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# The Physical Conditions of the X-ray Emission Line Regions in the Circinus Galaxy

## 1 Introduction

X-ray spectra of Seyfert 2 galaxies show numerous discrete spectral features that are produced in a wide variety of physical conditions. In the few cases where the statistical quality of the data has permitted a detailed investigation of the spectrum, the soft X-ray band has been found to be almost completely dominated by line emission while the hard X-ray emission has been found to be consistent with nonthermal radiation possibly produced through accretion onto the central compact object. X-ray observations have placed meaningful constraints on the structure of matter immediately surrouding the central source, and have played an important role in the development of a unified model of AGN (Antonucci, 1993). Observations of warm absorbers in Seyfert 1 galaxies, for example, and their response to variations in the X-ray continuum provide compelling evidence that a significant amount of circumnuclear material is photoionized by the primary radiation (Otani et al., 1996). There is also observational evidence that a large fraction of Seyfert 2 galaxies harbor starburst regions where large amounts of mechanically-heated gas are produced, for example, through supernova explosions. Nuclear jets may also heat the surrounding gas through shocks. The orgin of the observed soft X-ray emission and the excitation mechanisms responsible for producing the observed emission lines in these galaxies, however, are not well understood and, in most cases, cannot be discerned from the low spectral resolution data available to date.

In the archetypal Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068, for example, Ueno et al. (1994) find that the soft X-ray spectrum obtained with ASCA is consistent with emission from two-temperature gas in collisional ionization equilibrium (CIE), which may be associated with nuclear and spatially extended starburst regions seen in the ROSAT HRI data (Wilson et al., 1992). On the other hand, Netzer & Turner (1997) argue that a combination of warm ($`T1.5\times 10^5\mathrm{K}`$) and hot ($`T3\times 10^6\mathrm{K}`$) gas in photoionization equilibrium (PIE) is also consistent with the ASCA data. Despite the fact that both models adequately fit the data, their are problems in the inferred parameters that cast doubt on these interpretations. The CIE fit requires a low-temperature component which is essentially metal-free (abundances $`3\%`$ of the solar photosphere). The PIE model requires a steep soft X-ray continuum component (photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=3.4`$) that contains a large fraction of the total X-ray luminosity and does not have an obvious physical interpretation. On the other hand, a detailed X-ray spectral analysis of another Seyfert 2 galaxy, Mkn 3, by Griffiths et al. (1998) shows that emission from plasmas both in CIE and PIE can fit the composite Ginga, ASCA, and ROSAT data.

The Circinus Galaxy is the closest ($`D4\mathrm{Mpc}`$; Freeman et al. 1977) and one of the brightest Seyfert 2 galaxies in the X-ray band. Extensive studies at various wavelengths have provided firm evidence for an obscured Seyfert nucleus at the center of the galaxy; the detection of a prominent one-sided \[O III\] ionization cone (Marconi et al., 1994), optical and near-IR coronal line emission111The term coronal lines here refers to high excitation forbidden lines, which were first observed in the solar corona. These lines can, in principle, be produced either through photoionization or collisional ionization, and are unrelated to emission lines from coronal plasmas, a term which refers to optically thin emission from collisionally ionized plasmas. from the nuclear region (Oliva et al., 1994; Moorwood et al., 1996), bipolar radio lobes orthogonal to the plane of the galaxy (Elmouttie et al., 1995), rapid variations of H2O maser emission from the nucleus (Greenhill et al., 1997), polarized and broad H$`\alpha `$ emission from the nucleus (Oliva et al., 1998), and a highly absorbed hard X-ray spectrum with a bright iron K fluorescent line near 6.4 keV (Matt et al., 1996; Guainazzi et al., 1999). The system is also known to contain regions of starburst activity around the nucleus that account for a large fraction of the bolometric luminosity (Rowan-Robinson & Crawford, 1989). Recent studies of the infrared spectrum indicate that the relative contributions from starburst and AGN activity, which can be traced through emission from hot dust and ionized gas, respectively, are approximately equal (Maiolino et al., 1998; Genzel et al., 1998).

In a preliminary analysis of the ASCA data by Matt et al. (1996), it was shown that the 2 – 10 keV spectrum is dominated by reflection from cold matter, possibly originating from the inner wall of the putative molecular torus that surrounds the central nucleus. Several emission lines were also detected in the soft X-ray region (0.5 – 2 keV), most of which were inferred to be present in the lower resolution BeppoSAX spectrum as well (Guainazzi et al., 1999). The measured energies of these emission lines indicate that they are produced through excitation of highly ionized material, and cannot be produced in a cold reflection medium. The soft X-ray region is certainly not dominated by cold reflection.

The purpose of this paper is to perform a detailed analysis of the soft X-ray spectrum of the Circinus Galaxy using various spectral models, and to derive physical parameters that characterize the structure of the X-ray emission line regions. As we show, the soft X-ray spectrum cannot distinguish spectroscopically between collisionally ionized gas and photoionized gas (cf., Netzer, Turner, & George, 1998). There is a strong piece of evidence, however, against an interpretation in terms of collisionally ionized gas, and the inferred parameters somewhat favor photoionization equilibrium. We discuss the implications of our results and investigate the properties of the active nucleus and its circumnuclear environment.

## 2 Observation and Data Reduction

The Circinus Galaxy was observed with ASCA during August 14 – 15, 1995. For the purposes of our analysis, we only use data obtained by the Solid-state Imaging Spectrometers (SIS), which have the highest spectral resolving power in the soft X-ray band. The SIS data were taken in FAINT and BRIGHT 2-CCD modes, while most of the photons from the Circinus Galaxy were recorded on SIS0-CHIP1 and SIS1-CHIP3. A quick analysis of the SIS0 and SIS1 data indicated a $`1\%`$ offset in the energy scale in the iron-K region, while no obvious offset was observed in the soft X-ray band (although this is most likely due to the poor statistical quality of data in that region). We applied a $`1\%`$ gain correction to the SIS1-CHIP3 response matrix. Since the spectral resolving power of the GIS is lower by a factor of $`3`$ in the soft X-ray region, the discrete features observed in the SIS are smeared out in the GIS. We, therefore, only use data collected on the SIS for our spectral analysis.

The data were screened though the standard criteria using FTOOLS v4.0. After conversion of FAINT mode data to BRIGHT mode data, we combined them with true BRIGHT mode data to obtain a total exposure time of 33 ksec amounting to $`4000`$ and $`3000`$ counts on the SIS0 and SIS1 detectors, respectively. Although this method does not fully exploit the resolving power capabilities of the SIS, we can significantly improve the statistical quality of the data by compromising for a 20 – 30% degredation of the resolving power.

## 3 Spectral Analysis

In this section, we discuss the spectral models that we use for our analysis of the SIS0 data. All of the models we consider here consist of (1) a reflection component, (2) a soft continuum component, and (3) a soft X-ray emission line component. Possible physical interpretations of each of the spectral components are as follows. The reflection component represents a fraction of the intrinsic AGN continuum radiation that is Compton-scattered in a cold medium into our line of sight. The spectrum resembles that of a highly absorbed continuum with a number of K-shell fluorescent lines superimposed (Lightman & White, 1988; George & Fabian, 1991; Matt, Brandt, & Fabian, 1996), which we simply represent by a set of gaussian lines and a Compton reflected powerlaw continuum (i.e., PEXRAV in XSPEC). This component has a number of free parameters; line energies and fluxes of K-shell Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Fe, the intrinsic powerlaw photon index, and the total reflected flux. We assume that the K-shell fluorescent lines are infinitely narrow, which is justified by the observed Fe K$`\alpha `$ line profile, as we discuss later. The soft continuum component may be produced through electron scattering of the primary radiation in the surrounding gas, in which case the photon index should be equal to that of the primary radiation, or through inverse Compton scattering of infrared photons with relativistic electrons. For the latter case, the photon index should match the photon index in the radio band. The soft X-ray emission line component is modeled as either a collisionally ionized or a photoionized plasma in equilibrium. We assume that the entire spectrum is absorbed by a single column density (Galactic + local absorption). The reflection component possibly suffers higher absorption, since the reflection region (the inner wall of the molecular torus) is assumed to be located closer to the nucleus. The reflected spectrum, however, is not sensitive to $`N_H10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ since most of the flux is contained in the region above $`2\mathrm{keV}`$ anyway. Throughout this paper, we adopt a distance of 4 Mpc to the Circinus Galaxy.

### 3.1 Collisional Ionization Equilibrium Model

We first adopt a model in which the soft X-ray component is represented by a single temperature thermal plasma in collisional ionization equilibrium (i.e., MEKAL in XSPEC), with the temperature, overall abundance, and the emission measure free parameters in the fit. For the reflection component, we first allowed the fluorescent line energies to be free, and found that the model is unable to locate the centroid energies for all but the Fe K$`\alpha `$ and K$`\beta `$ lines. We, therefore, froze the energies of all of the fluorescent lines, except for those of iron, at values shown in Table 1, which are those derived from the photoionization equilibrium fit discussed in § 3.2. These are more or less consistent with the ionization state inferred from the iron K$`\alpha `$ line energy (i.e., partially ionized medium), which is also consistent with the iron K$`\alpha `$ line energy measured with BeppoSAX (Guainazzi et al., 1999). The measured fluorescent line intensities are also listed in Table 1. Contrary to Matt et al. (1996), we find a statistically acceptable fit with $`\chi _r^2=1.21`$ for 305 degrees of freedom. The best-fit model in comparison with the data is shown in Figure 1 and the derived parameters are listed in Table 2.

The allowed ranges in temperature and emission measure ($`EM=n_e^2𝑑V`$) are shown in Figure 2 where we plot 68, 90, and 99% confidence ranges for two interesting parameters. We obtain 90% confidence ranges of $`kT=0.69_{0.07}^{+0.05}`$ keV and $`EM=(1.12_{0.10}^{+0.17})\times 10^{63}\mathrm{cm}^3`$. Including an additional thermal component does not improve the fit significantly ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^21`$). In fact, if we adopt a powerlaw differential emission measure (DEM) model where the emission measure as a function of $`kT`$ is proportional to $`(kT)^\alpha `$, we obtain a steep slope of $`\alpha 5`$ and a sharp high-temperature cutoff at $`kT0.7`$ keV, which nearly corresponds to a single temperature model at $`kT0.7`$ keV. Similar results are obtained for different DEM models in coronal equilibrium. In any case, the total emission measure in the thermal component is $`1\times 10^{63}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ and the corresponding unabsorbed luminosity is $`L_x=3\times 10^{40}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$.

### 3.2 Photoionization Equilibrium Model

We next test a model in which the soft X-ray emission lines are produced through cascades following radiative recombination in photoionization equilibrium. This spectral model was originally constructed for the analysis of the ASCA spectrum of Cygnus X-3 (Liedahl & Paerels, 1996) and was also succesfully applied to the ASCA data of Vela X-1 (Sako et al., 1999). The model includes line emission from hydrogen- and helium-like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, argon, and calcium, as well as the highest ten charge states of iron (Fe XVII – Fe XXVI), and the associated radiative recombination continua (RRC). For a detailed description of the atomic model, see Sako et al. (1999).

We first start by fitting the data with the recombination cascade model, using only the K-shell ions of oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, argon, calcium, and iron, to construct an empirical DEM. Due to the limited statistical quality of the data, we cannot directly constrain the temperature of each ion emission region from the shape of the RRC, so we fix the temperature of each ion at their respective temperature of formation. We do this by first calculating the ionization balance and temperature as functions of the ionization parameter ($`\xi =L_x/(n_pr^2)`$, where $`L_x`$ is the X-ray luminosity between 1 and 100 Rydbergs, $`n_p`$ is the proton number density, and $`r`$ is the distance from the ionizing source; Tarter, Tucker, & Salpeter 1969) using the photoionization code, XSTAR (Kallman & Krolik, 1995). We assume that the medium is optically thin with respect to continuum absorption, which is an excellent approximation, as we show later. We adopt an exponential cutoff powerlaw ionizing continuum with a photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.7`$ with an e-folding energy of $`E_f=100\mathrm{keV}`$ and a cutoff energy of $`E_c=60\mathrm{keV}`$ (Guainazzi et al., 1999). Using these results, we then calculate the temperature at which each of the ion line emissivities is a maximum and fix each ionic temperature at those values, which we refer to as the temperatures of formation. This is a good first order approximation since a large fraction of the total ion line fluxes are produced near those temperatures. Approximately 50% of the recombination line emissivity of the He-like ions originates from a range in $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{log}\xi `$ of $`0.5`$. For the H-like ions, the width is broader ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{log}\xi 1`$) since the emission lines are formed through recombination onto a bare nucleus, which exists in a wider range in ionization parameter.

We fit the SIS0 and SIS1 data simultaneously and obtain a statistically acceptable fit with $`\chi _r^2=1.10`$ with 290 degrees of freedom. The data in comparison to the model are plotted in Figure 3. In addition to the continuum parameters, this model contains normalizations of each ion line flux, which are proportional to their ion line emission measures. Figure 4 shows the derived empirical DEM distribution assuming an emission width of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{log}\xi 0.5`$ for helium-like ions and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{log}\xi 1`$ for the hydrogenic species for two sets of assumed chemical abundances; (1) solar photospheric abundances (Anders & Grevesse, 1989) and (2) abundances derived by Oliva, Marconi, & Moorwood (1999) for a knot located approximately $`15\mathrm{}`$ from the nucleus in the direction of the \[O III\] cone. We adopt solar abundances for elements that are not listed in Oliva, Marconi, & Moorwood (1999). Given the assumptions that we have made in the construction of the empirical DEM distribution, we estimate the points drawn on Figure 4 to be uncertain by up to a factor of 2 – 3.

With the exception of the DEM points derived from O VII and O VIII at $`\mathrm{log}\xi =1.4`$ and $`\mathrm{log}\xi =1.9`$, respectively, the shape of the empirical DEM is nearly linear with evidence of a slight decrease in DEM with increasing $`\mathrm{log}\xi `$. The oxygen ions have bright features below $`E1\mathrm{keV}`$ and the derived emission measures are extremely sensitive to the foreground column density. An increase in the column density by $`50\%`$ can be offset by an increase in the emission measure of O VII by a factor of $`10`$ and O VIII by a factor of $`6`$. Keeping this in mind, the derived DEM distribution, to first order, is nearly linear.

We then adopt a reverse fitting procedure where we parametrize the model spectrum of the highly ionized component according to powerlaw DEMs of the form, $`d(EM)/d\mathrm{log}\xi \xi ^\gamma `$, with minimum and maximum cutoff ionization parameters, $`\xi _{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`\xi _{\mathrm{max}}`$, respectively. This procedure bypasses the ambiguities in the assumed temperatures of formation and correctly takes account of the temperature gradient in each ionization zone. In addition to the K-shell ions that we had initially used in the empirical fit, this time we also include line and RRC emission from the iron L species, which are expected to contribute $`10\%`$ to the total recombination emission flux. There are four free parameters in this component, namely, the slope $`\gamma `$ of the DEM as a function of ionization parameter, the normalization, which is proportional to the total emission measure $`EM`$, low-$`\xi `$ cutoff $`\xi _{\mathrm{min}}`$, and high-$`\xi `$ cutoff $`\xi _{\mathrm{max}}`$. Unlike the CIE case, we are able to centroid the fluorescent line energies of all the elements that we list in Table 2, and we find a statistically acceptable fit with $`\chi _r^2=1.12`$ for 299 degrees of freedom. The data in comparison to the model is shown in Figure 5 and the best-fit parameters are listed in Table 3. We also derive confidence contours for two pairs of interesting parameters; ($`\xi _{\mathrm{min}}`$, $`\xi _{\mathrm{max}}`$) and ($`\gamma `$, $`EM`$), as shown in Figures 6 and 7. In summary, we derive 90% confidence ranges of $`\gamma =0.07_{0.14}^{+0.12}`$ and $`EM=(5.5\pm 0.7)\times 10^{63}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ for two interesting parameters, and $`\mathrm{log}\xi _{\mathrm{min}}=0.91_{\mathrm{}}^{+0.48}`$ and $`\mathrm{log}\xi _{\mathrm{max}}=3.53_{0.20}^{+0.32}`$, again, for two interesting parameters. The best-fit model spectrum with the various components is shown in Figure 8.

The lower limit on $`\xi _{\mathrm{min}}`$ cannot be well-constrained simply because the X-ray spectrum of the Circinus Galaxy is absorbed through a moderately high column density ($`N_H8\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$), and also because the ASCA SIS detectors are not sensitive to X-rays below $`0.5`$ keV, where discrete recombination emission from regions with $`\mathrm{log}\xi 1`$ dominates, for example, from carbon and nitrogen. The upper limit on $`\xi _{\mathrm{max}}`$ is constrained mainly by the Ly$`\alpha `$ flux of Fe XXVI.

## 4 Discussion and Implications

We have shown that the soft X-ray emission line spectrum of the Circinus Galaxy is compatible with both coronal and photoionization equilibrium, and the excitation mechanisms cannot be spectroscopically distinguished without any ambiguity. In this section, we extract physical parameters implied by each model and discuss their validity in relation to observations at other wavelength bands.

According to recent ROSAT and ASCA observations, nearby star-forming galaxies show X-ray spectra that can be well described by a combination of a soft optically thin thermal plasma with a temperature of $`kT0.6\mathrm{keV}`$ and a hard continuum component with either a photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.7`$ or a bremsstrahlung temperature of $`kT5\mathrm{keV}`$ (e.g., Ptak et al. 1999, and references therein). The collisional ionization interpretation for the Circinus Galaxy gives a best-fit temperature of $`0.69\mathrm{keV}`$ and a luminosity of $`\mathrm{few}\times 10^{40}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ in this component, which are typical values for starburst galaxies. Note that the temperature of the plasma is well-constrained and that the data do not allow the presence of gas with temperature lower than $`kT0.60\mathrm{keV}`$ at the 99% confidence level. It is interesting to compare this with what Oliva et al. (1994) have found using visible and near infrared observations of the coronal emission lines in the Circinus Galaxy. In order to reproduce the observed spectrum in the context of a powerlaw DEM plasma in CIE, they require a sharp cutoff in the DEM at a temperature of $`kT_{\mathrm{max}}0.1\mathrm{keV}`$. This would imply that there is a gap in the emission measure distribution in the range $`0.1kT0.6\mathrm{keV}`$, which has no obvious physical interpretation.

In PIE, the assumption of plasma heating by a point source of X-radiation places an additional constraint on the plasma structure (e.g., the heating rate as a function of $`\xi `$), which can be then used to derive the geometrical distribution of the gas. In the PIE interpretation of the spectrum, have shown that a nearly flat DEM distribution is consistent with the data. One simple way of producing a flat DEM curve is to adopt a radial density profile of the form, $`n_e(r)r^{3/2}`$. This is perhaps the simplest configuration but, by no means, unique. More generally, a powerlaw density profile produces a powerlaw DEM curve. It is interesting to note, however, that a conical homogeneous medium with a powerlaw density profile as a function of radius always produces a powerlaw DEM distribution; i.e., a simple calculation shows that for a density profile of the form,

$$n_e(r)=n_{e0}r_{\mathrm{pc}}^\beta ,$$
(1)
where we define $`n_{e0}`$ to be the density in cm-3 at a distance of 1 pc from the central source, the DEM distribution can be written as, $`d(EM)=\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }n_e^2r^2dr`$, or

$$\frac{d(EM)}{d(\mathrm{log}\xi )}=\mathrm{ln}10\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }}{|\beta 2|}[n_{e0}(\mu L_x)^{32\beta }]^{1/(2\beta )}\xi ^{(32\beta )/(\beta 2)},$$
(2)
where $`\mu `$ is the ratio of the electron to proton number densities ($`\mu =1.2`$, for an X-ray emitting plasma) and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the opening solid angle of the photoionized region. From this equation, we can identify the slope of the DEM curve $`\gamma `$ to be $`(32\beta )/(\beta 2)`$. Our inferred range in $`\gamma `$ corresponds to $`\beta =1.48_{0.04}^{+0.03}`$. One can also see that $`\beta =3/2`$ corresponds to a flat DEM curve.

The fact that $`\beta `$ is relatively well-constrained is due to the fact that the slope of the DEM curve is extremely sensitive to the value of $`\beta `$. As mentioned earlier, a $`\beta =3/2`$ density profile produces a flat DEM curve, which produces emission lines and RRC from a wide range of ionization stages. A $`\beta =2`$ profile, on the other hand, corresponds to a single-$`\xi `$ zone, since both the ionizing flux and the density decay like $`r^2`$. In this case, only a small number of charge states can exist, and the resulting spectrum is more sparse.

Our derived values for the parameters shown in Table 4 depend on the assumed metal abundances. If we assume that the abundances are $`A_Z_{\mathrm{}}`$ relative to solar, the DEM curve will be uniformly shifted by a factor of $`A_Z_{\mathrm{}}^1`$ and the inferred total emission measure will be $`EM=5.5\times 10^{63}A_Z_{\mathrm{}}^1\mathrm{cm}^3`$. The parameters, $`\beta `$, $`\xi _{\mathrm{min}}`$, and $`\xi _{\mathrm{max}}`$ are unaffected by a uniform shift in abundances, since they characterize only the shape of the DEM curve and not its normalization. The exact dependences of these parameters on the abundance of an individual element, however, is more complex. For example, an underabundance of oxygen and neon, as found by Oliva, Marconi, & Moorwood (1999), may result in a steeper DEM slope ($`\beta 1.5`$) or a decrease in $`\xi _{\mathrm{min}}`$ in order to increase the emission measure at low-$`\xi `$ and compensate for the observed flux at low energies.

Although the density parametrization of equation 1 is simplistic, chosen for the photoionization interpretation of the spectrum, there is empirical evidence that narrow-line regions in many Seyfert galaxies, in fact, do exhibit this type of behavior. For $`\beta =2`$, the density scales like $`r^2`$, and, hence, the ionization parameter is constant with radial distance. This has been observed in some systems that show correlations between widths of optical emission lines and their critical densities for collisional de-excitation. Spectral transitions with higher critical densities generally exhibit broader line profiles. There are also cases where the observed widths are higher for transitions in ions with higher ionization potential, which corresponds to a scenario with $`\beta <2`$ (e.g., Pelat, Alloin, & Fosbury 1981; Filippenko & Halpern 1994; De Robertis & Osterbrock 1984). According to De Robertis & Osterbrock (1986), values of $`\beta `$ lie between 0 and 2, while more Seyfert 2 galaxies have $`\beta `$ closer to 2. A $`\beta >2`$ behavior (i.e., $`\xi `$ increasing with distance) is not observed in any Seyfert galaxy.

Using the empirical density profile, we can estimate several physical parameters from the results of the DEM fit. From the best-fit values for $`\beta `$ and the total $`EM`$, which is proportional to the prefactor in equation 2, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }(n_{e0}L_x^{32\beta })^{1/(2\beta )}`$, we estimate the density profile of the X-ray emission region to be,

$$n_e(r)=4.0\times 10^2\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }^{0.52}L_{x(42)}^{0.04}r_{\mathrm{pc}}^{1.48}(\mathrm{cm}^3),$$
(3)
where $`L_{x(42)}`$ is the X-ray luminosity in multiples of $`10^{42}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$. We also saw that the upper and lower limits on the ionization parameter were $`\mathrm{log}\xi _{\mathrm{max}}3.5`$ and $`\mathrm{log}\xi _{\mathrm{min}}0.9`$, respectively. From the upper limit, we can estimate the distance from the central nucleus to the inner-most X-ray emission line region that is directly visible from the observer. We estimate the inner distance to be $`r_{\mathrm{in}}0.011\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }L_{x(42)}^2\mathrm{pc}`$. Similarly, the lower limit on the outer distance is $`r_{\mathrm{out}}1200\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }L_{x(42)}^2\mathrm{pc}`$. We can see from the \[O III\] image that the opening half-angle of the one-sided ionization cone is $`30\mathrm{°}`$, which corresponds to a solid angle of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }0.8`$. Assuming that the X-ray emission lines are produced in the inner region close to the base of this ionization cone, we estimate its size to be $`900\mathrm{pc}`$ or approximately $`50\mathrm{}`$ in the sky. This is qualitatively consistent with the ROSAT HRI image that shows a slight spatial extent ($`30\mathrm{}`$) approximately in the direction of the \[O III\] cone.

As a cross-check on the derived parameters, we calculate the electron scattering optical depth through the emission line medium and compare it with the observed scattered continuum flux. As listed in Table 3, the unabsorbed luminosity of the scattered continuum is $`L_x^{\mathrm{scat}}8.4\times 10^{39}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$, which corresponds to a Thomson optical depth of $`\tau _{\mathrm{es}}=0.084(\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }L_{x(42)})^1`$. Integrating the density profile (equation 3) from $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ out to $`r_{\mathrm{out}}`$ yields an optical depth of, $`\tau _{\mathrm{es}}=0.014(\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }L_{x(42)})^1`$. We note that regions beyond $`r_{\mathrm{out}}`$ do not contribute significantly to the optical depth. This implies the presence of additional scattering regions in the circumsource medium, which must be either more highly ionized or less ionized than the X-ray emission line region. The additional column density required is $`N_H(\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }/4\pi )1\times 10^{23}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, which may be produced in the region that absorbs the transmission component observed in the hard X-rays. The measured column density of this component is $`N_H4\times 10^{24}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (Guainazzi et al., 1999), and thus a covering fraction of $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }/4\pi )0.03`$ can produce most of the observed soft continuum flux. An optical depth of $`\tau _{\mathrm{es}}0.01`$ through the photoionized gas amounts to a total column density of $`N_H\mathrm{few}\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, which justifies our assumption that the primary radiation is optically thin to continuum absorption.

It is interesting to note that a density profile of the form $`n(r)r^{3/2}`$ is expected for Bondi accretion in a spherically symmetric gravitational potential of a point source. For a central black hole mass of $`M_6`$ (in multiples of $`10^6M_{\mathrm{}}`$), the gas is nearly in free-fall within an accretion radius of $`r_{\mathrm{acc}}100M_6T_{\mathrm{}(4)}^1\mathrm{pc}`$, where $`T_{\mathrm{}(4)}`$ is the ambient gas temperature (in multiples of $`10^4\mathrm{K}`$) far away from the central compact object. Using the density profile of equation 3 and a free-fall velocity profile (i.e., $`vr^{1/2}`$), the mass inflow rate can be expressed as,

$$\dot{M}_{\mathrm{inflow}}=8\times 10^4\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }^{0.48}L_{x(42)}^{0.04}M_6^{1/2}(M_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{yr}^1).$$
(4)
The mass accretion rate implied by the observed X-ray luminosity is,

$$\dot{M}_{\mathrm{accretion}}=2\times 10^4L_{x(42)}\eta _{0.1}^1(M_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{yr}^1),$$
(5)
where $`\eta _{0.1}`$ is the energy conversion efficiency in multiples of $`0.1`$. Since the accretion radius is on the order of or larger than the size of the X-ray emission line region, the outer region may not necessarily be inflowing at the free-fall velocity, especially since photoelectric heating by the AGN continuum radiation increases the local sound speed of the surrounding gas. Nevertheless, these mass flow rates are roughly consistent with each other and we suggest that the inner part of the X-ray emission region is fueling the central engine. Projected velocity shifts of up to $`230\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ have also been detected near the base of the \[O III\] and H$`\alpha `$ ionization cones, which may be interpreted as either an outflow or inflow relative to the nucleus (Veilleux & Bland-Hawthorn, 1997; Elmouttie et al., 1998).

We suggest that the region that produces the observed X-ray recombination lines is the confining medium of the so-called coronal line regions (CLROke & Sargent 1968). Using the surface brightness of \[Fe XI\], (Oliva et al., 1994) finds the CLR to have a size $`0.5\mathrm{}`$ (diameter of $`10\mathrm{pc}`$) and a gas density of $`n_e250f^{1/2}\mathrm{cm}^3`$, where $`f`$ is the volume filling factor. The temperature is assumed to be $`kT3\times 10^4\mathrm{K}`$, a typical value for a photoionized CLR. Using the density profile inferred from our fit, we estimate the gas density at a distance of $`10\mathrm{pc}`$ to be $`n_e10\mathrm{cm}^3`$. According to our model, the ionization parameter at this distance is $`\mathrm{log}\xi 2.5`$ with a temperature of $`kT2\times 10^6\mathrm{K}`$, and thus the pressure is $`n_eT2\times 10^7`$. In order for the two regions to be in pressure equilibrium, the filling factor of the CLR must be $`f0.1`$. This implies the density of the \[Fe XI\] region to be $`n_e800\mathrm{cm}^3`$, which is still much lower than the critical density of the upper level and, therefore, the line will not be diminished.

The model that we have suggested can be further tested with high spectral and spatial resolution grating observations with the Chandra observatory. Our model predicts that $`70\%`$ of the total flux will be spatially unresolved, containing the reflection component, as well as a large fraction of the scattered soft continuum component. The remaining $`30\%`$, which is dominated by recombination line emission, will be extended. Specifically, recombination lines from low-$`Z`$ ions (e.g., O, Ne, and Mg) will be extended by $`10\mathrm{}`$ and those from higher-$`Z`$ ions (e.g., Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Fe) will have a spatial extent of $`5\mathrm{}`$. In addition to the spatial distibution of the X-ray emission line region, measurements of velocity shifts will allow us to constrain the kinematics and determine whether the confining medium is flowing towards or away from the central nucleus.

This work has benefited from useful discussions with Andy Rasmussen concerning the ASCA SIS calibrations. We have made use of data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. We thank the ASCA team and the HEASARC Online Service for their support. This work was supported under a NASA Long Term Space Astrophysics Program grant (NAG5-3541). D. A. L. was supported in part by a NASA Long Term Space Astrophysics Program grant (S-92654-F). Work at LLNL was performed under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy, Contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.


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# 1 Sample Selection

## 1 Sample Selection

Blank Field Sources (BFS) are extreme X-ray loud objects; the non detection of an optical counterpart down to the Palomar limit (O=21.5) imply $`f_X/f_V>60`$.

To isolate ROSAT BFS we selected the ROSAT PSPC pointed observation sources with $`f_x>10^{13}`$erg cm-2s-1 and with no optical counterparts in the digitized sky surveys. We used all the sources from the WGACAT (White, Giommi & Angelini 1994) that were: (1) well-detected; (2) at high Galactic latitude ($`|b|>`$20); (3) lay within the ‘inner circle’ of the PSPC (for their smaller positional uncertainty). We then used the APM digitization of the Palomar and UK Schmidt sky surveys (McMahon & Irwin, in preparation), via the WWW, to find sources with no optical counterpart within the 99% X-ray position circle ($`r39^{\prime \prime }`$). Due to a problem with rev 0 images used for WGACAT (Giommi, Angelini & Cagnoni, private communication 1999) $`35`$% of the BFS had wrong coordinates. We quote here the correct positions based on rev 2 version (from the Galpipe catalog) of ROSAT data. The total sample consists of 16 sources.

## 2 Nature of Blank field Sources

BFS nature is still mysterious: no known extragalactic population, including normal quasars, AGNs, BL Lacertae objects, normal galaxies and clusters of galaxies, can reach such an extreme $`f_X/f_V`$ (see Maccacaro et al. 1988’s nomograph).
The unsually large $`f_X/f_V`$ ratio, however, is not the only strong peculiarity of this class of sources. X-ray colors reveal other interesting properties: BFS tend to have flatter PSPC spectra, compared to radio-quiet AGNs, in both the soft (0.1-0.8 keV) and the hard (0.9-2.4 keV) PSPC range.
No known source has such an extreme hard distribution in the $`\alpha _S`$-$`\alpha _H`$ plane (Fiore et al., 1998, Nicastro, Elvis & Fiore 1998): Galactic X-ray sources have usually very steep PSPC spectra, which in term of PSPC colors means $`\alpha _S`$ and $`\alpha _H`$ greater than 2; normal galaxies and/or cluster of galaxies have thermal spectra with typical temperature of 1 keV and are generally distributed within a region of flat $`\alpha _S`$ and quite steep $`\alpha _H`$; radio-quiet and radio-loud type 1 AGN are well described by a single power law in the PSPC range and so lie in the central region of the $`\alpha _S\alpha _H`$ diagram; finally Seyfert 2, with their heavily absorbed intrinsic X-ray continua, have $`\alpha _S`$ and $`\alpha _H`$ typical of normal galaxies (the contribution from the host galaxy emerging in the soft X-ray band).

The still open possibilities regarding the nature of BFS are:
1) - Quasar 2s: high luminosity, high redshift, heavily obscured quasars, the bright analogs of the well known Seyfert 2s;
2) - low mass Seyfert 2: that is AGNs powered by a low mass obscured black hole (i.e. obscured Narrow Line Seyfert 1);
3) - high redshift clusters of galaxies;
4) - failed clusters: (Tucker et al. 1995) in which a large overdensity of matter has collapsed but has not formed galaxies;
5) - AGNs with no big blue bump.
The identification of BFS with any of these would be an important find.
The faintness of their optical counterparts and the flatness of their PSPC spectra can be, in cases (1) and (2), due to the effect of the intrinsic absorption.

For all the BFS we obtained optical imaging in R and K to R=22 (this corresponds to B$``$23.5 for a galaxy) and K=20 and 5 out of 16 sources show red (R-K$`>4`$) counterparts as expected from obscured AGNs and high z clusters of galaxies. We are applying to IR telescopes to obtain spectra of these 5 BFS with an interesting counterpart. The other 11 BFS do not show any obvious counterpart and their X-ray error circles show some sources ($``$ 5) expected as chance coincidence at these optical/IR magnitude limits.

## Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NASA grants NAG5-3066 and NAG5-9206(ADP) and the Italian MURST (IC and AC).


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# Comment on “Violation of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin Cutoff: A Tempest in a (Magnetic) Teapot? Why Cosmic Ray Energies above 10²⁰ eV May Not Require New Physics”

In a recent letter  with the same title, Farrar and Piran offered an explanation for the near isotropy of the arrival directions  of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) and the apparent absence  of the so called ‘GZK cutoff’ in their spectrum around $`10^{20}`$ eV due to pion photoproduction on the cosmic background radiation (CMB) that was predicted independently by Greisen  and by Zatsepin and Kuz’min . They suggested that the extragalactic magnetic fields near the Milky Way are strong enough to deflect and isotropise the arrival directions of the UHECRs from a few nearby sources for which their travel time to Earth is shorter than their attenuation time by pion photoproduction on the CMB. They also estimated that this allows active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or gamma ray bursts (GRBs) to be the source of the UHECRs. However, these suggestions are inconsistent with various observations:

a. If our Milky Way galaxy was embedded in a $`\mu `$G magnetic halo/slab of the local supercluster (LSC) with dimensions larger than the Larmor radius (eq. 5 of ref. ) of UHECRs, then $``$ GeV cosmic rays would have been confined magnetically for times exceeding the Hubble time. This contradicts the much smaller ‘age’ of the bulk of cosmic rays in the Milky Way that was inferred  from the measured isotopic ratios $`\mathrm{Al}^{26}/\mathrm{Al}^{27}`$ and $`\mathrm{Be}^{10}/\mathrm{Be}^9`$.

b. If our Milky Way galaxy was embedded in a $`\mu `$G magnetic halo/slab of Mpc dimensions, diffusion in this halo/slab would have produced a quasi uniform distribution of the bulk of the cosmic rays inside it. This contradicts the much smaller upper bounds on the densities of cosmic rays at the small and large Magellanic clouds (SMC and LMC, respectively) that were inferred from the EGRET observational limits on the diffuse gamma-ray produced by cosmic rays interactions in the SMC and LMC .

c. Cosmic ray protons with energy smaller than the GZK cutoff are attenuated mainly by electron-positron pair production off the CMB. Their attenuation time is longer/comparable to the Hubble time. Thus, the density of cosmic rays in the magnetic halo/slab must drop at the GZK cutoff energy by a factor $`\tau _\mathrm{h}(\mathrm{E}<\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{GZK}})/\tau _{\mathrm{GZK}}`$ where $`\tau _\mathrm{h}(\mathrm{E}<\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{GZK}})`$ is the magnetic confinement time of UHECRs with energy below the GZK cutoff energy and $`\tau _{\mathrm{GZK}}`$ is their attenution time above it. Such a drop in the intensity of UHECRs has not been observed . A cosmic ‘fine tuning’, $`\tau _\mathrm{h}(\mathrm{E}<\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{GZK}})\tau _{\mathrm{GZK}}`$, is required to ‘explain’ why such a drop is not observed .

d. If the UHECRs are isotropised by large angle magnetic scatterings, then on the average only UHECRs that are produced within a distance smaller than their diffusion distance during $`\tau _{\mathrm{GZK}}`$ can reach Earth. The correct expression for their energy flux is given then by

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{z}=0)\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{CR}}\mathrm{D}}{4\pi }\left(\frac{\mathrm{c}\tau _\mathrm{h}}{\mathrm{D}_{\mathrm{LSC}}}\right)\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{z}=0)\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{CR}}\mathrm{D}_{\mathrm{GZK}}}{4\pi }$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{z}=0)`$ is the local rate of GRBs, $`\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{CR}}`$ is the GRB energy output in UHECRs, and $`\tau _\mathrm{h}`$ is the mean residence time of UHECRs in the magnetic halo/slab and the near isotropy of arrival directions of UHECRs requires that $`\mathrm{D}\mathrm{D}_{\mathrm{LSC}}`$ and $`\tau _\mathrm{h}\tau _{\mathrm{GZK}}`$. Assuming a flat Universe with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0.7`$, and that the observed GRB rate is proportional to the star formation rate , $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{z}=0)10^{10}\mathrm{Mpc}^3\mathrm{yr}^1`$. The energy output in UHECRs of GRBs which are powered by merger or collapse of compact stars is unlikely to exceed $`\mathrm{E}10^{52}\mathrm{erg}`$, which is larger by approximately an order of magnitude than the total explosion energy of Type II supernova explosions. Consequently, eq. (1) yields $`\mathrm{\Phi }3\times 10^3\mathrm{eV}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{sr}^1`$, which is smaller by 4 orders of magnitude than the observed flux of UHECRs.

The observed evolution function of AGNs plus similar arguments exclude the possibility that the isotropised UHECRs arrive from nearby AGNs. However, relativistic jets from GRBs in the Milky Way which are not pointing in our direction can accelerate/deposit UHECRs in our Galactic halo and explain the absence of the GZK cutoff .

References

1. G. R. Farrar and T. Piran, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 3527 (2000).
2. N. Hayashida, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 1000 (1996); S. Yoshida, and H. Dai, J. Phys. G24, 905 (1998).
3. D. J. Bird et al., Astrophys. J. 441, 144 (1995); M. Takeda, et al. 1998, PRL, 81, 1163 (1998).
4. K. Greisen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 16, 748 (1996).
5. G. T. Zatsepin and V. A. Kuz’min, JETP Lett. 4, 78 (1996).
6. A. J. Connolly, et al., Astrophys. J. 486, L11 (1997); A. W. Strong and I. V. Moskalenko, Astrophys. J. 509, 212 (1998) and references therein.
7. P. Sreekumar et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 127 (1993).
8. A. Dar, astro-ph 9901005, in Frontier Objects in Astrophysics and Particle Physics, Proc. Vulcano Workshop, May 25-30, 1998 (eds. F. Giovannelli and G. Mannocchi) pp. 279-294.
9. A. Dar, Astrophys. J, 500, L93 (1998).
10. A. Dar and A. Plaga, Astron. and Astrophys. 349, 257 (1999).


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# Recycling of quantum information: Multiple observations of quantum clocks

## Abstract

How much information about the original state preparation can be extracted from a quantum system which already has been measured? That is, how many independent (non-communicating) observers can measure the quantum system sequentially and give a nontrivial estimation of the original unknown state? We investigate these questions and we show from a simple example that quantum information is not entirely lost as a result of the measurement-induced collapse of the quantum state, and that an infinite number of independent observers who have no prior knowledge about the initial state can gain a partial information about the original preparation of the quantum system.
PACS numbers: 03.65.Bz, 42.50.Ar

From the deterministic measurement model employed in classical physics it follows that the state of the physical system is not affected by measurement. That is, information about states of the system can be determined with an arbitrary precision. Formally, from a kinematical point of view, this can be expressed as follows: in classical physics there are measurements ($`m`$) for which the statistics of the measurement results ($`r`$) characterized by the conditional probability distribution $`p_m(r|s)`$ can be, for all possible states $`s`$ of the given classical system, of the form

$`p_m(r|s)=\delta (s_rs).`$ (1)
Moreover, these measurements do not change the state of the classical system, so an arbitrary number of independent observers (i.e. observers who do not communicate) can determine the state.

The standard Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is deeply rooted in a model of non-deterministic statistical measurement . From the kinematical point of view the quantum theory models (predicts) the statistics of results registered by a measuring device when the measurement is performed on a quantum object. Within this non-deterministic model of measurement the conditional probability distribution $`p_m(r|s)`$ can never be of the form (1) for arbitrary initially unknown states of a quantum system. In quantum mechanics the conditional probability distribution $`p_m(r|s)`$ is given by the expression

$`p_m(r|s)=\mathrm{Tr}\left[\widehat{O}_r\widehat{\rho }_s\right],`$ (2)
where the set of positive operators $`\widehat{O}_r`$ which sum up to the identity operator (i.e., the POVM) models the measuring device and the density matrix characterizes the state of the quantum object being subject of the measurement.

The axiomatics of quantum theory implicitly require that the state of the system is changed during measurement. Otherwise, repeated measurements of the previously measured but unchanged quantum state could reveal yet more information about the state. Consequently, the measurement model would eventually be equivalent to the standard deterministic measurement model of classical physics. Therefore there is an additional rule which excludes the possibility of repeated measurements. This additional principle is the well known von Neumann projection postulate.

Nevertheless it is an interesting question to ask how much information about the original state is “left” in the system which already has been measured. That is, how much information about the preparation can be extracted from the system by a second observer who does not communicate with the first observer. A further question we would like to understand is whether from the axioms of quantum theory we can obtain a “classical-like” picture when a physical system in an unknown state can be repeatedly measured, yet still retain information about the original state preparation. In what follows we analyze a simple example which illuminates these two questions.

First we specify the task of a measurement. In measurement we wish to determine some parameters of the state of a quantum system which correspond to a symmetry group. As an example, consider the position measurement which is connected with the group of translations, or measurement of the angle of orientation connected with the group of rotations. In what follows we analyze the simplest example of a continuous parameter $`\phi 0,2\pi `$, the phase, which parameterizes the group of rotations in the two-dimensional space of the $`U(1)`$ group. To make our discussion more physical we consider a model of optimal quantum clocks discussed in our previous work . We will analyze the situation when the observers have no a priori knowledge about the original state preparation. This means that the prior phase distribution is constant and equal to $`1/2\pi `$

In our previous paper we studied the problem of building an optimal quantum clock from an ensemble of $`N`$ ions . In particular we assumed an ion trap with $`N`$ two-level ions all in the ground state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }=|0\mathrm{}|0`$. This state is an eigenstate of the free Hamiltonian and thus cannot record time (phase). Therefore the first step in building a clock was to bring the system to an appropriate initial (reference) state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ which is not an energy eigenstate. For instance, one can apply a Ramsey pulse whose shape and duration is chosen such that it puts all the ions in the product state

$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\widehat{\rho }^N,`$ (3)
with $`\widehat{\rho }=|\psi \psi |`$ and $`|\psi =(|0+|1)/\sqrt{2}`$. After this preparation stage, the ions evolve in time according to the Hamiltonian evolution $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}(t)=\widehat{U}(t)\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}\widehat{U}^{}(t)`$, $`\widehat{U}(t)=\mathrm{exp}\{it\widehat{H}\}`$ (we use units such that $`\mathrm{}=1`$). Therefore these ions can be viewed as a time-recording device. The task is to determine this time $`t`$ (or equivalently the corresponding phase) by carrying out a measurement on the ions. Note that because of the indeterminism of quantum mechanics it is impossible, given a single set of $`N`$ two-level ions, to determine the elapsed time with certainty. As we have shown earlier  one can find an optimal measurement (see below) with the help of which information about the phase can be most optimally “extracted” from a system of $`N`$ identically prepared spin-1/2 particles. The ability of the system to retain information about the phase (time) depends very much on the choice of the initial reference state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$. For instance, if this state is an eigenstate of the total Hamiltonian, the system is not able to record (keep) time information. In Ref.  we addressed the question of which is the most appropriate initial state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ of $`N`$ spin-1/2 particle which “keeps” the record of phase in the most reliable way. In other words, what are the optimal quantum clocks and what is the performance of such quantum clocks when compared with classical clocks.

In the present paper we investigate another aspect of this comparison. Namely, we discuss the “robustness” of quantum clocks with respect to repeated measurements performed on them. Classical clocks, as all classical objects, do not change their state or behavior when they are observed. As we stated above this is no more true for quantum objects. This has consequences for the functioning of our proposed quantum clocks. In particular, one can ask whether quantum clocks may be robust enough in the sense that repeated readout of the time, let us say by many independent and non-communicating observers, can provide reliable information (if any) about the time to all of them. In order to find quantitative answers to our questions let us recall briefly the details of how time is read out from our quantum clocks.

In general, a quantum-mechanical measurement is described by a POVM  which is a set $`\{\widehat{O}_r\}_{r=1}^R`$ of positive Hermitian operators such that $`_r\widehat{O}_r=\widehat{𝟙}`$. Because such measurement is in general non-deterministic, to each outcome $`r`$ of the measurement we associate an estimate $`t_r`$ of the time elapsed. The difference between the estimated time $`t_r`$ and the true time $`t`$ is quantified by a cost function $`f(t_rt)`$ . Here we note that because of the periodicity of the clock, $`f`$ has to be periodic. We also take $`f(t)`$ to be an even function to ensure a non-zero average. Our task is to minimize the mean value of the cost function

$`\overline{f}={\displaystyle \underset{r}{}}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}\mathrm{𝐓𝐫}[\widehat{O}_r\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}(t)]f(t_rt){\displaystyle \frac{dt}{2\pi }}.`$ (4)
Following Ref.  we expand the cost function in a Fourier series:

$`f(t)=w_0{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}w_k\mathrm{cos}kt.`$ (5)
The essential hypothesis made by Holevo  is the positivity of the Fourier coefficients: $`w_k0`$, $`(k=1,2,\mathrm{})`$ Without loss of generality (see Ref. ) we can assume the initial (reference) state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}=|\psi \psi |`$, $`|\psi =_ma_m|m`$ to be a pure state (in what follows we make a phase convention such that $`a_m`$ are real and positive). In this case for the mean cost (4) we find the bound

$`\overline{f}w_0{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}w_k{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m,m^{}}{|mm^{}|=k}}{}}a_ma_m^{}.`$ (6)
In this last expression, equality is attained only if the measurement is of the form

$`\widehat{O}_r=p_r|\mathrm{\Psi }_r\mathrm{\Psi }_r|;`$ (7)
with $`p_r0`$ and $`_r\widehat{O}_r=\widehat{𝟙}`$, where

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }_r=e^{it_r\widehat{H}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_0,|\mathrm{\Psi }_0={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{N+1}}}{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{N}{}}}|m,`$ (8)
Holevo  originally considered covariant measurements in which times $`t_r`$ take a continuum of values between $`0`$ and $`2\pi `$. But as shown in Ref.  the completeness relation can also be satisfied by taking a discrete set of times $`t_r=\frac{2\pi r}{N+1}`$, $`r=0,\mathrm{},N`$. The states $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_r`$ form an orthonormal basis of the Hilbert space, and the corresponding measurement is therefore a von Neumann measurement. This is important for applications, because it means that it is not necessary to use an ancilla to make the optimal measurement.

We should also note that the states $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_r`$ are the eigenstates of the Pegg-Barnett Hermitian phase operator. For this reason we call them “phase states”. In the basis $`|m`$ of the symmetric subspace of $`N`$ two-level ions (spin-1/2 particles) they can be expressed as

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }_r={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{N+1}}}{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{N}{}}}\mathrm{e}^{i\frac{2\pi }{N+1}rm}|m.`$ (9)
The fact that the optimal measurement can be chosen as a von Neumann measurement is important for our further considerations. This is due to the fact that the state immediately after the measurement is uniquely determined by the von Neumann projection postulate.

Before we proceed further we turn our attention to the fact that from the positivity of $`w_k`$ it follows that not all cost functions are covered by the above result. Specifically, the quadratic deviation $`t^2`$ cannot be used. On the other hand for small $`t`$ it can be well approximated by the cost function $`4\mathrm{sin}^2\frac{t}{2}t^2`$. Therefore, in what follows we will use the cost function, $`4\mathrm{sin}^2t/2`$. In this case $`\overline{f}\mathrm{\Delta }t^2`$.

Once we have determined the optimal measurement we have to specify the initial (reference) state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ of our system. As discussed in Ref. , by an appropriate choice of this state one can substantially improve the quality of estimation. However, this concerns the estimation performed by the first observer (see footnote *Recycling of quantum information: Multiple observations of quantum clocks). The subsequent observers will actually always observe only rotated phase states. These are generated in the von Neumann measurement performed by the previous observer and subsequent time evolution. Therefore, in order to simplify our calculations we will assume that the initial (reference) state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ is the phase state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}=|\mathrm{\Psi }_0\mathrm{\Psi }_0|`$ given by Eq. (8).

Let us study now how the independent observers measure a system of $`N`$ spin-1/2 particles initially prepared in an unknown state obtained by the rotation of the reference state (8). As far as the first is observer concerned, the problem has been already solved (see ) and the mean cost Eq. (4) can be calculated. For our reference state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}=|\mathrm{\Psi }_0\mathrm{\Psi }_0|`$ the mean cost as a function of number $`N`$ of spin-1/2 particles is given by the expression

$`\mathrm{\Delta }t^2\overline{f}(N;1)=2\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{N}{N+1}}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{2}{N+1}}.`$ (10)
We see that the mean cost when a single measurement is performed ($`N=1`$) takes the value $`\overline{f}(N=1;1)=1`$. On the contrary, for $`N\mathrm{}`$ the mean cost is equal to zero. Specifically, for large $`N`$ the variance $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ goes to zero as $`1/\sqrt{N}`$. This is far of being optimal*** As shown in Ref.  in order to make this variance minimal we should take the reference state to be    $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{opt}{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}}{\sqrt{N+1}}}{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{N}{}}}\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi (m+1/2)}{N+1}}|m.`$  (11)  In this case the cost decreases for large $`N`$ as $`\overline{f}_{opt}\frac{\pi ^2}{(N+1)^2}`$ corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{opt}\frac{\pi }{(N+1)}`$. . Nevertheless, as our task is to study how much information subsequent observers can gain we are not over-worried about the optimality of the of the preparation of the reference state. Our further result can be understood as a lower bound and the optimization can be performed rather straightforwardly anyway.

Now we turn our attention to subsequent observers. We have assumed our observers do not communicate. If they do then the first observer can broadcast the result of his measurement (or, which is equivalent he can broadcast the orientation of his apparatus) and there is no need for subsequent observers to perform any measurement, because they know that they cannot perform better than this first observer. To describe the mean cost of the estimation of subsequent observers, we have to modify in Eq. (4) the conditional probability distribution $`p_1(r|t)=\mathrm{𝐓𝐫}[\widehat{O}_r\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}(t)]`$ characterizing the measurement statistics of the observer. This is because the $`(k+1)`$-st observer does not observe the original state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}(t)`$. He can only measure the state generated via the measurement performed by the previous $`k`$-th observer. In addition, the following random factors enter the game: Firstly, the $`(k+1)`$-st observer does not have full information about the choice of the measuring apparatus of the $`k`$-th observer. Although all observers posses the optimal measuring apparatus of the same construction ( corresponding to the optimal von Neumann measurement) there is one parameter they can choose at random. Namely, if we take the POVM characterized by the set of projectors $`\widehat{O}_r=|\mathrm{\Psi }_r\mathrm{\Psi }_r|`$, $`r=0,\mathrm{},N`$ and we rotate them all by the same transformation $`\widehat{U}(\alpha )=\mathrm{exp}\{i\alpha \widehat{H}\}`$ we get a new POVM $`\widehat{O}_r^\alpha =\widehat{U}(\alpha )\widehat{O}_r\widehat{U}^{}(\alpha )`$ which also corresponds to the optimal measuring apparatus. It is this information about the angle $`\alpha ^{}0,2\pi `$ characterizing the “actual orientation” of the $`k`$-th measuring apparatus which is not available to the $`(k+1)`$-st observer. The second piece of information which is not available to the $`(k+1)`$-st observer is, which of the possible outcomes $`r^{}`$ of the measurement was detected by the $`k`$-th observer. Finally, the actual time $`t^{}`$ when this measurement was performed is also unknown (however, as we will see in a moment, this is not important for our consideration). Taking into account these random factors the required conditional probability distribution $`p_{k+1}(r|t,\alpha )`$ (we have included the parameter $`\alpha `$ into the conditional probability distribution) reads

$`p_{k+1}(r|t,\alpha )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{r^{}=0}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}p_k(r^{}|t^{},\alpha ^{}){\displaystyle \frac{d\alpha ^{}}{2\pi }}`$ (12)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{𝐓𝐫}\left[\widehat{O}_r^\alpha \widehat{U}(tt^{})\widehat{O}_r^{}^\alpha ^{}\widehat{U}^{}(tt^{})\right].`$ (13)
It is easily seen that this can be simplified as

$`p_{k+1}(r|t,\alpha )=\mathrm{𝐓𝐫}\left[\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{k+1}(t)\widehat{O}_r^\alpha \right],`$ (14)
where

$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{k+1}(t)={\displaystyle \underset{r^{}=0}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}p_k(r^{}|t,\alpha ^{})\widehat{O}_r^{}^\alpha ^{}{\displaystyle \frac{d\alpha ^{}}{2\pi }}.`$ (15)
The last transformation is possible because $`p_k(r^{}|t^{},\alpha ^{})=p_k(r^{}|t,\alpha ^{}+tt^{})`$ and the integration with respect to $`\alpha ^{}`$ ensures that the shift $`(tt^{})`$ is irrelevant.

Using the iterative definition given by Eqs. (14) and (15) together with the definition for the mean cost (4) we calculate the precision of the measurement of time performed with the quantum clocks as a function of the number of qubits $`N`$ and the number of subsequent observers $`k`$:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }t^2\overline{f}(N;k)=2\left[1\left({\displaystyle \frac{N}{N+1}}\right)^k\right].`$ (16)
This is the main result of our paper. We stress that the above result holds for the reference state corresponding to the phase state (8) and the case that observers have no a priori knowledge about the initial state preparation. It can be generalized to the case when the initial reference state is take to be the optimal state (11) - unfortunately in this case we are not able to find a solution in an elegant closed analytical form.

Let us summarize our result: We have shown that quantum information can be recycled in a sense, that by performing a measurement on quantum systems which have already been measured independent observers can still obtain non-trivial information about the original preparation of the quantum system (i.e. the quantum information). The larger is the ensemble ( $`N`$) the more robust is the quantum system with respect to subsequent measurements. Obviously, as follows from Eq. (16) for the $`(k+1)`$-th observer the mean cost of the estimation will be larger than for the $`k`$-th observer. From the point of view of information stored in the system, in the large-$`N`$ limit the quantum system behaves very classically, i.e. an infinite number of independent observers who have no prior knowledge about the state preparation can precisely measure the state of the system.

One of us (V.B.) thanks Rado Derka and Serge Massar for helpful discussions. This work was in part supported by the Royal Society, by the IST project EQUIP under the contract IST-1999-11053, by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and by the CREST, Research Team for Interacting Career Electronics.


text:
# Efficient Raman Sideband Generation in a Coherent Atomic Medium

## I Introduction

Nonlinear optics assisted by electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT)  has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. The effect of EIT is due to creation, via interference of the excitation paths, of a coherent superposition of quantum states which does not participate in the atom-field interaction (”dark” state) . The preparation of atoms in this superposition gives rise to a strongly reduced absorption and refraction of the medium, and at the same time, it may lead to enhancement of the nonlinear optical susceptibility . Therefore, nonlinear optical processes are very efficient in such a coherently prepared medium (which is called sometimes as ”phaseonium”).

There are several directions in the research of EIT-assisted nonlinear optics which are actively developed at present. One is an efficient nonlinear frequency conversion and generation of coherent electromagnetic radiation unattainable by conventional methods. For example, up-conversion to VUV wavelengths outside the transparency window of most birefringent nonlinear crystals has been experimentally demonstrated with unity photon-conversion efficiency ; and a high-efficient scheme for generation of c.w. terahertz radiation by use of EIT has been proposed . Another interesting application of the coherent medium concept is a laser frequency modulation by parametric Raman sideband generation, with a total bandwidth extending over the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet spectral regions, and with a possiblity of subfemtosecond pulse compression . The third very promising direction is based on the fact that the intensity ”threshold” for EIT is given by the decay rate of the dark state, which can be made extremely small if the dark state is a superposition of atomic ground state sublevels. For example, a rate below 40 Hz has been observed in a cell with buffer gas , and of order of 1 Hz in a cell with antirelaxation coating . Then, the necessary intensity corresponds to only a few photons per atomic cross section . Therefore, one may expect a highly nonlinear response of phaseonium to applied e.m. fields at very low intensity levels, even at a few photon level. The potential of phaseonium has been demonstrated in a recent series of exciting experiments where the group velocity for a light pulse of the order of a few meters per second have been measured . Such a slow light propagation velocity is an indication of huge optical nonlinearities necessary for strong interactions between very weak optical fields. Recent theoretical work shows that this regime can be used for photon switching , for quantum noise correlations , for generation of nonclassical states of the e.m. field and atomic ensembles, including entangled states , and for quantum information processing .

In the present paper we report on the experimental observation of an EIT-assisted nonlinear optical process which combines the latter two directions: generation of a broad spectrum of Raman sidebands in a medium with small dark state decay rate, hence having a high efficiency even at low input light intensities. The process occurs in an atomic medium interacting with laser radiation in a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ scheme (Fig. 1).

In this system, a pair of laser frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ resonantly excites the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ system (Fig. 1(a)), which leads to creation of a dark superposition of both ground states $`|1`$ and $`|2`$ and to the preparation of the atoms in this state via optical pumping. Atoms in the dark superposition act as a local oscillator at frequency $`\omega _{12}`$ of the Raman transition. When a third frequency $`\omega _3`$ is applied to the system, it will beat against the local oscillator to produce sum and difference frequencies $`\omega _3\pm n\omega _{12}`$, i.e., Raman sideband frequencies (Fig. 1(b)). $`\omega _3`$ may be either of the resonant frequencies ($`\omega _1`$ or $`\omega _2`$) applied off-resonance to the conjugated transition ($`|2|3`$ or $`|1|3`$, respectively). Otherwise, it might be derived from an independent laser and tuned either on resonance or off resonance with one of the transitions to some additional upper state (in this case, the interaction scheme is called a double $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ scheme). In our experiment, we have realized these possibilities with all pump waves $`\omega _1`$, $`\omega _2`$ and $`\omega _3`$ propagating collinearly, and we have observed the manifold of the Raman sidebands for all three applied frequencies.

One should note that the use of a coherently prepared medium for the efficient generation of Raman sidebands has also been theoretically proposed in Ref. , and very recently experimentally realized . In this work, however, the medium (molecular hydrogen and deuterium) is prepared in the dark state by far-off-resonance pulsed radiation, which requires very high intensities. At the same time, the total electromagnetic energy dissipation is very small by virtue of the large detuning from any (molecular) state. Therefore, a very broad spectrum of Raman sidebands can be generated. In our scheme, in opposite, the coherent medium is prepared by resonant low-intensity c.w. radiation. Since in this case the preparation relies on the dissipative process of optical pumping , a part of the energy is lost. Nevertheless, the generation is still quite efficient even at very low pump powers. Besides our present work, the generation of a single Raman sideband (Stokes field for frequency $`\omega _1`$) in coherent medium prepared by low-intensity c.w. field has been observed in Ref.  for collinear geometry, and several Raman sidebands have been seen in the related experiment of Ref.  on parametric self-oscillation with the counterpropagating driving waves. The aim of the present experiment is to observe the generation of a broad spectrum of Raman sidebans in collinear geometry and to study the dependence of each of them on input laser parameters as well as on the optical density of the medium.

## II Experimental setup

Our $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ system is generated by the excitation of sodium atoms in a vapor cell. The lower states are the two hyperfine levels $`F=1`$ and $`F=2`$, spaced by $`\omega _{12}=1771.626`$ MHz, of the ground state $`3^2S_{1/2}`$, while the upper state is the hyperfine level $`F^{}=2`$ of the excited state $`3^2P_{1/2}`$. The vapor cell contains condensed Na and is additionally filled with He as puffer gas at a pressure of 6 torr (at room temperature). It is of cubic form with the length of 10.3 mm and is made of sapphire to avoid darkening of the cell windows. To compensate stray magnetic fields the Na cell is placed inside an arrangement of three mutually orthogonal Helmholtz coils. For the same reason the heating wires of the cell oven are made of non-magnetic material (Ta) and winded bifilarly. The cell temperature is electronically controlled and stabilized to an absolute accuracy of better than 1 C. We have performed experiments for temperatures ranging from 100C to 230C which corresponds to the saturated Na vapor density from 3$``$10$`^9`$cm-3 to 2$``$10$`^{13}`$cm-3. The optical density $`\tau `$ has been determined via the absorption of a very weak laser beam tuned on resonance with $`3^2S_{1/2},F=23^2P_{1/2},F^{}=2`$ transition: at $`\tau =1`$, a power of this beam falls by the factor $`1/e`$.

The three-frequency radiation is produced by two independent Ar+-laser-pumped dye lasers with a linewidth of about 1 MHz (Fig. 2). The first laser system is used to produce EIT in the medium by resonant excitation of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-system $`F=1F=2F^{}=2`$. The frequency of this first laser is stabilized to the $`F=2F^{}=2`$ hyperfine transition of the D1 line (frequency $`\omega _1`$) with a frequency accuracy of 2-3 MHz by use of saturation spectroscopy on an external temperature-stabilized Na cell. A part of the beam from this laser, which is linearly vertical polarized, is split off and led through an acousto-optical modulator (AOM) driven by a precise tunable RF-generator at 1700-1800 MHz (resolution of less than 1Hz). The first order sideband produced by the AOM is used as radiation with the frequency $`\omega _2`$. When an AOM modulation frequency of 1771,626 MHz is used, the first order sideband is exactly resonant to the $`F=1F^{}=2`$ transition, which corresponds to the Raman resonance necessary for establishment of EIT. A second cw-dye laser system identical to the first one provides the laser beam of frequency $`\omega _3`$ with horizontal linear polarization. The frequency $`\omega _3`$ can be tuned through the (Doppler broadened with an FWHM of the order of 1 GHz) resonance $`3^2S_{1/2},F=23^2P_{1/2}`$ in well defined steps over a range of 32 GHz.

The three laser beams are collinearly overlapped and circularly polarized by a quarter wave plate (QW1). Thus the frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ have in the cell the same circular polarization ($`\sigma ^+`$). This polarization configuration was found in our preliminary experiments to produce the best EIT conditions at small intensities. The third frequency $`\omega _3`$ is circularly polarized in the opposite direction ($`\sigma ^{}`$). The combined light beam has a Gaussian transversal profile with a waist of 0.8 mm, and is almost parallel inside the cell. The input power can be adjusted with a neutral-density filter, and measured before the cell by a photo diode (not shown in Fig. 3). After passing the Na cell, the light is again linear polarized by a second quarter-wave plate (QW2) and the beams of opposite polarizations are separated by use of a polarizing beamsplitter cube (PBS). Each of the beams passes an optical spectrum analyzer (scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer with a free spectral range of 2 GHz, SA1 and SA2) and is detected on separate photo diodes (D1 and D2) connected to a storage oscilloscope (OS1 or OS2). The oscilloscopes are read out by a data acquisition system on a computer (PC). This setup allows us to observe each frequency component, both input and generated ones. The waves $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ and their generated Raman sidebands (having $`\sigma ^+`$ polarization in the cell) are detected by the system (SA1, D1, OS1), while $`\omega _3`$ and its Raman sidebands (having $`\sigma ^{}`$ polarization in the cell) are detected by the second system (SA2, D2, OS2). We should note that the Raman sidebands have been observed in a setup with all three input frequencies having the same $`\sigma ^+`$ polarization, too. However, the efficiency was lower because in this case part of the atomic population is optically pumped into the state $`F=2,m_F=+2`$ which is not excited by the applied fields. Moreover, the oscilloscope picture was overcrowded and its analysis was much more complicated.

## III Results

The first step of our experiments was the measurement of the dark state relaxation rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. For this purpose, the frequency $`\omega _3`$ was blocked, and the transmission of frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ has been measured as a function of the AOM modulation frequency. The result is a typical EIT transmission peak at 1771,6 MHz, with a halfwidth given by $`\delta _{EIT}=\mathrm{\Gamma }+CI`$, where $`I`$ is the total intensity of the frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$, and $`C`$ is some constant . Thus, the axis offset value of the linear fit to the measured dependence $`\delta _{EIT}(I)`$ can be used as an upper limit for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. In this way, we obtained that the value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in our setup is below 3 kHz, which is determined by an AOM frequency jitter and a transit time broadening (due to finite diffusion time of atoms through the beam).

Fig. 3 shows typical oscilloscope signals demonstrating the generation of Raman sidebands for all three input frequencies. For the frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ only the first-order sidebands (Stokes and anti-Stokes fields, respectively) have been observed, while for the field $`\omega _3`$ up to the third-order sidebands have been seen, with the higher-order sidebands appearing at larger input power. The intensity of the generated sidebands grows almost linearly with the input power in the range of up to 2 mW for each of the waves $`\omega _1`$, $`\omega _2`$ and $`\omega _3`$. The minimum input power necessary for the generation of the first-order sidebands was found in our experiment to be of the order of 10 $`\mu W`$ for each wave (the intensity is about 2 mW/cm2). We stress that the generation was achieved without the use of buildup cavities. We believe that these results can be considered as an experimental confirmation of the possibility for nonlinear-optical generation processes with a few photons. With a pulse of a duration of a few $`\mu s`$ (as used, e.g., in experiment Ref. ) the intensity of 2 mW/cm2 would correspond to the energy of only a few light quanta per atomic cross-section. Thus, one is approaching the regime of nonlinear quantum optics where a large nonlinearity of the medium is created by single photons.

The nonlinear generation at such low light intensities is already an indirect confirmation of the EIT in action. For a direct confirmation, we measured the dependence of all transmitted frequencies on the AOM modulation frequency (Fig. 4). One can see that the generation of all sideband frequencies occurs only in the narrow range of Raman detuning $`\delta _R=(\omega _2\omega _1)\omega _{12}`$. This is exactly the same range where input frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ experience reduced absorption (EIT). The width of the range (10 - 200 kHz depending on the input intensity) is much narrower than the natural width of the excited state $`3^2P_{1/2}`$ (10 MHz), and its dependence on the intensity of the frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ follows the expected dependence $`\delta _{EIT}=\mathrm{\Gamma }+CI`$. The generation peak is shifted from exact Raman resonance due to both the buffer gas effects and the a.c. Stark shift . The a.c. Stark shift is a differential shift of the ground states $`3^2S_{1/2},F=1`$ and $`F=2`$ due to the off-resonance coupling to the second excited state $`3^2P_{1/2},F^{}=1`$ of the D1 line (which is 189 MHz apart from the $`3^2P_{1/2},F^{}=2`$ state). Our measurements show that this shift is proportional to the input intensity of the frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ with a slope depending on the optical density; for the parameters of Fig. 4 ($`\tau 6`$) the slope is about 0.2 kHz/(mW/cm2). The total absorption of $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ in Fig. 4 corresponds to 98% outside the EIT transparency window, while at resonance the absorption reduces only moderately to 93%. One must conclude therefore that it is not only reduction of absorption, but also enhancement of the nonlinear susceptibility that assist the generation.

The intensity of both generated and transmitted pump fields considerably depends on the value of frequency $`\omega _3`$. Figure 5 shows the dependence of the intensities on detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$ of the $`\omega _3`$ wave from the transition $`3^2S_{1/2},F=23^2P_{1/2},F^{}=2`$ in the range of $`\pm `$16 GHz. The $`\omega _3`$ wave has almost no influence on transmission of the resonant pump waves $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ (Fig. 5(a)) and their Raman sidebands (Fig. 5(b)) when $`\left|\mathrm{\Delta }_3\right|`$ is much larger than the Doppler width $`\mathrm{\Delta }_D`$1 GHz of the D1 line. The $`\omega _3`$ wave itself is absorbed very weakly in this range (therefore it is not shown in Fig. 5(a)). However, as the resonance with the D1 line is approached, the $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$ dependence becomes more and more dramatic. Starting from the value $`\left|\mathrm{\Delta }_3\right|`$ of about 8 GHz, one can observe weak intensity oscillations whose amplitude drastically increases for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$ being in the immediate range of the resonance. When $`\omega _3`$ is tuned close to $`3^2S_{1/2},F=23^2P_{1/2}`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_31.0÷0`$ GHz), transmission of the $`\omega _2`$ wave decreases, while that of the $`\omega _1`$ wave increases (Fig. 5(a)). This is because a larger part of atomic population is pumped into the state $`3^2S_{1/2},F=1`$. Similar process occurs at $`\omega _3`$ being tuned close to $`3^2S_{1/2},F=13^2P_{1/2}`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_31.7÷2.7`$ GHz), where transmission of the $`\omega _1`$ wave decreases, while that of the $`\omega _2`$ wave increases. It is interesting, however, that at these detunings the total transmitted intensity of the $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ waves (solid curve in Fig. 5(a)) slightly increases over the ”transparency level” in the absence of the $`\omega _3`$ wave. Despite of this fact, the intensity of generated Stokes ($`\omega _1\omega _{12}`$) and anti-Stokes ($`\omega _2+\omega _{12}`$) fields diminishes sharply in the same range of detuning (Fig. 5(b)), so that the total transmitted intensity of $`\omega _1`$, $`\omega _2`$ and their sidebands remains approximately the same as for very large detunings. This suggests that the absorption is not increased when the $`\omega _3`$ field is tuned on resonance, but the nonlinear susceptibility for the Stokes and anti-Stokes fields decreases. At the same time, generation of Raman sidebands of the $`\omega _3`$ field is maximized. All these facts indicate that when $`\omega _3`$ is close to resonance with the D1 line, the processes of coherent scattering from each input wave into its Raman sidebands become tightly coupled to one another and start to compete. Thus, the decrease of the ($`\omega _1\omega _{12}`$) and ($`\omega _2+\omega _{12}`$) fields generation in the range of resonance may be explained by direct competition of this process with the generation of ($`\omega _3\pm \omega _{12}`$) fields. Inside the resonance range, the ($`\omega _1\omega _{12}`$) and ($`\omega _2+\omega _{12}`$) fields (Fig. 5(b)) reflect the trend of the $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ fields (Fig. 5(a)), respectively, i.e., increase of the $`\omega _1`$ intensity leads to (moderate) increase of the ($`\omega _1\omega _{12}`$) intensity, etc. On the contrary, the behavior of the ($`\omega _3\pm \omega _{12}`$) sidebands is more complicated: they reveal nice periodical oscillations with detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$, shifted in phase with respect to each other. These oscillations are apparently related to those observed in  and also theoretically predicted in  for the generation of ($`\omega _3+\omega _{12}`$) frequency in double $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ atoms, which show a sinusoidal dependence of the generated wave intensity on detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$ and optical density $`\tau `$. So, the shift of the ($`\omega _3+\omega _{12}`$)-wave intensity with respect to the ($`\omega _3\omega _{12}`$) one may be explained simply by their different detunings from the resonance.

Finally, Fig. 6 demonstrates the measurement results for the optical density dependence of all the waves, both pump and generated ones. The measurements have been performed by taking the oscilloscope pictures at different cell temperatures corresponding to different optical densities. The results presented in Fig. 6 are obtained for the particular case when $`\omega _3`$ is tuned exactly on resonance with transition $`3^2S_{1/2},F=23^2P_{1/2},F^{}=1`$. This configuration corresponds to the all-resonant double $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ system, where one expects generation of the ($`\omega _4=\omega _3+\omega _{12}`$) wave resonant with the $`F=1F^{}=1`$ transition, and propagation dynamics leading to the matching of the field Rabi frequencies to relation $`g_1/g_2=g_3/g_4`$ . However, we have not observed such a matching.

One can see from Fig. 6 that power of the pump waves $`\omega _1`$, $`\omega _2`$ and $`\omega _3`$ is attenuated monotonically with the optical density. This attenuation occurs quite fast, with a rate being only slightly lower than that given by Beer’s exponential decay. There are at least two reasons for this behavior. First of all, we don’t have here real all-resonant double $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ system since all the waves couple to all possible transitions (which is, in fact, the reason for the broad Raman spectrum generation). Therefore, the energy is transferred not only between the resonant fields, but also goes to the off-resonant Raman sidebands. Second, the preparation of the medium in the dark state relies in our case on optical pumping. In this process, photons from the pump waves $`\omega _1`$, $`\omega _2`$ are absorbed and then rescattered in part spontaneously to bring atomic population in the dark state. The number of spontaneously scattered photons is proportional to the excited state population which is in turn proportional to the light intensity. Therefore, the pump beams experience exponential losses during propagation in the medium. Nevertheless, the atoms are prepared in the coherent superposition of both lower states $`|1`$ and $`|2`$, and as soon as they are prepared, the generation of the Raman sidebands goes on very efficient. As can be seen from Fig. 6, the first-order sidebands appear already at quite small optical densities ($`\tau =1÷2`$), grow very fast and reach their maximum at densities of the order of $`\tau =2.5÷5`$. The energy conversion efficiency is approaching the value of 5-7% for the sidebands of $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ fields, and of 3-4% for the first-order sidebands of $`\omega _3`$ field. At this point of maximum generation, the intensity of the first-order sidebands is large enough to induce the generation of the second-order sidebands. Immediately after the initial, very fast, stage of generation, the Raman sidebands start to decay. The resonant sideband ($`\omega _3+\omega _{12}`$) is attenuated as fast as the pump waves, while the other Raman sidebands decay slowly due to large detuning from any resonance and, hence, small absorption. It is interesting that different decay rates give rise to a curious situation at larger optical densities when the generated sidebands are more intensive than the pump fields.

## IV Conclusions

In conclusion, we have experimentally demonstrated generation of Raman sidebands in sodium atomic vapor excited on the D1 line by resonant c.w. optical fields of frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$. The first-order sidebands for frequencies $`\omega _1`$, $`\omega _2`$ and up to the third-order sidebands for the probe field of frequency $`\omega _3`$ have been observed. The efficient generation takes place due to the preparation of atoms in a dark superposition leading to reduced absorption and enhanced nonlinear susceptibility. This has been directly confirmed by measuring the frequency difference ($`\omega _1\omega _2`$) dependence of the transmission, which evidences that the generation of all sidebands as well as the reduced absorption of pump fields occur only in the narrow range around Raman resonance $`\omega _1\omega _2=\omega _{12}`$. Since the decay rate of the dark state is only a few kHz in our experiment, the generation is efficient even at very low pump powers, with the threshold value being of 10 $`\mu W`$ for each input wave. Our measurements show that the Raman sidebands are generated at any value of the frequency $`\omega _3`$. However, the generation of Raman sidebands of the $`\omega _3`$ field is maximized and competes with generation of the sidebands of $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ fields when $`\omega _3`$ is close to resonance with the D1 line. Inside this resonance range, the sideband intensities reveal periodical oscillations with $`\omega _3`$. In the present scheme, the coherent medium is prepared with the c.w. radiation by means of the dissipative process of optical pumping. Therefore, a large part of the radiation energy is lost. This is reflected in the optical density dependence exhibiting fairly fast and almost exponential decay of the resonant pump waves. We believe that much smaller energy losses and, correspondingly, higher conversion efficiency may be achieved by use of the adiabatic passage technique for the preparation of phaseonium . Together with a further reduction of the dark state decay rate (which is certainly possible by using better magnetic field shielding, stabilizing AOM frequency and optimizing the buffer gas pressure), this should allow to readily approach the regime of a few-photon nonlinear optics. Our experimental results also give rise to the challenge of developing a theory of Raman sideband generation by resonant c.w. radiation that will provide an understanding of a complicated interplay of the participating e.m. waves.

This work was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation under project No. P 12894.