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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Properties of the radioemission from the most rapidly spinning disk population millisecond radio pulsars (MSPs) support the neutron star model-based expectation that these pulsars should be mainly orthogonal rotators or aligned rotators. There are three kinds of observational evidence for this.

1) A large fraction of the MSPs have two radio-subpulses of comparable strength separated in time by about half a period ( P/2) , a signature property of an orthogonal rotator (Chen & Ruderman 1993, Jayawardhana & Grindlay 1996). In a sample of 8 of the fastest spinning disk-MSPs at least 4, and possibly 6, are in this category ( Chen et al 1998); among canonical radiopulsars only a few percent are ( Lyne & Manchester 1988).

2) The well studied original MSP, PSR 1937, is observed to have very different linear polarization properties in two narrow radio-subpulses an interval P/2 apart, just as expected from the spin-up evolution of that pulsar into an orthogonal rotator whose dipole moment is on the neutron star’s (NS’s) spin-axis at the NS crust-core interface (CR 93).

3) At least one pulsar in the chosen MSP octet, PSR J0437-4715, and possibly several, have only a single very broad, structured radiopulse. Its pulse-width is so large ($``$270 =3P/4) that a plausible description of the observed radiation beam seems to require an almost aligned beam (and dipole moment) observed from a line-of-sight direction near that of the NS’s spin-axis (Gil & Krawczyk 97). Because an almost spin-aligned radiobeam from a spinning NS sweeps out a smaller solid angle on the sky then that same beam would from an orthogonal rotator, one observation of an aligned MSP out of the 8 in the sample indicates a very considerably larger aligned fraction.

In Section 2 we consider the significance of MSP low energy X-ray light-curves when these data are combined with those from the same MSPs’ radiopulses. Section 3 summarizes relevant NS model predictions fro stellar magnetic field evolution as these stars were spun-up to become MSPs. Section 4 presents model predictions for an aligned MSP’s thermal X-ray emission areas and compares them to those inferred from PSR J0437 observations. In no case is there a conflict between what is expected from special properties of NSs and what is observed.

## 2  X-ray and radio light curves

Low energy (0.1-10 keV) x-ray emission has been reported from 6 MSPs previously identified by their pulsed radioemission. The 6 X-ray and radio light curves are shown in Figure 1 (Becker and Aschenbach 2002). The upper curves show those for X-ray emission, the lower ones for radioemission. There is no significant difference between the radio and x-ray profiles except possibly in PSR 0218 (Fig.1 upper middle) and PSR 1821 (Fig.1 upper left). In those two MSPs the X-ray light curves seem to resolve an ambiguity: their radioemission light curve profiles contain a sub-peak structure from the double crossing of a hollow cone beam rather than emission from three truly separate beams. Among the 6 MSPs of Figure 1 ,five reinforce support for the orthogonal rotator interpretation suggested by the radio light curves. One, PSR J0437, clearly does not. However, its single very broad X-ray light curve does not contradict the nearly aligned rotator interpretation for it. Why observed X-ray emission from a hot polar cap can be so strongly phase-modulated even though the observer’s line-of -sight is near the spin axis is discussed in CRZ 98.

## 3  Neutron star spin-up driven magnetic flux squeezing

We consider next why MSP genesis based upon very prolonged spin-up of older NSs with initially nearly canonical dipole moments can lead to much weaker dipole moments and ,preferentially, to orthogonal or aligned rotators. Soon after its birth a canonical NS is well described (except, possibly, for a small central region) as an almost uniformly rotating fluid core (radius R = 10 km) of neutrons (n )together with protons( p) and electrons several percent as abundant. This core is surrounded by a thin solid crust of thickness $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ 1 km. Early in its life (age $`<10^3`$ years) the core will have cooled sufficiently that its neutrons become superfluid (SF-n) and its protons superconducting (SC-p). A core of SF-n cannot rotate uniformly. Instead, the nearly uniform vorticity of 4 $`\pi `$/P in a rotating normal fluid fragments into a very dense almost parallel array of quantized vortex lines. The SF-n vortex number density (per unit area)

$$n_V=\frac{2\mathrm{\Omega }m_n}{\pi \mathrm{}}\frac{210^4}{P(sec)}cm^2$$
(1)
These vortices are represented by the eight straight vertical lines in the Figure 2 cartoon representation of a NS interior. As the NS spins-up (down) they remain parallel as they move in (out) toward (away from) the NS spin axis to maintain the vortex line density of Equation 1. The required addition (depletion) in total number of vortex lines needed for this comes from the creation (disappearance) of zero length vortex lines at the spin-hemisphere equator of the crust-core interface. Within the SC-p superconductor (estimated to be ”Type II”) of the NS core magnetic field fragments into an extremely dense array of quantized flux-tubes, each containing a magnetic flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=\pi \mathrm{}c/e210^7`$G cm2. One such flux-tube, among the 1030 in the interior of a typical NS, is shown in the Figure 2 cartoon. Unlike their neutron vortex line counterparts flux tubes turn and twist, a relic of a young highly conducting NS’s initially complicated toroidal and poloidal magnetic fields after its violent birth . The area density of the quantized flux-tubes

$$n_\mathrm{\Phi }=\frac{B}{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}510^{18}B_{12}cm^2$$
(2)
Within the non-superconducting crust the flux tubes merge into a microscopically smooth B.

MSPs are generally believed to achieve their very high spin from a surrounding accretion disk fed by a companion (still present around PSR J0437). As the NS spin-up begins and continues (typically for longer than 108 years) the original SF-n vortex array moves inward toward the NS spin-axis. The inward moving vortices must either cut through the core’s magnetic flux array in which they are embedded or else carry those flux-tubes inward with them. Detailed calculations show that because of the SF-n-vortices’ very slow inward velocity during this long spin-up ($`<`$ 10-9 cm s-1) the inward moving SF-n vortex array enforces a similar inward co-motion of the much denser, more flexible and complicated, flux-tube array through which it passes (Ruderman et al 1998). Because of motion-induced flux-tube bunching, such forced flux-tube co-motion would be expected even if the inward velocity of the SF-n vortices were very much faster (R 01). \[In the much earlier spin-down era in the history of this NS , SF-n vortices moved outward from the NS spin-axis, carrying the core’s flux tubes outward with them. There is strong supporting evidence for just such magnetic field evolution in much younger spinning-down radiopulsars (R 01)\].

Figure 3 shows the expected NS surface field evolution during spin-up for three prototype initial surface field configurations. (The very long time scale for spin-up to a MSP greatly exceeds the several x106 year Eddy diffusion time through the thin stellar crust. Therefore even if movement of an overstressed crust is neglected, crust conductivity is sufficient to insure that on long time scales the crust’s surface field reflects that of the core surface a km. below it.) In Figure 3 ’s case ( b) flux leaving the NS’s upper spin-hemisphere returns to the star in that same hemisphere. In this case prolonged spin-up of the NS must result in a dipole moment orthogonal to the NS spin-axis , positioned on that axis where it meets the core’s surface (cf. also Figure 4). NS spin-up from an initial period $`P_0`$ to a final $`P_1`$ reduces the NS dipole moment by a factor $`(P_1/P_0)^{1/2}10^2`$. It is this diminishing dipole strength that allows accretion to achieve such very strong spin-up. In Figure 3’s case ( a) all returning flux from the upper spin-hemisphere comes back to the stellar surface in its lower spin-hemisphere. From this initial configuration prolonged spin-up results in an aligned pulsar. Here, however, there can only be an increase in the dipole moment component parallel to the spin. Therefore such a NS could not be spun-up to a very small period MSP unless its initial dipole moment was already less than 109 G. The Figure 3 case ( c) NS is nearly that of case ( b). Here, however, a small fraction of the flux out of the upper spin-hemisphere returns to the stellar surface in its lower hemisphere. During stellar spin-up the large orthogonal dipole component become much smaller as in case ( b) , but the small aligned component is not similarly quenched. Whether, after $`P_0P_1P_0`$, the strongly quenched orthogonal moment or the initially much smaller but unquenched aligned one dominates depends on both the initial field distribution and on $`P_1/P_0`$. However, when $`P1P_0`$ is achieved, high fractions of both orthogonal and aligned MSPs are expected.

## 4 Aligned MSP polar caps and PSR J0437

Figure 4 shows details of final ”spin-up squeezed” surface magnetic fields after NS spin-up to very short period MSPs. Its left panel is that for the orthogonal dipole after the pre-spin-up field configuration of Figure 3 ( b). Agreement between the expected radioemission with this left panel distribution and radio observations of the MSP orthogonal rotator PSR 1937 has been considered in CR (93). The ”spin-up squeezed ” structure of the surface magnetic field of an aligned pulsar is shown in the middle panel of Figure 4, and in more detail in the right panel of it. In such a MSP the surface polar cap is only a short distance (the crust thickness $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, about 1 km above a magnetic pole. One consequence is that the polar cap magnetic field is about $`(R/\mathrm{\Delta })^2`$ times larger than it in conventional NS models with the same NS dipole moment at the center of the star or from a uniformly magnetized core (CRZ 98). However, the magnetic flux through the polar cap (= the magnetic flux through the pulsar’s ”light cylinder”) remains the same. Therefore, the polar cap radius of a strongly spun-up aligned MSP (PSR J0437 has P=5.75 ms) should be

$$r_1\mathrm{\Delta }\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }R}{c}\right)^{1/2}=190\left(\frac{P}{6ms}\right)^{1/2}m$$
(3)
rather than the canonical

$$r_{PC}=R\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }R}{c}\right)^{1/2}=1.9\left(\frac{P}{6ms}\right)^{1/2}km$$
(4)
In a very old MSP which long ago stopped accreting the main source for continuing thermal X-ray emission is expected to be from heating of its polar caps by backflow onto them of extreme relativistic e- or e+. These come from separated e± pairs made within or above an accelerator on the open field line bundle between the polar cap and a rapidly spinning aligned MSP’s light cylinder. The e- or e+ will be funneled down along the open B-field lines onto the tiny radius $`r_1`$ polar cap. \[ At the polar cap the energy of each such inflowing energetic lepton to the polar cap of PSR J0437 (initially acquired in the accelerator) 3 ergs, an energy not sensitive to assumptions about accelerator parameters (Wang et al 1998). The associated power inflow onto a heated polar cap is more difficult to estimate because of uncertainty about the e-(e+) flow rate.\]

A second source of PSR J0437 surface heating is the 102 MeV curvature radiation from its 3 erg leptons as they move down curved field lines toward the polar cap. As indicated in the right panel of Figure 4 , when a strongly spun-up MSP is an aligned rotator these B-field lines are so dominated by the nearby local pole as they approach the stellar surface that the guiding field lines become almost straight within a distance R of the polar cap. The inflowing leptons’ curvature radiation then drops greatly when they enter that region. The curvature radiation heating of the aligned MSP’s surface, which can be comparable in magnitude to that from particle flow onto its squeezed polar cap, is therefore mainly onto a large annulus of inner radius

$$r_2r_{PC}10r_12km$$
(5)
Thus an aligned PSR J3047 with the spin-up squeezed geometry of Figure 4 should emit its hottest thermal radiation from a tiny hot polar cap with the radius $`r_1`$ of Equation 3 and cooler thermal radiation from a much larger surrounding annulus with an inner radius the $`r_2`$ of Equation 5.

Observed soft X-ray emission from PSR J0437 fits a combination of a power law spectrum together with two black body components of almost equal luminosity ( Zavlin et al 2002, Pavlov et al 2002, B&A 02). Soft X-ray power law radiation is expected from the synchrotron emission by e$`\pm `$ pairs created by accelerator produced $`\gamma `$-rays. The thermal components have been interpreted as emission from a hot polar cap with a radius

$$r(hot)120m$$

with a cooler rim of radius

$$r(cool)=2.0km$$

These two radii are roughly those of Equations 3 and 5 for the expected spin squeezed geometry ( right panel of Figure 4) of an aligned PSR J0437. However, such agreement as support for this special B-field geometry is weakened because a broken power law fit to the whole soft X-ray spectrum has not been excluded. If the two black body spectra interpretation is confirmed it would be a crucial supplement to other evidence for the spin - dipole moment connection in NS evolution (R 01).

## Acknowledgements

It is a pleasure to thank K. Chen for his collaborations and W. Becker, J. Halpern, G. Pavlov, M. Rees, and J. Trümper for generous and informative conversations.


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# A study of the Galactic star forming region IRAS 02593+6016 / S 201 in infrared and radio wavelengths

## 1 Introduction

The high mass star forming region S 201, corresponding to the radio source W 5A, is at a distance of 2.3 kpc from the Sun (Mampaso et al. 1987). The S 201 region is coincident with an IRAS source (IRAS 02593+6016) with increasing spectrum from 12 to 100 $`\mu m`$. The IRAS fluxes lead to a luminosity of $``$ 1.1$`\times `$104 L (Zinchenko et al. 1997) for this source. The HII region S 201 is part of an extended complex of gas and dust stretched in the east-west direction and it is bordered on the west by the molecular cloud IC 1848 identified with the radio source W 5.

Earlier observations of S 201 region in the infrared wavelengths (Kleinmann et al. 1979, Thronson et al. 1984, Mampaso et al. 1989, Carpenter et al. 1993) and the radio (Felli et al. 1987, Fich 1993, Omar et al. 2002) have shown an interesting structure presumably due to the interaction between the HII region and the adjacent molecular cloud (Martin & Barrett 1978). The radio source has a bright, arc-shaped edge on one side and a smoothly decreasing surface brightness distribution on the opposite side as seen in the VLA observations at 2 and 6 cm (Felli et al. 1987). They modeled this configuration in terms of a three-dimensional electron distribution produced by the ionizing radiation of an early-type star located outside a spherical molecular cloud and found that an O9 zero age main sequence (ZAMS) star placed at a distance of 0.38 pc from a molecular cloud of 0.42 pc radius allows a good fit to the their data.

We have started a near-infrared (NIR) and radio continuum observational programme of study of regions of massive star formation. This is our first paper in this series. In this paper we study the Galactic star forming region S 201 in the infrared and the radio wavelengths with the aim of identifying the stellar populations in the directions of the IRAS source (IRAS 02593+6016). This paper combines new NIR observations from Telescopio Infrarosso del Gornergratm (TIRGO) & Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) telescopes, Italy with mid-infrared (MIR) data (8–21 $`\mu m`$) from Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) and radio continuum observations at 610 & 1280 MHz from Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), India.

In Sect. 2, we present the broad- and narrow-band NIR observations, as well as complementary MIR and radio continuum observations. Sect. 3 deals with the results and the discussion and we summarize our conclusions in Sect. 4.

## 2 Observations and data reduction

### 2.1 NIR observations

#### 2.1.1 Broad-band images

The broad-band (JHK) NIR observations were carried out on 23 December 2000 using the Arcetri NIR camera (ARNICA) mounted on the 1.5m f/20 infrared telescope TIRGO. ARNICA is equipped with a NICMOS3 256$`\times `$256 HgCdTe detector. The plate scale at TIRGO was 0.96″/pixel and the mean PSF was approximately 1.5″–1.8″(FWHM) during the observations.

We observed the field in the direction of the IRAS source 02593+6016 in the three standard J (1.25 $`\mu m`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ = 0.3 $`\mu m`$), H (1.6 $`\mu m`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ = 0.3 $`\mu m`$), and K (2.2 $`\mu m`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ = 0.4 $`\mu m`$) broad-band filters. A large number of dithered sky frames were obtained (by shifting the telescope a few arcmin off the source in north-west-south-east directions) in all the filters for sky subtraction and for making flat frames. Total on-target integration times were 60 s, 24 s, and 24 s in the J, H, and K bands, respectively. The photometric calibration was obtained by observing the standard stars AS03 & AS09 (Hunt et al. 1998) in all three bands. Fig. 1 shows the J, H, and K band images of S 201 region. The JHK images show the presence of diffuse emission near the center of the images, with an apparent concentration of embedded stars, suggesting the presence of a young cluster (see Sect. 3).

Data reduction was done using IRAF111IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under contract to the National Science Foundation. software tasks. All the NIR images went through standard pipeline procedures like sky-subtraction and flat-fielding. Accurate photometry was performed on the point sources detected in each of the three bands using the DAOPHOT (Stetson 1987) routines in IRAF software. Absolute position calibration was achieved using the coordinates of a number of stars from the USNO2.0 catalogue. The completeness limits of the images were evaluated by adding artificial stars of different magnitudes to the images and determining the fraction of stars recovered in each magnitude bin. The recovery rate was greater than 90% for magnitudes brighter than 17, 16 and 15.5 in the J, H and K bands, respectively. The observations are complete (100%) to the level of 15.5, 14.5 and 14 magnitudes in J, H and K bands, respectively. The average photometric error in all colours is $`\pm `$0.07 mag.

We checked our photometry with the data from 2MASS (The Two Micron All Sky Survey). The 2MASS All Sky Point Source Catalogue222http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/gator/nph-dd provides J, H & Ks magnitudes for each source. The 2MASS Ks filter is centered at 2.17 $`\mu m`$ and has a bandpass of 0.32 $`\mu m`$. Fig. 2 shows the comparison between TIRGO and 2MASS magnitudes in J, H & K filters. We see a good linear relation between the two systems, with the slopes between 0.9–0.97 and the dispersions that increase with the magnitude.

#### 2.1.2 Narrow-band images

The images through narrow-band filters including the molecular hydrogen (H2 $`v`$ = 1 – 0 $`S(1)`$) transition (2.122 $`\mu m`$, FWHM = 0.032 $`\mu m`$), the Br$`\gamma `$ line (2.169 $`\mu m`$, FWHM = 0.035 $`\mu m`$), and continuum K (Kcont at 2.275 $`\mu m`$, FWHM = 0.039 $`\mu m`$), were obtained on 13 November, 2002 at 3.58m TNG telescope at La Palma using the Near-Infrared Camera Spectrometer (NICS). NICS is the TNG infrared (0.9–2.5 $`\mu m`$) multimode instrument which is based on a HgCdTe Hawaii 1024x1024 array (Baffa et al. 2001). The image scale was 0.25″/pixel and the mean PSF was approximately 1.3″ (FWHM). Total integration time was of 90 s in all three filters. The images were analysed in a similar process as those from TIRGO. To identify the pure line emission (H2 $`v`$ = 1 – 0 $`S(1)`$ and Br$`\gamma `$)) one needs to subtract the continuum. That is done by subtracting the K continuum image from H2 and Br$`\gamma `$ images after aligning and PSF matching.

Fig. 3 shows the H2, Br$`\gamma `$, H2 continuum subtracted (reveal the pure H2 line emission), and Br$`\gamma `$ continuum subtracted images.

### 2.2 Mid-infrared data from MSX

The MSX images in A (8.3 $`\mu m`$), C (12.13 $`\mu m`$), D (14.65 $`\mu m`$), and E (21.34 $`\mu m`$) bands (Price et al. 2001) for the region around S 201 have been used to estimate the spatial distribution of warm interstellar dust, its temperature and optical depth. The MSX A and C bands with $`\lambda (\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda )`$ corresponding to 8.28(3.36) and 12.13(1.72) include several Unidentified Infrared emission Bands (UIBs) at 6.2, 7.7, 8.7, 11.3, and 12.7 $`\mu m`$. Using a scheme developed by Ghosh & Ojha (2002), the emission in these UIBs, probably due to the Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), have been extracted from the MSX images by correcting for the underlying thermal continuum from the interstellar dust.

### 2.3 Mid- and far-infrared data from IRAS

The data from the IRAS survey in the four bands (12, 25, 60, and 100 $`\mu m`$) for the region around S 201 were HIRES processed (Aumann et al. 1990) at IPAC. The HIRES processed maps in all the four IRAS bands are shown in Fig. 4. These maps have also been used to generate the maps of dust colour temperature and optical depth.

### 2.4 GMRT Radio continuum observations

The ionized gas within and around the HII region associated with S 201 has been mapped at high angular resolution using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) array. The radio continuum observations have been carried out in two frequency bands, viz., 610 & 1280 MHz on 04 January, 2002 and 28 September, 2002, respectively. The sources 3C48 and 3C147 were used as the primary flux calibrators for 610 & 1280 MHz observations, respectively, while the source 0432+416 was used as a secondary calibrator for both the observations. The GMRT antennas and their configurations are discussed in detail by Swarup et al. (1991).

Data reduction was done in classic AIPS. Bad data (dead antennas, interference, spikes, etc.) were identified and flagged using UVFLG & TVFLG. Images of the field were formed by Fourier inversion and cleaning (IMAGR). The initial images were improved by self-calibration (CALIB) in both phase and amplitude.

Figs. 5 & 6 show the radio continuum images of S 201 region generated from the GMRT observations at 1280 & 610 MHz respectively. The radio continuum images have a resolution of 4.5″$`\times `$2.5″at 1280 MHz, and 8.7″$`\times `$5.7″at 610 MHz. The images have an rms of 42 $`\mu `$Jy beam-1 at 1280 MHz, and 47 $`\mu `$Jy beam-1 at 610 MHz. The total flux densities are 0.68 Jy & 0.77 Jy at 1280 MHz & 610 MHz, respectively.

## 3 Results and discussion

### 3.1 The embedded cluster

Inside a $``$ 3.5′$`\times `$3.4′ field centered on IRAS 02593+6016 source, 114 stars are found to be common to all the three JHK bands and 153 stars are common to the HK bands alone, with magnitude errors less than 0.2. Fig. 7 shows a colour-colour (CC) diagram for the 114 stars detected in the JHK bands. The solid and broken heavy curves represent the unreddened main sequence dwarfs and giant branch (Koornneef 1983) and the parallel dashed lines are the reddening vectors for early and late type stars (drawn from the base and tip of the two branches) that encloses reddeded main sequence objects. The dotted line indicates the locus of T-Tauri stars (Meyer et al. 1997). We have assumed that AJ/AV = 0.282; AH/AV = 0.175 and AKs/AV = 0.112 (Rieke & Lebofsky 1985).

Most of the sources have colours of reddened photospheres but some of the stars lying outside the region of reddened main sequence objects (right of the reddening line for early type stars) are mostly young stellar objects (YSOs) with intrinsic colour excess. By de-reddening the stars (on the CC diagram) that fell within the reddening vectors encompassing the main sequence stars, we found visual extinction (AV) towards each star. The individual extinction values range from 0 to 18 magnitudes with the average foreground extinction of AV $``$ 5 mag. The stars lying on the left side of the reddening band are mostly foreground stars as supported by their low values of AV.

About 12% of the sources (within 0.43 pc radius around the position of the IRAS source) detected in J, H & K bands show an infrared excess (H-K $`>`$ 1, J-H $`>`$ 1, AV $``$ 8–14). These YSOs are shown as star symbols in Fig. 7 and they are concentrated close to the center of the embedded young stellar cluster. The most massive O6–O8 type star is located S-W of the cluster and is surrounded by at least two massive stars of spectral types earlier than B2, both of them showing an infrared excess (see Fig. 8).

Fig. 8 shows the H-K vs K colour-magnitude (CM) diagram for all the sources detected in HK bands. The vertical solid lines (from the left to the right) represent the main sequence curve reddened by 0, 20 and 40 magnitudes, respectively. We have assumed a distance of 2.3 kpc to the source to reproduce the main sequence data on this plot. The horizontal slanting lines in Fig. 8 trace the reddening zones for each spectral type. However, it should be noted that the spectral types inferred from the CM diagram are only upper limits when the stars present infrared excess. YSOs with an infrared excess found from CC diagram (Fig. 7) are shown as star symbols. However, it is important to note that even those stars not shown with a star symbol may represent YSOs with intrinsic colour excess, since these stars detected in the H and K bands are not detected in the J band due to their very red colours. The three massive and luminous stars discussed earlier are located at the top of the CM diagram (K $`<`$ 11.8).

Following the method described in Testi et al. (1999) we estimated the number of stars in the central regions of the cluster, within 40″ (0.4 pc), from the most massive star in the cluster (#2). We found an excess of $``$ 38 objects above the background with K band magnitude less than 15.5, corresponding to our 90% completeness level. The corresponding stellar volume density in the inner region of the cluster would then be $``$ 102 stars/pc3, on the low side compared to the typical densities of objects around early Herbig Be stars in the survey of Testi et al. (1999). However, to make a sensible comparison we need to estimate the lowest mass object that can be probed with our observations, which can be estimated following the method outlined in Testi et al. (1998). Assuming the distance of 2.3 kpc, an age in the range 0.5–1 Myr, and an extinction in K band between 0 and 1 mag (up to AV $``$ 10), the derived magnitude limit corresponds to M $``$ 0.5 M (using Palla & Stahler (1999) pre-main sequence evolutionary tracks)), which is significantly higher than most of the limits in Testi et al. (1999).

### 3.2 Comparison of infrared and radio continuum observations

The radio maps from GMRT at 1280 and 610 MHz (Figs. 5 & 6) display a striking cometary morphology with sharp boundaries toward the N–NE, and diffuse emission extending toward S–SW (an angular diameter of approximately $``$ 4′). This kind of morphology is produced by the winds and shocks from the massive stars in the vicinity of the molecular clouds, which are expected to compress the nearmost edges of nearby clouds and develop the cometary structure (Bachiller et al. 2002). Three bright near-infrared sources are present within the radio nebulosity. One of the sources (id#1 in Fig. 1) with NIR excess (H-K $`>`$ 1) is very close to the radio peak suggesting the spectral type of B1 in the H-K vs K CM diagram. This source is also coincident, within errors, with the H2O maser position present in the region (Blair et al. 1980). The brightest infrared source (id#2; K=10.24, H-K = 1.40, J-H = 2.66) deeply embedded in the cloud (AV $``$ 22), is located $``$ 26″ ($``$ 0.29 pc) west of the radio peak. The projected distance of source #2 from the cloud is approximately 33″ (0.37 pc). The colour and IR luminosity of this source indicate that it is an O6–O8 type star. The position of #2 coincides with the “secondary peak” detected by Felli et al. (1987) in the radio and also seen in the GMRT radio images (see Figs. 1 & 5).

It is interesting to revisit the model of Felli et al. (1987) after the results of our new near-infrared observations. Their modeling of the VLA observations was based on the assumption of a single star providing all the ionizing photons, while our observations clearly reveal a rich cluster within the radio continuum emission. The estimated spectral types from CM diagram and the total Lyman continuum photons (using the table in Panagia 1973) for the five bright stars within the young cluster are shown in Table 1. The most massive star (#2) alone provides more than 90% of the total Lyman continuum supply rate, explaining the success of the model based on a single source of the ionizing radiation. It is also interesting to note that our observations confirm the suggestion by Felli et al. (1987) of the co-location of the massive star responsible for the ionization of the nebula and the secondary peak of radio emission.

The quadrupole transition ($`v`$ = 1 – 0 $`S(1)`$) of molecular hydrogen at 2.122 $`\mu m`$ is an excellent tracer of shock emission and photo-dissociation regions (PDRs). In particular, in PDRs the molecular hydrogen emission traces the first neutral layer beyond the ionization front, a typical, well studied case is that of the PDR at the interface between the Orion Nebula and the Orion molecular cloud (the Orion Bar, see Walmsley et al. 2000). In fact, the model of Felli et al. (1987) implicitly predicts that a PDR should be located at the interface between the ionized and molecular gas, to the east of the arc-shaped feature in the radio continuum maps. Our near-infrared narrow band images fully support this picture, as we detect diffuse H2 emission where the PDR region should be located (see Fig. 9). Additionally, in the north-east corner of the image we detect an H2 knot reminiscent of Herbig-Haro objects.

The continuum subtracted Br$`\gamma `$ image displays a morphology very similar to the radio continuum maps, with a bright, arc-shaped edge on one side and a smoothly decreasing surface brightness distribution on the opposite side and a peak coinciding exactly with the radio continuum one (Figs. 3 & 10). The similar morphology between the Br$`\gamma `$ and radio continuum maps indicates that there are no steep extinction gradients across the S 201 region.

The ionization front at the interface between the HII region and the molecular cloud is clearly seen by comparing the radio, molecular hydrogen and Br$`\gamma `$ images (Figs. 3, 5 & 6). A more detailed analysis from the GMRT radio observations will be presented in a future paper.

### 3.3 Spatial distribution of Unidentified Infrared emission Bands (UIBs) around S 201 region

The MSX surveyed the entire Galactic plane within $`|b|5^{}`$ in four mid-infrared spectral bands centered at 8.28, 12.13, 14.65 and 21.34 $`\mu m`$, with image resolution of 20″ (Price et al. 2001). We have used the scheme developed by Ghosh & Ojha (2002) to extract the contribution of Unidentified Infrared emission Bands (UIBs) from the mid-infrared MSX images of S 201 region in the four bands. The scheme models the observations with a combination of thermal emission (gray body) from interstellar dust and the UIB emission from the gas component, under reasonable assumptions. The spatial distribution of emission in the UIBs with an anugular resolution $``$ 20″ (intrinsic to MSX survey) has been extracted and is shown in Fig. 11.

The UIBs emission map has been compared with the GMRT observations at 1280 MHz in Fig. 12. The positions of the peaks and other morphology (along N-S to E-W) compare rather well between the UIBs and the radio emission maps though we see a strong extended component of UIBs emission along S-E as compared to the radio emission.

### 3.4 Dust optical depth and temperature maps

#### 3.4.1 From MSX

The MSX maps were used to obtain maps of warm dust temperature and optical depth (Ghosh & Ojha 2002). Since the range of frequencies covered by the MSX bands is limited, we assume a power law dependence of the dust emissivity on frequency of the form $`ϵ_\lambda \lambda ^1`$. The optical depth and dust temperature maps have been presented in Fig. 13.

The positions of the peaks of the optical depth and temperature are different. The optical depth map is morphologically similar to the UIBs intensity map and the peaks in the two coincide indicating presence of the high densities near the embedded sources. However, the temperature map shows a more extended distribution with decreasing temperature gradient toward S to S-W. The temperature map peaks close to the boundary of UIBs emission toward west (48″ or 0.5 pc from the UIBs emission peak).

#### 3.4.2 From HIRES

We have used HIRES maps to generate maps of the dust colour temperature ($`T(12/25)`$ & $`T(60/100)`$), and optical depth ($`\tau _{12}`$ & $`\tau _{100}`$) around S 201 region. The intensity maps at 12, 25, 60 and 100 $`\mu m`$ (Fig. 4) were spatially averaged before computing $`T(12/25)`$, $`\tau _{12}`$, $`T(60/100)`$, and $`\tau _{100}`$ in a manner similar to that described by Ghosh et al. (1993) for an emissivity law of $`ϵ_\lambda \lambda ^1`$. The dust optical depth and temperature maps are presented in Fig. 14.

#### 3.4.3 Comparison between MSX and HIRES maps

A comparison of the $`\tau _{10}`$ maps generated from the higher angular resolution MSX maps (Fig. 13a) and that based on IRAS HIRES maps at 12 and 25 $`\mu m`$ (the best resolution among the 4 bands) is in order. The latter has been presented in Fig. 14a, which is scaled to 10 $`\mu m`$ by $`\lambda ^1`$ emissivity law to make the comparison with MSX $`\tau _{10}`$ map. The peak optical depth and the effective FWHM for the central maximum are 2.13 $`\times 10^4`$ and 54″ respectively for the map based on MSX. The corresponding values from the IRAS–HIRES maps are 6.6 $`\times 10^5`$ and 60″.

These derived values are in reasonable agreement considering the fact that they are based on instruments with very different angular resolutions. The difference in the peak values of $`\tau _{10}`$ may be a result of two effects, viz., beam dilution and a clumpy interstellar medium.

The peak dust column density implied by the optical depth map at 100 $`\mu m`$ (Fig. 14b), is much higher than that implied by the $`\tau _{10}`$ map from MSX data (Fig. 13a). This is not surprizing, since the former has main contribution from the cooler component of dust grains (T $`<`$ 80 K) lying in the larger outer envelope of the cloud. Only the dust grains very close to the exciting source can contribute to $`\tau _{10}`$ map.

Compared to MSX, the HIRES maps at 60 and 100 $`\mu m`$ trace the distribution of colder dust (35–55 K). However, the hot spot due west and a cooler plateau due east can be seen in the two maps (Figs. 13b & 14c), which shows the similar sense of temperatures between the MSX and HIRES (T(12/25)).

## 4 Conclusions

A detailed radio and infrared study of an embedded young stellar cluster associated with the Galactic star forming region S 201 is presented here. The colour-colour and colour-magnitude diagrams have been constructed to identify young stellar objects and estimate their spectral types. The high sensitivity and high angular resolution radio continuum maps based on the GMRT observations at 610 and 1280 MHz have been generated. These radio maps show interesting morphological details, including an interesting arc-shaped structure highlighting the interaction between the HII region and the adjacent molecular cloud. Three luminous infrared sources have been identified which are located within the radio nebulosity. The spatial distribution of temperature and optical depth of the interstellar dust component in the S 201 region, has been presented based on the mid- and far-infrared measurements from the MSX and IRAS (HIRES) missions.

We have detected a compact embedded star cluster located within the ionized nebula responsible for the radio continuum emission. The cluster has richness similar to the clusters surrounding early type Herbig Be stars; the most luminous member is consistent with an O6–O8 zero age main sequence star. Our analysis confirms that this single star is responsible for most of the Lyman continuum emission required to sustain the ionized radio nebula, with all the other cluster members contributing at most 10% of the ionizing photons. This explains the reason for the success of the model of Felli et al. (1987) (which assumed a single massive star for excitation), in explaining the radio continuum morphology of S 201. Our observations also confirm the position of this massive star as well as the location of the molecular cloud being eroded by the ionizing radiation. The PDR at the interface between the ionized gas and the molecular cloud is traced to the west of the bright arc-shaped feature in radio continuum and Br$`\gamma `$, by the diffuse H2 emission detected in our narrow-band near-infrared images.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the staff of the GMRT that made the radio observations possible. The GMRT is run by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. It is a pleasure to thank the Arcetri and TNG technical staff and the TNG operators for their assistance during the NICS observing runs. We also thank the TIRGO team, especially Filippo Mannucci, for nice scheduling and service observing at the Gornergrat. This paper is based on observations made with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) operated on the island of La Palma by the Centro Galileo Galilei of the CNAA (Consorzio Nazionale per l’Astronomia e l’Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. IPAC is thanked for providing HIRES processed IRAS data. This research made use of data products from the Midcourse Space Experiment, the processing of which was funded by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization with additional support from from NASA Office of Space Science. This research has also made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with National Aeronautics and Space Administration. DKO was supported by the JSPS (Japan) through a fellowship during which some part of this work was done. We thank Francesco Palla for providing us with their PMS grids.


text:
# Improving Multiparton Monte Carlo Tools in Hadronic CollisionsBased on work done in collaboration with M.L. Mangano, M. Moretti, R. Pittau and A.D. Polosa.

## 1 Introduction

In high energy hadronic collisions multijet final states characterize a large class of important phenomena both within and beyond the SM. These multiparticle final states can originate from hard QCD radiation processes, decay of SM massive particles ($`W`$, $`Z`$, top quark, Higgs boson), decay of heavy supersymmetric or more exotic particles. In general there are two different approaches to simulate multijet final states: the first one consists in generating the simplest possible final state by means of matrix elements and producing additional jets by parton showering (HERWIG herwig , ISAJET isajet , PYTHIA pythia ). This procedure works well in the soft/collinear regions but fails to describe configurations with several widely separated jets. A complementary strategy is to generate high-multiplicity partonic final states by means of exact matrix elements and eventually pass the generated events to further showering. Even if it is a leading-order (LO) approach, this procedure can become very difficult because of the complexity of the matrix element calculations with many external legs and of the phase-space integration. Recently there has been extensive activity in developing several parton-level Monte Carlo (MC) event generators, such as ACERMC acermc , ALPGEN alpgen , AMEGIC++ amegic , CompHEP comphep , GRACE grace ,
HELAC/PHEGAS/JETI helac , MADEVENT madevent . In this contribution the state of the art of the ALPGEN generator is reviewed, paying attention to the latest improvements. The general problem of interfacing a LO partonic event generator with the parton shower is addressed, reviewing some recent work on the subject.

## 2 The ALPGEN event generator

The ALPGEN library is a collection of MC codes dedicated to many processes relevant to high energy hadron–hadron collisions. The calculations are based on partonic events generated by means of exact LO matrix elements, obtained with the ALPHA algorithm alpha  for assigned kinematics, spin, flavour and colour configurations. The generated unweighted events, stored according to the Les Houches Accord #1 LesHouches  format, are ready for the HERWIG/PYTHIA evolution from partons to hadrons. Up to now the available final states in the ALPGEN package are:

* $`W+N`$ jets, $`Z/\gamma ^{}+N`$ jets, $`N6`$,
* $`WQ\overline{Q}+N`$ jets, $`Z/\gamma ^{}Q\overline{Q}+N`$ jets $`(Q=c,b,t)`$, $`N4`$,
* $`W+c+N`$ jets, $`N5`$,
* $`nW+mZ+p\mathrm{Higgs}+N`$ jets, $`n+m+p8`$, $`N3`$,
* $`m\gamma +N`$ jets, $`N+m8`$ and $`N6`$,
* $`Q\overline{Q}+N`$ jets, $`(Q=c,b,t)`$, $`N6`$,
* $`Q\overline{Q}Q^{}\overline{Q}^{}+N`$ jets, $`(Q,Q^{}=b,t)`$ , $`N4`$,
* $`N`$ jets, $`N6`$,
* $`Q\overline{Q}H+N`$ jets, $`(Q=b,t)`$, $`N4`$.

The limitations in the maximum number of jets is only due to the setting of internal parameters in the ALPHA code, which could be changed to accomodate a larger number of final-state particles. While in the first version of ALPGEN the top quarks were considered as real particles, they are now (v1.3, in the $`Q\overline{Q}`$ and $`Q\overline{Q}H`$ processes) allowed to decay in the three final state fermions ($`tWbbf\overline{f}^{}`$) with exact matrix element, thus retaining all the spin correlations among the top decay products. The decay is calculated in the approximation of on-shell top quark and $`W`$ boson, in order to avoid the inclusion of non-resonant diagrams while preserving the gauge invariance of the calculations. The same strategy has been implemented for the decay of the gauge boson in the vbjets code, the ALPGEN directory dedicated to multiboson plus jets production, where the matrix element for the vector boson decay into a fermionic pair has been introduced in the zero width approximation. The generation of multiboson final states requires a careful treatment of the widths in the propagators of the unstable particles, because they generally break gauge invariance, giving rise to a bad high energy behaviour of the cross sections gi . The strategy adopted in ALPGEN is to calculate the matrix element with the bosonic widths set to zero, removing the events containing a vector boson with a propagator mass $`M_0`$ such that $`|M_0^2M^2|<s_0`$, with

$`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{M^2s_0}}𝑑s{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(sM^2)^2}}={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{M^2}}𝑑s{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(sM^2)^2+\mathrm{\Gamma }^2M^2}}`$
and

$`|M_0M|{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{\pi }}.`$
For all other processes that do not involve the presence of several gauge bosons, the fixed-widths prescription is used. The Higgs bosons are treated as stable particles. Their decay to fermion pairs or to four fermions will be implemented in a future release of the programme.

## 3 Matching partonic event generators to parton shower

In order to simulate the real hadronic final states, the partonic events have to be passed through a MC parton shower. However, in this interface there is some ambiguity in the cuts implemented at the partonic level. They are unphysical, in the sense that the final jet cross-section should be independent of their choice, provided that they are not harder than the cuts applied to the real jets. However, starting with looser partonic cuts increases the probability of obtaining $`n`$ jets from $`n+m`$ partons after parton showering (giving rise to the double-counting problem), as can be seen in fig. 1, which shows the jet rates with the constraint $`E_T^{jet}>E_T^{cut}`$ for the hardest jet in $`W+3`$ jets events at Tevatron, versus the parton separation $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{\mathrm{part}}`$ imposed at the level of ME generation. The jets are reconstructed with the cone algorithm and the cross sections are normalized to the result obtained with $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{\mathrm{part}}=0.7`$.

The increasing ratio for smaller $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{\mathrm{part}}`$ is due to both the collinear divergence of the matrix element for $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{\mathrm{part}}0`$ and the increasing double counting for smaller $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{\mathrm{part}}`$. A first approximation to the solution of the problem could consist in requiring a jet matching for every parton mlmtev . With this recipe the shapes of the $`W+3`$ jets example above become flatter, as diplayed in fig. 2, but still showing a residual dependence on the parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{\mathrm{part}}`$.

The general problem of matching multiparton matrix element calculations with parton showers has been extensively studied in the literature and for $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions a solution (CKKW) has been proposed and tested on LEP data ckkw , which avoids double counting and shifts the dependence on the resolution parameter beyond next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) accuracy. The method consists in separating arbitrarily the phase-space regions covered by matrix element and parton shower, and use, for all parton multiplicities, vetoed parton showers together with reweighted tree-level matrix elements by means of suitable Sudakov form-factor combinations. The necessary steps for the implementation of the procedure can be summarized as follows:

* select the jet multiplicity $`n`$ according to the jet rates obtained with matrix elements with resolution $`y_{ij}>y_{cut}`$, defined according to the $`k_T`$-algorithm durham  ($`y_{ij}=2\mathrm{m}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}(E_i^2,E_j^2)/\widehat{s}(1\mathrm{cos}\vartheta _{ij})`$);
* generate $`n`$ parton momenta according to the matrix element with fixed $`\alpha _s(y_{cut})`$ and reweight the event with the probability of no further branching by means of Sudakov form factors;
* build a “PS history” by clustering the partons to determine the values at which 1,2,…,$`n`$ jets are resolved. In so doing a tree of branchings is constructed and the nodal scales characteristic of each branching are used to reweight the event with running $`\alpha _s`$;
* apply a coupling constant reweighting factor $`\alpha _s(y_i)`$ / $`\alpha _s(y_{cut})1`$ for every branching of the “PS history”, where $`y_i`$ is the nodal scale;
* after successful unweighting, use the $`n`$-parton kinematics as initial condition for the shower, vetoing all branchings such that $`y_{ij}>y_{cut}`$.

The extension of the procedure to hadronic collisions has been proposed in ref. krauss . Recent detailed results of the implementation of the procedure with the programs HERWIG, PYTHIA and SHERPA have been presented in ref. ckkwh . The implementation in ALPGEN is currently under investigation. Preliminary studies regarding the partonic steps with ALPGEN have been presented in ref. mlmmcw . In the case of hadronic collisions there is a certain degree of arbitrariness, such as the choice of the Sudakov form factors, the choice of the scale of $`\alpha _s`$ (LO or NLO), the treatment of the highest-multiplicity matrix element, the choice of the clustering scheme, the use of flavour or colour information to define the tree and the related reweighting factors, the treatment of gauge bosons. All these uncertainties entail that a large degree of tuning on the data (possibly process-dependent) will be needed, and further work remains to be done to find what the correct prescriptions are. The $`\alpha _s`$ reweighting of the partonic events could be important on its own, because it should effectively give, in a gauge-invariant way, the bulk of the NLO QCD corrections. This could be tested in cases where multijet NLO calculations are available.

## 4 Summary

The MC simulation of hard multiparticle final states at hadronic colliders is a very important issue. Thanks to recent efforts by different groups, several multiparton event generators based on exact matrix elements are now available; they were thoroughly cross-checked during the MC workshops held at FNAL and CERN during 2003. These programs generate samples of unweighted events in a standardized format (the LesHouches Accord # 1) which can be passed to the parton shower-based MC programs to go from the partons to the real final-state hadrons. The matching between a LO multijet event generator and the parton shower MC suffers from the serious problems of double-counting and dependence on the parton-level cuts. For the case of $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions the problem has been solved beyond NLL accuracy with the CKKW algorithm. This can be extended to hadronic collisions, but the proof is still pending. However, recently, there has been an intense activity in its implementation on existing MC event generators going through many subtleties involved in the CKKW algorithm for hadronic collisions.

The author wishes to thank the conveners of the Hard QCD Parallel Session for the invitation. M.L. Mangano and A.D. Polosa are gratefully aknowledged for many useful discussions and a careful reading of the manuscript.


text:
# Generating Mapping Class Groups by Involutions

## 1 Introduction

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$ denote a closed, oriented surface of genus $`g`$ with $`b`$ punctures. By $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$ we will denote its mapping class group — the group orientation-preserving homeomorphisms preserving the set of punctures (i.e., we allow homeomorphisms of the surface which permute the punctures) modulo homotopy. Let us also denote by $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0`$ the subgroup of $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$, which fixes the punctures pointwise. It is clear that we have the exact sequence:

$$1\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}\mathrm{Sym}_b,$$

where the last projection is given by the restriction of a homeomorphism to its action on the puncture points.

The study of the mapping class group of a closed surface begun in the 1930-es. The first generating set of the mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,0}`$ for $`g3`$ was constructed by Dehn (see ). This set consists of $`2g(g1)`$ Dehn twists. Thirty years latter, Lickorish (see ) constructed a generating set for $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,0}`$ consisting of $`3g1`$ twists for any $`g1`$. This result was improved by Humphries (see ), who showed that a certain subset of Lickorish’s set consisting of $`2g+1`$ twists suffices to generate $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,0}`$, and that this is in fact the minimal number of twist generators. This result was generalized in  by Johnson who proved that the same set of Dehn twists also generates $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,1}`$. In the case of multiple punctures the mapping class group can be generated by $`2g+b`$ twists for $`b1`$ (see ).

It is possible to obtain smaller generating sets of $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$ by using elements other than twists. N. Lu (see ) constructed a generated set of $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,0}`$ consisting of 3 elements two of which are torsion. This result was improved by Wajnryb who found the smallest possible generating set of $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,0}`$ consisting of $`2`$ elements one of which is torsion see . It is also known that in the case of closed surface the mapping class group can be generated by 3 torsion elements (see ), two of which are involutions. Recently Korkmaz (see ) showed that the mapping class group can be generated by $`2`$ torsion elements (also in the case of a closed surface).

In , Maclachlan proved that the moduli space $`_g`$ is simply connected as a topological space by showing that $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,0}`$ is generated by torsion elements. Several years later Patterson generalized these results to $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$ for $`g3,b1`$ see . The question of generating mapping class groups by involutions was considered by McCarthy and Papadopoulos in . Among other results, they proved that for $`g3`$, $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,0}`$ is generated by infinitely many conjugates of a single involution.

Several year ago Luo, see , described the first finite set of involutions which generate $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$ for $`g3`$. The size of his generating set depends linearly on both $`g`$ and $`b`$. Luo also proved that $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$ is generated by torsion elements in all cases except $`g=2`$ and $`b=5k+4`$, but this group is not generated by involutions if $`g2`$. In that paper Luo poses the question of whether there is a universal upper bound, independent of $`g`$ and $`b`$, for the number of torsion elements/involutions needed to generate $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$.

In the case of zero or one punctures, this question was answered by Brendle and Farb in , where they constructed a generating set of $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$ for $`g3`$ and $`b1`$ consisting of $`7`$ involutions. A detailed consideration of the generating set of involutions constructed by Brendle and Farb shows that one of the involutions is redundant and the mapping class group can be generated by $`6`$ involutions (at least in the case $`g>3`$, or $`g=3`$ and no punctures).

Our main result generalizes the construction in the above paper to the case of several punctures. We improve the bound given by Brendle and Farb for the smallest number of involutions needed to generate the mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$.

###### Theorem 1.

For all $`g3`$, the mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$ can be generated by: a) $`4`$ involutions if $`g>7`$ or $`g=7`$ and the number of punctures is even;

b) $`5`$ involutions if $`g>5`$ or $`g=5`$ and the number of punctures is even;

c) $`6`$ involutions if $`g>3`$ or $`g=3`$ and the number of punctures is even;

d) $`9`$ involutions if $`g=3`$ and the number of punctures is odd.

###### Remark 2.

From the work of Luo , it follows that the above theorem can not be generalized to the case of small genus, because the mapping class group is not generated by involutions if $`g2`$.

###### Remark 3.

If one allows orientation-reversing involutions, it is possible to extend Theorem 1 to the extended mapping class group which includes orientation-reversing mapping classes and show that it is generated by the same number of involutions as the mapping class group.

###### Remark 4.

Our result for genus $`3`$ is weaker than the result by Brendle and Farb, but the construction in their paper does not work for $`g=3`$ and one puncture. In , they wrote:

> For simplicity of exposition, we provide explicit arguments only for $`b=0`$. In the case $`b=1`$ the arguments are the same, although some involutions must be replaced with certain conjugates which move the puncture to a fixed point of the involution.

The problem with this argument is that for $`g=3`$ two of the involutions in their generating set (the pair swap involutions $`J_1`$ and $`J_2`$) do not have any fixed points.

###### Remark 5.

It is interesting to find the smallest possible set of involutions which generated $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$. It is clear that such a set should contain at least $`3`$ involutions, since every group generated by two involutions is dihedral. One should expect that the bound of $`9`$ involution for the genus $`3`$ case can be improved. The author believes that the bound of $`4`$ involutions in the high genus case could not be improved.

Acknowledgements: The author wishes to thanks Prof. Sehgal, for the useful discussions and the Department of Mathematics at University of Alberta for the pleasant working environment.

## 2 Generating the mapping class group by 2 involutions and 3 Dehn twists

Let us embed our surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$ in the Euclidian space in two different ways as shown on Figure 1. (In these pictures we will assume that genus $`g=2k`$ is even and the number of punctures $`b=2l+1`$ is odd. In the case of odd genus we only have to swap the top parts of the pictures, and in the case of even number of punctures we have to swap the lower parts of the pictures.)

In Figure 1 we have also marked the puncture points as $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_b`$ and we have the curves $`\alpha _i`$, $`\beta _i`$, $`\gamma _i`$ and $`\delta `$. Using these curves one can construct an explicit homeomorphism between the two surfaces in Euclidian space. The curve $`\delta `$ separates our surface into two components: the first one, denoted by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$, is a surface of genus $`g`$ with boundary component and no punctures. The second one (denoted by $`D`$) is a disk with $`b`$ puncture points. All other curves are simple non-separating curves on the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$.

Each embedding gives a natural involution of the surface — the half turn rotation around its axis of symmetry. Let us call these involutions $`\rho _1`$ and $`\rho _2`$. The product $`R=\rho _2\rho _1`$ of these involutions acts almost as a rotation on the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$111In the case of no punctures $`R`$ is homeomorphic to a rotation if one uses the flower embedding of the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,0}`$ in the Euclidian space, more precisely we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}R\alpha _i=\alpha _{i+1},& \text{ for }1i<g\hfill \\ R\beta _i=\beta _{i+1},& \text{ for }1i<g\hfill \\ R\gamma _i=\gamma _{i+1},& \text{ for }1i<g1.\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
On the set of punctures $`R`$ acts also as a long cycle

$$Rx_1=x_b\text{and}Rx_i=x_{i1}\text{ for }1<ib.$$

Let $`c`$ be a simple non-separating curve on an oriented surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. We will denote by $`T_c`$ the Dehn twist around the curve $`c`$333We will not distinguish between the homeomorphisms and their images in the mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$.. For any homeomorphism $`h`$ of the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ the twists around the curves $`c`$ and $`h(c)`$ are conjugate in the mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$,

$$T_{h(c)}=hT_ch^1.$$

The relations (1) imply that the Dehn twists around the curves $`\alpha _i`$-es, $`\beta _i`$-es and $`\gamma _i`$-es are conjugate, i.e.,

$$RT_{\alpha _i}R^1=T_{\alpha _{i+1}},RT_{\beta _i}R^1=T_{\beta _{i+1}}\text{ and }RT_{\gamma _i}R^1=T_{\gamma _{i+1}}.$$
(2)
The Dehn twists around these $`3g1`$ curves generate the whole mapping class group of a closed surface of genus $`g`$ by a result of Lickorish, and of the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ of genus $`g`$ and one boundary component by a result of Johnson (see ). This together with relations (2), shows the the subgroup $`G`$ generated by $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$ and $`3`$ Dehn twists $`T_\alpha `$, $`T_\beta `$ and $`T_\gamma `$ around one of the curve in each family, contains

$$\mathrm{Mod}(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{})\mathrm{Mod}(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}).$$

Our next step is to show that this subgroup actually contains all homeomorphisms of the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$ which preserve the punctures pointwise. In  it is shown that the group $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$ is generated by the Dehn twists around the curves $`\alpha _i`$-es, $`\beta _i`$-es, $`\gamma _i`$-es and $`\delta _j`$-es, for $`j=1,\mathrm{},b1`$, where the curves $`\delta _i`$-es are shown on Figure 2.

###### Lemma 6.

The ‘rotation’ $`R`$ acts on the curves $`\delta _j`$ as follows:

$$R^1\delta _i=\eta _{i+1}$$

###### Proof.

The Figure 3 shows the action of $`\rho _1`$ and $`\rho _2`$ on the curve $`\delta _i`$. It is clear from the picture that $`\eta _{i+1}=\rho _1\rho _2(\delta _i)=R^1\delta _i`$.

Now we are ready to show that $`G`$ contains $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$.

###### Lemma 7.

The group $`G`$ contains the Dehn twists around the curves $`\delta _j`$, for $`j=0,\mathrm{},b1`$.

###### Proof.

We will prove the lemma using induction on $`j`$. The base case, $`j=0`$, is clear because by construction $`G`$ contains $`T_{\delta _0}=T_{\alpha _1}G`$. Suppose that $`G`$ contains the twist $`T_{\delta _j}`$. Using Lemma 6 we can see that the twist $`T_{\eta _{j+1}}`$ also lies in $`G`$, since it is conjugate to $`T_{\delta _j}`$

$$T_{\eta _{j+1}}=R^1T_{\delta _j}RG.$$

To complete the induction step, we only need to notice that there exists a homeomorphism $`h_{j+1}\mathrm{Mod}(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{})G`$ such that $`h_{j+1}\eta _{j+1}=\delta _{j+1}`$, because the curves $`\delta _{j+1}`$ and $`\eta _{j+1}`$ are homotopic in the disk $`D`$. This gives us that

$$T_{\delta _{j+1}}=h_{j+1}T_{\eta _{j+1}}h_{j+1}^1G,$$

which completes the induction step. ∎

###### Corollary 8.

The group $`G`$ contains the subgroup $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$.

###### Remark 9.

The group $`G`$ is not the whole group $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$ (if $`b>3`$), because its image in the symmetric group $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$ is generated by two involutions and therefore is a dihedral group. It is easy see that this image is the group $`D_{2b}`$ which is a proper subgroup of $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$. However in the next section we will show how to generated the Dehn twists $`T_\alpha `$, $`T_\beta `$ and $`T_\gamma `$ by several involutions and we can be flexible in choosing their actions on the set of punctures. We can choose these involutions so that their images in the symmetric group together with the images of $`\rho _1`$ and $`\rho _2`$ generate the whole symmetric group on the punctures.

## 3 Generating Mapping class group by involutions

In the previous section we have shown that we can generate almost the whole mapping class group by $`2`$ involutions and $`3`$ Dehn twists. Now we only need to explain how to generate the Dehn twists by involutions. The basic idea is to use the lantern relation and generate the Dehn twist $`T_\alpha `$ by four involutions.

### 3.1 The Lantern Relation

We begin by recalling the lantern relation in the mapping class group. This relation was first discovered by Dehn in the 1930s and later rediscovered by Johnson. Here we will use this relation to show how a Dehn twist can be expressed using $`4`$ involutions. This argument is based on a result by Luo and Harer (see ), who proved that a Dehn twist lie in a subgroup generated by $`6`$ involutions. Brendle and Farb in  improved this argument by introducing pair swap involutions and showed that $`4`$ involutions suffice to generate a Dehn twist.

Let the $`S_{0,4}`$ be a surface of genus $`0`$ with $`4`$ boundary components. Denote by $`a_1,a_2,a_3`$ and $`a_4`$ the four boundary curves of the surface $`S_{0,4}`$ and let the interior curves $`x_1,x_2`$ and $`x_3`$, be as shown in Figure 4.

The following relation :

$$T_{x_1}T_{x_2}T_{x_3}=T_{a_1}T_{a_2}T_{a_3}T_{a_4}$$
(3)
among the Dehn twists around the curves $`a_i`$ and $`x_i`$ is known as the lantern relation. Notice that the curves $`a_i`$ do not intersect any other curve and that the Dehn twists $`T_{a_i}`$ commute with every twist in this relation. This allows us to rewrite the lantern relation as follows

$$T_{a_4}=(T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1)(T_{x_2}T_{a_2}^1)(T_{x_3}T_{a_3}^1)$$
(4)
The product $`T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1`$ can be expressed as a product of two involutions in the following way: let $`\rho `$ be an involution which maps $`a_1`$ to $`x_1`$, then we have

$$T_{x_1}=\rho T_{a_1}\rho $$

and

$$T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1=\rho T_{a_1}\rho T_{a_1}^1=\rho (T_{a_1}\rho T_{a_1}^1)$$
(5)
Figure 4 shows the existence of a pair swap involutions $`J_{12}`$ on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{0,4}`$, such that $`J_{12}`$ preserves the curves $`a_4`$ and $`a_3`$, and swaps the pairs $`(a_1,x_1)`$ with $`(a_2,x_2)`$. There also exists another pair swap involution $`J_{13}`$ with similar properties. This gives that

$$\begin{array}{c}T_{x_2}T_{a_2}^1=J_{12}T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1J_{12}\\ T_{x_3}T_{a_3}^1=J_{13}T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1J_{13}\end{array}$$

These relations together with relation 4 and 5 show that the twist around the curve $`a_4`$ lies in the group generated by the involutions $`\rho `$, $`\overline{\rho }=T_{a_1}\rho T_{a_1}^1`$, $`J_{12}`$ and $`J_{13}`$, more precisely we have

$$T_{a_4}=(\rho \overline{\rho })(J_{12}\rho \overline{\rho }J_{12})(J_{13}\rho \overline{\rho }J_{13}).$$

After this preparation, we can start the prof of Theorem 1. We will begin with part c).

### 3.2 Genus $`g3`$ and $`b`$ even if $`g=3`$

The argument which follows is the same as the one used in . The only major difference is that we use a different lantern.

Recall that in the whole paper we assume that the genus of the surface is at least $`3`$. In the argument which follows we will need an additional assumption that the number of punctures is even, if the genus $`g`$ is exactly $`3`$. For simplicity we will assume that the genus $`g=2k`$ is even. In the case of odd genus $`g=2k+1`$, we can use the same lantern but use the involution $`\rho _2`$ instead of $`\rho _1`$.

We want to apply the argument in the previous section and find $`4`$ involutions which generate the twist $`T_\alpha `$. In order to do that we need to find an embedding of the lantern $`S_{0,4}`$ into $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$ and extend all involutions to the whole surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$.

The Figure 5 shows one embedding of a lantern in our surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$. Note that the compliment of this lantern is still a connected surface of genus $`g3`$ with $`4`$ boundary components and $`b`$ punctures. The boundary components of this lantern are $`a_1=\alpha _{k+1}`$, $`a_2=\alpha _{k1}`$, $`a_3=\gamma _{k1}`$ and $`a_4=\gamma _k`$; and the middle curve $`x_1`$ is $`\alpha _k`$. Let denote $`S`$ denotes this embedding of a lantern in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

Let us notice that the involution $`\rho _1`$ ($`\rho _2`$ in the case of odd $`g`$) maps $`a_1`$ to $`x_1`$. Let $`\rho _3`$ denotes the conjugate of the involution $`\rho _1`$ (or $`\rho _2`$) with $`T_{x_1}`$. This gives us two of the four involutions needed to express $`T_{a_4}=T_{\gamma _k}`$.

The compliment of the lantern is a surface $`S_1`$ of genus $`g3`$ with $`4`$ boundary components and $`b`$ punctures.

On a surface $`S_1^{}`$ (of genus $`g3`$ with $`4`$ boundary components) there exists an involution $`\stackrel{~}{J}_{12}`$ which preserves the two boundary components $`a_3`$ and $`a_4`$ and switches the other two. Moreover, we can arrange that this involution has $`2(g3)`$ fixed points on the surface $`S_1^{}`$. We can find an invariant set (under the action of the involution $`\stackrel{~}{J}_{12}`$) of $`b`$ points/punctures $`S_1^{}`$, here we use the condition that $`g>3`$ if $`b`$ is odd, which implies that there exist a finite $`\stackrel{~}{J}_{12}`$ invariant set with arbitrary number of points. This allows us to define an involution $`\overline{J}_{12}`$ on the surface $`S_1`$, which preserves two of the boundary components and switches the other two. Finally, we can define an involution $`I_{12}`$ on the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$ by gluing together the involutions $`J_{12}`$ and $`\overline{J}_{12}`$ on the two parts of surface. In exactly the same way we can construct an involution $`I_{13}`$.

From the above construction it is clear that the twist $`T_{\gamma _k}`$ lies in the group $`G_1`$ generated by the involutions $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$, $`\rho _3`$, $`I_{12}`$ and $`I_{13}`$. Using conjugation with the element $`R`$ we can see that $`G_1`$ contains the twists around all curves $`\gamma _i`$-es.

By construction the involution $`I_{13}`$ takes the curve $`\alpha _{k+1}`$ to the curve $`\gamma _{k1}`$, i.e., we have

$$T_{\alpha _{k+1}}=I_{13}T_{\gamma _{k1}}I_{13}=I_{13}RT_{\gamma _k}R^1I_{13}G_1.$$

So far we have used $`5`$ involutions to generate a group $`G_1`$ which contains the twists around the curves $`\alpha _i`$-es and $`\gamma _i`$-es.

As shown on Figure 5, we can find a pair of pants (surface of genus $`0`$, with $`3`$ boundary components) on the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$, with boundary curves $`\alpha _k`$, $`\beta _{k+1}`$ and some curve $`x`$.

Using the same construction as above, we can find an involution $`I`$ on the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$ which interchanges the curves $`\alpha _k`$ and $`\beta _{k1}`$ and fixes the curve $`x`$. Moreover, since the compliment of a pair of pants is a surface of genus $`g21`$, we can chose $`I`$ so that it acts on the set of punctures as any involution in $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$ with up to $`3`$ fixed points.

###### Lemma 10.

The group $`G_2`$ generated by the involutions $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$, $`\rho _3`$, $`I_{12}`$, $`I_{13}`$ and $`I`$ contains $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$.

###### Proof.

We have already shown that $`G_1G_2`$ contains the Dehn twists around the curves $`\alpha _i`$-es and $`\gamma _i`$-es. Using the conjugation by the involution $`I`$, we can see that $`G_2`$ also contains the twist around $`\beta _{i1}`$. This allows us to apply corollary 8 and conclude that $`G_2`$ contains the subgroup $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }g,b)`$. ∎

Knowing that $`G_2`$ contains $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$, we only need to make sure that all permutations of the punctures can be obtained as elements of $`G_2`$ to conclude that $`G_2`$ is the full mapping class group.

###### Theorem 11 (6 involutions).

If $`g3`$, and $`b`$ is even if $`g=3`$, we can choose the involution $`I`$ such that the group generated by $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$, $`\rho _3`$, $`I_{12}`$, $`I_{13}`$ and $`I`$ is the whole mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$.

###### Proof.

To prove the theorem we only need to show that $`G_2`$ can be made to map surjectively onto the symmetric group $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$, because $`G_2`$ contains $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$. This is equivalent to showing that the full symmetric group $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$ can be generated by the involutions $`r_1=(1,b)(2,b1)(3,b2)\mathrm{}`$, $`r_2=(1,b1)(2,b2)\mathrm{}`$ corresponding to $`\rho _1`$ and $`\rho _2`$ and another involution which have less then $`4`$ fixed points.

###### Lemma 12.

The symmetric group $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$ is generated by $`r_1`$, $`r_2`$ and the involution $`r_3=(2,b1)(3,b2)`$.

###### Proof.

The group generated by $`r_i`$ contains the long cycle $`r_1r_2=(12\mathrm{}b)`$ and the transposition $`r_1r_3=(1,b)`$. These two elements generate the whole symmetric group, therefore the involutions $`r_i`$ generate $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$. ∎

Thus we have shown that if $`I`$ acts on the punctures as $`r_3`$ then the group generated by $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$, $`\rho _3`$, $`I_{12}`$, $`I_{13}`$ and $`I`$ is $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$, which finishes the proof of part c) of Theorem 1. ∎

### 3.3 Genus at least 5

Now we would like to refine the above argument and show that for large genus, we can avoid using the involution $`I`$, in order to generate the mapping class group. From now on we will assume that the genus $`g`$ of the surface is at least $`5`$ (and that the number of punctures is even in the case $`g=5`$).

We will start with the same lantern as above and define the involution $`I_{13}`$ in the same way. Now we know that the genus $`g`$ is at least $`5`$ which allows us to make the action of $`I_{13}`$ on the set of punctures the same as the action of any involution with up to $`3`$ fixed points. In particular we can make $`I_{13}`$ to act on the set of punctures as the involution $`r_3`$ used in the proof of Lemma 12.

We will slightly modify the construction involution $`I_{12}`$. The purpose of this modification is to make sure that $`I_{12}`$ sends some of the $`\alpha _i`$-es to some of the $`\beta _i`$-es, which will allow us to remove the involution $`I`$ for the generating set.

Let us glue to our lantern, two pairs of pants, to obtain a surface $`S_2`$ homeomorphic to a sphere with six boundary components. The first pair of pants is bounded by $`a_1=\alpha _{k+1}`$, $`\alpha _{k+2}`$ and $`\gamma _{k+1}`$. The boundary components of the second pair of pants are $`a_2=\alpha _{k1}`$, $`\beta _{k2}`$ and some curve $`x`$ (see Figure 6). From the figure is clear that the complement of $`S_2`$ in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$ is a connected surface $`S_3`$ of genus $`g5`$ with $`6`$ boundary components and $`b`$ punctures.

It is clear that we can extend the involution $`J_{12}`$ to a involution $`\widehat{J}_{12}`$ of the surface $`S_2`$ which takes $`\gamma _{k+1}`$ to $`\beta _{k2}`$ and $`\alpha _{k+2}`$ to $`x`$, and preserves the other two boundary components, $`a_3=\gamma _{k1}`$ and $`a_4=\gamma _k`$. As before, we can construct an involution $`\overline{J}_{12}`$ on the $`S_3`$ which preserves two of the boundary components and swaps the other $`4`$ components into two pairs. Gluing together $`\widehat{J}_{12}`$ and $`\overline{J}_{12}`$ gives us the involution $`I_{12}`$ of the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$.

###### Theorem 13 (5 involutions).

If $`g5`$ and $`b`$ is even if $`g=5`$, the group generated by $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$, $`\rho _3`$, $`I_{12}`$ and $`I_{13}`$ is the whole mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$.

###### Proof.

By construction the group $`G_3`$ generated by these $`5`$ involutions contains the Dehn twist around the curve $`\gamma _k`$ and using conjugation with powers of $`R`$ we have that $`G_3`$ contains the twists around all $`\gamma _i`$-es. We have constructed the involution $`I_{12}`$ in such a way that it sends one of the curves $`\gamma _i`$-es into some $`\beta _{k2}`$, also the involution $`I_{13}`$ sends some $`\gamma _i`$ to $`\alpha _{k+1}`$. This gives us that the Dehn twists $`T_{\beta _{k2}}`$ and $`T_{\alpha _{k+1}}`$ lie in the group $`G_3`$. Using the Corollary 8 we can conclude that $`G_3`$ contains the group $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$.

We also have that the group $`G_3`$ maps onto $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$ because its image contains the involutions $`r_1`$, $`r_2`$ and $`r_3`$, which proves that $`G_3`$ is the whole mapping class group. ∎

### 3.4 High genus

Now we want to refine the above argument and show that for high genus we do not need the involution $`I_{13}`$ in order to generate the mapping class group. Assume that the genus of the surface is at least $`7`$ and that the number of puncture points is even if $`g=7`$.

We will construct an involution $`I`$, such that in the group generated by $`I`$ and $`R`$ there are elements $`h_{12}`$ and $`h_{13}`$ such that

$$h_{12}a_1=a_2,h_{12}x_1=x_2;\text{and}h_{13}a_1=a_3,h_{13}x_1=x_3.$$

This would imply that the group generated by $`\rho _i`$ and $`I`$ contains the product of twists $`T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1=\rho _1\rho _3`$ and its conjugates

$$T_{x_2}T_{a_2}^1=h_{12}T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1h_{12}^1\text{and}T_{x_3}T_{a_3}^1=h_{13}T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1h_{13}^1$$

Therefore this group will contain the twist $`T_{a_4}=T_{\gamma _k}`$, and its conjugate $`T_{\alpha _{k+1}}`$. If $`I`$ also send some $`\gamma _i`$ into $`\beta _j`$, it will imply that the group generated by $`\rho _i`$ and $`I`$ contains $`\mathrm{Mod}(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{})`$, which allows us to conclude that it is almost the whole mapping class group.

The lanterns $`S`$ and $`R^2S`$ have a common boundary component $`a_1=R^2a_2`$ and their union is a surface $`S_4`$ homeomorphic to a sphere with $`6`$ boundary components. There exists an involution $`I`$ of $`S_4`$ which takes $`S`$ to $`R^2S`$ and acts on the boundary components as follows

$$Ia_1=R^2a_2=a_1Ia_2=R^2a_3Ia_3=R^2a_1Ia_4=R^2a_4$$

and therefore acts on the middle curves as

$$Ix_1=R^2x_2Ix_2=R^2x_3Ix_3=R^2x_1.$$

Therefore, for any extension $`\overline{I}`$ of $`I`$ to an involution of the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ we have:

$$T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1=\rho _1\rho _3T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1=R^2\overline{I}\rho _1\rho _3\overline{I}R^2T_{x_1}T_{a_1}^1=\overline{I}R^2\rho _1\rho _3R^2\overline{I}.$$

This shows that the group generated by $`\rho _i`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{I}`$ contains the twist $`T_{a_4}=T_{\gamma _k}`$ and by conjugation all twists around $`\alpha _i`$-es and $`\gamma _i`$-es. In order to conclude that this group is the whole mapping class group we need to make sure that $`\stackrel{~}{I}`$ sends some $`\gamma _i`$ to some $`\beta _i`$ and acts permutes the punctures in a nice way.

We will extend the surface $`S_4`$ by attaching two pairs of pants and obtain a surface $`S_5`$ homeomorphic to sphere with $`8`$ boundary components, such that its compliment $`S_6`$ in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b}`$ is connected.

One of the pair of pants will be bounded by $`\alpha _{k+3}=R^2a_1`$, $`\gamma _{k+3}`$ and $`\alpha _{k+4}`$, and the second one will have boundaries $`\gamma _{k1}=a_3=I(R^2a_1)`$, $`\beta _{k2}`$ and some curve $`x`$ (see Figure 7). The involution $`I`$ can be extended to $`S_5`$ with the property $`I\beta _{k2}=\gamma _{k+3}`$.

The compliment $`S_6`$ is a surface of genus $`g72`$ with $`8`$ boundary components and $`b`$ punctures. Using the arguments from the previous sections it can be seen that there exists an involution $`\stackrel{~}{I}`$ on $`S_6`$ which swaps the boundary components in $`4`$ pairs and acts on the punctures as the involution $`r_3`$444Here we use that we can find an involution $`\stackrel{~}{I}`$ of $`S_6`$ with $`s=2(g7)+2`$ fixed points. The number $`s2`$ is greater than the number of fixed points of $`r_3`$, which is either $`2`$ or $`3`$.. Let $`J`$ be the involution obtained by gluing together $`I`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{I}`$.

###### Theorem 14 (4 involutions).

If $`g7`$ for $`b`$ even and $`g>7`$ for $`b`$ odd, the group generated by $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$, $`\rho _3`$ and $`J`$ is the whole mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$.

###### Proof.

Let $`G_5`$ be the group generated by these $`4`$ involutions. As explained above, this group contains the twist $`T_{a_k}=T_{\gamma _k}`$, and therefore the twists around all curves $`\alpha _i`$, $`\beta _i`$ and $`\gamma _i`$ because all these curves lie in the orbit of $`\gamma _k`$ under the group generated by $`I`$ and $`R`$. This allows us to apply Corollary 12 and conclude that $`G_5`$ contains $`\mathrm{Mod}^0(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{g,b})`$. By construction this group also maps onto $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$, because its image contains the involution $`r_1`$, $`r_2`$ and $`r_3`$, therefore the group $`G_5`$ is the whole mapping class group. ∎

###### Remark 15.

The symmetric group $`\mathrm{Sym}_b`$ can be generated by the involutions $`r_1`$, $`r_2`$ and an other involution with $`1`$ fixed point if $`b=4k+3`$, which shows that Theorem 14 can be extended to the case $`g=7`$ and $`b=4k+3`$. If $`b=4k+1`$ this is not possible because every involution with $`1`$ fixed point is even. However, we believe that if one slightly modify the action of $`\rho _2`$ on the disk $`D`$ and make $`\rho _2`$ acts on punctures with $`3`$ fixed points, it is possible to obtain that $`\mathrm{Mod}_{7,b}`$ is generated by $`4`$ involutions for all values of $`b`$.

### 3.5 Genus 3 and odd number of punctures

Finally we will sketch the case of genus $`3`$ with odd number of punctures. In this case it is not possible to extend the pair swap involutions $`J_{12}`$ and $`J_{23}`$ to involutions of the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{3,b}`$. Therefore, in order to generate the twist $`T_\alpha `$ we need $`6`$ involutions (one of which is $`\rho _1`$). We also need $`2`$ more involutions which move some curve $`\alpha `$ to some curve $`\beta `$ and $`\gamma `$, respectively. These, together with the involution $`\rho _2`$, give us a generating set consisting of $`9`$ involutions.

###### Theorem 16 (9 involutions).

If $`g=3`$ and $`b`$ is odd, the mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}`$ can be generated by $`9`$ involutions.

This finishes the prof of the last part of Theorem 1.

###### Remark 17.

One can try to find a small generating set of the group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0`$ consisting of involutions. It is not clear that this group is generated by involutions – if the number of punctures $`b`$ is more than $`2g+2`$ then there are no involutions in the group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0`$. It is easy to see that if $`g3`$ and $`b2(g2)`$ then the group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0`$ is generated by finitely many involutions. It is interesting to see for which values of $`g`$ and $`b`$ is this group generated by finitely many involutions and what is the smallest number of involutions needed to generate this group.

The constructions used in the prof of Theorem 1 can be generalized to show that if $`b2(g2)`$, the group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0`$ can be generated by $`Cg`$ involutions for some constant $`C`$, and that there is a function $`f(\lambda )`$ for $`\lambda <2`$ such that if $`b\lambda g`$ then $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0`$ the group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0`$ can be generated by $`f(\lambda )`$ involutions. It is interesting whether there exists a constant $`C`$ such that the mapping class group $`\mathrm{Mod}_{g,b}^0`$ can be generated by $`C`$ involutions for all values of $`g`$ and $`b`$ such that this group is generated by involutions.

Martin Kassabov:
Department of Mathematics
University of Alberta
632 Central Academic Building
Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2G1
Canada
E-mail: kassabov@aya.yale.edu


text:
# (Phys. Rev. Lett., in press) Kinetic hindrance during the initial oxidation of Pd(100) at ambient pressures

## Abstract

The oxidation of the Pd(100) surface at oxygen pressures in the 10-6 to 103 mbar range and temperatures up to 1000 K has been studied in-situ by surface x-ray diffraction (SXRD) The results provide direct structural information on the phases present in the surface region and on the kinetics of the oxide formation. Depending on the $`(T,p)`$ environmental conditions we either observe a thin $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ surface oxide or the growth of a rough, poorly ordered bulk oxide film of PdO predominantly with (001) orientation. By either comparison to the surface phase diagram from first-principles atomistic thermodynamics or by explicit time-resolved measurements we identify a strong kinetic hindrance to the bulk oxide formation even at temperatures as high as 675 K.

Many technologically important materials containing transition metals are intended for use under oxygen pressures much higher than those of the high or ultra high vacuum (UHV) environment typically employed in surface science related investigations of the structural, electronic, and chemical properties of these materials. As the surface properties of such materials may be significantly altered by the oxidation or corrosion over00 ; hendriksen02 ; stampfl02  occurring at oxygen pressures difficult to achieve in conventional UHV experiments, it is disconcerting that most of our present atomic-scale knowledge derives from such experiments or from theoretical treatments which neglect the surrounding gas-phase. Despite the pressure limitations a few such experiments and theoretical simulations have in recent years significantly advanced our atomic-scale understanding of the initial oxidation of metal surfaces, demonstrating e.g. how radically a surface may change its structure and functionality under conditions appropriate for high pressure oxidation catalysis over00 ; hendriksen02  and how the growth of bulk oxide films is often preceded by the formation of few-atomic-layer-thin so-called surface oxides of complex geometrical structure and with properties often unknown from the bulk oxides carlisle00 ; lundgren02 ; todorova03 . The unexpected and complex behavior revealed by these experiments emphasizes the need for further in-situ investigations of the structural, electronic and chemical surface properties at higher oxygen pressures but maintaining the accuracy known from UHV studies - in particular to also address the kinetics of oxidation and corrosion processes.

A main reason for the lack of in-situ investigations has been the scarcity of appropriate experimental techniques that provide the aspired atomically-resolved information at high pressure in situ, or theories that explicitly include the effect of the surrounding gas-phase. Recently enforced attempts to overcome this limitation have on the theoretical side led to the development of first-principles atomistic thermodynamics, where electronic structure theory calculations are combined with thermodynamic considerations to address the surface structure and composition of a metal surface in equilibrium with arbitrary environments (See Refs. reuter02 ; li03  and references therein). On the experimental side the state-of-the-art is, however, currently still characterized by either traditional ex-situ atomic-scale investigations over00 , or new high pressure techniques like high pressure scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) that still lack atomic resolution hendriksen02 .

In this Letter we demonstrate how precise knowledge of the $`(T,p)`$-conditions under which such various oxides, -bulk and surface-, exist can be obtained by means of in-situ surface X-ray diffraction (SXRD) measurements. We have chosen to study Pd as the metal is a highly active oxidation catalyst of hydrocarbons under oxygen-rich conditions ziauddin97 . Still it is unknown whether Pd or PdO is the active phase veser99 . Monitoring the oxidation of the Pd(100) surface over the pressure range from 10-6 to 103 mbar and up to sample temperatures of 1000 K, we observe the formation of both the previously characterized $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ surface oxide todorova03  and the transform to three-dimensional bulk oxide films. Framing our experimental data with the equilibrium results from atomistic thermodynamics calculations we can identify kinetically inhibited bulk oxide growth even at temperatures as high as 675 K. Under suitable conditions this hindered transformation to the bulk oxide can be followed on a time scale currently accessible to the experiment, opening the door to time-resolved atomic-scale studies of the initial oxidation process of metal surfaces at ambient pressures.

The SXRD measurements were performed at the Angstrøm Quelle Karlsruhe (ANKA) beamline in Germany beamline . A photon energy of 10.5 keV was used and the experiments were conducted in a six-circle diffraction mode. The crystal basis used to describe the (H K L) diffraction is a tetragonal basis set (a1,a2,a3), with a1 and a2 lying in the surface plane and of length equal to the nearest neighbor surface distance a/$`\sqrt{2}`$, and a3 out-of-plane with length a (a(Pd) = 3.89Å). The UHV x-ray diffraction chamber allowed partial oxygen pressures of up to 103 mbar, and the temperature was estimated from a thermocouple mounted behind the transferable sample holder, resulting in an uncertainty of the sample temperature of $`\pm 25`$ K. The sample and the cleaning procedure are identical to the one described in an earlier UHV study todorova03 . The oxide films grown were found to be metastable on the time scale of hours under UHV conditions, and could readily be desorbed at 1175 K.

The atomistic thermodynamics results are based on density-functional theory (DFT) calculations performed within the Full-Potential Linear Augmented Plane Wave (FP-LAPW) scheme blaha99  using the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) perdew96  for the exchange-correlation functional. The supercell setup and the highly converged basis-set basis  have been detailed in our preceding study todorova03 . To determine the range of $`(T,p)`$-conditions in which this surface oxide would represent the thermodynamically most stable state, we evaluate the Gibbs free energy of adsorption reuter02 ; li03  and compare it to other possible states of the system, like the reported $`p(2\times 2)`$ on-surface phase with O in fcc sites zheng00 ; todorova03  or the tetragonal PdO bulk oxide rogers71 .

Figure 1 depicts a SXRD K-scan at a sample temperature of 575 K and partial oxygen pressure of $`10^3`$ mbar. From the inset showing the reciprocal space as observed with UHV low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) it is obvious that the two observed peaks in the SXRD scan arise from the $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ surface oxide. The width of the rocking scan at the (0.6 0.8 0.3) reflection is (0.13) equal to the substrate rocking scan in the minimum of the crystal truncation rod (CTR) before dosing, allowing us to conclude that the surface oxide domains extend over complete substrate terraces – in agreement with our previous STM results todorova03 .

The out-of-plane diffraction from the (0.6 0.8 L) reflection under the same temperature and pressure conditions is shown as an L-scan in the top section of Fig 2a. The smooth decrease of the intensity and the absence of sharper peaks with increasing L is a clear fingerprint of a single diffracting layer, in agreement with the recent finding todorova03  that the $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ surface oxide consists of a single PdO(101) layer adsorbed on the Pd(001) surface. The observed diffraction changes significantly as the oxygen pressure and temperature is increased to 103 mbar and 675 K, respectively, as shown in Fig. 2b. Instead of a smoothly decreasing diffraction intensity with increasing L, a peak is now observed at L=0.74. Since the reciprocal lattice is defined by the lattice constant of Pd, this peak corresponds to a lattice distance of a(Pd)/0.74 = 5.26 Å, which is very close to the $`c`$-lattice constant of bulk PdO, namely 5.33 Å. Thus, we observe bulk-like diffraction from PdO, indicating the formation of several layers of PdO on the Pd(001) surface. Interestingly, we also note that no diffracted intensity is observed at L=0 anymore demonstrating that the $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ surface oxide has completely disappeared from the surface, i.e. the initially formed PdO(101) plane does not continue to grow but instead restructures. This is in agreement with our DFT calculations identifying the (101) orientation as a higher-energy facet of PdO todorova03 , and also with experimental observations on the preferred growth direction of PdO mcbride91 . Further, since no finite thickness oscillations are observed along the rod, the observed oxide film must be rough, as has also been reported in a recent high-pressure STM study of this surface hendriksen03 .

A more detailed analysis of our diffraction data allows us to even draw some more quantitative conclusions about the properties of the grown oxide. We observe no change in the overall shape of the (1 1 L) CTR upon oxidation. Without apparent relaxation, we therefore attribute the change in integrated intensity at the minimum (1 1 1) to a change in surface roughness. Estimating the latter within the $`\beta `$-model robinson88  yields approximately root-mean-square roughness of 10 Å, whereas the measured width of $`0.1`$ of the L=0.74 peak indicates an average film thickness of around $`3.89`$ Å/0.1 = $`40`$ Å. The poor order of the formed oxide fringe is further reflected in the 1 width of the rocking scan at the L=0.74 peak, indicating either an enhanced mosaic spread, or a small domain size of the PdO at the surface, which would comply with the previous STM observations by Hendriksen et al. hendriksen03 . This poor order is probably also reflected by our inability to detect reflections from the O sublattice. In fact, the (0.6 0.8 0.74) peak corresponds to the (1 0 1) reflection in PdO bulk coordinates. In addition to this reflection we also found the (103), (200) and the (202), and equivalents when rotating by 90 degrees. By observing that this indexing is similar to the selection rule for a bcc lattice for which the sum of all indices must be even, we conclude that what we observe is the Pd sublattice in PdO, which forms a distorted bcc lattice. The orientation and geometry of the ordered domains are then predominantly PdO(001)$``$Pd(100).

Having thus established the means to distinguish and characterize the formation of either surface or thicker oxide films at higher O partial pressures from the diffraction signals, we may in a straightforward way construct a diagram showing which phase we measure under which $`(T,p)`$-conditions. The result is shown in Fig. 3, covering the whole range of now experimentally accessible gas pressures from 10-6 mbar to ambient pressure. Most strikingly, the $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ structure is found under a wide variety of conditions – even at an oxygen pressure of 103 mbar and a sample temperature of 575 K we still observe only the formation of this surface oxide and no indications for the growth of a thicker oxide film on the time scale of 1 hr currently accessible to the experiment.

As a first step to understand this data we proceed by comparing it with the surface phase diagram obtained by DFT and atomistic thermodynamics. Figure 3b gives the corresponding $`(T,p)`$-diagram, showing which phase would be most stable on the basis of our DFT data, if the surface were in full thermodynamic equilibrium with the surrounding oxygen gas phase. We immediately stress that although state-of-the-art, some approximations like e.g. the present treatment of vibrational contributions to the free energies, as well as the uncertainty introduced by finite basis set and the employed exchange-correlation functional may well allow for errors in the phase boundaries of the order of $`\pm 100`$ K and (depending on temperature) of up to several orders in pressure reuter02 ; li03 .

Taking this into account we notice a gratifying overall agreement between theory and experiment in this wide range of environmental conditions. At a closer look there is, however, a notable difference that is beyond the uncertainties underlying both the experimental and theoretical approach: the experimental observation of the $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ surface oxide in the top left corner of the drawn diagram, i.e. at lower temperatures and high pressures. Since the central assumption of theory, which predicts the stability of the bulk oxide under such conditions, is the full thermodynamic equilibrium between surface and gas phase, we interpret this difference as reflecting kinetic limitations to the growth of the bulk oxide under such conditions. This is also apparent even within the experimental data set alone. If the surface was fully equilibrated with the environment, the evaluated phase boundaries would have to follow lines of constant oxygen chemical potential, which is the single determining quantity if thermodynamics applies. In the drawn $`(T,p)`$-plots such lines of constant chemical potential would always be parallel to the phase boundaries as drawn in the theoretical diagram, cf. Fig. 3b, which the bulk/surface oxide boundary drawn in Fig. 3a (even considering all uncertainties) is clearly not. Similarly we also understand the experimental observation of the $`p(2\times 2)`$ adsorbate phase, which according to theory is never a thermodynamically stable phase, as a sign of kinetic hindrance to the formation of the $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ phase. Correspondingly, we have also marked in the theoretical plot the area, where the $`p(2\times 2)`$ would turn out more stable than the clean surface, if the surface oxide can not form.

Under suitable conditions we can even follow the kinetically limited transition from surface to bulk oxide within the time resolution of our current experiment. This is illustrated in Fig. 4 showing how the diffraction signal at 675 K and $`p=50`$ mbar slowly transforms at every consecutive scan from the one characteristic for the surface oxide phase, cf. Fig. 2a, to the one of the bulk oxide film, cf. Fig. 2b. Obviously, this transformation will be faster for higher temperatures, so that we immediately observe the bulk oxide, or eventually so slow at lower temperatures that we can no longer measure the transition within the time frame open to our experiment. In passing we finally note that these clear kinetic limitations at time scales of 1 hr even at technologically relevant temperatures as high as 675 K, are somewhat at variance with the well-known theoretical notion by King and coworkers suggesting that oxide growth should immediately set in as soon as it is thermodynamically possible carlisle00b .

In conclusion we have studied the oxidation of the Pd(100) surface from $`10^6`$ mbar to ambient pressure by in-situ SXRD. Depending on the environmental conditions we observe either the formation of the $`(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R27^{}`$ surface oxide (essentially a well-ordered layer of PdO(101)), or the growth of $`40`$ Å poorly ordered and rough PdO bulk oxide, predominantly with PdO(001) orientation. The range of $`(T,p)`$-conditions where we measure the surface oxide is surprisingly large, and goes for $`T<600`$ K even up to ambient pressures. Comparing with the theoretical surface phase diagram from first-principles atomistic thermodynamics we interpret this as reflecting a kinetic hindrance to the formation of the bulk oxide, which is clearly an activated process due to the involved massive restructuring at the surface. Such kinetic limitations in the initial oxide formation process have hitherto barely been addressed, but could be crucial for understanding high pressure applications like e.g. oxidation catalysis. Our measurements demonstrate the usefulness of SXRD for the study of the oxidation process of almost any material in such high pressure environments, providing the aspired atomically resolved structural information of any thin film or nano-based structure exposing its surface to an ambient working atmosphere.

This work was financially supported by the Swedish Natural Science Council and the DFG-priority program “Realkatalyse”.