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# Monte Carlo study of the scattering error of a quartz reflective absorption tube

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Light absorption is the essential element required for marine phytoplankton growth. The region of the upper ocean illuminated by sunlight is responsible for most of marine primary production. Absorption and scattering of phytoplankton control the light field (at least for Case 1 waters which comprise a large majority of ocean waters), and thus, affect the spectral reflectance of the ocean surface. Such spectral changes provide information about ocean color (Gordon and Morel, 1983)

In all radiative transfer modeling of the marine environment the inherent optical properties (IOPs) are either the necessary input parameters, or in the case of inverse problems, the output of the calculations. This makes them important in marine optics studies. The measurement of the attenuation coefficient is relatively easy; an attenuation meter consists of a collimated light source and a collimated light detector at a known distance. The only major problem in the attenuation measurement are photons from outside sources or the ones reflected on the instrument scattered into the light beam, causing an underestimation of the attenuation coefficient value. The detector has a finite aperture so that some of the forward scattered photons will be counted as part of the direct beam, also causing an underestimation. However, the measurement of the components of the attenuation, the absorption and scattering coefficients, is inherently much more difficult, and researchers have been striving to minimize the measurement errors of these parameters for most of this century.

The central idea behind any absorption measurement is to project a beam of light through an absorbing medium. If one could measure all of the unabsorbed light of the direct beam, as well as all of the scattered light, the only light lost would be the absorbed light. Thus, absorption meters tend to be arranged to collect as much of the scattered light as possible. The absorption coefficient measured in any optical device has two major sources of error, both of which are due to the fact that natural suspensions tend to scatter light as well as absorb it. In practice, the scattered light traverses a longer path through the absorbing medium and so is more likely to be absorbed (the path length amplification factor). Secondly, not all of the scattered light is collected due to the geometry of the absorption meter (the scattering error).

One of the choices to measure in situ absorption is the cylindrical reflection tube. Such a tube needs to be be long enough to provide a sufficient optical path to measure the low absorption values typical for Case1 waters below 580nm. Any photon scattered forward off the instrument axis is, at least in theory, reflected by the tube walls until it reaches the detector. An ideal instrument of this kind should also have a reflector inside of the source end to collect the backscattered photons.

The first working prototypes of such a device were developed by Zaneveld and co- workers (Zaneveld and Bartz, 1984; Zaneveld et al., 1990). One of the greatest problems of making a practical reflective tube is the reflectivity coefficient of the walls. A Monte Carlo study of the performance of a reflective tube absorption meter (Kirk, 1992) shows that the results quickly deteriorate with reflectivity decreasing from 100%. As it is virtually impossible to produce perfect reflecting walls, especially ones that would not deteriorate with prolonged use of the instrument, the concept of a quartz glass tube surrounded by air was proposed instead (Zaneveld et al., 1990). Assuming smooth surfaces of the tube, all photons encountering the wall at an angle to the wall surface smaller than the critical angle, $`41^{}`$, must be internally reflected. Therefore, a clean quartz reflection tube should collect all photons scattered in the angular range between $`0^{}`$ and $`41^{}`$ (if multiple scattering is neglected). However, the large losses of photons scattered at angles above $`41^{}`$ are the main theoretical source of error for quartz tube absorption meters.

The Monte Carlo calculations by Kirk (1992) were conducted for a prototype absorption tube with an almost parallel light beam resembling the Wetlabs ac-9 absorption meter. The results showed that the relative error of absorption is always positive and increases linearly with the ratio of scattering to absorption. The error increases with decreasing wall reflectance and acceptance angle of the receiver. Another study by Hakvoort and Wouts (1994) used a Lambertian light source. In this case the absorption error decreases with the decreasing angle of photon acceptance. However, early prototypes of HiStar, the new Wetlabs spectrophotometer, has a diverging beam limited to $`20^{}`$. The receiving end of the tube is illustrated in Fig. 1. It consists of a Light Shaping Diffuser (LSD) in front of a lens. The fiber transmits light to a spectrometer. Such an arrangement results in a large receiving area which through the use of the LSD and the lens translates into the small acceptance angle needed by the spectrometer.

In this paper we take account of the reflections at both ends of the tube, that were neglected by previous studies of this kind. We also extend previous results by considering a more realistic arrangement, by introducing weighting functions that quantitatively show the scattering error as a function of angle, and by providing calculations for some cases of practical interest.

## 2 CALCULATION SETUP

The Monte-Carlo code used was adopted from the code written to determine the effects of self-shading on an in-water upwelling irradiance meter (Piskozub 1994). This is a forward Monte Carlo algorithm, meaning that the photons are traced in the forward direction starting from the light source. An absorption event ends a photon’s history. The low values of the optical depth inside the absorption tube make this approach comparatively efficient.

The absorption tube studied (called henceforth $`\alpha `$-TUBE) is a cylindrical shell of inner radius r=0.006 m and length d=0.23 m which corresponds to the dimensions of the HiStar quartz reflective tube (see Fig. 1). Thickness of the quartz wall is $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$r=0.002 m. The indices of refraction used are 1.33 for water and 1.41 for quartz.

The photons inside the $`\alpha `$-TUBE are traced along their three dimensional trajectories. The scattering or absorption events inside the volume of the water sample are defined by inherent optical properties of the medium: the absorption coefficient of the medium a, scattering coefficient b, and the scattering phase function $`\beta (\theta )`$. Random numbers are used to choose whether a given photon traveling from point (x,y,z) towards direction $`(\theta ,\phi )`$ will reach the wall or the end of the cylinder. Otherwise, it is assumed that the photon ends its trajectory inside the liquid medium, and the type of the event (scattering or absorption) is determined by comparing a random number to the single scattering albedo $`\omega _0`$ value. All random number used in the code are uniformly distributed in the open interval (0, 1).

We define the Cartesian coordinate system such that the axis of the tube is co-located with the z-axis, and the center of the source end of the tube defines the origin of the coordinate system. Therefore, $`\theta `$ is the angle between the photon direction and the tube axis and $`\phi `$ is the angle of projection of the photon direction onto the x-y plane. In every scattering event the new direction of the photon is chosen using the relevant phase function.

The source of photons is assumed to be within a circle of the radius r = 1.5 mm emitting photons into a cone of $`25^{}`$ half-width. This represents the fiber head. The angular distribution of photons is assumed to be Lambertian up to the $`25^{}`$. The position of the photon entering the tube itself is calculated, taking into account the distance from the fiber head to the tube entrance (0.019 m) and refraction from air to water at the mouth of the reflective tube.

Such an $`\alpha `$-TUBE, defined above, is similar to the prototype WET Labs HiStar, but it does not precisely model the detailed radiance structure surrounding both the source and the receiver ends of the reflective tube. We believe that those details are of minor importance in comparison to neglecting the albedo of the tube ends. Therefore we introduced the albedo of the source end for photons returning to it from inside the tube, for which we estimated the albedo as 0.3 (0.2 being the diffuse albedo and 0.1 the specular albedo). This is a rough assumption of the combined effects of the input window and the silver colored metal surface around the fiber head.

The quartz walls are treated as ideally smooth, reflecting and refracting photons according to geometrical optics. The direction of a refracted photon is determined in the code by Snell’s law and probability of reflection and refraction by Fresnel’s law. However, no polarization effects are included. The photons are also followed inside the quartz, which is assumed to be non-absorbing. All photons leaving the outer surface of the quartz tube are treated as lost. The tube is assumed to be surrounded by an ideally black medium.

The receiver end of the tube is treated as a smooth surface reflecting 8% of the incident photons. This corresponds to the angular average of reflection for the glass window and the Light Shaping Diffuser (LSD) used. It is assumed that a photon hitting the diffuser plate at an angle $`\theta `$ reaches the receiver with a probability proportional to the angular diffusion distribution (or scattering angle profile) of the LSD. The Light Shaping Diffuser used in the instrument is a Physical Optics Corporation $`20^{}`$ LSD. Also, we use in the calculations two other diffusers: $`60^{}`$ LSD and $`95^{}`$ LSDs. The angles are half-widths of the angular diffusion function. This means that, for example, a $`60^{}`$ LSD has a 50% transmission efficiency at angle $`30^{}`$. The angular diffusion distribution used was determined by the least-square fits of the experimental curves provided by the producer. The $`20^{}`$ LSD was approximated by two Gaussian functions (with all angles in degrees):

$$L_{20}(\theta )=A\mathrm{exp}\left[0.5\left(\frac{\theta }{B}\right)^2\right]+(1A)\left[0.5\left(\frac{\theta }{C}\right)^2\right]$$
(1)
where $`A=0.85`$, $`B=8.0^{}`$, $`C=15.3^{}`$. The $`60^{}`$ LSD was approximated by a single Gaussian function:

$$L_{60}(\theta )=A\mathrm{exp}\left[0.5\left(\frac{\theta }{B}\right)^2\right]$$
(2)
where $`A=1.0`$ and $`B=24.5^{}`$. Finally, the $`95^{}`$ LSD was approximated by a Gompertz function (Gompertz, 1825):

$$L_{95}(\theta )=A\mathrm{exp}\left[\mathrm{exp}\left(\left(\frac{\theta \theta _0}{B}\right)\right)\right]$$
(3)
where $`A=1.0`$, $`B=7.33^{}`$ and $`\theta _0=50.75`$.

The shapes of the three LSD diffusion angle profiles are presented in Figure 2.

The standard Petzold scattering phase function for open turbid waters was used (Petzold 1972) except for the calculations of the effect of the phase function shape on the measurement error where Henyey-Greenstein phase functions (Henyey and Greenstein, 1941) were used.

Each Monte Carlo calculation was performed twice: one to determine how many photons are recorded if there is no absorption and scattering ($`P_0`$) and the other for the IOPs (absorption, scattering and phase function) of the aquatic medium being studied (P). We define the measured absorption am as Kirk (1992):

$$a_m=(1/d)\mathrm{ln}(P_0/P)$$
(4)
where d is the length of the cylinder.

It must be noted that the first program run corresponds to calibration of the instrument in “ideal water,” not in air. We use the water index of refraction for this medium so as not to influence the new photon direction in refraction events. Therefore, the results are different from what one would obtain if the tube was filled with air. Such a non-scattering and non-absorbing liquid medium does not exist. However, it is the most obvious reference value to use in the calculations aimed at studying the calibration of the instrument, because it does not introduce any photon losses due to scattering (b=0) and does not change the behavior of photons on the quartz-liquid border.

## 3 RESULTS

### 3.1 SEMI-ANALYTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

In this section we present qualitative arguments related to the optical phenomena influencing the fate of photons in the absorption tube. The purpose of this is to provide approximate results that can be compared with exact Monte Carlo results later. The semi- analytic results give a better understanding of the underlying physics. If, for example, the IOPs of the studied water sample are assumed to be: b=0.8 m-1, a=0.2 m-1, and the Petzold San Diego Harbor (turbid water) phase function, one can expect that 4.5% ($`\mathrm{exp}(ad)`$) of all photons will be absorbed and 16.8% ($`\mathrm{exp}(bd)`$) will be scattered in the water volume inside the quartz tube.

The phase function used, determines that 92.9% of all scattering events take place in the 0-41 range. Assuming for simplicity, that before scattering, all photons traveled parallel to the tube axis, all those scattered photons will be reflected back into the tube on all encounters with the tube wall. Similarly, all photons backscattered into the range of 139-180 stay in the tube on their way back to the source end. These represent 0.3% of all photons. The remaining 6.8% of all scattered photons are scattered into the range 41-139. These photons have a large probability of leaving the tube on the first encounter with the wall. The angles to the z-axis at which those photons travel make it virtually certain that they will leave the tube before reaching either end, unless they are scattered close to $`41^{}`$. For example at $`\theta =45^{}`$, a photon scattered in the very center of the tube will hit the wall 9 times before reaching the end of the tube making the probability of not leaving it $`<10^8`$. The 6.8% of scattered photons that are lost translates into 1.1% of all traced photons being lost through the walls.

After the absorption and scattering losses are taken into account, 94.3% of all traced photons reach the receiver end of the tube. Thus, the assumption of 8% specular albedo of the receiver end of the tube means that 7.5% of all traced photons are reflected from the receiver end of the tube. Absorption and scattering losses result in only 7.1% of all initial photons coming back to the source end after being reflected. The backscattered photons, which are attenuated in a pathlength approximately equal to the tube length, increase this number to 7.2%.

Another important aspect of a quartz absorption tube is the length of the path that the photons travel in quartz instead of water. Any distance traveled in quartz decreases the attenuation due to the negligible absorption coefficient in the visible range of the spectrum (Kirk 1992). This decreases the measured absorption values because the receiver is reached by more photons due to the shorter path through the absorbing medium. In the studied tube geometry, the ratio of tube diameter to wall thickness is only 6:1, and considering that every time the photon goes across the water volume it needs to cross the wall twice (out and back into the tube) it would seem that this effect must be overwhelming. However, due to Snell’s law and the narrow angles between the direction of most photons and the wall, the average path of photons in quartz is much smaller.

### 3.2 SANITY CHECKS OF THE MONTE CARLO RESULTS

Even if rough approximations of the results are possible with simple arithmetic calculations, Monte Carlo modeling includes all optical phenomena taking place inside the tube. This can be illustrated by comparing the approximate values from the previous section to the results of a Monte Carlo run using 40 million photons with the same IOPs. The number of photons lost through the walls is 1.74% (estimated above as 1.1%). The discrepancy can be explained by the divergence of the input beam: photons entering the tube at an angle may leave it through the walls, even if scattered from its original direction at less than the angle of total internal reflection, resulting in higher scattering losses.

The Monte Carlo derived absorption losses percentage is 4.09% (semi-analytically estimated as 4.5%). The reason for this is that the path length of the photons is in quartz instead of in water. The Monte Carlo code makes it possible, by tracing each photon individually, to calculate the average path traveled by the photons in water to be 21.15 cm and in quartz: 2.83cm. This means that the path in water is 8% shorter than the length of the reflective tube, a value much higher than that calculated by Kirk (1992) for a parallel beam in which only the scattered photons encounter the walls. The losses by absorption on the front end of the tube are 4.84% of all photons (estimated as 5.0%). The small difference is the net result of smaller absorption losses and greater scattering losses.

The effect of the shortened optical path, described above, is not very grave if the way the instrument is calibrated is taken into account. All calibration techniques involve a comparison of the received signal (that is the number of photons reaching the receiver) for the measured sample with pure water or air values. Using pure water almost completely removes the error due to non-scattered photons traveling partly inside the wall, as the effect will be identical for water of any IOPs. Calibrating the instrument in air leaves some error due to path length in quartz because air has a different index of refraction making the path length in quartz shorter. There is, however, a much bigger source of error in calibrating the instrument without water, which is the removal of total internal reflection on the quartz wall by surrounding both its sides by the same medium.

### 3.3 VARIATION IN THE SCATTERING-ABSORPTION RATIO

It was shown by Kirk (1992) that for a reflective tube absorption meter propagating an almost parallel beam, that the ratio of the measured to the true value of the absorption coefficient $`a_m/a`$ increases linearly with $`b/a`$ at a rate depending on the phase function used. We decided to test whether such a relationship will hold for the relatively divergent light beam and limited acceptance angle of the $`\alpha `$-TUBE. Figure 3 shows that this is indeed the case for all studied angles of acceptance (depending on the LSD type used). The slope coefficients w of the linear fit

$$a_m=a+wb$$
(5)
are 0.194 for $`20^{}`$ LSD, 0.139 for $`60^{}`$ LSD, and 0.0957 for $`95^{}`$ LSD. These results suggest that the scattering losses of the instrument increase with the decreasing angle of acceptance of the receiver. It must be noted that the values of the coefficient w depend on the scattering phase function used.

Figure 3 shows that there is a small offset in Equation 5. Its general version $`a_m=a+wb+o`$ (where o is the offset) can be transformed to

$$a=\frac{a_mwco}{1w}$$
(6)
which, for a given phase function and absorbing tube geometry, allows for determining the true a value if attenuation c is measured independently. The parameters w and o may be calculated for the given absorption meter geometry if the phase function is known at least approximately. The values of the coefficient w, for the physically important range of Henyey-Greenstein asymmetry parameter g and the $`20^{}`$ LSD receiver are shown in Figure 4.

### 3.4 VARIATION IN THE SCATTERING PHASE FUNCTION

The measurement error in absorption depends on the scattering phase function of the aquatic medium (Kirk, 1992). To study the effect of the scattering phase function on absorption measured by the given instrument setup with $`20^{}`$ LSD, we performed a sequence of Monte Carlo calculations for the Henyey-Greenstein phase function (Henyey and Greenstein 1941) by varying the asymmetry parameter g

$$\beta (\theta )=\frac{1g^2}{(1+g^22g\mathrm{cos}\theta )^{3/2}}$$
(7)
where g is a parameter determining the shape of the phase function. In this paper we assume range of g from $`g=0`$ (isotropic scattering) to $`g=1`$ (forward scattering).

The results in Fig. 5 show $`a_m/a`$ as a function of the asymmetry parameter. They were obtained by running the code for the studied tube equipped with three different LSD plates ($`20^{}`$, $`60^{}`$, and $`95^{}`$). As expected, for g approaching 1 the $`a_m/a`$ ratio is close to 1 as all photons are scattered almost in the direction that they were headed before the scattering. For a more realistic range of g values between 0.8 and 0.9 (Mobley, 1994) the measured absorption increases when g decreases due to the greater scattering losses of the photons. The value of $`a_m/a<1`$ for $`g=0.95`$ and $`95^{}`$ LSD is not a statistical error, but the effect of the slightly longer path of scattered photons in the quartz, in comparison to the non-scattering ”ideal water” which results in decrease of absorption.

For small g values the $`a_m/a`$ values (Fig. 5) approach the maximum (a+b)/a at which all the scattered photons are lost and the measured value of absorption equals the total attenuation. In the case studied (a+b)/a = 5. However, even for an isotropic scattering phase function (g=0) the value of the scattering error does not reach this maximum value because some photons are scattered at angles small enough to be recorded by the receiver. Again, the figure shows that increasing the angle of acceptance of the receiver decreases the absorption error for all realistic phase functions.

### 3.5 VARIATION IN THE ACCEPTANCE ANGLE

Results presented by Kirk (1992) for a reflective tube absorption meter with an almost parallel beam show a rapidly increasing value of $`a_m/a`$ with the acceptance angle decreasing below $`90^{}`$. On the other hand, Hakvoort and Wouts (1994) suggest that for the reflective tube with Lambertian light source and metallic reflective walls, the measurement error increases with the acceptance angle of the receiver. The Monte Carlo code was run for several values of the receiver angle of acceptance to test if the similiar situation arises for the $`\alpha `$-TUBE. No Light Shaping Diffuser was used in this case. The results are presented in Figure 6.

It can be seen that for large acceptance angles ($`>40^{}`$) the $`a_m/a`$ values have a similar shape to that of a parallel beam case. However, for acceptance angles in the $`040^{}`$ range a minimum can be observed, instead of a high peak as in the case of a parallel beam. The reason for that is that the source beam is more divergent than the angle of acceptance. For small acceptance angles the receiver accepts some scattered photons that would not be accepted if they reached the receiver without a scattering event. This is because their angle of incidence is reduced by the scattering event. This reduces the scattering error of the absorption measurement. Unlike the Lambertian source case, there is no major increase of $`a_m/a`$ values for large acceptance angles (although a small increase above $`120^{}`$ may be discerned). It should be noted that the LSD plate used in the instrument corresponds roughly to an acceptance angle of $`20^{}`$. Although this angle is close to a local minimum of $`a_m/a`$, it is still within the range of the highest levels of absorption error.

### 3.6 ANGULAR FUNCTION OF PHOTON LOSS PROBABILITY $`W(\theta )`$

Full understanding of the mechanism of scattering loss is not possible without determining the angular relationship of the scattering error of the reflective tube absorption meter. The fraction of scattered light lost because of the absorption after being scattered at a given angle can be defined as a loss function $`W(\theta )`$. The angular integral of this function multiplied by the phase function is the error of the measured absorption value $`\epsilon =a_ma`$

$$\epsilon =_0^\pi W(\theta )\beta (\theta )\mathrm{sin}(\theta )𝑑\theta $$
(8)
The advantage of the W function is that it is not dependent on the shape of the phase function but only on the tube geometry. This is true only if multiple scattering is neglected because a second scattering event influences the fate of a photon already scattered. In order to differentiate among the possible sources of the scattering loss error of the absorption value we decided to calculate three variants of the W function (a) $`W_0(\theta )`$ for scattering losses due to photons lost through the tube walls, (b) $`W_1(\theta )`$ same as $`W_0(\theta )`$ and for scattering losses due to additional photons absorbed by the source (”front”) end of the tube, (c) $`W_2(\theta )`$ same as $`W_1(\theta )`$ and for scattering losses due to additional photons lost on the LSD.

By ”additional photons” we mean that only the difference between the number of photons lost by the absorption and scattering and the ”ideal” water is taken into account. In each of the three cases the actual value of W for angle range is derived by dividing the number of photons scattered into the angular sector and subsequently lost by the sum of these photons plus the number of photons scattered into the same sector which are subsequently recorded by the receiver. Fig. 7 presents the W functions calculated by running the code for 40 million photons with $`a=0.2m^1`$, $`b=0.8m^1`$, Petzold turbid phase function, and $`20^{}`$ LSD. In this case the number of multiple scattered photons is 7% of all which are scattered. That means that the influence of the phase function shape on the W function is of secondary importance. All three functions have the sigmoid shape for the forward scattered photons between $`090^{}`$. There is no sharp step at $`41^{}`$ and $`139^{}`$ because the divergence of the beam causes some photons to travel at an angle to the tube axis before scattering which allows photons to escape through the wall even if scattered at an angle smaller than the total internal reflection angle. On the other hand, a photon scattered at more than $`41^{}`$ back towards the axis may survive the encounter with the wall without being refracted out of the tube. The symmetrical shape of $`W_0`$ is caused by the fact that losses on the ”front” end are not taken into account. A photon backscattered at angle $`180\varphi `$ has the same chance of being lost through the walls as the one scattered at $`\varphi `$. The symmetry is broken only by the assumed diffusive albedo of the light source end of the tube because some photons leave the tube by the wall after being diffused on its source end.

Adding the photon losses on the light source end of the tube (function $`W_1`$) changes the symmetry. Most of the backscattered photons are lost in this way as well as some of the forward scattered. The latter is caused by two reasons. Some forward-scattered photons are reflected by the receiver end of the tube back towards the source end. However, it is even more important that some of the forward scattered photons are absorbed on the ”front” end because they were scattered after they were reflected on the receiver end. The reverse direction of those photons before scattering complicates the $`W(\theta )`$ function, but we decided to include these scattering events in the statistics used to calculate the functions because they contribute to the total scattering losses.

Receiver end losses are caused by more photons missing the receiver due to reaching it at a wider angle after a scattering event. This changes the picture by, paradoxically, decreasing the photon losses for photons that were scattered in the forward direction (function $`W_2`$). This means that scattering a photon by a small angle increases its probability of being accepted by the receiver compared to the average of non-scattered photons. This is caused again by the source beam being wider than the acceptance angle of the receiver. The discrepancy between $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$, especially at scattering angles close to 0, is also partly caused by the inclusion of photons scattered on their way back to the source end of the tube. One of its consequences is that the population of photons scattered at close to 0 degree is different from the population of non-scattered photons.

The shape of the W functions for angles greater than $`90^{}`$ is not important for the scattering error estimates because only a fraction of all the photons is backscattered. For the $`W_2`$ function which includes all the photon losses due to scattering, the loss of backscattered photons is close to 100%. Therefore, the best fit approximations to $`W_0`$, $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$ were calculated for the range $`090^{}`$ only. The three functions were fitted with a 4-parameter sigmoid

$$W(x)=y_0+\frac{A}{(1+\mathrm{exp}((xx_0)/B))}$$
(9)
where for $`W_0`$ we have A = 0.935, $`B=2.53^{}`$, $`x_0=26.72^{}`$, $`y_0=0.061`$, for $`W_1`$ we have $`A=0.841`$, $`B=3.35^{}`$, $`x_0=25.75^{}`$, $`y_0=0.157`$, and for $`W_2`$ we have $`A=0.901`$, $`B=2.58^{}`$, $`x_0=26.79^{}`$, $`y_0=0.095`$.

## 4 CONCLUSIONS

Monte Carlo calculations of the scattering error for the HiStar prototype absorption meter show that the different blueprint of the instrument (more divergent light beam and a limited angular view of the receiver) in comparison to other reflective tube absorption meters does influence the error. Due to additional scattering losses by the view limited receiver the absorption error is greater for all combinations of moderate optical parameters. It is possible to correct the error by careful calibration, and the results presented in this paper for the turbid water Petzold phase function are a step in this direction. Independent measurements of attenuation may improve the error correction for water samples of known (at least approximately) phase functions as shown in the paper. However, the source of inter-instrumental discrepancy in absorption measurement that is more difficult to correct is their different responses to phase function variability. One possible solution is to use the photon loss function W. If the phase function of the studied sea-water is known (or is possible to be estimated by comparing it to known phase functions of similar water samples), the W function makes it possible to calculate directly the value of the scattering error for the sample.

Our calculations show that the main source of the absorption error is the view limited receiver. Therefore, we suggest that if technically possible (it would diminish the amount of light collected by the receiver optical fiber) a diffuser of wider angular characteristics should be used in the instrument receiver setup.

## 5 REFERENCES

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Hakvoort J.H.M, Wouts R. 1994: ”Monte Carlo modelling of the light field in reflective tube type absorption meter,” Proc. SPIE , 2258, Ocean Optics XII, 529–538.

Henyey, L. G., and J. L. Greenstein, 1941: ”Diffuse radiation in the galaxy,” Astrophys. J., 93, 70–83.

Kirk, J.T.O, 1992: ”Monte Carlo modeling of the performance of a reflective tube absorption meter,” Appl. Opt., 31, 6463–6468

Mobley, C. D., 1994, Light and water: radiative transfer in natural waters, Academic Press, San Diego.

Petzold, T. J., 1972: ”Volume scattering functions for selected ocean waters,” SIO Ref. 72-78, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Univ. of California, San Diego.

Piskozub J., 1994: ”Effects of surface waves and sea-bottom on self-shading of in-water optical instruments” in Ocean Optics XII, Proc. SPIE, 2258, 300–308.

Pope R.M., Fry E.S., 1997: ”Absorption spectrum (380-700 nm) of pure water. II. Integrating cavity measurements,” Appl. Opt., 36, 8710–8723.

Zaneveld J.R.V, Bartz R, 1984: ”Beam attenuation and absorption meters” in Ocean Optics VII, M.A. Blizard ed., Proc. SPIE, 489, 318–324.

Zaneveld J.R.V, Bartz R., Kitchen J.C, 1990: ”A reflective tube absorption meter,” in Ocean Optics X, R.W. Spinard ed., Proc. SPIE, 1302, 124-136.


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# BeppoSAX – ROSAT PSPC observations of the Shapley Supercluster: A3562

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Superclusters of galaxies are the largest and more massive structures in the Universe and have a dynamical status that provides direct information on the evolution of structures formed by accretion of matter in a hierarchical bottom up scenario. Numerical simulations on scales of cosmological relevance (e.g. Cen & Ostriker 1994) reveal that merging in a Cold Dark Matter dominated Universe happen along preferential directions at whose intersection rich clusters and core of Superclusters form.

The Shapley Supercluster is a remarkable concentration of galaxies and clusters of galaxies in the nearby Universe (Raychaudhury 1989, Scaramella et al. 1989, Raychaudhury et al. 1991, Zucca et al. 1993) and presents a highly overdense core formed by three ACO (Abell et al. 1989) clusters, A3556, A3558 and A3562. This structure is elongated by $`3^{}`$ in the East–West direction with a comoving size of about 15 $`h_{50}^1`$ Mpc. The size of the core region is typical for a structure that is collapsing, with A3556 and A3562 that are on the way to merge with the more massive A3558 (Metcalfe et al. 1994, Bardelli et al. 1994, Ettori et al. 1997, Hanami et al. 1999). Considering how the region is undergoing strong interaction among the component clusters, it represents an ideal place in the local Universe to investigate the dynamical status of massive structures.

For these reasons, several multiwavelength studies have been dedicated to the Shapley Concentration of galaxies since the very first observation by Shapley in 1930. In the recent years, Bardelli et al. (1994, 1998a, 1998b, 2000), Quintana et al. (1995, 1997) and Drinkwater et al. (1999) have investigated its optical properties. Venturi et al. (1997, 1998) have analyzed the radio emission from galaxies in the region and its interaction with the intracluster gas. In the X-ray energy band, analyses of the Shapley supercluster have been performed with GINGA (Day et al. 1991), Einstein (Raychaudhury et al. 1991, Breen et al. 1994), pointed (Ettori et al. 1997) and All-Sky Survey (Kull & Böhringer 1999) ROSAT PSPC observations and ASCA (Hanami et al. 1999) data to describe both spectroscopically and spatially its extended emission.

In particular, the study of the distribution of the hot plasma in the X-ray waveband within each cluster and its environment can provide detailed informations on the merging history of the Shapley Supercluster. A detailed analysis of the most massive cluster, A3558, was based on spatial and spectral analysis of a ROSAT PSPC observation (Bardelli et al. 1996) and ASCA spectra (Markevitch & Vikhlinin 1997). From ASCA data, Hanami et al. (1999) have proposed a scenario of the evolution sequence of the clusters in the Shapley Supercluster, from an ongoing merger (SC1329-313), to a post-merger cluster (A3556), to the relaxed poor cluster (SC1327-312) and to the rich clusters with mergers in succession (A3558 and A3562). Kull & Böhringer (1999) have found evidences of a physical filamentary structure of hot gas embedding the three clusters (A3558, A3556, A3562).

The scenario of the merging evolution of the A3558-A3556-A3562 structure, as the remnant of a cluster-cluster collision seen just after the first core-core encounter, is also supported from an analysis of galaxy colors and substructures in Bardelli et al. (1998b).

With the present work, we start an investigation of the members of the core of the Shapley Supercluster combining the spatial resolution of ROSAT PSPC with the higher spectral capabilities of the Italian-Dutch satellite BeppoSAX .

We present in Table 1 the X-ray observations of A3562 discussed in this work. The ROSAT PSPC data were retrieved from the archive, while the BeppoSAX observation has been our AO2 target. All the errors quoted are at the 68.3 per cent confidence level ($`1\sigma `$) unless otherwise stated. Hereafter, we assume a cosmological model with a Hubble constant, $`H_0`$, of $`50h_{50}^1`$ km s-1 Mpc-1, the density parameter, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, equal to 1 and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$. Therefore, $`1^{}`$ corresponds to a proper radius of 78 kpc at the redshift of A3562 of $`0.0483_{0.0010}^{+0.0008}`$ (Bardelli et al. 1998a).

The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2, we discuss the spatial morphology of the X-ray emission from A3562 and the results of the spectral analysis using the ROSAT PSPC observation; in Section 3, the BeppoSAX spectra are analyzed. The constraints on the masses obtained from the observed gas temperature profile are presented in Section 4. Finally, we discuss the main conclusions of this work in Section 5.

## 2 ROSAT PSPC data

The ROSAT (the ROentgen SATellit, Trümper 1983) Position Sensitive Proportional Counter (PSPC) has a field of view with a diameter of $`2^{}`$ and is divided by the ribs into (i) an unobscured central circular region of 20 arcmin in radius, and (ii) an outer annulus sectioned in eight equal sectors. The FWHM of the on-axis Point-Spread-Function (PSF) is of about 25 arcsec. The energy resolution of the PSPC is $`dE/E=0.43(E/0.93)^{0.5}`$ (FWHM) over the entire sensitive area of the detector and in the energy band 0.1–2.4 keV.

The reduction and analysis of these data have made use of the Ftools version 4.2 package, Xselect 1.4b and Xspec 10.00 (Arnaud 1996).

### 2.1 Spatial analysis

The PSPC images with pixel size of 15″have been constructed from counts in the 0.5–2 keV band, where the Galactic and particle background are minimum, after correction for instrumental and telemetry dead time, and exclusion of times of high background counts. The total livetime is 16,597 seconds. We also require the Master Veto count rate to be less than 170 counts s-1 (cf. guidelines for reduction of PSPC data in Snowden et al. 1994). Using the ROSAT Interactive Data Language (IDL) user-supplied libraries, we have divided the images by the respective exposure maps in the same energy band and corrected them for vignetting and exposure-time. The region of the detector support rib has been masked out as well all detected point sources.

The raw image has been smoothed in IDL with an adaptive kernel method, ASMOOTH (Ebeling, White & Rangarajan 1999), using a Gaussian kernel with size between 0.2 and 74.8 pixels and a characteristic smoothing threshold of 5 times the map of the local background (Fig. 1). The contoured image shows clearly the interactions in act between A3562 and the two groups westwards.

The local background (and the respective error) is estimated from the average of the counts in the three exposure-corrected $`45^{}`$-sectors located eastward (cf. Sectors 1, 2 and 8 in Fig. 1), in opposition to the two groups, between 40′ and 45′ from the X-ray emission center (RA, Dec) = 13h 33m 35$`\stackrel{s}{.}`$5, –31°40′05″. The choice of these Sectors is driven from the necessity to reduce the contamination from the extended sources to the West that seems to affect 5 out of 8 sectors in different proportion (see Table 2).

We measure an average local background of $`4.06(\pm 0.10)\times 10^4`$ cts s-1 arcmin-2. The background map is then the product of this value with the exposure map calculated in the same energy band, 0.5–2.0 keV.

To characterize the azimuthal deviations in the X-ray surface brightness, we have represented the azimuthally averaged profile with a $`\beta `$-model (Cavaliere & Fusco-Femiano 1976):

$$S(r)=S_0\left[1+\left(\frac{r}{r_\mathrm{c}}\right)^2\right]^{0.53\beta }.$$
(1)
We have binned the profile in bins with width of 30 arcsec and used the local average background. The radial profile is extracted up to the outer radius, $`r_{\mathrm{out}}=1.51`$ Mpc, defined as the last radial bin where the signal to noise ratio is above 2. The best-fit results over the radial range 0–1.51 Mpc provide a core radius, $`r_\mathrm{c}`$, equals to $`1.25(\pm 0.05)`$ arcmin, or $`0.097(\pm 0.004)h_{50}^1`$ Mpc, and $`\beta =0.473(\pm 0.004)`$ ($`\chi _\nu ^2=2.0`$ with 36 d.o.f.). The errors are at the 68.3 per cent confidence level ($`1\sigma `$) and are obtained from the distribution of 500 repetitions of the fitting process applied to a surface brightness profile randomly generated from the original one and taking into account the Poisson error in each radial bin. These results are consistent with previous measurements (see, e.g., Mohr, Mathiesen & Evrard 1999, Neumann and Arnaud 1999). Moreover, we find evidence of elongation of the surface brightness when the two dimensions distribution is analyzed. Fitting the distribution with an elliptical King profile, we find an axial ratio of about 0.75 with a position angle of 190 degree (clockwise from 0 degree at West). Using a single core radius, the two dimensional fit is consistent with the one dimensional radial fitting discussed above.

In Fig. 2, we investigate the residuals (significant at the 95 per cent confidence level) obtained when the original raw image, $`I(x,y)`$, is compared with a cluster, $`S(x,y)`$, simulated by using the best-fit results obtained from the $`\beta `$model added to the local background. Both $`S(x,y)`$ and $`I(x,y)`$ are in counts pixel-1. The significance of the residuals is assessed in terms of a $`\chi ^2`$ distribution (see Press et al. 1992, p. 614):

$$\chi ^2=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N_x\times N_y}{}}\frac{[I(x_j,y_j)S(x_j,y_j)]^2}{S(x_j,y_j)},$$
(2)
where $`N_x`$ and $`N_y`$ are the numbers of pixels in the rows and columns in the selected sectors of 22$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5 in annular circular bins of 1.5 arcmin.

The model of the azimuthally averaged surface brightness can account for about 98 per cent of the total flux from the central 19′-radius region. We individuate three main deviations from this circular model: (i) the core region, which is affected from the presence of a small cooling flow of $`40M_{}`$ year-1 (Peres et al. 1998) and from its elliptical shape; (ii) a slice pointing to South-West, along the axis between A3562 and SC1329-313; (iii) a region to East, starting 5 arcmin away from the X-ray center and extending outward, that produces an excess of about 3.3 per cent of the total flux, or a luminosity of about $`1.8\times 10^{43}`$ erg s-1 at the redshift of the cluster.

To investigate through a $`\beta `$-model the characteristics of the azimuthal profiles, we have extracted the surface brightness profiles from eight 45°-sectors enclosed between the ribs and extending up to a radius where the signal is above 2 times the uncertainty present in that radial bin.

The results of the $`\beta `$-model fitting are presented in Fig. 3. The $`\beta `$ value for the emission eastward (Sector 1) is remarkably smaller ($`0.36\pm 0.01`$) than the value for the azimuthally averaged profile. In Sectors 7 and 8 (located East and South-East), the values of the core radius are larger than the value obtained from the azimuthally averaged profile of 0.097 Mpc. Considering that the parameters of the $`\beta `$-model correlate between them, so that higher $`\beta `$ values corresponds to higher $`r_\mathrm{c}`$, we conclude that both of these results support the evidence for a much flatter distribution of the gas eastward, probably due to the broadening of the plasma for the merging action along that direction. Finally, we note how poor is the representation with a $`\beta `$model of the cluster emission in Sector 5, which is located in opposition to Sector 1 and covers the area in the direction toward the neighboring groups. This region also appears as a deviation at 95 per cent confidence level from the azimuthally-averaged profile in the map of residuals in Fig. 2.

### 2.2 Spectral analysis

We use the REV2 events file, rp800237n00, processed on January 10th, 1997 from the original dataset. The main correction applied in the REV2 data that affects the spectral analysis is an updated boresighting in the attitude solution that corrects a mean offset of about 6″ observed in the PSPC events (see ROSAT News n.49 111 available at http://wave.xray.mpe.mpg.de/rosat/mission/rosat\_news). The REV2 events file is then corrected for temporal and spatial gain variations with the Ftools/Rosat Perl script pcpicor 2.2.0 (Snowden et al. 1995, Turner et al. 1995).

We make use of the redistribution matrix file pspcb \_gain2 \_256.rmf and calculate with pcarf 2.1.1 the ancillary response file for each source spectrum. Another Ftools/Rosat Perl script, pcbgdcor 1.0.0, has been used to create background spectra with given source region file and background region file that allow a proper vignetting correction. The original background spectrum is obtained from a circular region with a radius of 4′ at $`45`$ arcmin eastward (cfr. Sector 1 in Fig.1), to avoid any contamination from the interacting clumps to the West. The results of this spectral analysis are discussed below. We note that these results are consistent with those obtained both using background spectra obtained from different regions and from the simultaneous fitting of the source and background spectra using a model for the background (see, e.g., Ebeling, Mendes de Oliveira, White 1995) that combines a power law with photon index 1.97 to account for the particle background (Snowden et al. 1992), a thermal component at 0.124 keV and observed power law with photon index 2.12 for the solar scattered photons (Snowden & Freyberg 1993) and unresolved AGN (Hasinger 1992), respectively.

The Pulse-Invariant channels are grouped to collect a minimum of 20 counts in each energy bin to allow the use of the $`\chi ^2`$ analysis. The spectra are then fitted over the energy range 0.2–2.0 keV to avoid energy regions with known poor calibration (see Table 3.3 in Section 3.4 of the ROSAT User’s Handbook)

The results of the spectral analysis are shown in Table 3. Due to the low spectral capabilities of the PSPC, we have fixed the metal abundance to 0.4 times the solar value (Anders & Grevesse 1989) as obtained in the BeppoSAX analysis (see next section). In the central 6′-radius region, we measure a temperature of $`3.7_{0.6}^{+0.8}`$ keV (90 per cent confidence level), a flux of $`1.2\times 10^{11}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 in the 0.1–2.4 keV band, with a corresponding un-absorbed luminosity of $`1.5\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1. In fitting the PSPC spectra, we leave the galactic absorption free to vary to improve the goodness of the fit (Fig. 4). If we fix the absorption to the galactic value of 3.84 $`\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Dickey & Lockman 1990), we measure a temperature of about 2.7 keV but the fit is not statistically acceptable ($`\chi _\nu ^24.7`$ with 174 d.o.f.).

The temperature obtained from ROSAT PSPC is in agreement with a previous 2–10 keV EXOSAT observation (Edge & Stewart 1991): $`kT=3.8_{0.8}^{+1.0}`$ keV (90 per cent c.l.). However, as we discuss in subsection 3.1.1, these temperature estimates disagree (probably for two different reasons) with measurements obtained from high band-pass X-ray instruments.

## 3 BeppoSAX MECS and LECS data

The cluster A3562 was observed by the BeppoSAX satellite (Boella et al. 1997a) between 1999 January 31 and February 1. We discuss here data from two of the instruments onboard BeppoSAX : the Medium-Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (MECS) and the Low-Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (LECS). The MECS (Boella et al. 1997b) is presently composed of two units, working in the 1–10 keV energy range. At 6 keV, the energy resolution is $`8\%`$ and the angular resolution is $``$0.7 (FWHM). The LECS (Parmar et al. 1997), consists of an imaging X-ray detector, working in the 0.1–9 keV energy range, with 20$`\%`$ spectral resolution and 0.8 (FWHM) angular resolution (both computed at 1 keV). Standard reduction procedures and screening criteria have been adopted to produce linearized and equalized event files. The MECS (LECS) data preparation and linearization was performed using the Saxdas (Saxledas) package under Ftools environment. The observed count rate for A3562 is 0.174$`\pm `$0.002 cts s-1 for the 2 MECS units and 0.133$`\pm `$0.003 cts s-1 for the LECS. Here we note that the counts rate observed in the high energy instrument on board of BeppoSAX , i.e. the Phoswich Detection System (PDS, 15–200 keV), is consistent with zero and presents a 90 per cent upper limit of 0.13 cts s-1.

### 3.1 Broad Band Spectroscopy

Considering the present status of the calibration of the BeppoSAX instruments and following the suggestions in Fiore, Guainazzi, Grandi (1999), we have extracted a MECS spectrum, in the 2–10 keV band, and a LECS spectrum, in the 0.1–4 keV, both from a circular region of 8 radius ($``$ 0.62 Mpc), centered on the emission peak. From the ROSAT PSPC radial profile, we estimate that about 70 per cent of the total cluster emission falls within this radius. The background subtraction has been performed using spectra extracted from blank sky event files in the same region of the detectors as the source. The counts are then grouped to be a minimum of 25 per bin to apply properly the $`\chi ^2`$ statistics in the fitting analysis.

The spectra from the two instruments have been fitted simultaneously with an optically thin thermal emission model (MEKAL code in the Xspec package), absorbed by a galactic line of sight equivalent hydrogen column density, $`N_\mathrm{H}`$, of 3.84 $`\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Dickey & Lockman 1990). A numerical relative normalization factor among the two instruments has been added to account for the slight mismatch in the absolute flux calibration of the MECS and LECS response matrices employed in this paper (September 1997 release). The MECS vignetting is included in the response matrix thanks to the Effarea program (see Molendi et al. 1999 for details). For the LECS we have used two redistribution matrices and ancillary response files, the first computed for an on-axis pointlike source and the second for a source with a flat brightness profile. The temperatures and abundances we derive in the two cases do not differ significantly, as the telescope vignetting in the 0.1–4.0 keV energy range is not strongly dependent upon energy. As expected, the relative normalization factor is significantly different, 0.55$`\pm `$0.02 in the case of the fit with the point source effective area, and 0.77$`\pm `$0.02 in the case of the diffuse source effective area, where the effects of vignetting are included.

The MEKAL model yields an acceptable fit to the data, $`\chi ^2=`$ 229.1 for 210 d.o.f. (see Figure 5). The best fitting values for the temperature and the metal abundance are 5.13$`{}_{0.19}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.21}`$ keV and 0.39$`\pm `$0.05 solar units (Anders & Grevesse 1989), respectively. These values are consistent with the results obtained fitting the single spectrum of LECS and MECS.

From the best-fit results (cfr. Table 3), we measure an un-absorbed flux of $`2.0\times 10^{11}`$ ($`2.1\times 10^{11}`$) erg cm-2 s-1 in the 2–10 (0.1–2.4) keV band with a corresponding rest-frame luminosity of $`2.1\times 10^{44}`$ ($`2.1\times 10^{44}`$) erg s-1. The bolometric luminosity is $`4.3\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1.

#### 3.1.1 Comparison with previous estimates

The estimate of the BeppoSAX broad-band gas temperature is not consistent with both the ROSAT and EXOSAT estimates by $`2.9\sigma `$ and $`2.1\sigma `$, respectively (see Section 2.2 and 3.2). Once the absorption in front of the thermal model is fixed to the Galactic value, the ROSAT measurement provides a larger disagreement with the BeppoSAX result. In particular, if we extrapolate the MECS results to the ROSAT energy band, we observe large deviations below 0.5 keV (Fig. 6). Therefore, we select the PSPC counts between 0.5 and 2 keV (instead of 0.2–2.0 keV as done for the analysis presented in Section 2.2). Doing this, the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value diminishes to 0.97 with 144 d.o.f. (the improvement is significant to the 87 per cent confidence level, using the F-test), but still the best-fit gas temperature remains low ($`kT=3.1\pm 0.3`$ keV, 1 $`\sigma `$; note that if we fix the parameters of the spectral fit to the best values obtained from the BeppoSAX spectra –$`kT=5.3`$ keV, $`Z=0.4Z_{}`$ and galactic absorption– the $`\chi _\nu ^2`$ is 1.14 and can not be excluded at 0.05 significance level given the $`\chi ^2`$ probability distribution). Finally, if we fit the LECS spectrum between 0.2 and 2 keV, we obtain a reasonable good agreement with both the Galactic absorption and the temperature estimate as measured from MECS data only (cf. Table 3).

On the other hand, using the Japanese-US satellite ASCA that operates in a similar energy band as the BeppoSAX MECS instrument, Hanami et al. (1999) and White (2000) observe a gas temperature in A3562 of $`5.3\pm 0.2`$ and $`5.2\pm 0.2`$ keV, respectively, with a metallicity of about 0.3 times the solar value and fixing the absorption to the galactic value. Moreover, White (2000) finds a statistical evidence (90 per cent confidence level) that a cooling flow component is required from the ASCA GIS spectra. Including this component, the ambient gas temperature raises to $`7.0_{1.0}^{+1.8}`$ keV.

About the EXOSAT measurement, it is worth to note that the spectrum was obtained from the Medium-Energy array of proportional counters that has no spatial resolution and a quite large field-of-view of 45′$`\times `$45′. We have verified that the observation has been centered between A3562 and SC1329-313, at (RA, Dec) = 13h 32m 14$`\stackrel{s}{.}`$4, –31°41′22″, and covers only 65 per cent of the central circular region of the PSPC centered on the cluster. Therefore, a significant contamination from the cooler group of galaxies could have affected the measurement of the cluster temperature.

In principle, a possible explanation of this soft excess can be the fact that A3562 is located not far from the galactic center, $`(l,b)`$ (313$`\stackrel{}{.}`$3, 30$`\stackrel{}{.}`$4), where the ROSAT soft band maps of Snowden et al. (1997) show a strong contribution from the Galactic bulge and the SNR/stellar wind bubble Radio Loop I. However, if this foreground contamination is homogeneous, diffuse and extended over the field of view of the exposition, the use of a local background should correct for this excess. We have tried to fit the ROSAT spectra with a two temperatures model, but we have not obtained any reduction of the $`\chi ^2`$. Furthermore, we do not observe any disagreement between the best-fit MECS results and the extrapolation to the LECS energy band (note that the squares in Fig. 6 are consistent with a constant value).

Finally, we note that the same trend of a lower value of the plasma temperature as measured from ROSAT PSPC than the estimate obtained from spectra collected by instruments with wide X-ray energy band (e.g. MECS, ASCA GIS and SIS) has been also observed in A3558, the most massive cluster in the Shapley region: from the PSPC data, Bardelli et al. (1996) measure 3.3 keV that has to be compared with temperatures larger than 5 keV obtained from ASCA \[$`5.5\pm 0.4`$ keV in Markevitch et al. (1998); $`6.0\pm 0.2`$ keV in Hanami et al. (1999); $`5.5\pm 0.1`$ keV in White (2000)\].

Thus, given also the reasonable agreement between ASCA and BeppoSAX measurements, it seems that a calibration problem affects the soft ROSAT band, i.e. at energies between 0.2 and 0.5 keV where large positive residuals are still observed also for calibration sources due to temporal variation of the PSPC gain (see section B.2 of the ROSAT User’s Handbook, Prieto et al. 1994, Markevitch & Vikhlinin 1997). Here, we note that there are other pieces of evidence that support this conclusion from an observational point of view: Allen & Fabian (1997) note that ROSAT PSPC spectra provide generally lower excess absorption when compared with ASCA results; Iwasawa, Fabian & Nandra (1999) measure a significant disagreement between PSPC and ASCA in the soft spectrum of a simultaneous observation of NGC 5548 (cfr. their Fig. 7 with our Fig. 6); Mineo et al. (2000) find same evidence of PSPC soft excess when compared to LECS data in a sample of PG quasars.

### 3.2 Spatially Resolved Spectral Analysis

The distribution of the gas temperature within the clusters provides a powerful tool to investigate the dynamical status of the intracluster plasma and to constrain the gravitational mass in hydrostatic equilibrium with the gas itself.

A combined good spatial and spectral sensibility is necessary to resolve the gas temperature distribution. The ROSAT PSPC has a good spatial resolution but is spectrally limited to energy below 2.4 keV. On the other hand, ASCA is sensitive to photons with energies up to 10 keV typical for a hot cluster, but its Point-Spread-Function (PSF) has a large ($``$3 arcmin) half-power diameter that depends strongly upon the energy (Serlemitsos et al. 1995). A better combination of the properties required is provided from the MECS instrument onboard BeppoSAX . The PSF of the MECS has a half-power diameter of 2.5 arcmin and is found to vary only weakly with energy (D’Acri, De Grandi & Molendi 1998). Nonetheless, we have taken into account the small spectral distortions introduced by the PSF using appropriated effective area files produced with the Effarea program for each annulus and sector in which a source spectrum has been accumulated.

#### 3.2.1 Radial Profiles

We have accumulated spectra from seven annular regions centered on the X-ray emission peak (see Fig. 7 and Table 3). The background subtraction has been performed using spectra extracted from blank sky event files in the same region of the detector as the source. A correction for the absorption caused by the strongback supporting the detector window has been applied for the 8-12 annulus, where the annular part of the strongback is contained. For the 4-6, 12-16 and the 16-20 annuli, where the strongback covers only a small fraction of the available area, we have chosen to exclude the regions shadowed by the strongback. For the 4 innermost annuli the energy range considered for spectral fitting is 2–10 keV. The 8-12 annulus is the more sensitive to the strongback correction. This correction is less reliable at low energies: if we use 2 and 3 keV as lower energy cutoff, the best-fit results provide a temperature of about 5 and 3.4 keV, respectively. In the present analysis, we have chosen to accumulate photons with energies between 2.7 and 10 keV and to flag this bin for a systematic uncertainties that can be up to twice the statistical error. Finally, for the 2 outermost annuli, the fit is restricted to the 2–8 keV energy range. The softer energy range considered for the outer annuli limits the spectral distortions, which could be caused by an incorrect background subtraction.

We have fitted each spectrum with an absorbed MEKAL model. For the spectrum from the 0-2 region we have also performed a fit with a one temperature thermal emission component plus a cooling flow component (MKCFLOW code in the Xspec package). The parameters of this component have all been fixed, as the energy range we use for spectral fitting (2–10 keV) is not particularly sensitive to the cooling flow. More specifically, the minimum temperature is fixed at 0.1 keV, the maximum temperature, and the metal abundance is set to be equal to the temperature and the metal abundance of the MEKAL component, the mass deposition rate, $`\dot{M}`$ is fixed to 37 M yr-1, (from the deprojection analysis of the 0.4–2.0 keV ROSAT PSPC image in Peres et al. 1998). The derived values for the ambient temperature and the metal abundance are indistinguishable from those derived for the single temperature analysis.

In Fig. 7, we show the temperature and abundance profiles (filled circles) obtained from the spectral fits.

By fitting the temperature and abundance profiles with a constant we derive the following average values: $`4.67\pm `$0.22 keV and 0.33$`\pm `$0.05 solar units. A constant provides an acceptable fit to the abundance profile, $`\chi ^2=`$ 9.4 for 6 d.o.f. (probability = 0.15). On the other hand, a constant does not provide an acceptable fit to the temperature profile (Table 4). Using the $`\chi ^2`$ statistics we find $`\chi ^2=`$ 21.7 for 6 d.o.f., corresponding to a probability of 0.001 for the observed distribution to be drawn from a constant parent distribution. We have tried to fit a more physical functional form, obtained from the assumption of a polytropic relation between the gas density, described by a $`\beta `$model, and temperature:

$$T(r)=T_0\left[1+\left(\frac{r}{r_\mathrm{c}}\right)^2\right]^{1.5\beta (\gamma 1)}.$$
(3)
Using the best-fit values for the core radius, $`r_\mathrm{c}`$, and $`\beta `$ (see Section 2.1), we measure $`kT_0=6.19_{0.59}^{+0.53}`$ keV and $`\gamma =1.16\pm 0.03`$ ($`\chi ^2=`$8.6 with 5 d.o.f.), i.e. a significant 4.8 $`\sigma `$ deviation from an isothermal profile. (The error bars come from the distribution of the parameter values after 500 repetitions of the polytropic fit, each time performed with a new set of \[$`r_\mathrm{c},\beta `$\]; random values of the temperature and surface brightness profiles are considered for the fit with a polytropic and $`\beta `$ model, respectively, according to the error estimates at each radial bin of the two profiles). We note that, from the deconvolution of the ASCA data, White (2000) measures a flat profile up to $``$17 arcmin. However, the last bin covers the radial range between 6.4 and 16.7 arcmin and, thus, is not able to resolve any gradient.

The ROSAT PSPC and MECS image (see Fig. 8) of A3562 contains an unrelated strong point source (EXO1331.7-3120, serendipitously detected with EXOSAT, Giommi et al. 1991), located at $`13`$ arcmin from the center of the cluster. We have accumulated the spectra excluding a region of 5 around this point source and rederived the temperature and metal abundance for the 3 outer annuli. Our results are over-plotted in Fig. 7 both for the temperature (open squares in the top panel) and abundance (open triangles in the bottom panel) measurements. Clearly, the excision of the point source from the spectra, does not modify in any substantial way the measured temperatures and abundances.

Finally, if we fit the spectra of the last two bins over a harder energy range (2–10 keV instead of the adopted 2–8 keV), we obtain that the spectral distorsion due to an incorrect background subtraction decreases the best-fit central values in the two bins by 25 and 50 per cent, respectively, with a relative uncertainties of about 50 per cent.

#### 3.2.2 Analysis by sectors

We have divided A3562 into 4 sectors: north, west, south and east. Each sector has been divided into 2 annuli with bounding radii 2-8 and 8-16. In Fig. 8, we show the MECS image with the sectors overlaid. The background subtraction has been performed using spectra extracted from blank sky event files in the same region of the detector as the source. A correction for the absorption caused by the strongback supporting the detector window has been applied for the sectors belonging to the 8-16 annulus. We have adopted the 2–10 keV energy range for spectra from all annuli. In the case of the spectra from the outermost annulus, 8-16, we have verified that reducing the energy range to the 2–8 keV band does not alter in any significant way the best fitting values for the temperature and metal abundance. We have fitted each spectrum with a MEKAL model absorbed by the galactic line of sight equivalent hydrogen column density.

In Fig. 9, we show the temperature profiles obtained from the spectral fits for each of the 4 sectors. Note that in all the profiles we have included the temperature measure obtained for the central circular region with radius 2. All four sectors show a decrease of the temperature at large radii, consistent with the trend shown in Fig. 7 for the entire cluster. Moreover, when fitted with a constant temperature, the resulting best fit temperature for each sector is consistent at the 90 per cent confidence level with the average temperature for A3562 derived in the previous section.

In Fig. 10, we show the abundance profiles for each of the 4 sectors. In all profiles we have included the abundance measure obtained for the central circular region with bounding radius 2. We have fitted a constant abundance to these profiles (see Table 4). While in the south and east sectors we have clear evidence of an abundance decline with increasing radius, the modest statistics of the 8-16 arcmin annulus in the north and west prevent us from drawing any conclusion in these sectors.

## 4 Constraints on the masses

We have directly deprojected the surface brightness from the azimuthally averaged profile and four azimuthal sectors to look for variations in the gas temperature and pressure (see Fig. 11) and to constrain the distribution of the gas and total mass.

The deprojection technique (Fabian et al. 1981, White et al. 1997) has been applied to the surface brightness profiles extracted from exposure–corrected image in the 0.5–2.0 keV band. Given the assumption that the observed projected cluster emission is due to the X-ray emitting gas in spherically symmetric shells, the count emissivity in each radial volume shell can be calculated and compared with the predicted counts from a thermal emission of an optically thin gas \[described by a MEKAL model, based on the model calculations of Mewe and Kaastra (Kaastra 1992) with Fe L calculations by Liedahl et al. (1995)\], absorbed by intervening matter ($`N_\mathrm{H}=3.84\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2) and convolved with the response of the detector. For such an emission model, the calculated flux is proportional to the electron density, $`n_\mathrm{e}`$, and the intracluster medium temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{gas}}`$, according to the relation: $`n_\mathrm{e}^2f(T_{\mathrm{gas}})`$ (where $`f(T_{\mathrm{gas}})\stackrel{}{}T_{\mathrm{gas}}^{0.5}`$, for $`T_{\mathrm{gas}}3\times 10^7`$ K). Applying the perfect gas law and the equation of hydrostatic equilibrium to the ICM and assuming a form for the gravitational potential, the temperature and density profiles are obtained once, e.g., the pressure in the outermost bin is fixed.

The gravitational potential functional form is defined by the Navarro, Frenk & White dark matter profile \[$`\rho _{\mathrm{DM}}x^1(1+x)^2`$, where $`x=r/r_\mathrm{s}`$; Navarro et al. 1995\] parametrized with the velocity dispersion $`\sigma GM/(2r)`$ and the scale radius, $`r_\mathrm{s}`$.

The criterion in obtaining a reasonable deprojection is to match an assumed or observed gas temperature profile. We have looked for a good representation of the temperature profile obtained from our analysis of the BeppoSAX data. The gas temperature profile is well reproduced from the deprojection of the azimuthally averaged profile by choosing a $`\sigma =800`$ km s-1 (in good agreement with the optical determination of $`913_{96}^{+189}`$ km s-1, Bardelli et al. 1998a), $`r_\mathrm{s}=0.40`$ Mpc and a pressure value at the outer radius $`r_{\mathrm{out}}=1.51`$ Mpc of $`0.8\times 10^4`$ Kelvin cm-3.

The results of the deprojection provide a mass deposition rate of about 33 $`M_{}`$ year-1, with a 90th percentile upper limit of 70 $`M_{}`$ year-1, which is consistent with the result in Peres et al. (1998).

To make a qualitative comparison among the deprojected profiles of the four azimuthal sectors, we have fixed the input parameters to the values above. In Fig. 11, the eastern (squares) and southern (triangles) temperature profiles show a steep behaviour in the core that imply the use of a larger scale dark matter radius, i.e. a broader distribution of the gas, to reproduce the observed profiles in Fig. 9. (Note that the 8-12 annulus is the more sensitive to the strongback correction; cf. second paragraph in Section 3.2.1).

At the penultimate radial bin, $`r=1.40h_{50}^1`$ Mpc, we measure a gas mass, $`M_{\mathrm{gas}}`$, of $`9.0(\pm 0.2)\times 10^{13}h_{50}^{5/2}M_{}`$, a total mass, $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}`$, of $`4.7\times 10^{14}h_{50}^1M_{}`$, and a gas fraction, $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}=M_{\mathrm{gas}}/M_{\mathrm{tot}}`$ of $`0.19(\pm 0.01)h_{50}^{3/2}`$.

Using the results from the analysis of the surface brightness profile up to 1.51 Mpc done with the $`\beta `$model, we can investigate the properties of A3562 at the representative radius $`r_{200}`$, where the mean overdensity in the cluster is 200 times the critical density and the virial equilibrium within the cluster is reached. In detail, the gas mass is given by the integration over the cluster spherical volume of the gas density represented from the $`\beta `$model, the total mass is obtained from the hydrostatic equilibrium between the cluster potential and the plasma (see, e.g., Henriksen & Mushotzky 1986):

$`M_{\mathrm{tot}}(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{kT(r)r}{G\mu m_\mathrm{p}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}\rho }{\mathrm{ln}r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}kT}{\mathrm{ln}r}}\right)`$ (4)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3\beta \gamma kT_0r_\mathrm{c}}{G\mu m_\mathrm{p}}}{\displaystyle \frac{x^3}{(1+x^2)^B}}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1.13\times 10^{14}}{(\mu /0.59)}}\beta \gamma kT_0r_\mathrm{c}{\displaystyle \frac{x^3}{(1+x^2)^B}}M_{},`$
where $`x=r/r_\mathrm{c}`$, $`B=1.5\beta (\gamma 1)+1`$, $`kT_0`$ is the central temperature in keV, $`r_\mathrm{c}`$ the core radius in $`h_{50}^1`$ Mpc, $`\mu `$ is the mean molecular weight in a.m.u. and the numerical values include the gravitational constant $`G`$, the mass of the proton $`m_\mathrm{p}`$ and all the unit conversions. Finally, given this mass profile, $`r_{200}`$ is given by a simple analytic formula (Ettori 2000).

Under the isothermal assumption (i.e., $`\gamma =1`$ and $`kT(r)=kT_0=5.13\pm 0.21`$ keV; see Section 3.1), $`r_{200}=2.02\pm 0.01`$ Mpc, $`M_{\mathrm{gas}}=1.3(\pm 0.1)\times 10^{14}h_{50}^{5/2}M_{}`$, $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}=5.5(\pm 0.2)\times 10^{14}h_{50}^1M_{}`$ and the gas fraction, $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$, is $`0.24(\pm 0.01)h_{50}^{3/2}`$. Once a polytropic temperature profile is considered (see best-fit results in Section 3.2.1) and a proper correction is applied to the projected central temperature ($`kT_0`$ changes from the best-fit value of 6.19 keV to the deprojected value of 6.63 keV; see Markevitch et al. 1999), $`r_{200}`$ decreases to 1.79 ($`\pm `$0.05) Mpc, the total mass at that radius is $`3.9(\pm 0.4)\times 10^{14}M_{}`$, the gas mass is $`1.1\times 10^{14}M_{}`$, and the gas mass fraction is $`0.28(\pm 0.03)h_{50}^{3/2}`$.

It is worth to note that these values of the gas and total mass, and the relative gas mass fraction, are extrapolations of the observed masses profiles and are consistent at the 90 per cent confidence level with the results of the deprojection analysis over the radial range covered from the cluster emission.

These estimates of the total mass are generally lower than the values quoted in Quintana et al. (1995), where different estimators of the virial mass applied to the galaxy counts within 2 Mpc provide values in the range $`[7.7,17.3]\times 10^{14}M_{}`$. Using the galaxy density distribution and the isothermal assumption, Bardelli et al. (1998a) measure a total mass of $`6.8\times 10^{14}M_{}`$ at $`r=1.5`$ Mpc. This disagreement can be due to the difficulty in disentangling the cluster properties only through optical analysis for the presence of mergers and contaminations that affect the estimate of the optical velocity dispersion and the definitions of the galaxy members.

## 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

From the present analysis of the ROSAT PSPC and BeppoSAX data, we conclude that A3562 is a moderate rich cluster with a X-ray bolometric luminosity of $`4.3\times 10^{44}h_{50}^2`$ erg s-1 in a not-relaxed status, with evidence of merging and/or interaction along the West-East axis. The broader gas emission along that axis is consistent with the picture described by N-body and hydrodynamical simulations, in which the clumps, originally spherical, merge in a cigar-like shape structure that propagates the shock front in the outskirts and relaxes (see, e.g., Fig. 3 in Takizawa 1999). This scenario is complementary and in support of the spectral analysis of the ASCA spectra presented by Hanami et al. (1999).

The complex morphology of the cluster is also underlined from the comparison between the two $`\beta `$ values, one obtained from the spatial analysis, $`\beta _{\mathrm{imag}}`$, and the other from the spectral and optical data, $`\beta _{\mathrm{spec}}=\frac{\mu m_\mathrm{p}\sigma _{\mathrm{opt}}^2}{kT}`$. Representing the estimate of the same quantity, i.e. the ratio of the energies per unit mass stored in the galaxies and in the gas (Cavaliere & Fusco-Femiano 1976), these values should be equal at least in relaxed systems. However, deviations in the average values of $`\beta _{\mathrm{imag}}`$ and $`\beta _{\mathrm{spec}}`$ have been observed, rising the so-called $`\beta `$problem (Mushotzky 1984, Edge & Stewart 1991, Bahcall & Lubin 1994). This disagreement is observed more significantly in systems that present mergers and complex morphology. The case of A3562 confirms this tendency: given an optical velocity dispersion from Bardelli et al. (1998a) and the X-ray spectral temperature $`kT=5.13_{0.19}^{+0.21}`$ keV obtained from the BeppoSAX spectra, we measure $`\beta _{\mathrm{spec}}=1.00_{0.21}^{+0.42}`$ that is not consistent at the 2.5 $`\sigma `$ level with $`\beta _{\mathrm{imag}}=0.473\pm 0.004`$ obtained from the modeling of the surface brightness profile with a spherically-symmetric and isothermal X-ray emission.

From the analysis of the BeppoSAX data, we observe a gas temperature that is consistent with ASCA measurements and significantly higher than the estimate obtained from ROSAT and EXOSAT. We suspect that a calibration problem affects the measure done with ROSAT PSPC and a misdirect pointing that done with EXOSAT. Here we note that also the main cluster in the Shapley core, i.e. A3558, presents a temperature of the intracluster plasma lower than the ASCA estimate (Markevitch & Vikhlinin 1997, Hanami et al. 1999, White 2000) when it is measured with ROSAT PSPC (Bardelli et al. 1996).

We observe evidence of a gradient in the temperature and abundance profiles. The presence of the small cooling flow in the core of A3562 and the steep decrease of the metallicity in the southern and eastern sectors may suggest that the cluster is undergoing a successive merger with a group with a luminosity of about $`10^{43}`$ erg s-1 and poor metallicity in the East, after a time in which the relaxation allowed the enhancement of the gas density in the core. It is worth to note that Bardelli et al. (1998b) show the evidence of two merging groups in the same directions of the observed X-ray excess: the clump ’T598’ has a peak density at 17.7 arcmin to East of the X-ray center, while ’T599’ is separated by 28.9 arcmin from the X-ray center to the South-East. From the isodensity of the bi-dimensional distribution (Fig. 9 of Bardelli et al 1998b) and the redshift distribution (Fig. 2 of Bardelli et al 1998a) of galaxies belonging to these groups, they appear quite dispersed, probably due to strong tidal interaction with the more massive A3562.

From a recent survey performed at 20 cm in the region of the A3558 chain (Venturi et al. 2000), it results that A3562 hosts in its neighborhood nine of the 28 radio sources of the cluster complex. Seven of these objects are located in the eastern edge, where the dynamical analysis found the existence of the two groups, T598 and T599, cited above. These two groups seem to connect each other near the position of the X-ray excess we detected at a distance of $`15`$ arcmin from the A3562 center. Two (J1333-3141 and J1335-3153) of the A3562 radio sources present extended morphology and it was possible to estimate their physical properties. In particular, the equipartition pressure of J1333-3141 is $`P_r=0.4\times 10^{12}h_{50}^{4/7}`$ dyne cm-2 (or $`2.9\times 10^3`$ K cm-3): if the source is at the projected distance of $`101h_{50}^1`$ kpc, the pressure of the hot gas $`P_{hg}`$ as estimated from the deprojection will be a factor 100 higher than $`P_r`$. This is not a strange result, since it is known that the radio emission could be overpressured by the diffuse hot gas up to a factor 10-100 (Feretti, Perola & Fanti 1992). However, if we impose $`P_{hg}=P_r`$, we derive a physical distance of $`0.9`$ Mpc of the radio source from the cluster center, with an inclination of the tail of $``$ 83°with respect to the plane of the sky. More interesting is the source J1335-3153, whose pressure is $`P_r=0.5\times 10^{12}h_{50}^{4/7}`$ dyne cm-2; its projected distance from the cluster center is $`2.3h_{50}^1`$ Mpc. At this distance, the gas of A3562 is not able to confine the extended radio emission, which on the contrary could be in interaction with the more diffuse component seen in the X-ray map, if it extends to the radio source. A more detailed analysis, comprising also the age of the relativistic electrons derived from the spectra, is underway.

A BeppoSAX observation of each of the two groups of galaxies present in the Shapley core, SC1327-312 and SC1329-313, is planned by the end of the present AO (March 2000). These observations will allow us to describe in detail the ongoing merging thanks to the capability of BeppoSAX to map the temperature distribution as shown in the present work.

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research has made use of linearized event files produced at the BeppoSAX Science Data Center and data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Centre. SE acknowledges the support of the Royal Society. The anonymous referee is thanked for comments that improved the presentation of this work.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The relaxation of restrictions, imposed by the relativistic causality on links between distant physical events, seems to have no reasonable alternative in many fields of physics. In cosmology, the synchronous start of expansion is hard to explain without an instantaneous omnipresent initiation. Such a problem persists, e.g., in the model based on Sakharov’s idea of a non-singular initial state , as well as in inflationary models, which suggest the synchronous start of the phase transition at the end of inflation. On the other end of scale, the relativistic causality is challenged by the quantum non-locality.

This challenge is the subject of the discussion below aimed to merge quantum non-locality with relativistic physics.

## 2 Time arrow representation

The spacetime history of a quantum object is built up by two kinds of events: interactions at the intersections of histories, and free falling, with no disturbance reaching the object.

Quantum mechanics describes a free falling object by a set of constants, quantum numbers and mechanical integrals of motion, defined by quantum and relativistic conservation laws. At intersections, the conservation laws generally leave room for the redistribution of conserved variables among the products of interactions. The final distribution is predicted, at best, only stochastically.

The source of stochasticity can be formally described as the exposure of quantum objects to random fluctuations obeying the uncertainty principle. Conservation laws strictly suppress the effect of fluctuations on a free falling object: in the average, all the uncertainties must vanish (just this lets us see remote celestial objects). But at the intersections the fluctuations can randomly affect interactions. This distinguishes a free falling quantum object from an interacting one.

In principle, the randomness attributed to fluctuations could be driven by some deterministic machinery. (Recall, e.g., the infinite decimal expression for the number $`\pi `$: the sequence of figures is perfectly random, though each figure is strongly determined.) Far from being resolved, the issue of determinism is still out of reach of contemporary theory, and the real concern is reversibility rather than causality.

Because of the time-symmetry of quantum formalism, we admit that it must be applied to a direct physical process and to its reversal identically. This means that if the theory defines a physical process stochastically, the same is true for its reversal, with the reversed process being dependent only on its past in terms of the reversed time (cf. Ref. ). We will call a process reversible if the reversal of the time direction (time reversal for short), being employed twice, returns exactly the original process. It follows then from the quantum formalism that, contrary to the explicit reversibility of free falling histories, the intersections of the space-time histories are generally irreversible because of the stochasticity of quantum formalism. This means that some aspects of preexisting reality are theoretically unrecoverable, and the subsequent evolution is not completely predictable.

Since the information lost during interactions is not restored by time reversal, we may admit that it is the loss of information that inside intersections creates the local distinction between the past and the future, making cause and effect non-interchangeable physically. Such occurrences can be labeled as the arrow of time.

The intersections, however, do not cover the whole spacetime. What then in the remaining part of spacetime—let us call it open spacetime—creates the local distinction between past and future, i.e., between cause and effect? The striking answer is “nothing”. The constants, determining the state of a free-falling object, do not specify the arrow of time. The spacetime geometry is alien to the notion of direction, so that no geometrical means exists for delivering the time arrow from afar. The fact that free falling histories are future-directed in the global reference frame is not relevant, because the principle of relativity denies the influence of relative velocity on local physics.

Thus, in open spacetime a quantum object is free of the arrow of time. We face the alternative: either this is a kind of easily removable degeneration, which is unnoticeably eliminated in any interaction, or this is the inherent property of free falling quantum objects, and then the way in which such objects behave is radically distinct from that of free falling macroscopic bodies.

Decoherence, prevailing in the microscopic structure of the latter, involves a lot of causally related properties, such as irreversibility and the arrow of time. Based on these properties, the propagation of a disturbance through a macroscopic body proceeds along the time arrow with the speed of sound. In the absence of the time arrow, the notion of propagation, as a continuous sequence of the cause and effect, becomes self-contradictory. Thus, physics without the arrow of time is also deprived of the cause and effect propagation. So, entering interactions, a free falling quantum object can behave only as an indivisible whole. The consideration of the distant quantum objects in the next section reveals just this type of behavior.

## 3 Deon, distant entangled object

A quantum object is called entangled if its wave function is not the product of the wave functions of its components. If its size is much larger than the sizes of its components, it is called a distant entangled object; we will call it deon for short.

Consider Bohm’s version  of the well-known EPR-thought-experiment , which historically turned out to be the first challenge to relativistic causality.

An emitter in each of its working cycles shoots out in opposite directions along its axis a pair of spin-1/2-particles, with total spin zero, but with the spin of each particle remaining undetermined. The last condition implies that the particles share the zero spin of the pair, and this creates some kind of interdependence between them. Only a pair as a whole is an independent quantum object, which is a deon with the growing distance between its constituents.

The EPR-deon is one of the innumerable quantum entangled objects, whose constituents share some quantum numbers and display the behavior known as quantum non-locality.

Let, on each side of the emitter, be stationed an observer who measures a spin component of the approaching particle. For measurements, each observer independently chooses one of the two predetermined mutually orthogonal directions, normal to the emitter axis. Quantum formalism predicts that the stochastic distribution of readings, found by any single observer, depends neither on the independent choice made by the other, nor on the fact that the particles belong to a deon. This means that the particles’ link with a deon does not affect local physics. In particular, EPR-deon cannot be a means of communication between observers.

The occurrence of deons can be revealed only post factum by analysis of the correlation between readings pertaining to the pairs of particles. The cases, when the measurements, related to the same pair, have been made in distinct directions, reveal no correlation, but the same choice of direction always yields the opposite results, and this discloses the presence of the deon, i.e, a quantum number shared by both particles.

In terms of quantum formalism, this pattern can be explained only if the measurement of the spin of one particle somehow changes the wave function of the twin particle, which also acquires the definite spin component. The latter is opposite in direction to that found for the first particle. Then and only then the required pattern appears, and angular momentum is conserved.

The mechanism of this process is, however, obscure. To keep the angular momentum unchanged, the interaction between the deon constituents either should be instant, and then the process cannot be described in terms of relativistic causality, or quantum formalism is incomplete, and then it can be expanded to include a carrier, which transports action from one deon constituents to another (cf. Ref. ).

The seven-decade attempts to incorporate the last idea into quantum mechanics, however, failed. Thus, quantum non-locality—quantum instant (or, in other words, spacelike) propagation—is, most likely, in the nature of things. Though this is seemingly in variance with relativistic causality, the discrepancy is conceptual rather than physical, because, just as for the EPR deon, the local physics is never affected, and by means of that no actual violation of relativistic causality takes place.

The simplest suggestion for resolving the problem is that the place, where relativistic causality is in force, is separated from that where the quantum non-locality can be observed. The suitable places are open spacetime and intersections of histories.

The expected deon behavior supports this idea. At the intersections of histories with massive redistribution of conserved variables, multiple deons can appear; each of them being a cluster of free falling particles, which share some quantum numbers. When a multiple deon runs into an intersection, the particles, which are actually involved in interactions, instantly acquire definite quantum numbers, and so do their twins. Thus, due to these instant adjustments, the deon as a whole escapes interactions. Only former constituents that have broken off with the deon are actually involved in the interaction. Constituents, keeping their non-local quantum ties intact, remain in open spacetime where they form the altered deon. Deons therefore exist merely in open spacetime as free falling objects, and therefore escape from the incompatibility with the relativistic causality acting merely inside intersections of histories. It is worth emphasizing that this separation of powers is essentially based on the quantum non-locality.

## 4 Relativistic quantum non-locality

A causal interaction is continuously decomposable into local cause-and-effect relations along paths confined to a light cone. Since quantum non-locality does not affect local physics, it cannot be displayed in this way. This, in classical terms, looks like the action at a distance. The Lorentz invariant counterpart of the latter is tachyon mechanics, the internally consistent superluminal paraphrase of special relativity . This implies that quantum non-locality should obey tachyon mechanics and therefore is Lorentz invariant.

As was shown long ago , tachyonlike faster-than-light links between physical events can be incorporated into quantum formalism without causality breaking, but only if tachyons are virtual and never appear as free propagating particles. This essential restriction is actually inherent in tachyon mechanics itself. Indeed, let $`u`$ be the velocity of a particle and $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ the time interval between its emission and absorption measured by an inertial observer. Lorentz transformations indicate that another inertial observer, moving in the same space-direction with the relative velocity $`v`$, finds this time interval to be $`(c=1)`$:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }t^{}=\frac{1uv}{\sqrt{1v^2}}\mathrm{\Delta }t.$$

If the particle is a tachyon, i.e. $`u>1`$, and the velocity $`v>u^1`$, then $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }t^{}`$ are of opposite signs. This means, that what one observer sees as emissions, another does as absorption, and vice versa. This is in striking contrast to relativistic causality, where it is of the prime importance that the sequence of cause and effect, or in other words the arrow of time, is Lorentz invariant. This means that an invariant time arrow cannot be introduced in tachyon mechanics, i.e. the latter does not describe the real propagation of anything. (The tachyon propagation is spacelike, so that in terms of causality it deals with the already existing relations between things.) This feature of tachyon mechanics is, however, completely in line with above-considered properties of non-locality.

Thus, we have at hand: The concept of open spacetime deprived of the arrow of time and by means of that providing the room for non-locality. The Lorentz invariant tachyon mechanics that describes the spacetime properties of non-locality. Quantum non-locality—the collection of supporting facts that fills up the still empty tachyon niche in relativistic physics. These three ingredients seem to be the foundation of the relativistic quantum non-locality. Causality survives, and non-locality comes as a part of the same relativistic physics, which is responsible for causality. This brings to a close the debate on the conflict between quantum non-locality and relativistic causality.

At present, we can only guess the possible physical role of the relativistic quantum non-locality. We cannot rule out that it is the spacelike links, introduced by the non-locality, which are responsible for the simultaneous start of the cosmological expansion, as well as for the homogeneity and basic hallmarks of the universe arising from the initial state with all conserved quantities globally shared.

## Acknowledgments

The author thanks The Andrei Sakharov Foundation for the literature grant, Stanford Linear Acceleration Center for hospitality, and Michael E. Peskin for stimulating criticism. The author gratefully acknowledges the recent works by Stephen Hawking, Roland Omn s, Roger Penrose, Huw Price, L. S. Shulman and many others, which with modern inquisitiveness make it clear that no deciphering of the quantum reality allows avoiding the exploration of the spacelike paths in general relativity. As a matter of fact, this final victory of quantum thinking is coming without sacrificing Einsteinian relativity.