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# Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae Detected by ASCA and RXTE

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Rapid variability, together with the non-thermal emission observed from radio to $`\gamma `$–rays, and very weak emission lines, are the main characteristics of BL Lac objects. Those objects are a subclass of blazars, and the most promising explanation for these characteristics is the scenario where the radiation is emitted by energetic electrons contained in a relativistic jet. This jet points close to the line of sight, and thus the radiation is beamed and Doppler-boosted (Blandford & Konigl (1979)).

Recently, many simultaneous multi-wavelength observations have been held, providing important tests for the emission mechanisms in blazars. The broadband spectra of blazars consist of two peaks, one in the radio to optical–UV range (and in some cases, reaching to the X–ray band), and the other in the X–ray to $`\gamma `$–ray region. From the high polarization of the radio to optical emission, the lower energy peak is believed to be produced via the synchrotron process by relativistic electrons in the jet. The higher energy peak is believed to be due to Compton upscattering by the same population of relativistic electrons. Several possibilities exist for the source of the seed photons; these can be the synchrotron photons internal to the jet (e.g. Jones, O’Dell, & Stein (1974); Ghisellini & Maraschi (1989)), but also external, such as from the broad emission line clouds (Sikora, Begelman, & Rees (1994)) or from the accretion disk (Dermer, Schlickeiser, & Mastichiadis (1992); Dermer & Schlickeiser (1993)). BL Lac objects are often separated into two groups by whether the synchrotron peak frequency is in the UV–X–ray region (HBLs, or High-Energy peaked BL Lacs) or IR–optical region (LBLs, or Low-Energy peaked BL Lacs) (Padovani & Giommi (1996); Sambruna, Maraschi, & Urry (1996); Kubo et al. (1998)).

BL Lacertae is the prototype object for the BL Lac class, and thus is one of the best studied blazars; it is an LBL. The active nucleus lies in a giant elliptical galaxy at a redshift of 0.069 (Miller, French, & Hawley (1978)). While the optical and UV spectra of BL Lac type objects are usually devoid of emission lines, the unusual aspect of of BL Lacertae is the relatively recent appearance of optical emission lines (Vermeulen et al. (1995); Corbett et al. (2000)), obscuring the boundary between quasars and BL Lacs. Other than the emission lines, LBLs tend to have properties intermediate between quasars and HBLs such as luminosities or frequencies where the peaks are located (Kubo et al. (1998); Ghisellini et al. (1998); Fossati et al. (1998)). The 1988 $`Ginga`$ observation of BL Lacertae showed that the X–ray spectrum of BL Lacertae is relatively flat, with a photon index of 1.7 to 2.2, and located above the extrapolation of the optical-UV continuum (Kawai et al. (1991)). In 1995 it was observed with $`ASCA`$, showing the photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 1.94 $`\pm `$ 0.04 (Madejski et al. (1999); Sambruna et al. (1999)); it was also observed by $`ROSAT`$, which showed $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ of 1.94$`{}_{0.47}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.46}`$ (Urry et al. (1996)), and by $`Einstein`$, where the index was 1.68 $`\pm `$ 0.18 (Bregman et al. (1990)). In 1995, the $`\gamma `$–ray emission above 100 MeV was detected for the first time by the EGRET instrument onboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, or $`CGRO`$ (Catanese et al. (1997)).

BL Lacertae was observed by $`ASCA`$ following the report of a major outburst in 1997 discovered by optical observations (Noble et al. (1997); Maesano et al. (1997)). Such outbursts are particularly valuable for investigating correlations between different wavelengths, which led many observatories to point at BL Lacertae. EGRET observations indicated that the flux level above 100 MeV was 3.5 times higher than that observed in 1995 (Hartman et al. (1997); Bloom et al. (1997)). It was also detected in the 50 – 300 keV OSSE range (Grove & Johnson (1997)), and 2 – 10 keV $`RXTE`$ range (Madejski et al. (1997); Madejski et al. (1999)). Intra-day time variability was observed in the optical band (Massaro et al. (1998); Nesci et al. (1998)) and in the X–ray band with $`ASCA`$ (Makino et al. (1997)). Fits to the spectral energy distributions have been done by several authors, and interestingly, they all argue that the high energy emission detected from BL Lacertae is likely to reveal Comptonization of both internal (synchrotron) and external (broad-line) photons (Madejski et al. (1999); Sambruna et al. (1999); Bottcher & Bloom (2000)).

In this paper, we present and interpret the results of the $`ASCA`$ observation of BL Lacertae, together with the simultaneous $`RXTE`$ observations. The observations are presented in Section 2. In Section 3, we describe in detail the different variability patterns seen in the soft and hard X–ray bands; in Section 4, we discuss the radiative processes responsible for the X–ray emission, and summarize our results in Section 5.

## 2 OBSERVATIONS AND DATA REDUCTION

We observed BL Lacertae with $`ASCA`$ during 1997 July 18.60 – 19.62 UT. The data were extracted by using the standard $`ASCA`$ procedures for SIS (Solid-state Imaging Spectrometer; Burke et al. (1991); Yamashita et al. (1997)) and GIS (Gas Imaging Spectrometer; Ohashi et al. (1996)). GIS was used in the PH-nominal mode, and SIS was used in 1 CCD mode. Source photons were extracted from a circular region centered at the target with 3 and 6 radii for SIS and GIS, respectively. The background data were taken from source-free regions in the same respective images. During the net exposure of 37 ks for SIS and 60 ks for GIS, the average count rates in the energy range of 0.7 – 7.0 keV were 0.47 count s-1, 0.41 count s-1, 0.33 count s-1, 0.43 count s-1, for SIS0, SIS1, GIS2, GIS3, respectively. The $`RXTE`$ data were the same as presented in Madejski et al. (1999).

During the 1997 July outburst, BL Lacertae was monitored intensively in the optical, and in the high energy $`\gamma `$–rays by EGRET. Comparing the optical and $`\gamma `$–ray light curves measured over the 10-day span shown in Figure 2 of Bloom et al. (1997) to the $`ASCA`$ light curve shown in Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE, one can see that our 1-day observation occured exactly at the time of the correlated optical / $`\gamma `$–ray flare. In the the top and middle panels of Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE, we plot the soft (0.7 – 1.5 keV) and hard (3 – 7 keV) X–ray light curves. The X–ray flare – which occured close to the time of the optical and GeV $`\gamma `$–ray flares – is strongly suggestive of a correlation of emission in the three wavebands. During the increase of the X–ray flux by a factor of nearly 4, the flux increased by a factor of 2.5 in the EGRET band (30 MeV – 30 GeV), and a factor of 4 in the optical band (Bloom et al. (1997)). However, we must note that the correlation (and any lags) cannot be precisely measured because of the rather sparse sampling and limited sensitivity of EGRET (but should be accomplished by the upcoming missions such as $`GLAST`$).

Most importantly, we discovered an apparent difference between the soft and hard X–ray variability, and this is well illustrated in the bottom panel of Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE, showing the time series of the calculated hardness ratio. In the soft X–ray band, we detected two rapid flares with the rise and decay times on the order of 2 – 3 hours. The hard X–ray flux also flared up, but with a somewhat smaller amplitude, and decreased with a longer time scale. This suggests that two separate emission processes may be responsible for the X–ray emission from this source. We also had two simultaneous $`RXTE`$ observations, labeled as \[a\] and \[b\] in Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE, which extended our energy range up to 20 keV.

The average 2 – 10 keV flux during the observation was $`2.6\times 10^{11}`$ erg cm-2 s-1, which is about 3 times higher than the previous $`ASCA`$ observation in 1995 (Madejski et al. (1999); Sambruna et al. (1999)). We fitted the $`ASCA`$ spectrum with a power law with absorption (model wabs + pegpwrlw using XSPEC version 10.0). We fixed the absorption at the the Galactic value, $`N_\mathrm{H}=4.6\times 10^{21}`$ atoms cm-2, which is a sum of gas columns measured in H and CO as summarized in Madejski et al. (1999). Here the $`ASCA`$ data (using 0.7 – 7.0 keV) showed a significant excess below $`1`$ keV. The excess is also indicated from the low value of absorption when it was allowed to vary in the fitting process. On the other hand, the simultaneous $`RXTE`$ data (using 3– 20 keV) are well fitted by the same model. The fitting results are summarized in Table 1. We also found an indication of harder spectrum compared with previous observations in 1995 by $`ASCA`$ ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 1.94 $`\pm `$ 0.04; Madejski et al. (1999)) and in 1988 by $`Ginga`$ ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 1.7 $`\pm `$ 0.1, 2.2 $`\pm `$ 0.2; Kawai et al. (1991)).

## 3 THE TWO - COMPONENT NATURE AND VARIABILITY OF THE X–RAY SPECTRUM

Because the source was varying, we first selected two sets of spectra including the two pairs of $`RXTE`$ and $`ASCA`$ data sets, labeled as \[a\] and \[b\] in Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE. Note that one set was during a state of relatively low flux (which is still higher than the 1995 value), and the other close to the maximum of the flaring state; this provided two different flux states for a comparison of the spectra. As reported in Madejski et al. (1999), spectral variability (although at a modest level) was seen among various segments of the $`RXTE`$ observation.

Before performing joint spectral fits to the $`ASCA`$ and $`RXTE`$ data, we selected the common energy range of 3 – 7 keV for both data sets to verify the consistency between the two instruments. In selecting the same time regions for $`ASCA`$, we extended the time intervals to 5 ks in order to collect a sufficient number of counts. We fitted both $`ASCA`$ and $`RXTE`$ data with a single power law plus Galactic absorption model. For all the spectral fitting hereafter, we combined the data from 2 SISs and 2 GISs for the $`ASCA`$ data, and the data from PCU 0, 1, and 2 for the PCA data. The resulting best fits for region \[a\] and \[b\] for $`ASCA`$ were: photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.5\pm 0.4`$ and $`1.4\pm 0.2`$, with 3 – 7 keV flux $`F_{37\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}}`$ = 1.1 $`\pm `$ 0.1 and 1.67 $`\pm `$ 0.09 $`\times `$ 10-11 erg cm-2 s-1. For the $`RXTE`$ data, they were: $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 1.60 $`\pm `$ 0.15 and 1.4 $`\pm `$ 0.1, $`F_{37\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}}`$ = 1.28 $`\pm `$ 0.04 and 1.95 $`\pm `$ 0.04 $`\times `$ 10-11 erg cm-2 s-1. This indicates that the photon indices are consistent, but the flux inferred by the $`RXTE`$ is larger by $``$10%. Regarding this as an uncertainty of the calibration of two instruments, we added a multiplying parameter (constant in XSPEC) to account for the difference in the normalization. We fixed the value to 1 for $`ASCA`$, and allowed it to vary for $`RXTE`$. We fitted the 3 – 7 keV spectrum of $`ASCA`$ and $`RXTE`$ together, and resulted with a normalization factor of $`RXTE`$ to be 1.1 $`\pm `$ 0.1 and 1.16 $`\pm `$ 0.06 for regions \[a\] and \[b\].

We then fitted the full 0.7 – 20 keV combined data set with a single power law plus Galactic absorption model, with the normalization of the PCA data kept free. We found that although the single power law model provides an adequate fit to the low state spectrum \[a\], it is rejected for the flaring state spectrum \[b\] at a confidence level of more than 99.9%. Thus we fitted the spectrum \[b\] with an additional soft power law, where the fit improved to be acceptable. Again, the normalization factors of $`RXTE`$ were 1.08 $`\pm `$ 0.06 and 1.14 $`\pm `$ 0.05 for regions \[a\] and \[b\], which is within the error bars of the values derived above. The fitting results to the combined data are summarized in Table 2.

The unfolded spectra of the two time regions \[a\] and \[b\] are shown in Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE. It is apparent from that Figure that a power law with a hard index is dominant in both spectra, which is consistent with the fact that BL Lacertae is classified as an LBL; in the context of the scenario described in the Introduction, the main emission process in the X–ray band above $`1`$ keV is the inverse Compton process. However, for the flaring state spectrum, we found that another soft spectral component, well-described as a steep power law, begins to dominate below $`1`$ keV.

Any detailed modeling of the source requires the knowledge of fluxes of the two spectral components separately. Since both the $`E<1`$ keV and $`E>1`$ keV count rates are affected by both components and not just by the soft or hard component alone, we had to model the time-resolved spectrum to unravel the light curves of each component. This is particularly important since the combined $`ASCA`$ and $`RXTE`$ data revealed the soft component varying with larger amplitude at flaring states. We separated the entire observation into 9 time regions, labeled as (1) – (9) in the top panel of Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE, and fitted the entire spectrum with a model including two power laws plus Galactic absorption. Since we found that the $`ASCA`$ spectrum above 2 keV can be well fitted by a single power law plus Galactic absorption model, we inferred that the spectrum above 2 keV is only modestly affected by the soft component. Thus, we first fitted the $`ASCA`$ data set above 2.5 keV with a single power law plus Galactic absorption to determine the initial parameters of the hard power law. In the subsequent fitting of the full spectrum, we kept all four parameters of the two power laws free. All such spectra were well fitted by the two power law plus Galactic absorption model. The index and the flux of each component are plotted in Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE. We found that the soft power law is very steep with the photon index $``$ 3 – 5 which appears to vary, while the hard power law has an index that varies little, between $`1.31.6`$. The flux variability is a factor of 2 for the hard component, and a factor of 4 for the soft component. The derived fitting parameters are summarized in Table 3.

## 4 DISCUSSION

The $`ASCA`$ observation of BL Lacertae showed that the flux is highly variable on a time scale of hours, and that the variability in the soft and hard X–ray bands appears significantly different, indicating that two different emission processes are responsible for the X–rays detected by $`ASCA`$. Perhaps the most natural explanation of this behavior is where the high energy “tail” of the rapidly flaring synchrotron component is mixing into the less variable inverse Compton spectrum. The very steep power law required in the soft spectrum in addition to the hard power law also supports this idea. The existence of the soft component was also suggested from the spectrum in the previous $`ASCA`$ observation in 1995 (Sambruna et al. (1999); Madejski et al. (1999)). However, the reality of this soft component as intrinsic to BL Lacertae – inferred on the basis of the excess of soft X–ray flux – was somewhat uncertain, as it also could be interpreted by the overestimated value of the CO absorption. Our $`ASCA`$ results of 1997 July are the first to confirm the existence of the soft component in BL Lacertae not solely based on the photon spectrum, but on the different variability patterns of both components. This will be the third source following S5 0716+714 (Cappi et al. (1994); Giommi et al. (1999)) and ON 231 (Tagliaferri et al. (2000)) which reveals two components inferred on the basis of the difference in the variability patterns. We thus suggest that the soft power law dominating the soft X–ray band is the high energy tail of the synchrotron spectrum, representing its steep cutoff. Because the synchrotron emission frequency is proportional to the square of the energy of the radiating electrons, we can regard the soft X–ray band as reflecting the most energetic electrons. The flat index of the hard component indicates that the hard X–rays are representing the onset of the inverse Compton spectrum reflecting the lower energy end of the electron population, consistent with what we have known from previous observations.

The overall spectral energy distribution (SED) of BL Lacertae during the July 1997 outburst is shown in Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE; this Figure also illustrates the literature and archival data for pre-1997 observations. The two peaks common in blazar spectra are clearly seen, with the higher energy part of our combined $`ASCA`$ and $`RXTE`$ spectrum smoothly connecting to the $`\gamma `$–ray band observed by OSSE and EGRET. The upturn in the soft X–rays is evident, illustrating the synchrotron spectrum extending to the $`ASCA`$ band. The X–ray light curve of BL Lacertae shown in Figure Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE reveals that the rapid flares are more prominent in the soft X–ray band. One possibility is that the flare is caused by the increase of the maximum energy of the electron population, similar to the flares observed in several HBLs, such as from Mrk 501 (Kataoka et al. (1999); Pian et al. (1998)). However, we must remark that BL Lacertae also requires some other mechanism to account for the changes in the hard X–ray flux, which presumably forms the low energy end of the SSC spectrum. The most likely explanation for this is the increase of the normalization of the electron population, although variability of the magnetic field or the beaming factor is also possible.

Rapid variability in blazars is generally assumed to be triggered by shocks propagating along a relativistic jet, and such a shock front is thought to be the most promising region where the electron acceleration may be taking place. The cutoff (the maximum) of the electron population is likely to result from the electron cooling time scale $`\tau _{\mathrm{cool}}`$ balancing the acceleration time scale $`\tau _{\mathrm{acc}}`$ in this region (e.g. Inoue & Takahara (1996); Kirk, Rieger, & Mastichiadis (1998); Kusunose, Takahara, & Li (2000)). In this case, the photon spectrum also cuts off at a corresponding frequency, $`\nu _{\mathrm{max}}1.2\times 10^6B\delta \gamma _{\mathrm{max}}^2`$ (using the peak frequency of the synchrotron spectrum; see, e.g., Rybicki & Lightman (1979)), followed by a steeper decline. Here, $`B`$ is the magnetic field in units of Gauss, and $`\gamma _{\mathrm{max}}`$ is the Lorentz factor of the maximum energy electrons. Because the photon index of the soft component in our $`ASCA`$ data was mainly steeper than 3, the cutoff of the synchrotron spectrum most likely occurs at an energy lower than the $`ASCA`$ band, $``$ 0.1 keV or less. Using 0.1 keV, we can calculate, $`\gamma _{\mathrm{max}}4.5\times 10^4(h\nu /0.1\mathrm{keV})^{0.5}B_1^{0.5}\delta _{10}^{0.5}`$, where $`B_1`$ is the magnetic field in units of Gauss, and $`\delta _{10}`$ the beaming factor $`\delta /10`$. We used $`B=1`$ G and $`\delta =10`$ inferred from the fits to the SED by Madejski et al. (1999) and Sambruna et al. (1999).

From the calculated maximum energy of the relativistic electrons, we can now estimate the energy at which the overall spectrum cuts off. As suggested by Madejski et al. (1999) and Sambruna et al. (1999), assuming that the highest energy ($`\gamma `$–ray) range of the spectrum is produced by the Compton mechanism via scattering of external photons from the broad line region, the overall spectrum should extend only up to the energy corresponding to these photons interacting with the most energetic electrons. If Klein-Nishina effects become important, the spectrum should also steepen above a certain energy. Taking the typical energy of the broad line photons to be $`h\nu _{\mathrm{BL}}`$ 1.9 eV (or wavelength $``$ 6600 Å, the H$`\alpha `$ line) and $`\delta `$ = 10, Klein-Nishina effects set in for electrons with Lorentz factors exceeding $`\gamma _{\mathrm{KN}}m_ec^2/(\delta h\nu _{\mathrm{BL}})2.7\times 10^4`$, where $`m_e`$ is the electron mass, and $`c`$ the velocity of light. This is slightly below the maximum Lorentz factor inferred from the soft X–ray cutoff. Thus the $`\gamma `$–ray spectrum should break above $`h\nu _{\mathrm{KN}}\delta ^2h\nu _{\mathrm{BL}}\times \gamma _{\mathrm{KN}}^2140`$ GeV. The maximum attainable $`\gamma `$–ray energy corresponds to the maximum electron energy, $`h\nu _{\mathrm{max}}\delta \gamma _{\mathrm{max}}^2m_ec^2230`$ GeV. Accordingly, BL Lacertae is not likely to be a TeV emitter, consistent with the observations showing only upper limits (Catanese et al. (1997)). This is in contrast to the “TeV blazars” such as Mrk 421 or Mrk 501, where the $`\gamma _{\mathrm{max}}`$ is thought to extend up to $`10^6`$, and this high value of the maximum electron energy should be one of the main factors responsible for a blazar being a TeV emitter.

The decay time of the variability in the $`ASCA`$ data for BL Lacertae appears to be longer for hard X–rays – presumably produced by the low end of the distribution of electron energies – than for soft X–rays, produced by the most energetic electrons. This is reasonable given the fact that the electron cooling time is shorter for higher energy electrons ($`\tau _{\mathrm{cool}}7.7\times 10^8(1+u_{\mathrm{soft}}/u_\mathrm{B})^1B^2\gamma ^1`$ (see, e.g. Rybicki & Lightman (1979)), where $`u_\mathrm{B}`$ and $`u_{\mathrm{soft}}`$ are the energy density of the magnetic field, and the soft photons to be upscattered. As the scattering is expected to occur mainly in the Thomson regime, $`u_{\mathrm{soft}}/u_\mathrm{B}`$ can be estimated from the peak luminosity of the synchrotron ($`L_{\mathrm{sy}}`$) and inverse Compton ($`L_{\mathrm{IC}}`$) components in the observed spectrum (cf. Fig. Rapid Synchrotron Flares from BL Lacertae  Detected by ASCA and RXTE) via $`u_{\mathrm{soft}}/u_\mathrm{B}=L_{\mathrm{IC}}/L_{\mathrm{sy}}4`$. Applying $`B1`$ Gauss and $`\delta 10`$, the cooling time for the maximum energy electrons is calculated to be $`\tau _{\mathrm{cool},\mathrm{obs}}(\gamma _{\mathrm{max}})=\tau _{\mathrm{cool},\mathrm{intr}}/\delta 3.5\times 10^2(h\nu /0.1\mathrm{keV})^{0.5}B_1^{1.5}\delta _{10}^{0.5}`$ s, which is much shorter than the X–ray variability time scales of 2 – 3 hours that we have observed. This can be interpreted as resulting from the fact that time scales faster than the source light-crossing time $`\tau _{\mathrm{crs}}`$, which is the time for the photons to propagate across the emission region, will always be smoothed out by $`\tau _{\mathrm{crs}}`$ (cf. Chiaberge & Ghisellini (1999)).

The soft X–ray light curve indicates that the rise and decay times are similar to each other. This is nicely consistent with the scenario where the soft X–ray band reflects the highest energy electrons, both $`\tau _{\mathrm{cool}}`$ and $`\tau _{\mathrm{acc}}`$ are shorter than the $`\tau _{\mathrm{crs}}`$, and thus both rise and decay times are reflecting the $`\tau _{\mathrm{crs}}`$. Regarding the hard X–rays, in the context of the two-component Comptonization model (cf. Madejski et al. (1999)), those are produced by lower energy electrons, where the seed photons for the Comptonized spectrum are probably the synchrotron photons in the optical band, at $`\nu 10^{14}`$ Hz. With this, the 5 keV ($`10^{18}`$ Hz) X–rays are produced by electrons with $`\gamma 100`$, and for those electrons, $`\tau _{\mathrm{cool}}`$ is about 40 hours. This is now significantly longer than the $`\tau _{\mathrm{crs}}`$, estimated to be 2 – 3 hours, so those electrons are not expected to cool within $`\tau _{\mathrm{crs}}`$. The long, gradual decay of the hard X–rays is then probably due to other causes, such as escape of particles from the radiating region, or decrease in the effective density of soft (target) photons.

In contrast to the hard X–rays, adopting the above parameters – and assuming that the region producing the optical radiation is co-spatial with that producing the soft X–rays – we infer that the cooling times of the electrons producing the optical synchrotron photons (which should have $`\gamma 6500`$ for $`\lambda =6000`$ Å) are $`2500`$ s, which, just as for the case of soft X–rays, is shorter than the source crossing time. This is supported by the very rapid variability of the optical flux with similar rise and decay times (Massaro et al. (1998); Nesci et al. (1998)), similar to that seen in the soft X–ray band.

However, we must also remark that we cannot completely exclude the possibility of variability on a shorter time scale which we cannot measure. The detected flares can actually consist of a superposition of more rapid undetectable flares, and there is actually a data point indicating a more rapid variability in the middle of the second flare, but the statistics do not let us distinguish such small flares. We expect future missions with larger effective area to provide sufficiently sensitive observations to completely resolve the most rapid events.

## 5 CONCLUSIONS

$`ASCA`$ X–ray observations of BL Lacertae during the July 1997 outburst revealed that the X–ray flux was in a high state throughout the observation, in similarity to the optical and high energy $`\gamma `$–ray behavior. We detected two rapid flares with a time scale of 2 – 3 hours, but only in the soft X–ray band. The hard X–ray flux also increased, but decayed with a much longer time scale. The spectrum of the source in the highest flux states required two separate power law components, a soft and steep one, dominating below $`1`$ keV with a photon index of 3 – 5, in addition to a hard component with a photon index 1.3 – 1.6. This suggests that the soft component represents the high energy end of the synchrotron spectrum extending to the X–ray band, and thus allows us to estimate the position of the high energy cutoff of the synchrotron component, from which we infer the cutoff in the electron energy distribution to be $`\gamma _{\mathrm{max}}4.5\times 10^4`$. The cooling time scale of such electrons is $``$ 350 s, short as compared to the variability time scale $`\tau _{\mathrm{var}}`$. We interpret this $`\tau _{\mathrm{var}}`$ as the indicator of the source size. The slower decay time of the hard X–ray flux fits well into the scenario where the hard X–rays are produced via the Comptonization of optical synchrotron photons by the lower energy end of the relativistic electron distribution (where the cooling time scales are longer than the source crossing time). In this context, the long decay time in the hard X–ray flux is due to other causes, such as escape of particles from the radiating region, or decrease in the effective energy density of soft photons.

This research was supported by the Fellowship of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science for Young Scientists, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research No. 05242101, the Grand-in-Aid for COE Research No. 07CE2002 by the Ministry of the Education, Culture and Science, Japan, and NASA grants to USRA and University of Maryland / College Park, and also by NASA Grant NAG5-3384 to Boston University.


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# Untitled Document

UTTG-08-00

Curvature Dependence of Peaks in the Cosmic Microwave Background Distribution

Steven Weinberg***Electronic address: weinberg@physics.utexas.edu

Theory Group, Department of Physics, University of Texas
Austin, TX, 78712

Abstract

The widely cited formula $`\mathrm{}_1200\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{1/2}`$ for the multipole number of the first Doppler peak is not even a crude approximation in the case of greatest current interest, in which the cosmic mass density is less than the vacuum energy density. For instance, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ fixed at 0.3, the position of any Doppler peak varies as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{1.58}`$ near $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$.

The precise measurement1 of the multipole number $`\mathrm{}_1=197\pm 6`$ at the first ‘Doppler’ peak has provided an invaluable constraint on cosmological parameters. In a 1994 numerical calculation, Kamionkowski, Spergel and Sugiyama2 presented a formula giving $`\mathrm{}_1`$ as a function essentially of the curvature alone:

$$\mathrm{}_1\frac{200}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_0}},$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0\mathrm{\Omega }_M+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, in which $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ are the present ratios of the cosmic mass density and the vacuum energy (associated, e. g., with a cosmological constant) to the critical density. This calculation was done before supernova studies3 indicated the likely presence of a relatively large cosmological constant, and therefore assumed that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$. They also explained the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{1/2}`$ behavior by noting that $`\mathrm{}_1`$ is approximately inversely proportional to the angle subtended at the earth by the horizon at the time of last scattering, which was known4 to be proportional to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{1/2}`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$. The same $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$-dependence was derived on the same grounds by Frampton et al.,5 explicitly for the case $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that it was derived only for the case $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, Eq. (1) continues to be quoted1,6,7,8,9 as if it were generally applicable also when $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is appreciable. As far as I know, this formula has not been used by observational groups in analysis of their data, but in view of the great current interest in these matters, it seems worth warning that in fact, Eq. (1) is not valid for parameters in the range suggested by supernova observations, for which $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }>\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$. Although it is true that when $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ is near unity, $`\mathrm{}_1`$ depends less sensitively on other parameters than on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, the dependence of $`\mathrm{}_1`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ bears no resemblence whatever to Eq. (1), except for the case $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }1`$. Instead, we shall see that the dependence of $`\mathrm{}_1`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ near $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ fixed at values less than 0.4 is much stronger than given by Eq. (1) (for instance, $`\mathrm{}_1\mathrm{\Omega }_M^{1.58}`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.3`$), and it depends sensitively on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$.

To calculate the full dependence of $`\mathrm{}_1`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{baryon}}`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{radiation}}`$, etc. is a complicated task, requiring the consideration of the evolution of the acoustic velocity and of the ratio of radiation and matter energies, and the consideration of Doppler shifts as well as temperature fluctuations. We can avoid all these complications by considering the dependence of $`\mathrm{}_1`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ when only $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is allowed to vary, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ and all other parameters held fixed. If it were really true (as Eq. (1) says) that $`\mathrm{}_1`$ depends only on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, then this would be all we need to calculate the full $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$-dependence.

The advantage of letting only $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ vary is that the vacuum energy density is negligible compared with the densities of matter and radiation at and before the redshift $`z_L1100`$ of last scattering, so the only effect of variations in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ on the multipole number $`\mathrm{}_n`$ of the $`n`$th Doppler peak is to change the paths followed by light rays since the time of last scattering. The angle subtended at the earth by any feature of the cosmic microwave background of proper length $`d`$ is

$$\theta =d/d_A,$$
(2)
where $`d_A`$ is the angular diameter distance of the surface of last scattering:10

$$d_A=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_k^{1/2}H_0(1+z_L)}\mathrm{sinh}\left[\mathrm{\Omega }_k^{1/2}_{1/(1+z_L)}^1\frac{dx}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }x^4+\mathrm{\Omega }_kx^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_Mx}}\right],$$
(3)
and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$ is a measure of curvature

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_k1\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{\Omega }_M=1\mathrm{\Omega }_0.$$
(4)
It follows that the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dependence of $`\mathrm{}_n`$ is given by

$$\mathrm{}_nd_A.$$
(5)
Furthermore, although the relation between the present Hubble constant $`H_0`$ and the proper scales of phenomena at the time of last scattering depends on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{radiation}}`$, it does not depend on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. (For instance, if we neglect radiation, then the acoustic horizon at the redshift of last scattering is $`2(1+z_L)^{3/2}/\sqrt{3\mathrm{\Omega }_M}H_0`$.) Therefore, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ fixed, the dependence of $`\mathrm{}_n`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is given by

$$\mathrm{}_n(\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda })\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_k^{1/2}}\mathrm{sinh}\left[\mathrm{\Omega }_k^{1/2}_0^1\frac{dx}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }x^4+\mathrm{\Omega }_kx^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_Mx}}\right],$$
(6)
with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$ given in terms of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ by Eq. (4). (The lower limit on the integral has here been set equal to zero because $`z_L>>1`$.) Of course, all the detailed physics of the acoustic oscillations responsible for the Doppler peaks is contained in the constant of proportionality; all we need to know here is that it does not involve $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

Now let us consider the variation of the quantity (6) as we make small changes in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ near $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ fixed. An elementary calculation gives

$$\mathrm{}_n\mathrm{\Omega }_0^\nu ,$$
(7)
where

$$\nu \left(\frac{\mathrm{ln}}{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }}\right)_{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=1\mathrm{\Omega }_M}=\frac{_1^2}{6}\frac{_2}{2_1},$$
(8)
with

$$_1_0^1\frac{dx}{\left[(1\mathrm{\Omega }_M)x^4+\mathrm{\Omega }_Mx\right]^{1/2}},_2_0^1\frac{(x^2x^4)dx}{\left[(1\mathrm{\Omega }_M)x^4+\mathrm{\Omega }_Mx\right]^{3/2}}.$$
(9)
The table below gives values of these integrals, and of the resulting exponent $`\nu `$ in Eq. (7).

| $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ | $`_1`$ | $`_2`$ | $`\nu `$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0.2 | 3.891 | 2.546 | 2.196 |
| 0.3 | 3.305 | 1.601 | 1.578 |
| 0.4 | 2.938 | 1.145 | 1.244 |
|  |  |  |  |
| 1.0 | 2 | 8/21 | 4/7 |

The only approximation made in deriving these results is that the universe becomes transparent suddenly at a redshift $`z_L1`$, and has been dominated since then by non-relativistic matter and vacuum energy. Also, we are neglecting the effect of changing gravitational potentials at redshifts $`zz_L`$, which introduce an additional $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$\- dependence11 that is quite small at the wavelengths of the Doppler peaks. Otherwise, these results are exact.

The behavior $`\mathrm{}_1\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{4/7}`$ near $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ fixed at unity is close to the behaviour $`\mathrm{}_1\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{1/2}`$ near $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$ found2,5 for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ fixed at zero, confirming that $`\mathrm{}_1`$ is approximately a function of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ alone for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ near unity. The fact that $`\nu `$ depends strongly on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ for smaller values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ shows that for observationally favored parameters $`\mathrm{}_1`$ is not approximately a function of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ alone. Indeed, there is no physical reason why $`\mathrm{}_1`$ should be even approximately a function of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ alone. For fixed values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ less than 0.4 the $`\mathrm{}_n`$ fall off with increasing $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ much more rapidly than would be expected from Eq. (1), so the measurement of the positions of the Doppler peaks provides a more stringent constraint on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ than would be the case if Eq. (1) were correct.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for conversations with M. Kamionkowski, M. Roos, M. Turner, and M. White. This research was supported in part by the Robert A. Welch Foundation and NSF Grant PHY-9511632.

References

1. P. de Bernardis et al., Nature 404, 955 (2000).
2. M Kamionkowski, D. N. Spergel, and N. Sugiyama, Ap. J. 426, L57 (1994).
3. S. Perlmutter et al., astro-ph/9812133, 9812473; B. P. Schmidt et al., Ap. J. 507, 46 (1998); A. G. Riess et al., astro-ph/9805200.
4. See, e. g., S. Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology (Wiley, New York, 1972), Eq. (15.5.39); E. W. Kolb and M. S. Turner, The Early Universe (Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, CA, 1990), p. 505.
5. P. Frampton , Y. J. Ng, and R. Rohm, Mod. Phys. Lett. A13, 2541 (1998). There are aspects of this paper with which I disagree, but they are not relevant to the present work.
6. N. A. Bahcall, J. P. Ostriker, S. Perlmutter, and P. J. Steinhardt, Science 28, 1481 (1999).
7. M. S. Turner, in Cosmo-98: Second International Workshop on Particle Physics and the Early Universe, AIP Conference Proceedings 478 (American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, NY 1999), ed. by D. O. Caldwell, p. 113.
8. M. Roos and S. M. Harun-or-Rashid, astro-ph/0005541 (2000).
9. Bahcall et al.6 cited reference 2, while Turner7 cited no reference for Eq. (1). De Bernardis et al.1 cited no references for Eq. (1), but relied on references 2, 5, and 6. Roos and Harun-or-Rashid8 also cited no references, but took this formula from reference 1.
10. This formula is given, e. g., in reference 5.
11. M. White, D. Scott, and J. Silk, Ann. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 32, 319 (1994): Appendix B; W. Hu and M. White, Astron. Astrophys. 315, 33 (1996).


text:
# On the Uniqueness of the Chentsov Metric in Quantum Information Geometry

## 1 Introduction

The first task of quantum information geometry is to extend to non-commutative probability spaces the uniqueness and rigidity of the geometrical structures used in the classical version of the theory. This includes, for instance, the uniqueness result of Chentsov concerning the Fisher metric  and the two equivalent definitions of $`\alpha `$-connections given by Amari : either using an $`\alpha `$-embedding of the form $`p\frac{2}{1\alpha }p^{\frac{1\alpha }{2}}`$ or as the convex mixture of the exponential and mixture connections.

As for the first problem, Chentsov himself made the first attempt to find the possible Riemannian metrics on a quantum information manifold with the property of having its line element reduced under stochastic maps  (cf ). This monotonicity property, which is the quantum analogue of being reduced under Markov morphisms, was later investigated by Petz . Unlike the classical case, he found that there are infinitely many Riemannian metrics satisfying it. Concerning the second problem, several definitions of $`\alpha `$-connections have been proposed , both for finite and infinite dimensional quantum systems. Since some of these definitions involve finding dual connections with respect to some chosen Fisher metric, it is clear that the multitude of possible candidates for the metric encourages the appearance of non-equivalent definitions for the $`\alpha `$-connections.

We take the position that quantum information manifolds are equipped with two natural flat connections: the mixture connection, obtained from the linear structure of trace class operators themselves, and the exponential connection, obtained when combinations of states are performed by adding their logarithms . In §2 we present our preferred definition of the $`\pm 1`$-connections in finite dimensional quantum information manifolds.

Following Amari , we consider duality as a fundamental structure to be explored. Thus, given these two connections, we should ask what are the Riemannian metrics that make them dual. We give our answer to this question in §3. In §4, we combine this result with Petz’s characterisation of monotone metrics in finite dimensional quantum systems to find that the BKM metric  is, up to a factor, the unique monotone Riemannian metric with respect to which the exponential and mixture connections are dual.

## 2 The Exponential and Mixture Connections

Let $`^N`$ be a finite dimensional complex Hilbert space, $`𝒜`$ the subspace of self-adjoint operators and $``$ the set of all invertible density operators on $`^N`$. Then $`𝒜`$ is an $`N^2`$-dimensional real vector space and $``$ is an $`n`$-dimensional submanifold with $`n=N^21`$. Defining the $`1`$-embedding of $``$ into $`𝒜`$ as

$`\mathrm{}_1`$ $`:`$ $`𝒜`$
$`\rho \mathrm{log}\rho ,`$
we can use the linear space structure of $`𝒜`$ to obtain a representation of the tangent bundle of $``$ in terms of operators in $`𝒜`$ even though $``$ is not a vector space itself. At each point $`\rho `$, consider the subspace $`𝒜_\rho =\{A𝒜:\text{Tr}(\rho A)=0\}`$ of $`𝒜`$, called the space of ‘scores’; we define the isomorphism

$`(\mathrm{}_1)_{(\rho )}`$ $`:`$ $`T_\rho 𝒜_\rho `$
$`v(\mathrm{}_1\gamma )^{}(0),`$
where $`\gamma :(\epsilon ,\epsilon )`$ is a curve in the equivalence class of the tangent vector $`v`$. We call this isomorphism the $`1`$-representation of the tangent space $`T_\rho `$. If $`(\theta ^1,\mathrm{},\theta ^n)`$ is a coordinate system for $``$, put $`_i:=/\theta ^i,i=1,\mathrm{},n`$, evaluated at $`\rho `$. Then the $`1`$-representation of the basis $`\{_1,\mathrm{},_n\}`$ of $`T_\rho `$ is $`\{\frac{\mathrm{log}\rho }{\theta ^1},\mathrm{},\frac{\mathrm{log}\rho }{\theta ^n}\}`$. The $`1`$-representation of a vector field $`X`$ on $``$ is therefore the $`𝒜`$-valued function $`(X)^{(1)}`$ given by $`(X)^{(1)}(\rho )=(\mathrm{}_1)_{(\rho )}X_\rho `$.

The exponential or $`1`$-connection is the connection obtained from the $`1`$-embedding through the following parallel transport

$`\tau _{\rho _0,\rho _1}^{(1)}`$ $`:`$ $`T_{\rho _0}T_{\rho _1}`$
$`v(\mathrm{}_1)_{(\rho _1)}^1\left((\mathrm{}_1)_{(\rho _0)}v\text{Tr}[\rho _1(\mathrm{}_1)_{(\rho _0)}v]\right).`$
Giving the parallel transport in a neighbourhood of $`\rho `$ is equivalent to specifying the covariant derivative. It is readily verified that the $`1`$-representation of the $`1`$-covariant derivative, applied to the vector field $`_j:=/\theta ^j`$, is

$$\left(__i^{(1)}\frac{}{\theta ^j}\right)^{(1)}=\frac{^2\mathrm{log}\rho }{\theta ^i\theta ^j}\text{Tr}\left(\rho \frac{^2\mathrm{log}\rho }{\theta ^i\theta ^j}\right)$$
(1)
At a more abstract level, the construction above corresponds to making $``$ into an affine space and endowing it with the natural flat connection . Rather than exploring this concept further, we benefit from dealing with finite dimensional spaces and prove that the $`1`$-connection is flat by exhibiting an affine coordinate system for it. Let $`\{\mathrm{𝟏},X_1,\mathrm{},X_n\}`$ be a basis for $`𝒜`$. Since $`\mathrm{log}\rho 𝒜`$, there exist real numbers $`\{\theta ^1,\mathrm{},\theta ^n,\mathrm{\Psi }\}`$ such that

$$\mathrm{log}\rho =\theta ^1X_1+\mathrm{}+\theta ^nX_n\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{𝟏},$$

that is,

$$\rho =\mathrm{exp}\left(\theta ^1X_1+\mathrm{}+\theta ^nX_n\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{𝟏}\right).$$
(2)
The normalisation condition $`\text{Tr}\rho =1`$ means, however, that only $`n`$ among these numbers are independent, so we choose $`\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )`$ to be the one determined by the others. Then $`\theta =(\theta ^1,\mathrm{},\theta ^n)`$ form a $`1`$-affine coordinate system, as can be seen from the following calculation

$`\left(__i^{(1)}{\displaystyle \frac{}{\theta ^j}}\right)^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{log}\rho }{\theta ^i\theta ^j}}\text{Tr}\left(\rho {\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{log}\rho }{\theta ^i\theta ^j}}\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }}{\theta ^i\theta ^j}}(\theta )+\text{Tr}\left(\rho {\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }}{\theta ^i\theta ^j}}(\theta )\right)`$
$`=`$ $`0.`$
Now let $`𝒜_0`$ be the subspace of traceless operators in $`𝒜`$. Consider the $`1`$-embedding

$`\mathrm{}_1`$ $`:`$ $`𝒜`$
$`\rho \rho ,`$
and define, at each $`\rho `$, the $`1`$-representation of tangent vectors as

$`(\mathrm{}_1)_{(\rho )}`$ $`:`$ $`T_\rho 𝒜_0`$
$`v(\mathrm{}_1\gamma )^{}(0),`$
where $`\gamma :(\epsilon ,\epsilon )`$ is again a curve in the equivalence class of the tangent vector $`v`$. In coordinates, the $`1`$-representation of the basis $`\{_1,\mathrm{},_n\}`$ of $`T_\rho `$ is $`\{\frac{\rho }{\theta ^1},\mathrm{},\frac{\rho }{\theta ^n}\}`$. As before, the $`1`$-representation of a vector field $`X`$ on $``$ is an $`𝒜_0`$-valued function denoted by $`(X)^{(1)}`$ or $`X^{}`$.

We obtain the mixture or $`1`$-connection by defining the parallel transport

$`\tau _{\rho _0,\rho _1}^{(1)}`$ $`:`$ $`T_{\rho _0}T_{\rho _1}`$
$`v(\mathrm{}_1)_{(\rho _1)}^1\left((\mathrm{}_1)_{(\rho _0)}v\right),`$
and we find that its covariant derivative in the direction $`_i`$ is

$$\left(__i^{(1)}\frac{}{\theta ^j}\right)^{(1)}=\frac{^2\rho }{\theta ^i\theta ^j}.$$
(3)
If we equip $`𝒜`$ with the trace norm, then the $`1`$-embedding maps $``$ into the unit sphere $`𝒮`$ of $`𝒜`$, and the $`1`$-connection given here is nothing but the projection onto $`𝒮`$ of the natural flat connection in this space. It turns out that the unit sphere with respect to the trace norm is flat in $`𝒜`$, hence the $`1`$-connection is flat on $``$. Again, it is a convenience of the finite dimensional case that we can prove flatness of the $`1`$-connection by direct construction of a $`1`$-affine coordinate system. Suppose $`\{X_1,\mathrm{},X_{n+1}\}`$ is a normalised basis for $`𝒜`$, then there exist real numbers $`(\xi _1,\mathrm{},\xi _{n+1})`$ such that

$$\rho =\xi _1X_1+\mathrm{}+\xi _{n+1}X_{n+1}.$$
(4)
Since $`\text{Tr}\rho =1`$, we can take $`\xi _{n+1}=1(\xi _1+\mathrm{}+\xi _n)`$ as a function of the first $`n`$ independent parameters $`\xi _1,\mathrm{},\xi _n`$. Then $`\xi =(\xi _1,\mathrm{},\xi _n)`$ is a $`1`$-affine coordinate system for $``$, because

$`\left(_{\frac{}{\xi _i}}^{(1)}{\displaystyle \frac{}{\xi _j}}\right)^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\rho }{\xi _i\xi _j}}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{}{\xi _i}}(X_jX_{n+1})`$
$`=`$ $`0.`$
## 3 Duality and the BKM Metric

Two connections $``$ and $`^{}`$ on a Riemannian manifold $`(,g)`$ are dual with respect to $`g`$ if and only if

$$Xg(Y,Z)=g(_XY,Z)+g(Y,_X^{}Z),$$
(5)
for any vector fields $`X,Y,Z`$ on $``$ . Equivalently, if $`\tau _{\gamma (t)}`$ and $`\tau _{\gamma (t)}^{}`$ are the respective parallel transports along a curve $`\{\gamma (t)\}_{0t1}`$ on $``$, with $`\gamma (0)=\rho `$, then $``$ and $`^{}`$ are dual with respect to $`g`$ if and only if for all $`t[0,1]`$,

$$g_\rho (Y,Z)=g_{\gamma (t)}(\tau _{\gamma (t)}Y,\tau _{\gamma (t)}^{}Z).$$
(6)
Given any connection $``$ on $`(,g)`$, we can always find a unique connection $`^{}`$ such that $``$ and $`^{}`$ are dual with respect to $`g`$. On the other hand, given two connections $``$ and $`^{}`$, we can ask what are the possible Riemannian metrics $`g`$ with respect to which they are dual. In particular, we want to explore this question for the case of the exponential and mixture connections on a manifold of density matrices.

A different concept of duality also used by Amari  is that of dual coordinate systems, regardless of any connection. Two coordinate systems $`\theta =(\theta ^i)`$ and $`\eta =(\eta _i)`$ on a Riemannian manifold $`(,g)`$ are dual with respect to $`g`$ if and only if their natural bases for $`T_\rho `$ are biorthogonal at every point $`\rho `$, that is,

$$g(\frac{}{\theta ^i},\frac{}{\eta _j})=\delta _j^i.$$

Equivalently, $`\theta =(\theta ^i)`$ and $`\eta =(\eta _i)`$ are dual with respect to $`g`$ if and only if

$$g_{ij}=\frac{\eta _i}{\theta ^j}\text{and}g^{ij}=\frac{\theta _i}{\eta ^j}$$

at every point $`\rho `$, where, as usual, $`g^{ij}=(g_{ij})^1`$.

The following theorem gives a characterisation of dual coordinate systems in terms of potential functions, thus bringing convexity theory and the related duality with respect to Legendre transforms into the discussion.

###### Theorem 7 (Amari, 1985)

When a Riemannian manifold $`(,g)`$ has a pair of dual coordinate systems $`(\theta ,\eta )`$, there exist potential functions $`\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }(\eta )`$ such that

$$g_{ij}(\theta )=\frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )}{\theta ^i\theta ^j}\text{and}g^{ij}=\frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }(\eta )}{\eta _i\eta _j}.$$

Conversely, when either potential function $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ or $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ exists from which the metric is derived by differentiating it twice, there exist a pair of dual coordinate systems. The dual coordinate systems and the potential functions are related by the following Legendre transforms

$$\theta ^i=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(\eta )}{\eta _i},\eta _i=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )}{\theta ^i}$$

and

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )+\mathrm{\Phi }(\eta )\theta ^i\eta _i=0$$

In contrast to the case of dual connections, dual coordinate systems do not necessarily exist on every Riemannian manifold . When the additional property of flatness is required, the following theorem provides a link between the two concepts of duality. In the sense used in this paper, a connection $``$ on manifold $``$ is said to be flat if $``$ admits a global $``$-affine coordinate system. This is equivalent to its curvature and torsion both being zero.

###### Theorem 8 (Amari, 1985)

Suppose that $``$ and $`^{}`$ are two flat connections on a manifold $``$. If they are dual with respect to a Riemannian metric $`g`$ on $``$, then there exists a pair $`(\theta ,\eta )`$ of dual coordinate systems such that $`\theta `$ is $``$-affine and $`\eta `$ is a $`^{}`$-affine.

We now return to our manifold $``$ of density matrices and consider the problem of finding a unique Riemannian metric for it. Using either the $`1`$ or the $`1`$ representation of the tangent bundle $`T`$, we define a Riemannian metric on $``$ by a smooth assignment of an inner product $`,_\rho `$ in $`𝒜B(^N)`$ for each point $`\rho `$. The BKM (Bogoliubov-Kubo-Mori) metric is the Riemannian metric on $``$ obtained from the BKM inner product . If $`A^{(1)},B^{(1)}`$ and $`A^{(1)},B^{(1)}`$ are, respectively, the $`1`$ and $`1`$ representations of $`A,BT_\rho `$, then the BKM metric has the following equivalent expressions:

$`g_\rho ^B(A,B)`$ $`=`$ $`\text{Tr}\left(A^{(1)}B^{(1)}\right)`$ (9)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}\text{Tr}\left(\rho ^\lambda A^{(1)}\rho ^{1\lambda }B^{(1)}\right)𝑑\lambda `$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\text{Tr}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{t+\rho }}A^{(1)}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{t+\rho }}B^{(1)}\right)𝑑t`$
It is well known that the exponential and mixture connections are dual with respect to the BKM metric . A natural question is whether it is the unique metric with this property. The next theorem tells us how much uniqueness can be achieved from duality alone.

###### Theorem 10

If the connections $`^{(1)}`$ and $`^{(1)}`$ are dual with respect to a Riemannian metric $`g`$ on $``$, then there exist a constant (independent of $`\rho `$) $`n\times n`$ matrix $`M`$, such that $`(g_\rho )_{ij}={\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}}M_i^k(g_\rho ^B)_{kj}`$, in some $`1`$-affine coordinate system.

Proof: Since the two connections are flat, by theorem 8, there exist dual coordinate systems $`(\theta ,\eta )`$ such that $`\theta `$ is $`^{(1)}`$-affine and $`\eta `$ is $`^{(1)}`$-affine. Thus, applying theorem 7, there exist a potential function $`\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )`$ such that

$$g_{ij}(\theta )=\frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )}{\theta ^i\theta ^j}$$

and

$$\eta _i=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )}{\theta ^i}.$$

On the other hand, since $`\theta `$ is $`^{(1)}`$-affine, there exist linearly independent operators
$`\{\mathrm{𝟏},X_1,\mathrm{},X_n\}`$ such that

$$\rho =\mathrm{exp}\left(\theta ^1X_1+\mathrm{}+\theta ^nX_n\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}(\theta )\mathrm{𝟏}\right),$$
(11)
where

$$\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}(\theta )=\mathrm{log}\text{Tr}\left[\mathrm{exp}\left(\theta ^1X_1+\mathrm{}+\theta ^nX_n\right)\right].$$
(12)
Without loss of generality, we can assume that the operators $`X_1,\mathrm{},X_n`$ are traceless, since if we add multiples of the identity to any $`X_j`$ in (11), we can still have the same parameters $`\theta `$ as coordinates for the same point $`\rho `$ just by modifying the function $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}`$. But any such set of operators define a $`^{(1)}`$-affine coordinate system through the formula

$$\stackrel{~}{\eta }_i=\text{Tr}(\rho X_i),$$

because the latter are affinely related to the $`\xi `$ coordinates defined in section 2 (with $`X_{n+1}=\mathrm{𝟏}/n`$). Differentiating $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}`$ with respect to $`\theta ^i`$ we obtain

$$\frac{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}(\theta )}{\theta ^i}=\text{Tr}(\rho X_i)=\stackrel{~}{\eta }_i.$$

Thus $`\stackrel{~}{\eta }_i=\frac{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}(\theta )}{\theta ^i}`$ and $`\eta _i=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )}{\theta ^i}`$ are two $`^{(1)}`$-affine coordinate systems, so they must be related by an affine transformation . So there exist an $`n\times n`$ matrix $`M`$ and numbers $`(a_1,\mathrm{},a_n)`$ such that

$$\eta _i=\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}M_i^k\stackrel{~}{\eta }_k+a_i,$$

that is,

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )}{\theta ^i}=\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}M_i^k\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )}{\theta ^k}+a_i,$$

and differentiating this equation with respect to $`\theta ^j`$ gives

$$g_{ij}(\theta )=\frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }(\theta )}{\theta ^i\theta ^j}=\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}M_i^k\frac{^2\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}(\theta )}{\theta ^j\theta ^k}.$$
(13)
But we can calculate the second derivative of $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}`$ directly from (12), obtaining

$`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}(\theta )}{\theta ^j\theta ^k}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}\text{Tr}\left(\rho ^\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}\rho }{\theta ^j}}\rho ^{1\lambda }{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}\rho }{\theta ^k}}\right)𝑑\lambda `$
$`=`$ $`g_\rho ^B({\displaystyle \frac{}{\theta ^j}},{\displaystyle \frac{}{\theta ^k}})`$
$`=`$ $`g_{jk}^B(\theta ).`$
Inserting this in (13) completes the proof.$`\mathrm{}`$

## 4 The Condition of Monotonicity

We have seen in the previous section that requiring duality between the exponential and mixture connections reduces the set of possible Riemannian metrics on $``$ to matrix multiples of the BKM metric. We now investigate the effect of imposing a monotonicity property on this set.

If we use the $`1`$-representation to define a Riemannian metric $`g`$ on $``$ by means of the inner product $`,_\rho `$ in $`𝒜B(^N)`$, then we say that $`g`$ is monotone if and only if

$$S(A^{(1)}),S(A^{(1)})_{S(\rho )}A^{(1)},A^{(1)}_\rho ,$$
(14)
for every $`\rho `$, $`AT_\rho `$, and every completely positive, trace preserving map $`S:𝒜𝒜`$.

In a series of papers , Petz has given a complete characterisation of monotone metrics on full matrix spaces in terms of operator monotone functions. The Chentsov condition, however, is defined for metrics on the space $``$ of faithful states, and must first be extended to $`𝒜`$ before we can use Petz’s results. Let $`\widehat{}`$ be the manifold of faithful weights (the positive definite matrices). Let $`g`$ be a metric on $`T`$. We can extend $`g`$ to $`𝒜T\widehat{}`$ as follows. At $`\rho `$ and $`\widehat{A},\widehat{B}T\widehat{}_\rho `$, put $`\widehat{A}^{(1)}=A_0\rho +A^{}`$, where $`A_0=\text{Tr}\widehat{A}^{(1)}𝐑`$ and $`\text{Tr}A^{}=0`$, and similarly for $`B`$. Then put

$$\widehat{g}_\rho (\widehat{A},\widehat{B}):=A_0B_0+g_\rho (A^{},B^{}).$$
(15)
For $`g^B`$ this extension coincides with that given by eq. (9). More generally, if $`g`$ is monotone on $`T`$, then $`\widehat{g}`$ is monotone on $`T\widehat{}`$. For, let $`S`$ be a trace-preserving completely positive map on $`T\widehat{}`$, and $`\rho `$. Then $`S`$ maps $`T`$ to itself, and

$$\widehat{g}_{_{S\rho }}(S\widehat{A},S\widehat{A})=A_0^2+g_{_{S\rho }}(SA^{},SA^{})A_0^2+g_\rho (A^{},A^{})=\widehat{g}_\rho (A,A).$$

For any metric $`\widehat{g}`$ on $`T\widehat{}`$, and putting $`\widehat{A}^{(1)}=A_0\rho +A^{}`$, we define the positive (super) operator $`K_\rho `$ on $`𝒜`$ by

$$\widehat{g}_\rho (\widehat{A},\widehat{B})=\widehat{A}^{(1)},K_\rho \left(\widehat{B}^{(1)}\right)_{HS}=\text{Tr}\left(\widehat{A}^{(1)}K_\rho \left(\widehat{B}^{(1)}\right)\right).$$
(16)
Note that our $`K`$ is denoted $`K^1`$ by Petz. He also defines the (super) operators, $`L_\rho X:=\rho X`$ and $`R_\rho X:=X\rho `$, for $`X𝒜`$, which are also positive. Then he proved

###### Theorem 17 (Petz)

A Riemannian metric $`g`$ on $`𝒜`$ is monotone if and only if

$$K_\rho =\left(R_\rho ^{1/2}f(L_\rho R_\rho ^1)R_\rho ^{1/2}\right)^1,$$

where $`K_\rho `$ is defined in (16) and $`f:R^+R^+`$ is an operator monotone function satisfying $`f(t)=tf(t^1).`$

In particular, the BKM metric is monotone and its corresponding operator monotone function is

$$f^B(t)=\frac{t1}{\mathrm{log}t}.$$

Combining this characterisation with our theorem (10), we obtain the following improved uniqueness result.

###### Theorem 18

If the connections $`^{(1)}`$ and $`^{(1)}`$ are dual with respect to a monotone Riemannian metric $`g`$ on $``$, then $`g`$ is a scalar multiple of the BKM metric.

Proof: We first extend the $`(N^21)\times (N^21)`$ matrix $`M`$ of theorem (10) by one row and column, to a matrix $`\widehat{M}`$, where $`\widehat{M}_{ij}=M_{ij},(1i,jN^21)`$, and

$$\widehat{M}_{i,N^2}=\widehat{M}_{N^2,i}=\delta _{i,N^2},(i=1,\mathrm{},N^2).$$

Now, in the coordinates $`\widehat{A}^{(1)}=A_0\rho +A^{}`$ of eq. (15), the extension of $`g`$ to $`\widehat{g}`$ in the orthogonal direction $`\rho `$ is the same for all $`g`$. In particular,

$$\widehat{g}(A_0\rho ,B^{})=\widehat{g}^B(A_0\rho ,B^{})=0;\widehat{g}(A_0\rho ,B_0\rho )=\widehat{g}^B(A_0\rho ,B_0\rho )=A_0B_0.$$

It follows that the equation proved in theorem (10), when expressed in the $`1`$-affine coordinates $`\eta `$ (by taking inverses and using theorem 7), gives the following relation between the kernels of $`\widehat{g}`$ and $`\widehat{g}^B`$, say $`K^g`$ and $`K^B`$ respectively,

$$K_\rho ^g=\widehat{M}^tK_\rho ^B.$$
(19)
Therefore, if $`f^g`$ and $`f^B`$ are the operator monotone functions corresponding respectively to $`g`$ and $`g^B`$, from theorem 17, we have

$`\left(R_\rho ^{1/2}f^g(L_\rho R_\rho ^1)R_\rho ^{1/2}\right)^1`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{M}^t\left(R_\rho ^{1/2}f^{BKM}(L_\rho R_\rho ^1)R_\rho ^{1/2}\right)^1`$
$`\left(R_\rho ^{1/2}f^g(L_\rho R_\rho ^1)R_\rho ^{1/2}\right)\widehat{M}^t`$ $`=`$ $`\left(R_\rho ^{1/2}f^{BKM}(L_\rho R_\rho ^1)R_\rho ^{1/2}\right)`$
$`\widehat{M}^t`$ $`=`$ $`f^g(L_\rho R_\rho ^1)^1f^{BKM}(L_\rho R_\rho ^1),`$
as everything commutes. Thus, the operator $`\widehat{M}`$ is given as a function of the operator $`L_\rho R_\rho ^1`$, but it is itself independent of the point $`\rho `$, so we conclude that it must be a scalar multiple of the identity operator.$`\mathrm{}`$

## 5 Discussion

We have proved that, in a finite dimensional quantum system, the BKM metric is, up to a scalar factor, the unique monotone Riemannian metric with respect to which the exponential and mixture connections are dual. It should be emphasised that we have considered the manifold of all invertible density operators. The uniqueness result might not be true for a submanifold of $``$, such as occurs in parametric estimation theory.

We should compare our uniqueness theorem with the results of Hasegawa  and Petz and Hasegawa , who obtained a family of metrics $`\{g^\alpha \}`$, each corresponding to a divergence based on the corresponding Wigner-Yanase information, as generalised by Dyson. They show that these metrics are monotone, and that the $`\alpha `$-divergence ‘admits dual connections’, in a sense they specify. This does not contradict our result; the $`\pm 1`$-connections are not dual relative to $`g^\alpha `$ unless $`\alpha =\pm 1`$, which is the BKM case.

Having fixed the metric, the next step in the development of the theory is to define the $`\alpha `$-connections, for $`\alpha (1,1)`$. We look for a definition that makes $`^{(\alpha )}`$ and $`^{(\alpha )}`$ dual and such that the extended manifold $`\widehat{}`$ is $`\alpha `$-flat. Only then we can try to find the quantum analogue of the $`\alpha `$-divergence. Duality is easily achieved if we define the $`\alpha `$-connections as the convex mixture $`^{(\alpha )}=\frac{1+\alpha }{2}^{(1)}+\frac{1\alpha }{2}^{(1)}`$. Flatness, on the other hand, is more apparent if we use the $`\alpha `$-embedding. We have not yet been able to prove that the two definitions are equivalent. All these questions are deferred to a subsequent paper.


text:
# Quasar Strömgren Spheres Before Cosmological Reionization

## 1. Introduction

The epoch of cosmological reionization, and the nature of the ionizing sources bear fundamental cosmological importance, but are yet unknown. In contrast, we have a better understanding of how the reionization might have happened: individual HII regions, whether around galaxies or quasars (or sources of other nature), start out as isolated islands, eventually overlap to fill the universe and complete the reionization process (Aaron & Wingert 1972; Shapiro & Giroux 1987; Gnedin & Ostriker 1997; Haiman & Loeb 1998; Miralda-Escudé et al. 1999). In this Letter we suggest that it may be possible to directly probe the structure of an HII region around a bright quasar before the reionization is complete. Although we do not necessarily have to identify the primary reionization sources with quasars, the existence of bright quasars at high redshift is supported by the recent discovery of the very bright quasar at $`z=5.8`$ in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; Fan et al. 2000; F00 hereafter).

To study the size and structure of an individual Strömgren sphere, we propose to utilize the observed profile of the quasar’s Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line. When a source is embedded in a neutral IGM, its emission line suffers from strong absorption by the damping wing of the resonance Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption of the intervening neutral IGM (Miralda-Escudé 1998). As a result, the Ly$`\alpha `$ photons are absorbed and re–emitted multiple times in the IGM, resulting in an extended, low–surface brightness line, which is difficult to observe (Loeb & Rybicki 1999). In contrast, if the source is surrounded by a large HII region, the Ly$`\alpha `$ photons can escape absorption, provided they redshift out of resonance before they reach the boundary of the HII region. In this Letter, we show that a sufficiently bright quasar placed at $`z6`$ can produce a sufficiently large Strömgren sphere to render its Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line detectable, using the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), as well as high spectral resolution ground based telescopes such as Keck and the Hobby-Eberly (HET) telescopes. Throughout this Letter, we adopt a flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM background cosmology dominated by a cosmological constant and cold dark matter, with density parameters $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },\mathrm{\Omega }_0,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b})=(0.7,0.26,0.04)`$, and Hubble constant $`H_0=70\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$.

## 2. Strömgren Spheres Around Quasars

According to the classical definition in stellar astronomy, a Strömgren sphere is an HII region around an individual, ionizing-photon-emitting O/B star, within which the rate of recombinations exactly balances the emission rate $`\dot{N}_{ph}`$ of ionizing photons from the star. The radius $`R_s`$ of the Strömgren sphere is given by

$$R_s=\left[\frac{3\dot{N}_{ph}}{4\pi \alpha _Bn_H^2}\right]^{1/3},$$
(1)
where $`\alpha _B`$ is the hydrogen recombination coefficient at $`T=10^4`$K, and $`n_H^2`$ is the mean squared hydrogen density within $`R_s`$.

An analogous situation arises on much larger scales, for cosmological ionizing sources such as galaxies and quasars (Shapiro & Giroux 1987). There are, however, important differences between the stellar and cosmological case. The most important one for our purposes is that the hydrogen recombination time in the IGM is longer than the Hubble time at the relevant epochs ($`z<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}10}`$) and the quasar lifetime. As a result, the size $`R_s`$ of the equilibrium Strömgren sphere is large, but is never reached in practice before the ionizing source turns off. The radius $`R_{t_Q}`$ of the ionized region around a steady source of age $`t_Q`$ is then simply

$$R_{t_Q}=\left[\frac{3\dot{N}_{ph}t_Q}{4\pi n_H}\right]^{1/3},$$
(2)
where $`n_H`$ is the mean hydrogen density within $`R_{t_Q}`$. A second difference is that in the stellar case, the Strömgren sphere is static if the luminosity of the source is constant, whereas in the quasar case the sphere around a long–lived quasar can evolve due to the evolution of density around a quasar (both mean density and clumping factor) as well as the accumulation of ionizing photons (equation 2 and equation 4 below), even if the source luminosity remains constant. To fully take these effects into account, one needs to solve the equation of motion for the ionization front, $`R_i`$, with the following equation

$$\frac{dR_i^3}{dt}=3H(z)R_i^3+\frac{3\dot{N}_{ph}}{4\pi n_H}C_{\mathrm{HII}}n_H\alpha _BR_i^3,$$
(3)
where $`H(z)`$ is the Hubble constant at $`z`$, and $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}n_H^2/n_H^2`$ is the mean clumping factor of ionized gas within $`R_i`$. The three terms on the right side in equation 3 account for the Hubble expansion, the ionizations by newly produced photons, and recombinations (Shapiro & Giroux 1987; Haiman & Loeb 1997), respectively. Note that equation 3 predicts an initial phase of superluminal expansion for the I–front, i.e. when $`R_i(t)>ct`$. Ignoring any clumping or recombinations, this phase would last for $`t10^7(\dot{N}_{ph}/10^{57}\mathrm{s}^1)^{1/2}[(1+z)/8]^{3/2}`$ years (cf. eq. 2); a potentially significant effect, since the quasar found by F00 in the SDSS survey implies an intrinsic ionizing emissivity of $`\dot{N}_{ph}2\times 10^{57}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Nevertheless, the Ly$`\alpha `$ photons emitted by the quasar lag behind the I–front during the phase of relativistic expansion, and will only see the opacity once the front slows down to be subluminal. As a result, for our purposes, the apparent size of the HII region is always given by equation 3.

In practice, we find that the apparent size of a quasar Strömgren sphere is primarily determined by the total number of ionizing photons emitted. Assuming that the quasar luminosity $`\dot{N}_{ph}`$ is constant, the solution of equation 3 is accurately described by $`R_{t_Q}`$ given in eq. 2. Gas clumping is unlikely to significantly change this answer. As a specific example, with the ionizing photon emissivity of the SDSS quasar, and for $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}=100`$, we find that $`R_i`$ would be reduced by 10% at $`10^7\mathrm{yr}`$, and by 50% at $`10^8\mathrm{yr}`$. Cosmological simulations indicate that the value of $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}`$ is likely to be significantly below $`100`$ (Gnedin & Ostriker 1997).

## 3. Ly$`\alpha `$ Transfer Across a Strömgren Sphere

The main purpose of this Letter is to assess the effect of the quasar’s HII region on the observed profile of its Ly$`\alpha `$ line. Consider a source located at $`z_s>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}6}`$ before reionization is complete, whose age is $`t_Q`$. The source is assumed to be surrounded by a spherical HII region of size $`R_i(t_Q)`$, but is otherwise embedded in a neutral IGM. The source is also assumed to emit a Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line, which is subsequently reprocessed by the opacity of the intervening neutral IGM, as well as of the residual neutral hydrogen within the HII region itself.

The optical depth between the source and the observer at $`z=0`$, at the observed wavelength $`\lambda _{\mathrm{obs}}=\lambda _s(1+z_s)`$, is given by

$$\tau (\lambda _{\mathrm{obs}},z_s)=_{z_r}^{z_s}𝑑zc\frac{dt}{dz}n_H(z)\sigma _\alpha [\lambda _{\mathrm{obs}}/(1+z)],$$
(4)
where $`cdt/dz`$ is the line element in the assumed $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology, $`n_H`$ is the neutral hydrogen density, and $`\sigma _\alpha `$ is the Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption cross–section. The reionization redshift is assumed conservatively to be $`z_r=6`$, but the precise value (as well as the details of the reionization process) is irrelevant here, since we are only sensitive to the optical depth near the source redshift $`z_s`$, where the IGM is assumed to be still fully neutral. It is useful to divide the range of integration in equation 4 into two parts, to reflect the contributions to the optical depth from within ($`z_i<z<z_s`$) and outside ($`z_r<z<z_i`$) the HII region, where $`z_i`$ is the redshift somewhat below $`z_s`$, corresponding to the boundary of the HII region ($`z_iz_sR_i[t]/R_H[z_s]`$, where $`R_H[z_s]`$ is the size of the cosmological horizon at $`z_s`$).

The Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption cross–section is assumed to be described by a numerically computed Voigt profile (see eq. 6 of Press & Rybicki 1993). The gas temperature for this profile is taken to be $`T=10^4`$K within the HII region, and $`T=1.2[(1+z)/8]^2\mathrm{K}`$ outside it.111We assume that the IGM temperature is coupled to the cosmic microwave background until $`z=150`$, and cools adiabatically thereafter. Outside the HII region, the neutral hydrogen density is assumed to follow the IGM density, $`8.5\times 10^5[(1+z)/8]^3\mathrm{cm}^3`$. Inside the HII region, the neutral hydrogen density depends on the ionized fraction. Assuming photoionization equilibrium (justified for the source lifetimes of $`>10^6`$ yr considered here), and that the gas is highly ionized, the neutral hydrogen fraction $`x=n_{HI}/n_H1`$ at the quasar-centric radius $`r`$ is given by

$$\alpha _BC_{\mathrm{HII}}n_H=x_{\nu _H}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\nu \frac{L_\nu }{4\pi r^2}\frac{\sigma _\nu }{h\nu }=\frac{x\overline{\sigma }\dot{N}_{ph}}{4\pi r^2}.$$
(5)
Here $`L_\nu `$ is the intrinsic luminosity of the source in $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Hz}^1`$, $`\nu _H`$ and $`\sigma _\nu `$ are the ionization threshold and cross section of hydrogen, with the luminosity weighted cross section being

$$\overline{\sigma }_{\nu _H}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\nu \frac{L_\nu \sigma _\nu }{h\nu }\times \left[_{\nu _H}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\nu \frac{L_\nu }{h\nu }\right]^1$$
(6)
and equal to $`2.5\times 10^{18}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ for the Elvis et al. (1994) template spectrum (the same value would be obtained for a power law spectrum with a slope of $`\nu ^{1.8}`$). The resulting neutral hydrogen fraction is

$$x=10^6C_{\mathrm{HII}}\left(\frac{r}{1\mathrm{Mpc}}\right)^2\left(\frac{\dot{N}_{ph}}{10^{57}\mathrm{s}^1}\right)^1\left(\frac{1+z}{8}\right)^3.$$
(7)
This equation applies within the optically thin central region of the Strömgren sphere where $`x1`$, and shows that for bright sources of interest here, this region is highly ionized. Near the boundary of the HII region, the neutral fraction rapidly increases to unity, where the $`x1`$ condition breaks down and equation 7 becomes invalid. However, this does not affect the results shown below for the following reasons. First, the flux transmission shortward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength that we are concerned with occurs in regions with optical depth $`\tau 7`$ or $`x5\times 10^5`$. Second, the optical depth longward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength is roughly $`0.5x(\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda /100\AA )^1`$ for the cosmological parameters adopted here (Miralda-Escudé 1998), and is dominated by neutral ($`x=1`$) IGM outside the Strömgren sphere. Therefore, the boundary region of the Strömgren sphere does not affect the results in a sensitive way. We assume that the jump from $`x(R_i)`$ to unity takes place as a step function at the radius $`R_i(t_Q)`$.

## 4. Results and Discussion

Figure 3 shows the optical depth around the Ly$`\alpha `$ line for a quasar at $`z_s=7`$. The left panel shows that, for a bright quasar like that of F00, the optical depth longward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength is nearly independent of the clumping factor, simply because the optical depth in that region is dominated by the damping wing of the neutral IGM (dotted curves in the left panel) outside the Strömgren sphere, whose radius is insensitive to $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}`$ as long as $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}100`$ (see §2). The situation is dramatically different for a fainter quasar as shown in the right panel of Figure 3; because the HII region is much smaller, the red damping wing produced by the neutral IGM outside the Strömgren sphere start to reflect the size of the sphere hence the age of the quasar. The dependence of the red damping wing on the clumping factor is very weak, because the contribution from the residual neutral hydrogen within the Strömgren sphere is small.

On the other hand, the optical depth shortward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength within the stretch of the Strömgren sphere is always dominated by the residual neutral hydrogen inside the Strömgren sphere (dashed curves), and therefore is proportional to $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}`$ (equation 7), in sharp contrast with the situation at the longward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength. However, the optical depth shortward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength it is quite insensitive to $`t_Q`$ (equation 7).

Let us now translate the theoretical illustration in Figure 3 to observable spectra of quasars around the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line shown in Figure 4. A logarithmic ordinate is used to better show the flux over many orders of magnitude down to the expected noise level (although the spectral line may appear misleadingly flat). We adopt the black hole (BH) mass and luminosity inferred from the quasar at $`z=5.8`$ observed by F00 and place it either at $`z_s=10`$ or $`z_s=7`$ in the top two panels; another quasar with one tenth of this luminosity is used for the two bottom panels. In all cases, the profile of the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line is assumed to be Gaussian with a half-width of $`1,500`$ km/s, and with a central flux that is twice the continuum. The random noise shown at the bottom of each panel in Figure 4 is estimated assuming a $`10^5`$second integration with the NGST (see http://augusta.stsci.edu for details on the expected backgrounds) with a spectral resolution of R=10,000. Obviously, it is advantageous to use high resolution spectroscopy to maximize the number of pixels that probe the structure of the HII region on the blue side of the emission line (especially for faint and/or very young quasars). At spectral resolutions this high, the dominant absolute (not relative) noise is either the Poisson photon noise (for bright sources with $`\dot{N}_{ph}>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}10}^{56}\mathrm{s}^1`$) or the detector noise (for fainter sources), rather than the zodiacal light or sky background (see expressions for noise in Gillett & Mountain 1998). A ground based telescope such Keck or HET with sufficient spectral resolution should therefore work just as well as NGST.

A rich amount of information is contained in the profile of the line. We see that the red side of the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line is largely transmitted even for the fainter quasar adopted at the bottom panels, consistent with Figure 1 showing an optical depth of $`0.1`$ there (except near the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength for the case with $`t_Q=10^6`$yr, where the radius of the Strömgren sphere is sufficiently small that the damping wing of the neutral IGM contributes an optical depth significantly above unity.) For the brighter quasar shown in the top panels the transmission on the red side is insensitive to either $`t_Q`$ or $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}`$, whereas for the fainter quasar shown in the bottom panels the transmission on the red side is sensitive to $`t_Q`$ but not to $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}`$. It is therefore possible to measure the lifetime of a relatively faint quasar (perhaps the majority of the quasars belong to this category) before reionization is complete. The primary uncertain factor is the intrinsic Ly$`\alpha `$ emission profile.

The blue side of the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line is not completely absorbed. On the contrary, we see in the top panels of Figure 4 that for a quasar observed by F00 with $`t_Q>10^7`$ yr there is a large range $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda 50150`$Å where the flux is at least ten times above the noise (S/N=10). Even if the quasar is ten times fainter, one should still be able to detect of order several tens of spectral pixels if $`t_Q>10^6`$ yr (assuming $`R=10^4`$).

More interestingly, the extent of the flux transmission $`T_\nu `$ on the blue side is a strong function of $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}`$ but a very weak function of $`t_Q`$. The idealized case in Figure 4 shows the mean flux processed through a relatively gently fluctuating medium, with no saturated lines \[so that $`T_\nu \mathrm{exp}(\beta _\nu C_{\mathrm{HII}})`$, where $`\beta |\nu `$ is a known constant of order $`0.11.0`$\]. An actual observed flux distribution on the blue side may contain numerous absorption features due to density fluctuations on small scales. In the limit when clumping is caused by highly overdense regions with a small volume filling factor, the absorption lines saturate, and the mean transmission could increase, rather than decrease, for increasing values of $`C_{\mathrm{HII}}`$ (since a larger fraction of the line of sight probes underdense voids). In order to adequately model the absorption profile and to make use of the additional available information, numerical simulations are needed, which we will explore in a subsequent paper. In either case, the blue side of the Ly$`\alpha `$ line will provide a potentially powerful tool to directly measure the small scale power at the quasar redshift.

Since the intrinsic Ly$`\alpha `$ emission of a quasar is expected to be significantly broader than the width of the blue side of the absorbed spectrum, the latter should not sensitively depend on the exact intrinsic width of the unabsorbed Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line. Since the red side of the profile traces the intrinsic profile well for a bright quasar, it is possible that fitting the entire observed profile significantly removes the uncertainty of the unknown intrinsic profile, as long as it is reasonably symmetric and sufficiently broad.

Hogan, Anderson, & Rugers (1997) and Anderson et al. (1999) have made the point that the quasar lifetime and ionizing background from the proximity effect for a HeIII region around the quasar (at lower redshift) is related and showed that a large HeIII region can be created by a bright quasar with a reasonable lifetime. They indicated that for a bright quasar of age $`t_Q10^{78}`$yr a large HeIII region of size $`20`$Å can be generated.

Finally, we point out that the existence of a useful HII region around a quasar requires only that the reionization is not complete. When individual HII regions overlap, the universe is not yet completely reionized, due to the travel delay of ionizing photons from other sources. In other words, the emission profile that we show above should exist even at times significantly later than the overlapping epoch, but before the average Gunn–Peterson optical depth of the IGM is reduced to below unity (note that the latter can take a significant time, see, e.g. Gnedin 2000). This could potentially significantly reduce the redshift of quasars that should show useful transmission profiles.

## 5. Conclusions

A quasar one tenth as luminous as that recently reported by F00, if placed in the neutral IGM at $`z_s7`$ before cosmological reionization, generates a large HII island (a Strömgren sphere). We show that for such a quasar a substantial fraction of the flux on both the blue and red sides of the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission wavelength can be transmitted. For the range of wavelengths around the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength where significant transmission of flux occurs, the red damping wing of the intervening neutral IGM outside the Strömgren sphere dominates the optical depth longward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength, whereas the residual neutral hydrogen inside the (highly ionized) Strömgren sphere dominates the optical depth shortward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength. While the flux longward of the Ly$`\alpha `$ wavelength is not substantially suppressed to a large offset in wavelength ($`\delta \lambda 100`$A), the blue side of the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line is more absorbed than the red side and displays a distinct profile that drops sharply with decreasing wavelength. Nevertheless, the flux on the blue side is clearly detectable even for a quasar 10 times fainter than that found by F00. We show that NGST as well as large ground-based, high spectral resolution telescopes with a spectral resolution of $`R=10^4`$ should be able to provide such a detection.

Two applications of such a partially absorbed Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line are suggested. First, for a relatively faint quasar (for example, one tenth as luminous as that found by F00), the red side of the Ly$`\alpha `$ line profile depends mostly on the age of the quasar and therefore can be used to infer it. The main uncertainty is the unknown intrinsic profile. Second, for bright quasars, the blue side of the Ly$`\alpha `$ line profile is also detectable, and depends only very weakly on the lifetime of a quasar but very strongly on the density fluctuations the gas around the quasar. Therefore, one can use it to directly measure the fluctuation of gas on small scales at high redshift. This may provide a unique opportunity to probe the small-scale power at very high redshift, where competing cosmological models differ most.

We thank M. Haehnelt for useful comments. This research is supported in part by the NSF grants AST-9803137 and ASC-9740300, and by NASA through the Hubble Fellowship grant HF-01119.01-99A, awarded to ZH by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA under contract NAS 5-26555. Conclusions similar to the present paper were reached independently recently by Madau & Rees (2000).