption line in the $`K`$-band spectrum.

We can see tidal features in the images obtained in all three NIR bands. Judging from the colors, the apparent counter-tidal tail to the southeast of the QSO more likely seems to be an un-associated galaxy in the foreground, whereas Canalizo & Stockton (2000) find it to be a background galaxy at a redshift of $`z`$=0.8. Despite this discrepancy it seems to be established that the apparent counter-tidal tail is not associated with 3C 48. Therefore further investigation is necessary. Another solution to the missing counter tidal tail is given by multi particle simulations (Scharwächter et al. 2003), which show that there could be a counter tidal tail in a SW-NE direction in front of the galaxy. This is in correspondence with the velocity dispersions measured by Canalizo & Stockton (2000) in the optical along their slit B.

Its large host galaxy which is clearly subject to strong tidal interactions makes 3C 48 an ideal candidate for further studies of the merger-induced starformation at its redshift of $`z=0.37`$.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported in part by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) via grant SFB 494. We kindly thank T. Ott, MPE Garching, for interest and initial support. We also kindly thank P. N. Wilkinson for the permission to use the 1.66 GHz continuum map.


text:
# WHAT ARE S0 (0) GALAXIES?

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Hubble (1936, p.44) introduced the classification type S0 to bridge the gap between objects of types E7 and Sa. Galaxies that are morphologically intermediate between ellipticals and spirals have also been referred to as “lenticulars” by de Vaucouleurs (1959). A detailed discussion of the morphology of S0 galaxies is given in Sandage (1961, p.10) and in Sandage & Bedke (1994, Vol.1, p.7). Not unexpectedly S0 galaxies, on average, appear more flattened than E galaxies. Following Hubble this flattening f may be defined as f = 10(a-b)/a, where a and b are the major and minor axis diameters, respectively. In the convention adopted by Sandage & Tammann (1981) an elliptical of flattening f will be called an Ef, whereas an S0 galaxy of the same flattening is denoted S0 (f). The physical difference between elliptical and lenticular galaxies is that S0 galaxies contain an old disk, whereas ellipticals do not. It often becomes difficult to unambiguously distinguish between these two classes of objects when either (1) only a small fraction of the light originates in the disk, or (2) if the disk is viewed almost pole-on. This effect is clearly seen in the Coma cluster (Abraham & van den Bergh 2004) where most flattened, and hence presumably edge-on, early-type galaxies were classified as S0s, whereas those objects that have more circular isophotes are mostly classified as ellipticals. Nevertheless, some nearly circular \[S0 (0) or S0 (1) in the notation of Sandage & Tammann (1981)\] galaxies are classified as S0 rather than E0 or E1. What are these almost circular objects that Sandage and Tammann (1981) classify as being of type S0 (0)?

## 2 THE NATURE OF S0 (0) GALAXIES.

The classifications of galaxies given in A Revised Shapley -Ames Catalog of Bright Galaxies (Sandage & Tammann 1981) represent the gold standard of galaxy classification because they were almost all based on inspection of photographic images obtained with large reflectors, that were classified in a uniform fashion by highly experienced galaxy morphologists. The Shapley-Ames Catalog (in which $`H_o`$ = 50 km $`s^1`$ Mpc<sup>-1</sup> was assumed) contains 45 ellipticals of types E0 + E1 which have $`<M_B^o>`$ = -21.19 $`\pm `$ 0.15 and 14 S(0) (0) plus S0 (1) galaxies for which $`<M_B^o>`$ = -20.25 $`\pm `$ 0.30. The mean luminosity difference between E0 and E1 galaxies on the one hand, and S0 (0) and S0 (1) galaxies on the other, is found to be 0.94 $`\pm `$ 0.34 mag. However, this estimate of the mean error in the difference between the mean luminosities makes the unwarranted assumption that both E0 +E1 and the S0 (0) plus S0 (1) galaxies in the Shapley-Ames Catalog have Gaussian luminosity distributions. It is therefore better to use a non-paramentric test to assess the significance of the difference in the mean luminosities of nearly circular E and S0 galaxies. Such a test is provided by the data in Table 1 which shows the number of nearly circular E and S0 galaxies that are brighter (or fainter) than $`<M_B^o>`$ = -20.5. For the data in Table 1 Chi-sqared = 7.2 which, for one degree of freedom, yields an a-priori probability of only 0.7% for the hypothesis that nearly round ellipticals and nearly circular S0 galaxies have parent populations with the same luminosity distribution. \[A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test yields a probability of 11% that these two samples were drawn from the same parent population.\] In other words the present data strongly suggest that E0 + E1 galaxies are systematically more luminous than S0 (0) and S0 (1) galaxies. This means that assigning a round early-type galaxy to the E or S0 class may be regarded as a crude form of luminosity classification. Whereas the morphological luminosity classification of spiral galaxies (van den Bergh 1960abc) was based on the characteristics of their spiral arms, the distinction between E and S0 galaxies is based on the existence (or absence) of a faint amorphous envelope Sandage (1961, p.11).

The galaxy luminosities given by Sandage & Tammann (1981) are on the $`B_T`$ system of the RC2 Catalog of de Vaucouleurs et al. (1976). However, because integrated magnitudes depend on the outer profiles of galaxies, there is a small systematic difference between absolute magnitudes of galaxies on the $`B_T`$ system of de Vaucouleuers et al. and those on the $`B_{26}`$ system of Sandage & Visvanathan (1978). According to Sandage & Tammann (1981, p.7) ($`B_{26}B_T`$) = -0.12 mag for E’s and ($`B_{26}B_T`$) = -0.03 mag for S0 galaxies. However, these effects are seen to be an order of magnitude smaller than the observed systematic differences between the luminosities of nearly spherical E and S0 galaxies. In other words the systematic difference between the luminosity distributions of E and S0 galaxies is too large to be attributed to systematic differences between the luminosity profiles of these two types of objects. Inspection of Fig. 22 of van den Bergh (1997) shows that S0 galaxies are not only fainter than E0 galaxies but they are, on average, also fainter than galaxies of types Sa and Sb. This shows that the luminosity differences between spiral, S0, and E galaxies are not primarily due to the systematic changes of galaxy luminosity along the Hubble classification sequence.

## 3 CONCLUSION.

Among very early-type galaxies with almost circular isophotes some are called ellipticals \[E0 + E1\] and others are classified as lenticulars \[S(0) (0) and S(0) (1)\]. It is shown that the objects that were classified as ellipticals are, on average, almost one magnitude more luminous than those that are called S0. This suggests that the dichotomy between round ellipticals and face-on S0 galaxies (which appear to have extended amorphous envelopes) represents a crude form of luminosity classification for early-type galaxies. Physically this result confirms that rotation and “diskiness” are more important in the outer regions of faint early-type galaxies than they are in more luminous early type objects. This conclusion is consistent with earlier work by Davies et al. (1983), Capaccioli et al. (1990) and by Rix, Carollo & Freeman (1999).