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# Physical Mechanism of the 𝑑→𝑑+𝑖𝑠 Transition

## Abstract

We discuss the basic physical mechanism of the $`dd+is`$ transition, which is the currently accepted explanation for the results of tunneling experiments into $`ab`$ planes . Using the first-order perturbation theory, we show that the zero-bias states drive the transition. We present various order-of-magnitude estimates and consistency checks that support this picture.

It has now been firmly established  that the order parameter in cuprate superconductors has a $`d`$-wave symmetry. An inhomogeneity may therefore scatter a quasiparticle between directions that experience opposite signs of the order parameter. This effect is strongest for specular reflection off the 110 surface. Here the sign of the order parameter along every quasiclassical trajectory changes sign upon reflection (see Fig. 1). As a consequence of this and the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem , the Andreev equation along each trajectory has a normalizable eigenstate of zero energy . These all contribute to the local density of states, and are the source of the zero-bias anomaly observed in tunneling experiments .

The tunneling data  show that the zero-bias peak splits as the temperature is lowered below 1 or 2 K. This splitting is probably due to an additional symmetry-breaking transition, most likely $`dd+is`$ transition where a subdominant $`s`$-wave order parameter appears close to the surface with a $`\pi /2`$ phase shift compared to the dominant $`d`$-wave. Such a transition had been anticipated theoretically  prior to the experiment. Subsequent calculations of the surface phase diagram  included the effects of the surface roughness, and gave results that are in good agreement with the experimental data.

These calculations are done within the Eilenberger approach to superconductivity , which uses the quasiclassical approximation of the local Green function. This (so-called Eilenberger) function then satisfies a transport-like equation. Unfortunately, this approach is very formal, so it hides, rather than explains, the physics behind the calculations, especially when the equations are solved numerically in the imaginary-time domain . As new experimental results  call the $`d+is`$ interpretation into question, it is even more important to have a direct physical understanding of the transition.

We believe the Andreev quasiclassical picture , which deals with single-particle states rather than local Green functions, contributes to such understanding by showing how the energy costs and benefits of the $`dd+is`$ transition are distributed among the degrees of freedom in the system. As we mentioned above, due to the presence of the 110 surface, there are many zero-bias states (ZBSs) in the spectrum. The main purpose of this paper is to show that these states drive the transition.

Our approach was inspired by the study of a weak-coupling BCS superconductor modeled by a Fermi sea with an attractive local four-fermion interaction

$$V\psi _{}^{}(𝐫)\psi _{}^{}(𝐫)\psi _{}(𝐫)\psi _{}(𝐫);$$

$`V<0`$ is the coupling constant. One decouples this interaction by the Hubbard-Stratonovich (HS) transformation, which introduces the pairing field $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. The instability to superconductivity can then be detected by going to $`T=0`$ and looking at the energy change due to the opening of the gap $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$. The occupied single-particle states lower their energy as $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|^2\mathrm{ln}|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$ while the system raises its energy by $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|^2/(V)`$, which is the extra term in the hamiltonian introduced by the HS transformation. Since the non-analytic decrease wins over the analytic increase as $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|0`$, an arbitrarily weak attractive $`V`$ will, at low enough temperature, make the system superconducting. The decrease of the single-particle energies is non-analytic due to contribution from the states initially close to the Fermi surface. We conclude, therefore, that these low-energy states drive the BCS transition.

A similar argument works for the $`dd+is`$ transition. If there is an attractive interaction in the $`s`$-wave channel with strength $`V_s<0`$, we may use the HS transformation to introduce the $`s`$-wave component of the pairing field $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ on top of the dominant $`\mathrm{\Delta }_d`$, leading to an extra positive term in the hamiltonian $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|^2/(V_s)`$, just as in the BCS case. When the “$`is`$” component appears close to the surface, the shape of the order parameter along the trajectory in Fig. 1 changes, as shown in Fig. 2. To study the instability to the transition, we again look at $`T=0`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|0`$. The energy of the ZBSs ***We shall abuse the terminology and call these states ZBSs even after their energy has been shifted away from zero. to the lowest, that is first, order in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ then changes to

$$E_\theta [\mathrm{\Delta }_s]=\pm \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}𝑑\rho 2|f(\theta ,\rho )|^2\text{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }_s,$$
(1)
where the upper (lower) sign corresponds to the up- (down-)moving trajectory. Here

$$\left(\begin{array}{c}f(\theta ,\rho )\\ g(\theta ,\rho )\end{array}\right)$$

is a solution of the Andreev equation along the trajectory in the direction $`\theta `$ at the point $`\rho `$. For the ZBSs, $`g(\theta ,\rho )=if(\theta ,\rho )`$. At $`T=0`$, only the down-moving ZBSs will be occupied, and their energy will decrease linearly. It turns out  that the energy changes of the remaining states (non-ZBSs) cancel each other out. Thus, upon the appearance of small $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|`$, the energy of the occupied (zero-bias) states is lowered linearly, which, for small enough $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|`$, wins over the quadratic increase of the HS term for arbitrarily weak $`s`$-wave attraction $`V_s`$. It follows that the transition $`dd+is`$ is driven by the ZBSs.

For YBCO, the experiments give $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_d|30`$ meV (amplitude) and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|1`$ meV, so we assume the first-order perturbation formula (1) holds up to the experimental value of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|`$. We can then calculate $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|`$ by minimizing the energy of the system. When we sum over all occupied ZBSs, we find that the energy per CuO plane per unit length of the surface is

$$E[s(x)]=\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}𝑑x\frac{s^2(x)}{(V_s)}+\underset{\pi /2}{\overset{0}{}}\frac{k_F}{2\pi }𝑑\theta \mathrm{cos}\theta E_\theta [s(x)],$$
(2)
where $`s(x)=\text{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }_s(x)`$. Since $`s`$ extends into the bulk only as far as the $`d`$-wave coherence length $`\xi \mathrm{}v_F/|\mathrm{\Delta }_d|`$, we can estimate

$$E[s]\frac{s^2}{(V_s)}\xi k_Fs,$$
(3)
which gives

$$s\frac{(V_s)k_F}{\xi }.$$
(4)
The experimental values $`s1`$ meV, $`k_F1`$ Å-1, and $`\xi 10`$ Å give us $`|V_s|10`$ meV Å2. (Since the CuO plane is two-dimensional, $`V_s`$ has dimension $`EL^2`$ rather than $`EL^3`$.)

The full variational calculation is presented in . We only remark here that the solution of the variational equation obtained from (2) agrees with the contribution to $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ from the occupied ZBSs in the gap equation

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{ZBS}(x)=i(V_s)\underset{\pi /2}{\overset{0}{}}\frac{k_F}{2\pi }𝑑\theta 2|f(\theta ,x/\mathrm{cos}\theta )|^2,$$
(5)
that is, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ZBS}(x)=is(x)`$, which shows the internal consistency of the picture. Unlike the BCS gap equation, (5) is an explicit formula for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ZBS}(x)`$; there is no $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ZBS}`$ on the right-hand side. The physical reason for this is that within the first-order perturbation theory, it is only the sign of $`s(x)`$ (and not its magnitude) that determines which ZBSs are occupied.

Our argument has shown only that $`d+is`$ is the favorable state at $`T=0`$. To see what happens at finite temperatures, we need to minimize the free energy $`F[s(x)]`$, which is obtained from (2) when we replace $`E_\theta [s(x)]`$ by $`(T)\mathrm{ln}(1+\mathrm{exp}(E_\theta [s(x)]/T))`$, making the lowest order quadratic in $`s(x)`$. The order-of-magnitude estimate gives

$$F[s]\left(\frac{\xi }{(V_s)}\frac{k_F}{T}\right)s^2+O(s^4).$$
(6)
Hence, the system is unstable to the transition to the $`d+is`$ state even at finite temperatures. The transition temperature is

$$T_s\frac{(V_s)k_F}{\xi },$$
(7)
which is of the same order of magnitude as $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|_{T=0}`$ (see (4)).

Now we shall go back to $`T=0`$ and observe that the presence of the $`is`$ component induces a twist in the phase $`\phi `$ of the order parameter from $`\pi `$ to 0 for an up-moving trajectory and from 0 to $`\pi `$ for a down-moving one, see Fig. 2. This twist implies a current flowing down; its density at the point $`\rho `$ of a quasiclassical trajectory labeled by $`\theta `$ is equal to

$$j(\theta ,\rho )=\frac{e}{2m}n^{(1d)}_\rho \phi (\theta ,\rho ),$$
(8)
where $`n^{(1d)}k_F/\pi `$ is the density of the one-dimensional Fermi sea ($`k_F`$ is the Fermi wave vector). Current flowing down is also expected from our previous argument that showed that only the down-moving ZBSs are occupied. Each of them contributes

$$j(\theta ,\rho )=ev_F(|f(\theta ,\rho )|^2+|g(\theta ,\rho )|^2)$$
(9)
to the current density at a given point; it turns out again  that the contributions from the non-ZBSs cancel. In both approaches, we get the total current by summing up contributions from all the quasiclassical trajectories. The result is

$$I=\frac{ev_Fk_F}{4\pi }$$
(10)
per CuO plane in both calculations. To get an order-of-magnitude estimate, we take $`v_F10^5`$ m/s and $`k_F10^{10}`$ m-1, so $`I10^5`$ A. The agreement shows that all the current is carried by the ZBSs. It is important that not only the magnitude, but also the direction of the current, agrees in both calculations. The reason for this agreement is that the ZBSs moving in the direction of the current are shifted down in energy and thus occupied, whereas those moving against the current are shifted up and unoccupied. We wish to stress that this is exactly opposite to the sign of the Doppler shift: the states moving along the current would be Doppler-shifted up, whereas those moving against the current would be Doppler-shifted down.

In conclusion, the first-order perturbation theory shows that the $`dd+is`$ transition is driven by the ZBSs and that the transition temperature is finite and of the order $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_s|_{T=0}`$. The ZBSs that are being pushed down by the $`is`$ component carry surface current; they are not  Doppler-shifted by this current.

I want to give special thanks to M. Stone for suggesting the problem and discussing it with me. I have also benefited from discussions with H. Aubin, L. H. Greene, A. J. Leggett, D. E. Pugel, R. Ramazashvili, M. Turlakov, and H. Westfahl. I would like to thank C. M. Elliott for proofreading the manuscript. The project was supported by the grant NSF-DMR-98-17941.


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# The Charge Transfer Efficiency and Calibration of WFPC2

## 1 Introduction

Shortly after the installation of WFPC2 on Hubble Space Telescope, it was discovered that the camera suffered from a charge transfer inefficiency, causing stars at the top of each chip to lose 10-15% of their charge while being read out. This effect was significantly reduced, although not eliminated, by cooling the camera from $`76^{}`$C to $`88^{}`$C. Holtzman et al. (1995, hereafter H95) gave initial estimates of the charge loss, and observed that it appeared to be related to the background level. Whitmore & Heyer (1997) quantified the background dependence, and also detected a count dependence. Furthermore, a charge transfer loss was also seen in the X direction, which was also characterized by Whitmore & Heyer (1997).

A further complication arose when it was discovered that the Y and possibly X losses were growing with time, a dependence characterized by Whitmore (1998) and most likely caused by radiation damage. The most recent paper on this topic from the STScI WFPC2 group is Whitmore, Heyer, & Casertano (1999, hereafter WHC99), who combine the two earlier results and have a longer time baseline (through February 1999) with which to determine the time dependence.

In addition to these studies, there have been two recent independent determinations of the CTE loss. Stetson (1998, hereafter S98), using DAOPHOT reduction of the Omega Cen and NGC 2419 calibration fields, derived a calibration that produced similar results to Whitmore & Heyer (1997) but finding no significant time dependence (+0.0012 magnitudes per year for the typical star). Saha, Lambert, & Prosser (2000, hereafter SLP00), in a paper detailing errors in DoPHOT Cepheid reductions, found significantly different results from previous studies in their reductions of the NGC 2419 field: no detectable XCTE loss and no count dependence of the YCTE. The presence of very different conclusions as to the dependencies of the CTE loss leads to the uncomfortable possibility that the amount of the CTE loss is package-dependent, as aperture photometry, DAOPHOT, and DoPHOT reductions have produced different results. As one would hope that the stellar brightnesses scale linearly from package to package, the most likely cause of such a dependence would be in the background calculation. DoPHOT backgrounds, especially, contain a significant amount of starlight and thus it is possible that the lack of an obvious count dependence in the DoPHOT CTE solution was caused by the presence of a count dependence in the background level.

In addition to the CTE effect, a position-independent charge loss was detected and dubbed the “long-short anomaly” because it was first seen as a difference in the magnitudes of a star in short and long exposures. Casertano & Mutchler (1998, hereafter CM98) determined this effect to be a function of the number of counts rather than the exposure time through an analysis of the NGC 2419 calibration field, and determined a correction formula. SLP00 found evidence of such a position-independent correction in their F814W observations of the same data, but not in the F555W observations. S98 found no evidence of a position-independent anomaly in any of his data, despite also using the NGC 2419 calibration data.

Finally, the validity of the H95 calibrations have been called into question by a number of studies. In addition to the “long” zero points measured by Kelson et al. (1996), Saha et al. (1996), Hill et al. (1998), and others, which were all about 0.05 magnitudes fainter than the H95 zero points, S98 and SLP00 have determined zero point corrections using their CTE solutions.

This paper uses HSTphot (Dolphin 2000) reductions of the Omega Centauri and NGC 2419 standard fields in an attempt to address the unresolved issues from the studies mentioned above. At the very least, should the CTE loss be determined to be package-dependent, it will be necessary to provide a solution that is valid for HSTphot reductions. However, a unified explanation of the different effects is preferred and will be sought. This study also provides something of a “trial by fire” for HSTphot, given the large amount of data (over 1000) images that were reduced, primarily non-interactively.

## 2 Observations and Reduction

As with S98, this study was based on observations of the Omega Cen and NGC 2419 calibration fields. The Omega Cen data comprise the bulk of the observations and span a wide baseline of epoch (January 1994 through March 2000), use all of the non-UV filters, and contain observations at both gain settings and both temperatures. However, nearly all of these data contain little or no background, so the NGC 2419 field (also used by S98 and SLP00) was added to improve the background baseline.

### 2.1 Ground-based Data

The ground-based Omega Cen data were those of Walker (1994), with stars fainter than V=21.0 eliminated because of the large scatter in the data at the faint end. The ground-based NGC 2419 data were provided by Peter Stetson, in which a similar faint-end cut had already been made. The faint cuts in both data sets, in addition to reducing the amount of low-quality data in the fits, avoid the photometry bias that is found just above the cutoff. As the WFPC2 data are generally deeper than the ground-based data, they also avoid this effect.

Given the superior resolution of HST over ground-based telescopes, it is not surprising that many of the ground-based stars were resolved into multiple star systems when observed by HST. In order to eliminate errors from this effect, all WFPC2 stars that fell within 0.8 arcsec of the ground-based standard star were combined into a single star. If the combined magnitude was more than 0.05 magnitudes brighter than that of the brightest constituent star, the standard star was thrown out. Otherwise, the star was kept, with the combined magnitude used for the WFPC2 magnitude in the analysis. If at least 25% of all images with detections of a star contained bright companions, the star was eliminated from the analysis altogether. (In other cases, it was assumed that a cosmic ray was responsible for the second detection, as no cosmic ray cleaning could be made.) In this process, 29 Omega Cen stars and 13 NGC 2419 stars were eliminated.

For the remaining stars, the expected WFPC2 flight system magnitudes were calculated using the H95 zero points and color terms with the equation

$$\text{WFPC2}=\text{SMAG}+Z_{FG}ZFST_{1,FS}\text{SCOL}T_{2,FS}\text{SCOL}^2,$$
(1)
where the values are defined as in H95. For this analysis, it is assumed that the color terms from H95 are correct, a necessary assumption given that these data do not contain a range of colors sufficient to re-calibrate the color terms. However, filter-dependent corrections are determined for the zero points.

### 2.2 WFPC2 Data

WFPC2 observations of the Omega Cen and NGC 2419 standard fields were obtained from the STScI archive, using on-the-fly calibration to process the images using the best available calibration data at the time of retrieval. The Omega Cen data consist of 795 images, mostly in the standard filters (117 F439W, 271 F555W, 88 F675W, and 235 F814W), with additional images reduced but discarded because of insufficient overlap with the ground-based field. Additionally, data in secondary filters were also obtained (8 F380W, 8 F410M, 4 F450W, 6 F467M, 9 F547M, 7 F569W, 13 F606W, 2 F622W, 9 F702W, 7 F785LP, 2 F791W, 2 F850LP, and 4 F1042M). U observations, although available, were omitted because of the lack of ground-based comparison photometry in the Walker (1994) data.

The NGC 2419 data consist of 51 images (7 F555W and 44 F814W). F300W images were also available for NGC 2419, but were omitted in this analysis due to the lack of interest in calibrating F300W (as per the recommendation of H95). In the interest of producing the best possible calibrations, the chips containing NGC 2419 itself (WFC4 for five of the images; WFC2 for the remainder) were omitted from the analysis because of the higher crowding. This caused a mean magnitude offset of $``$0.02 magnitudes, which is reasonable in crowded field photometry but undesirable in a calibration study, especially since the NGC 2419 data provide most of the high-background points.

Photometry was made using the usual HSTphot recipe, except that cosmic ray cleaning was omitted because the images were reduced individually. Aperture corrections were made to correct to the 0.5 arcsec aperture of H95. In order to reduce the number of bad points in the analysis, all stars were required to have $`\chi 1.5`$ and $`0.3sharpness0.3`$ to be used in the calibration solution. Additionally, all stars near the WFPC2 saturation limit were removed, as were stars with fewer than 105 electrons, which contributed more noise than signal to the solution. In all, 843 images were used for the solution, producing a total of 58728 cleanly-fit stars that were matched to the standard stars.

### 2.3 Background

As noted in Section 1, the most likely explanation of the apparent package dependence of the CTE loss is that different photometry packages calculate the background differently. Specifically, any package that determines a background level close to the star will invariably measure the wings of the star as part of the background. The DoPHOT sky measurement, as made by Saha et al. (1996) and SLP00, is perhaps the most severe example of this effect, with its average sky pixel containing $``$0.2% of the star’s total light. HSTphot, which also determines sky values near the star (although not as close as DoPHOT), shows this dependence at a smaller level.

In an attempt to create as generally useful a CTE determination as possible (as well as to provide independent parameters for the solution), the count dependence of the background was solved and subtracted from the background levels before running the calibration solution. Because the background contamination is proportionally the most significant at low background levels, it was calculated using the low-background Omega Cen data only.

This dependence was determined to be chip-dependent, in that it was about an order of magnitude smaller in PC1 but the same in the three WFCs, wavelength-dependent (smallest for B and V), and temperature-dependent (slightly larger at cold temperature than at warm temperature). The correction equations and coefficients are not given here, since this result almost certainly will not apply to other software packages. For example, DoPHOT background levels have a factor of $`20`$ greater dependence on the number of counts than do HSTphot background levels.

Finally, as a negative background is a non-physical result of readout noise or bias errors on a very small background, all negative values were set to zero. The background and counts were converted to electrons by multiplying by the gain (7 or 14), and the background then softened according to S98’s procedure (background = $`\sqrt{1+N_{electrons}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}`$) to allow logarithms to be taken at zero background. For the remainder of this paper, $`counts`$ will refer to the number of electrons detected for a star, while $`background`$ will refer to the background level in electrons, so that the value of the gain is unimportant. If discussing values in DN rather than electrons, it will be made explicit.

## 3 Characterization

Before determining the CTE and zero point solution, some preliminary work needed to be done in order to constrain the form of the solution. It should be stressed that the constraints determined in this section are empirically determined from observed differences between WFPC2 and ground-based data, rather than based on any assumed physical model of the charge loss.

### 3.1 Position-Independent Corrections

The nature of the data in this present study - WFPC2 photometry with comparison ground-based photometry - permits a more direct study of the position-independent error (“long-short anomaly”) than what was given by CM98. The complete sample of 58728 stars was restricted to points with limited ranges of counts, background, and epoch, thus producing a relatively homogeneous data set that should have a common set of correction factors. To maximize the ability to determine the position-independent correction, the $`counts`$ were restricted to between 210 and 350, for which the average position-independent correction (based on CM98) should be about 0.23 magnitudes. The $`background`$ was required to be 3.5 or less, which would include the greatest amount of data. The differences between WFPC2 and ground-based magnitudes were then fit to the formula

$$\mathrm{\Delta }mag=c_0+c_1\frac{y}{800}+c_2\frac{x}{800}+\mathrm{\Delta }ZP.$$
(2)
($`\mathrm{\Delta }counts`$ could have been used equally well, as the next section demonstrates, with the same result produced.) $`\mathrm{\Delta }ZP`$ is the zero point correction from Section 4, and is of order 0.01-0.02 magnitudes, depending on filter and chip. (In the initial solution, the $`\mathrm{\Delta }ZP`$ term was omitted, producing a result less than 0.01 magnitudes different from the one below. However, to minimize systematic errors, the term was added and the solution redone after running the CTE solution.)

A robust fit parameter was minimized using the nonlinear minimization routine $`dfpmin`$ from Numerical Recipes in C (Press et al. 1992), providing the best values of the three parameters, and uncertainties estimated via bootstrap tests. In the solution, $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ are the YCTE and XCTE terms, respectively, while $`c_0`$ is the position-independent offset.

For the NGC 2419 data that were used by CM98, 21 stars were found that met the count and background criteria, producing a $`c_0`$ value of $`0.02\pm 0.07`$ magnitudes. Expanding the sample to all 1997 data to improve the statistics, $`c_0`$ was determined to be $`0.04\pm 0.05`$ magnitudes. To further improve the statistics, the count range was changed to $`350700`$, producing 114 points and a correction of $`0.01\pm 0.02`$ magnitudes despite the expected value of 0.12 magnitudes from the CM98 correction.

Although the uncertainties are significant, a position-independent offset of 0.23 magnitudes in the faint data is ruled out at almost the 4$`\sigma `$ level, while the expected correction of 0.12 magnitudes for brighter points is ruled out at more than the 5$`\sigma `$ level. Both samples, however, are consistent to well within 1$`\sigma `$ with no anomaly, and therefore the CTE analysis below does not include a position-independent correction except for the zero point corrections, $`\mathrm{\Delta }ZP`$. Further discussion of the long-short anomaly is given in Section 5.3.

### 3.2 CTE Functional Form

With the result of no position-independent correction, the functional form of the charge loss will include only XCTE and YCTE corrections. The first issue to be determined is whether the charge loss is of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }counts=\frac{Y}{800}\text{YCTE}+\frac{X}{800}\text{XCTE}$$
(3)
or

$$\mathrm{\Delta }magnitude=\frac{Y}{800}\text{YCTE}+\frac{X}{800}\text{XCTE}$$
(4)
As is demonstrated in Figure 1, which shows both magnitude residuals and the ratio of counts lost as a function of Y for a subset of the data, the choice of functional form does not make a significant difference. However, the plot as a function of magnitude difference gives the slightly better fit, so the form given in Equation 4 will be used for this study.

The CTE loss is assumed to depend only on counts, background, temperature, and epoch. This assumption was tested by determining the CTE solution for subsets of the data restricted by chip, gain, and filter. These subset CTE determinations produced corrections that were not significantly different from the full solution, thus verifying the assumption.

Finally, a number of numerical and observational criteria were set out, which the CTE functional form must satisfy.

* There must be no combination of counts, background, and epoch that would cause the formula to become undefined.
* As the CTE effect is one of lost charge, the correction must never be negative.
* The logarithms of the mean magnitude residuals appear to scale roughly linearly with the logarithms of $`counts`$ and $`background`$, implying a form involving $`e^{c_{ct}\mathrm{ln}(counts)}`$ and $`e^{c_{bg}\mathrm{ln}(background)}`$.
* A sufficiently high background will eliminate the CTE loss. For example, stars with less than 1000 $`counts`$ and more than 1000 $`background`$ have an average offset of $`0.001\pm 0.015`$ magnitudes.
* A sufficiently high count rate will reduce but not eliminate the CTE loss. For example, stars with over 21000 $`counts`$ but under 10 $`background`$ have an average offset of $`0.031\pm 0.001`$ magnitudes.
* A sufficiently early time will again reduce but not eliminate the CTE loss. For example, the average cold camera offset in 1994 is $`0.020\pm 0.001`$ magnitudes.
* High count rates do not eliminate the time dependence, nor do early epochs eliminate the count dependence. For example, stars with 21000 or more $`counts`$ increase from an average offset of $`0.018\pm 0.002`$ to $`0.041\pm 0.004`$ magnitudes from 1994 to 2000. Likewise, the 1994 correction increases from $`0.018\pm 0.002`$ magnitudes for stars with at least 21000 $`counts`$ to $`0.083\pm 0.002`$ magnitudes for those between 500 and 1000 $`counts`$.

These observations restrict the set of functional forms that can be used. Attempts were made to adopt different forms obeying the above restrictions, with the formulae below producing the best fits to the data.

$$yr=epoch1996.3$$
(5)
$$lct=\mathrm{ln}(counts)7$$
(6)
$$lbg=\mathrm{ln}(background)1$$
(7)
$$\text{YCTE}=\frac{Y}{800}[y_0+(y_1+y_2yr)(y_3+e^{y_4lct})e^{y_5lbgy_6bg}],$$
(8)
$$\text{XCTE}=\frac{X}{800}[(x_1+x_2yr)e^{x_4lctx_5lbg}].$$
(9)
The offsets of 1996.3, 7, and 1 were roughly the averages of these values in the data, and were included to improve numerical stability and to produce independent coefficients. (Failing to do so would have provided correlated coefficients and thus correlated errors.) The addition of the $`y_6`$ parameter was required to eliminate an overcorrection at moderate and high background levels seen in the first solution. No similar $`x_6`$ parameter was needed. Additionally, $`x_0`$ and $`x_3`$ terms analogous to the $`y_0`$ and $`y_3`$ terms were initially included but were determined to be insignificant (well less than $`1\sigma `$) and subsequently removed from the equation.

Note that in the above functional form, all coefficients $`y_i`$ and $`x_i`$ must be positive to meet the requirements itemized above. Additionally, to avoid negative corrections at early epochs (1994.3), $`y_1`$ must be at least twice $`y_2`$ and likewise for $`x_1`$ and $`x_2`$.

Separate sets of constants were determined for the warm ($`76^{}`$C) and cold ($`88^{}`$C) camera observations. However, all warm camera observations were made with little or no background and at similar time (January through April 1994), so no background or time dependence could be determined. Additionally, no XCTE loss was measurable in the warm data.

### 3.3 Zero Point Corrections

In addition to the CTE solution, a set of zero point corrections was also determined. The first correction was made to search for any offset between the ground-based Omega Cen and NGC 2419 data. This correction factor was determined to be well under 0.01 magnitudes (and less than a $`1\sigma `$ effect), and was eliminated.

The remaining corrections, as functions of filter, temperature, chip, and gain, were divided into two sets. This division, though made primarily for numerical reasons, was not entirely arbitrary. The “ideal” solution would naturally involve a zero point correction for every combination of temperature, filter, chip, and gain, or a total of 272 free parameters. This total was reduced to 25 by adopting the following assumptions and simplifications:

* The principal factors affecting detection efficiency are wavelength and temperature. This makes the assumption that the four chips have similar wavelength-dependent quantum efficiencies (an overall sensitivity difference would be corrected by item 3 in this list), which was verified by determining the CTE corrections individually for the four chips. This creates 34 filter- and temperature-dependent zero point offsets.
* Although the non-standard filter offsets are temperature-dependent, the differences between their corrections and the corrections of the standard magnitudes of the same color are observed to be independent of temperature. This allows the consolidation of the 26 non-standard filter zero point corrections to 13 corrections relative to the nearest standard filter, and the reduction of the 34 total temperature/filter zero point offsets to 21.
* The principal factors in the readout efficiency are chip and gain setting, as each of the eight combinations involves slightly different electronics. This creates 8 zero point offsets dependent on chip and gain. After running the solution, it was determined that the gain setting made no measurable difference, further reducing these offsets to 4.

Thus the total zero point correction is thus

$$\mathrm{\Delta }ZP=\mathrm{\Delta }ZP_{T,color}+\mathrm{\Delta }ZP_{filter}+\mathrm{\Delta }ZP_{chip}.$$
(10)
As with the CTE loss correction, all of the zero point corrections were computed in the sense that they should be subtracted from the WFPC2 magnitudes to produce standardized magnitudes.

## 4 CTE and Zero Point Solution

The solution for the CTE effect and zero point corrections was made by iteration. The program was a more sophisticated version of that used to determine the position-independent correction in section 3.1. In order to produce an adequate fit parameter, it was necessary to add 0.02 magnitudes (in quadrature) to the uncertainty of every point. The source of this additional uncertainty is unknown, and was also noticed by S98. After the solution, all photometry was re-read, with corrected points falling more than 0.15 magnitudes and 2$`\sigma `$ away from the standard magnitudes removed for the next iteration. This process continued until the same points were removed for consecutive iterations. For the final iteration, 55910 of the 58728 points were used.

### 4.1 CTE Coefficients

The final coefficients and offsets provide the values to subtract from the observed WFPC2 magnitudes (calibrated using H95 flight system zero points, gain ratios, and pixel area ratios) to generate corrected WFPC2 flight system magnitudes. The CTE coefficients are given (with 68% confidence limits) in Tables 1 and 2 for cold and warm data, respectively. As noted above, no XCTE loss was detectable in the warm camera observations, but can be characterized well in the cold observations. The time dependence of the cold XCTE loss is small and is consistent with the Whitmore (1998) time dependence, while the dependence on counts is much higher than that on background. The detection of any significant background dependence in the XCTE loss is different from S98 and WHC99, but the effect on the corrections is minimal given the size of the XCTE correction. The XCTE loss is only a minor effect, with the worst-case combination in the calibration data ($`lct=1.15`$; $`bg=1`$, $`lbg=1`$; $`yr=4`$) producing an XCTE ramp of only 0.05 magnitudes.

The YCTE loss is by far the larger of the two. The primary difference between warm and cold is the YCTE base value $`y_0`$, which decreased by 0.08 magnitudes when the instrument was cooled. As opposed to the XCTE equation, the YCTE loss is strongly dependent on counts, background, and time. Again the time dependence is consistent with the values from Whitmore (1998). The worst-case combination will produce a YCTE ramp of 0.50 magnitudes, consistent with the WHC99 result of a $`40\%`$ loss for faint stars on low background in early 1999.

A second simple check can be made by determining the corrections for the conditions used by H95 ($`lct=1`$; $`bg=3`$, $`lbg=0`$; $`yr=1.8`$) to determine their corrections of 0.10 to 0.15 magnitudes in the warm data and 0.04 in the cold. These values lead to YCTE ramps of 0.11 magnitudes in the warm data and 0.03 magnitudes in the cold data, consistent with the H95 CTE loss estimates. Detailed comparisons with the recent studies are given in Section 5.2.

### 4.2 Zero Point Offsets

The zero point offsets by color and temperature are given in Table 3. There is a clear trend of increasing offset with increasing wavelength for the cold data, and the opposite case in the warm data. This trend was extrapolated to U (F336W) to compensate for the lack of U data in the calibration sample. Because of the extrapolation, the uncertainties are likely $``$0.01 magnitudes. The cause of these offsets is unknown, as the H95 calibrations were based on these same set of observations. Systematic differences between HSTphot and aperture photometry are unlikely, especially given the excellent agreement between the present CTE loss determination and that by WHC99. It is also not a time-dependent effect, as this trend is still seen if only the 1994 data are used. The easiest explanation would be that H95 used both warm and cold data, as the offsets would roughly cancel out if added, but this was not the case. Compared with the synthetic zero points of Table 28.1 of the HST data handbook, the new zero points are on average 0.02 magnitudes fainter, with RMS scatter of 0.02 magnitudes. The difference is most likely the result of the handbook zero points, which are only claimed to be accurate to 0.02 magnitudes.

Table 4 gives the zero point corrections of the non-standard filters, which should be subtracted from the observed WFPC2 flight system magnitudes in order to determine magnitudes on the same system as the standard filter of the same color. (In addition, The Table 3 value should be subtracted to produce magnitudes corrected to the ground-based data.) It is assumed that these values are nonzero because the H95 transformations for these filters were synthetic rather than empirical, and thus were not directly tied to any observed system. Given the amount of observations made in F450W and F606W, it is worth noting that while the F450W magnitudes appear to be correct relative to F439W, F606W magnitudes are off by 0.02 magnitudes relative to F555W. A comparison between the new zero points and those in Table 28.1 of the HST data handbook indicates that the handbook zero points fare quite poorly, with RMS scatter of 0.08 magnitudes between the new zero points and those of Table 28.1 for the non-standard filters. In comparison, the RMS scatter between the new zero points and the synthetic zero points of H95 is less than half of that value.

Finally, the chip-to-chip zero point corrections are $`0.037\pm 0.001`$, $`0.012\pm 0.001`$, $`0.007\pm 0.001`$, and $`0.004\pm 0.001`$ for PC1, WFC2, WFC3, and WFC4, respectively. The presence of non-zero chip-to-chip differences implies either a minor error in the relative pixel areas reported by H95 or a sensitivity difference between the four chips. Although other studies have determined that chip-to-chip offsets are a function of filter as well as gain, such an effect is not observed here at any significant level.

### 4.3 WFPC2 Calibration Formulae

Rather than calibrating using H95, and then applying two or three sets of zero point corrections, it is simpler to apply the corrections to the calibration process. The calibration equations, analogous to equations 7 and 8 of H95 but incorporating the pixel area correction, would be

$$\text{WFPC2}=2.5\mathrm{log}(DN/s)+Z_{FG}+\mathrm{\Delta }Z_{CG}\text{CTE}$$
(11)
and

$$\text{SMAG}=2.5\mathrm{log}(DN/s)+Z_{FS}+T_1\text{SCOL}+T_2\text{SCOL}^2+\mathrm{\Delta }Z_{CG}\text{CTE}.$$
(12)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }Z_{CG}`$ is the zero point modification for chip and gain settings, and the values can be found in Table 5. $`Z_{FG}`$ in Table 6, and $`Z_{FS}`$, $`T_1`$, and $`T_2`$ in Table 7, and follow the definitions of H95. The terms $`T_1`$ and $`T_2`$ in Table 7 are reproduced from Tables 7 and 10 of H95. The CTE correction should be calculated from Equations 5-9 and Table 1 for cold data or 2 for warm data. Again, it should be noted that aperture corrections were made to the 0.5 arcsec aperture of H95 and others, rather than the nominal infinite aperture of the zero points in Table 28.1 of the HST data handbook.

## 5 Tests of the Corrections

### 5.1 Internal Consistency

Residuals (WFPC2 magnitude minus ground-based magnitude) from before and after applying the CTE correction and revised calibration are shown in Figures 2-5, plotted against Y, X, $`\mathrm{ln}(counts)`$, and $`\mathrm{ln}(background)`$, in order to provide a preliminary test of the correction formulae. As the figures demonstrate, the correction has been successful, at least to first order, in reducing the systematic residuals to under 0.01 magnitudes.

A concern in adopting any functional form for the corrections is that it will not properly account for second-order factors. For example, one frequently-mentioned concern is that the count dependence in the CTE corrections changes as a function of background level. This can be readily tested, with mean residuals for combinations of low and high counts, background, and epoch shown in Table 8. None of the residuals in the table are significantly more than 0.005 magnitudes.

However, the most significant source of concern is caused by the fact that the average calibration data are significantly different from most science data. The calibration observations are generally bright stars with little background (due to short exposure times), while most science observations are long enough to have a significant background and most projects require accurate photometry as faint as possible. The effect of this can be tested, and the solution appears to have succeeded despite these problems, with the average residual for points with $`background`$ between 35 and 105 (typical for most science exposures) being 0.003 magnitudes.

Another potential source of error in the calibration is at the faint end, as there are insufficient stars in the calibration sample with $`<350`$ $`counts`$ (and those that are present naturally have large uncertainties) to have much effect on the solution. Therefore, the solution is largely extrapolated below 350 $`counts`$ and subject to significant systematic errors. Such an effect can be checked by comparing the relative photometry of the NGC 2419 field, in a manner similar to that of CM98, but only using the F814W images with no preflash. The multiple image version of HSTphot, multiphot (Dolphin 2000), was used in order to reduce the random scatter and force a common object list. The 100 and 300 second images had sufficient background (at least 1 DN per pixel) to reduce faint sensitivity and were omitted. As with the CTE study, the more crowded chip (WFC2) including the globular cluster was omitted to improve the photometry. Figure 6 shows the short (10- and 40-second exposure) magnitudes minus the 1000s magnitudes for these stars plotted against $`\mathrm{ln}(counts)`$ scaled from the 1000s image, before CTE correction in the top panel and after correction in the bottom. Only well-fit stars ($`\chi 2`$ and $`0.3sharpness0.3`$ are shown. No systematic error is detectable, aside from the effect of the photometry cutoff beginning around $`\mathrm{ln}(counts)=5.3`$, or 200 electrons. Between $`\mathrm{ln}(counts)`$ of 5.3 and 5.5, the median residual after CTE correction is -0.01 magnitudes, while the median uncorrected residual is 0.15 magnitudes. However, even down to $`\mathrm{ln}(counts)=4.9`$ (134 electrons), the mode of the distribution is within 0.01 magnitudes of zero, giving confidence in the photometry to the faintest level.

As a final check on the corrections, the corrected WFPC2 data were used to determine combined magnitudes of the Omega Cen and NGC 2419 standard stars. A comparison of ground-based and corrected WFPC2 data is given in Figure 7, showing good agreement.

### 5.2 Comparison with Previous CTE Studies

In order to make a comparison between the present corrections and those of S98, WHC99, and SLP00, all four sets of corrections were applied to the data set used in this study. To be perfectly fair, it should be noted that this study’s corrections are at somewhat of an advantage, given that the same data used to determine the corrections are now used for the comparison. However, the data set used here is identical (although larger) than that used in the earlier studies, and the quality of the photometry should be at least as good as that in the earlier studies given the use of HSTphot. Finally, the fact that all major differences are attributable to obvious causes gives confidence that the comparisons are accurate.

To eliminate the effects of zero point differences, the present zero point corrections were applied to the WHC99 study, while the S98 and SLP00 zero points were applied respectively. In order to adequately model the SLP00 background dependence, their background parameter was modified for the observed DoPHOT count-background correlation

$$\text{DoPHOT background}=(\text{Dark Background})+2\times 10^3counts.$$
(13)
Residuals (corrected WFPC2 magnitudes minus standard magnitudes) are given in Table 9.

In terms of the overall corrections in the top line of the table, the WHC99 equations produce very similar results to the present study. The S98 and SLP00 corrections are also reasonably good on average, but produce considerably more scatter. The cause of this extra scatter is clear when examining the remaining lines in Table 9: neither includes a time-dependent term and thus has a trend of increasing residual with time, in the sense that the 2000 data are significantly under-corrected in both studies. Since the WFPC2 magnitude of the average star in this data set has increased by 0.06 magnitudes from 1994 to 2000 (and that the magnitude of the average star with 350 electrons or less has increased by 0.18 magnitudes), it would have been surprising had either S98 or SLP00 been consistent with all of the available data.

A plot comparing the present CTE corrections to those of S98 using only cold F555W and F814W data obtained before 1997 and ignoring zero point differences is shown in Figure 8. The corrections clearly agree extremely well for this limited data set, with an average difference of 0.004 magnitudes and scatter of 0.015 magnitudes. However, the time dependence limits the usefulness of the S98 solution, with the 1999-2000 data producing an average difference of 0.061 magnitudes with significantly more scatter.

A similar comparison made with SLP00 is shown in Figure 9, using only F555W and F814W data obtained during 1997. The effect of the different functional form used for the two colors is apparent, with the F555W correction (which has no position-independent term) producing excellent agreement (under-correcting on average by $`0.006\pm 0.010`$ magnitudes) while the F814W correction (which has a position-independent term) considerably off (over-correcting on average by $`0.026\pm 0.025`$ magnitudes). Although the zero point offsets will compensate for this error in conditions identical to the calibration data used by SLP00, it is dangerous to assume that this will be the case in general.

Finally, the agreement between the present corrections and those of WHC99, shown in Figure 10 for data taken through February 1999, is excellent. Although the data show more scatter than Figure 8, a figure using the WHC99 corrections restricted to data before 1997 (as per Figure 8 would show only 65% the scatter. The differences become significant only at more recent epochs, where the WHC99 functional form (with the count dependence tied to the time dependence) begins to break down. For example, the average star with under 1000 counts observed between February 1998 and February 1999 has an average residual of $`0.10\pm 0.14`$ magnitudes with the WHC99 corrections, while those of this study produce an average residual of $`0.00\pm 0.10`$ magnitudes.

Thus the differences between the results of this study and previous recent studies can be explained fairly easily. Neither S98 nor SLP00 included a time effect, producing large deviations in corrections for stars beyond the times in which the data were taken. The remaining significant scatter between this study and SLP00 is due to the use of a single parameter (the DoPHOT background level) instead of both the dark background and counts. Minor differences remain between all four corrections, due to different choices made in the functional forms.

This comparison of the different CTE solutions appears to explain the discrepancies, leading to the conclusion that, provided any count dependence is removed from the background levels, there is no package dependence in the CTE loss. It is thus suggested that the present CTE study, which contains a time dependence and corrects some of the shortfallings in the WHC99 functional form, should be applicable to all WFPC2 stellar photometry.

### 5.3 The Long-Short Anomaly Revisited

The previous section shows, reassuringly, that differences between previous CTE studies are primarily the result of assumptions of time dependence and the method of background calculation. However, the different results for the long-short anomaly (a position-independent charge loss) need to be reconciled as well.

Positive results regarding the detection of a long-short anomaly have come from the modified zero points of Saha et al. (1996), Kelson et al. (1996), and Hill et al. (1998), all of whom found that magnitudes from long exposures are about 0.05 magnitudes more than those from short exposures. CM98 characterized this effect, providing a correction formula that was based on the number of counts rather than the exposure time. However, S98 attempted to determine a position-independent loss in his CTE solution, but found no evidence for it, and Section 3.1 of this paper likewise finds no evidence. Finally, Section 5.1, which compares magnitudes from the 1000-second exposure of NGC 2419 with those from 10- and 40-second exposures, finds no effect at more than the 0.01 magnitude level.

In order to understand the nature of this effect, a more detailed comparison between the present data and that of CM98 needs to be made. Specifically, Figure 6 was taken from the same data used by CM98 and compared in the same way (short magnitude minus the 1000-second magnitude), and should thus be nearly identical to the 10s and 40s lines of Figure 11 of CM98 (although CM98 Figure 11 is plotted against short counts rather than scaled long counts). However, while CM98 shows a median short minus long error of 0.27 magnitudes for $`\mathrm{ln}(counts)=5.4`$, the difference in this study is only -0.01 magnitudes. The difference between the two studies is also in the pre-CTE correction photometry, with Figure 9 of CM98 showing a magnitude difference of about +0.38 magnitudes and the top panel of Figure 6 showing a difference of +0.15 magnitudes at $`\mathrm{ln}(counts)=5.5`$, thus ruling out the CTE solution as the source of the anomaly.

The difference, then, appears to stem from the photometry. The most plausible explanation for the apparent long-short anomaly is an overestimate of the sky by CM98, as well as by previous authors. The expected functional form of the magnitude error caused by a sky measurement error is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }mag=2.5\mathrm{log}(1\frac{\pi r^2\mathrm{\Delta }sky}{counts}),$$
(14)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }sky`$ is the error per pixel in the sky value and $`counts`$ is the number of counts. For the two-pixel radius used by CM98, a sky error of +0.58 DN or +4.1 electrons would match the CM98 correction formula to within 0.01 magnitudes for stars with detections of 33 DN or more. This potential solution to the problem would also explain the aperture dependence of the effect seen by CM98, as a larger aperture should be more susceptible to a sky error. Finally, this would explain why CM98 found only a count dependence in the short-long anomaly. This also would explain the Hill et al. (1998) remark that the effect appeared to be a constant subtraction of 2 electrons from every star pixel but not the background pixels, as a background overestimation would do exactly that.

In summary, there appears to be no convincing evidence for a long-short anomaly. It would be quite remarkable if a real effect of 0.27 magnitudes measured by CM98 was reduced to -0.01 magnitudes by an error in HSTphot; rather it is more likely that an error in the CM98 reduction was responsible for a false detection of the anomaly. Given the similarity between the CM98 correction equation and Equation 14 of this paper given $`\mathrm{\Delta }sky`$ error of 0.58 DN, which agree at the 0.01 magnitude level above 33 DN, as well as the simple explanation of the aperture dependence of the effect, the most probable cause of the CM98 result (as well as the other reports of the long-short anomaly) is an overestimation of the background by a few electrons.

## 6 Summary

An HSTphot-based CTE and zero point correction study, based on the Omega Cen and NGC 2419 observations, attempts to accomplish two goals. First is a comprehensive testing of HSTphot, which succeeded in reducing well over 1000 WFPC2 images without any problem. Given the tight agreement between this study and previous CTE work of S98 and WHC99, it seems that HSTphot is able to produce photometry without any noticeable systematic effects.

The more ambitious goals of this study were to improve upon existing CTE determinations, and to determine the cause of differences between the previously published corrections. A functional form for the CTE correction was arrived at semi-empirically, and the coefficients were solved using an iterative nonlinear minimization process. The correction formulae were then applied to the observed data, resulting in no systematic residuals larger than 0.005 magnitudes. Additionally, the corrections were applied to relative photometry of the NGC 2419 field, with no significant errors found down to the faintest stars measured (under 140 electrons). New zero points were also determined for 18 of WFPC2’s medium and wide filters, including empirical calibrations of the non-standard filters, such as F606W. These new zero points provide evidence of significant errors in the synthetic zero points given in the HST data handbook.

The corrections were also compared to those from previous studies (S98, WHC99, and SLP00). The major differences between the four sets of corrections are understandable in terms of the lack of a time dependence in S98 or SLP00 and the lack of a count dependence in SLP00. The primary difference between this study and WHC99 is the use of an improved characterization of the count and time dependencies. In terms of producing smaller systematic and random residuals over the full time baseline, the present set of corrections proved superior to all three other formulations, although the WHC99 CTE equations will also produce corrections accurate to a few hundredths of a magnitude in all cases except for recent (1998 and later) data with low counts. The previous detections and characterizations of the long-short error are believed to result from sky overestimation, an error which would cause the count dependence characterized by CM98 and fit their correction formula to within 0.01 magnitudes, as well as explaining the aperture dependence and lack of background dependence.

It is concluded that, given the understanding of the differences between this and other CTE studies, the present corrections should be valid for use on all WFPC2 stellar photometry, regardless of the photometry procedure, and are an improvement on previous work. However, due to differences in the determination of background (especially by DoPHOT), the contribution of starlight to the background level must be fit and removed in order to determine the dark background for a star.

I would like to thank Alistair Walker and Peter Stetson for providing the ground-based Omega Cen and NGC 2419 photometry, respectively. This work was supported by NASA through grants GO-02227.06-A and GO-07496 from Space Telescope Science Institute.


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# The iron abundance in hot central stars of planetary nebulae derived from IUE spectraBased on observations with the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite

## 1 Introduction

The continuing spectroscopic study of central stars of planetary nebulae (CSPN) is motivated by two observational facts which reveal our incomplete understanding of post-AGB stellar evolution. The first concerns the mere existence of hydrogen-deficient objects which comprise the spectroscopic types \[WC\] and PG 1159. The second concerns the apparent lack of hydrogen-rich CSPN at the hot end of the white dwarf cooling sequence, suggesting that during this stage all H-rich objects become H-deficient. The first problem initialized an almost complete analysis of all known H-deficient post-AGB stars, resulting in accurate determinations of the effective temperature ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$) and surface gravity ($`g`$), as well as the abundance of the main atmospheric constituents (He, C, O) and in some cases trace of elements (H, N, Ne). The second problem could be solved by the systematic search for (pre-) white dwarf central stars. Subsequent analyses of the H-rich objects revealed $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$, $`\mathrm{log}g`$, and H:He ratio and the results complement the analyses of other H-rich CSPN performed in numerous previous analyses (see Tab. 2).

Almost no effort has been yet made to analyze metal abundances in the H-rich CSPN. Interesting insight into AGB evolutionary phases may be gained by such analyses, because obvious abundance anomalies exist among stars with otherwise similar atmospheric parameters (Méndez 1991). Before embarking on such a project and discussing the abundance patterns it is reasonable to obtain information about the primordial metallicity of these objects by analyzing their iron abundance. The reason herefore is that iron is not affected by nuclear processes during previous evolutionary phases. Such an analysis requires UV spectroscopy. As a first step it is mandatory to check, if the IUE Final Archive contains useful data. It is the aim of this paper to exploit that archive exhaustively in order to identify and analyze quantitatively iron lines in hot central stars.

## 2 Sample selection and IUE data reduction

Our sample selection started from a CSPN compilation by Méndez (1991) and we complemented his list of H-rich objects by several objects dealt with in the more recent literature (e.g. see Tab. 2). For these stars we checked the IUE archive for high resolution SWP spectra and found data for 27 H-rich CSPN. From this sample those objects were excluded, which have high mass-loss rates, i.e., those showing Of-type optical spectra and those with extraordinarily strong P Cygni resonance line profiles in the UV. Thereby the final sample consisted of ten stars, which can be analyzed reliably with our static model atmospheres. All program stars have $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 70 000 K. Fig. 1 shows their position in the $`\mathrm{log}T_{\mathrm{eff}}\mathrm{log}g`$-diagram and Tab. 1 summarizes their atmospheric parameters.

The SWP spectra were extracted from the IUE Final Archive and subject to several reduction steps before comparison with model spectra. These steps comprise the assembly of single Echelle orders in order to obtain a complete spectrum in the 1200 – 1600 Å range; elimination of the strongest interstellar absorption lines by Voigt profile fitting (Ly$`\alpha `$ and Si ii lines); correction for radial velocity; normalization of the spectra. The last step is rather delicate. Firstly the ripple correction for the Echelle orders in the archival data is far from being perfect (see Fig. 2) and has to be corrected. Secondly, fixing the continuum is a rather subjective procedure and thus the major error source for the quantitative analysis, because of the generally high noise level in the spectra. To determine the continuum we smoothed the spectrum with a median filter of 2 Å width, followed by a convolution with a Gaussian profile of 2 Å FWHM. This method is inapplicable in regions with P Cygni profiles and the continuum has to be determined manually. Furthermore the determined continuum around deep ISM lines is too low and has to be raised manually.

## 3 Model Atmospheres

We have calculated a grid of plane-parallel non-LTE model atmospheres (Fig. 3) in radiative and hydrostatic equilibrium. The computer code is based on the Accelerated Lambda Iteration method (Werner & Husfeld 1985; Werner 1986) and it can handle the line blanketing of iron group elements by a statistical approach using superlevels and superlines with an opacity sampling technique (Anderson 1985; Dreizler & Werner 1993). The latest version of the code and a detailed description of the numerical method can be found in Werner & Dreizler (1999). Our model atmospheres include the CNO elements as well as iron and nickel self-consistently, i.e. their back-reaction on the atmospheric structure is accounted for. In essence, they are very similar to the models described in detail by Haas et al. (1996); Haas (1997), so we restrict ourselves here to a summary of the model atoms in Tab. 3. The main extension of that models refers to a detailed model atom for Fe viii. This turned out to be essential in order to reliably compute Fe vii lines, because the relative occupation of both ionization stages sensitively depends on the detailed treatment of their respective level populations via ionization and recombination processes.

As an example, the iron ionization structure in a typical model atmosphere is shown in Fig. 4.

## 4 Results and discussion

We derived our results with two independent methods. First we compared the observed and theoretical spectra by eye (Fig. 5), second a $`\chi ^2`$-test has been performed (Fig. 6). To get more reliable results, the $`\chi _{\mathrm{red}}^2`$ has been computed only around strong iron lines excluding known ISM lines. As a general trend, the iron abundance appears to be subsolar by 0.5-1 dex with both methods (see Tab. 1). However, the S/N of the IUE spectra is not sufficient to exclude a solar abundance in any specific case.

We cannot identify nickel lines for certain, which correspond to an upper limit of a solar nickel abundance. Ni v lines have been detected in other central stars and sdO stars by Schönberner & Drilling (1985), however, these stars have effective temperatures which are lower than those of our objects.

For three high-gravity objects in the sample the suspected iron deficiency may be the result of gravitational settling. For the other stars of the sample with low gravity and high luminosity another explanation must be found since mass loss efficiently suppresses gravitational settling (Unglaub & Bues 1998). Following suggestions in the literature (Lambert et al. 1988; Venn & Lambert 1990; Bond 1991; Van Winckel et al. 1992), the iron abundance in these stars might not be primordial, but the result of chemical fractionation through dust formation and subsequent loss due to stellar wind during previous AGB phases.

Therefore improved spectroscopy either by FUSE or HST is necessary to confirm or reject the possibility of a general Fe deficiency in these central stars. Furthermore, the determination of the abundance of CNO-elements is desirable in order to get a better understanding of the chemical evolution of these stars.

Our study suggests that iron is not necessarily a suitable tracer to determine the primordial metallicity. Alternatively one may use the S or Zn abundance to obtain reliable information (Van Winckel et al. 1992). The abundance of both elements is not affected by nuclear processes during previous evolutionary phases and both elements do not tend to dust formation as iron does (Habing 1996). Due to the lack of detailed atomic data for Zn, one has to concentrate on the S lines in the FUV and UV region. This emphasizes the need for improved spectroscopic data to solve these questions.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank S. Haas for helpful discussions and for providing his original version of the iron cross-section sampling software. UV data analysis in Tübingen is supported by the DLR under grants 50 QV 97054 and 50 OR 97055.


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# Knowing a network by walking on it: emergence of scaling

## Acknowledgements

I thanks S. Redner and L. A. Nunes-Amaral for helpful comments and references.