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# Population dynamics advected by chaotic flows: a discrete-time map approach.

## I INTRODUCTION

Patchiness, or the uneven distribution of substances of organisms, is ubiquitously observed in the ocean . In complex situations such as the marine ecosystems, characterized by the interplay of population dynamics and an ambient fluid motion which may differently affect individual populations, the question of how a localized availability of nutrients (or preys, or, in chemical terms, activators) may affect the distribution of primary producers (or predators, or inhibitors, respectively; in the following we refer to preys and predators) is a crucial and challenging problem.

According to , the possible causes originating patchiness in marine ecosystems may be grouped in different categories: fluid motion, biological growth coupled with dispersive processes, less ubiquitous mechanisms like swarming, vertical migration, and others. In addition to patchiness, localized availability of food may occur in correspondence of localized sub-ecosystems, such as Posidonia Oceanica beds (for a review see ): they display a quite complex structure in which the most important features arise from direct consumption of the plant and epiphyte-herbivore interactions, although a portion of the trophic chain is based on suspended matter .

A comprehensive description of such processes leads to the study of the so called advection-reaction-diffusion equations. These are partial differential equations of the type:

$$\frac{C_i(𝐱,t)}{t}+(𝐯(𝐱,t))C_i=R_i(C_1,\mathrm{},C_N,𝐱,t)+D_i\mathrm{}C_i.$$
(1)
Where $`C_i(𝐱,t)`$ ($`i=1,\mathrm{},N`$) is the concentration of the $`i`$-th reactive (in biological or chemical terms) species or substance, and the functions $`R_i`$ describe the reaction, or the population, intrinsic dynamics. The possible explicit spatial and temporal dependence may model the influence of temporal and spatial inhomogeneities in food, temperature, etc. The term $`(𝐯(𝐱,t))C_i`$ represents advection by a given solenoidal (i.e. incompressible $`𝐯=0`$) velocity field $`𝐯(𝐱,t)`$. Finally, the term $`D_i\mathrm{}C_i`$ describes diffusion of the $`i`$-th species or substance with diffusivity $`D_i`$. In writing (1) we are assuming that the evolution of the advected concentrations does not affect that of the underlying flow $`𝐯(𝐱,t)`$. This is definitely reasonable at the scales we are interested in, even though it is worth mentioning that at much smaller scales the presence of organisms may affect the rheological properties of seawater .

In some situations it would be necessary to consider a different velocity field for each of the $`N`$ concentrations $`C_i`$. This may happen, for instance, if different organisms live at different mean depths, leading to differences in the experienced flow. In such cases one has to replace Eq. (1) by

$$\frac{C_i(𝐱,t)}{t}+(𝐯_i(𝐱,t))C_i=R_i(C_1,\mathrm{},C_N,𝐱,t)+D_i\mathrm{}C_i.$$
(2)
In this paper, however, we will only consider the case given by Eq. (1) in which the same velocity field advects all the substances.

Introducing the Lagrangian time derivative $`\frac{d}{dt}=\frac{}{t}+𝐯`$, Eq. (1) can be written in the form

$$\frac{dC_i(𝐱,t)}{dt}=R_i(C_1,\mathrm{},C_N,t)+D_i\mathrm{}C_i.$$
(3)
If diffusion is neglected, it is simple to write the $`C_i(𝐱,t)`$ in terms of the solutions of the Lagrangian evolution equation

$$\frac{d𝐱(t)}{dt}=𝐯(𝐱(t),t),$$
(4)
and the reactive evolution equation

$$\frac{dC_i(t)}{dt}=R_i(C_1,\mathrm{},C_N,𝐱(t),t).$$
(5)
This set of coupled ordinary differential equations describe the advection-reaction process in a Lagrangian frame: fluid particles move according to (4), and reactions among the $`C_i`$’s occur inside each fluid particle, as expressed by (5), where $`C_i(t)`$ are the concentrations at a particular fluid particle (the one at $`x(t)`$ at time $`t`$, i.e. $`C_i(t)C_i(𝐱(t),t)`$). Denoting by $`S^t`$ and $`L^t`$ the formal solutions of (4) and (5) respectively (i.e., $`𝐱(t)=S^t𝐱(0)`$ and $`𝐂(t)=L^t𝐂(0)`$, with $`𝐂=(C_1,C_2,\mathrm{},C_N)`$) we can write the solution of Eq. (1) in the form (with $`D_i=0`$)

$$𝐂(𝐱,t)=L^t𝐂(S^t𝐱,0).$$
(6)
The case $`D_i0`$ needs a more elaborated treatment. In addition to the time dependence, $`L^t`$ will have also an explicit space dependence if the $`R_i`$’s have it.

Obviously, the detailed understanding of the above class of partial differential equations constitute a formidable task. However, at this stage of development, we are just interested in the search for generic behaviors expected when few typical characteristics of the flow and of the population dynamics are considered. Thus, if, for example, we concentrate on flows of geophysical nature, horizontal motion turns out to be much more intense than vertical one as soon as one considers scales larger than a few kilometers. This justifies restricting in the following to incompressible twodimensional flows. A turbulent bidimensional flow would be a way to model the irregular advection process to which suspended matter is subjected in real oceans. There are however simpler classes of flows which share some basic characteristics with turbulence, but are much more accessible to analysis: Lagrangian chaotic flows. These are smooth velocity fields, with some simple time dependence in the Eulerian description, but which lead to chaotic trajectories of fluid elements, with the associated stretching and folding, in the Lagrangian description. In this restricted framework, it is well known that even periodic time-dependence in two-dimensional incompressible flows leads generically to chaotic motion of fluid particles.

Rather than integrating the full equations describing the continuous in time dynamics, and since our interest lies mainly in a qualitative characterization of the population system, we will resort in this paper to a discrete in time mapping-approach in terms of discrete-time dynamical systems. This approach is numerically very efficient, and has proven to be extremely productive to study the impact of chaotic advection on mixing . The main idea is to mimic the advection and reaction processes in terms of maps that capture the main features of each aspect. Thus, since we will be looking at processes taking place in 2d incompressible flows, the advective part of our model is naturally described by a twodimensional symplectic map. It is well known that Lagrangian motion in such systems is typically chaotic and with a rather rich behavior. In addition, the transported fluid parcel contains concentrations of active chemical substances or biological specimens subjected to a specific dynamics that will be also modeled in terms of a map. Also, it is worth noticing that even though this is not done in this work, diffusion can be easily reincorporated into the model by averaging, after each iteration of the maps, the concentration of the different species contained in the fluid elements over a region of size $`l\sqrt{D_i\tau }`$, where $`D_i`$ is the corresponding diffusivity and $`\tau `$ is a characteristic time scale of the system.

The general ideas and formalism sketched above will be made more concrete in the following, and applied to tackle our main problem: the influence of inhomogeneities of the distribution of preys on that of predators. We will make use of some known results for random maps, and compare our discrete-time approach with results obtained in a continuous-time description of the problem . In Section II we will discuss the approach to population dynamics in terms of maps; in Section III our particular model is presented and compared with results for a random logistic map; the analogy helps in the interpretation of the resulting spatial structure of predators, which is described in Section IV, and discussed in Section V.

## II A DISCRETE-TIME APPROACH

Let us now present the general idea of our approach for the analysis of the population dynamics in terms of maps.

It is easy to understand that for time-periodic velocity fields, i.e. $`𝐯(𝐱,t)=𝐯(𝐱,t+T)`$ where $`T`$ is the period, Eq (4) can be described by a discrete-time dynamical system. The position $`𝐱(t+T)`$ is univocally determined by $`𝐱(t)`$. In addition (because of the periodic velocity field) the map $`𝐱(t)𝐱(t+T)`$ cannot depend on $`t`$. Since a periodic time dependence is enough to induce Lagrangian chaos, and because of the above mathematical simplifications, we particularize our study to time-periodic velocity fields, for which we can write

$$𝐱(t+1)=𝐅(𝐱(t)),$$
(7)
Now, time is measured in units of the period $`T`$. If $`𝐯`$ is incompressible, the map (7) is volume (area in $`2d`$) preserving, i.e., $`\left|det(\frac{F_i}{x_j})\right|=1`$. In $`2d`$ the map (7) is symplectic, i.e. the discrete-time version of a Hamiltonian system. Usually, it is not simple at all to obtain $`𝐅(𝐱(t))`$ for a given $`𝐯(𝐱,t)`$. However, one can directly write models for $`𝐅`$ which contain the qualitative features of the flow one is trying to model.

In addition, the transported fluid parcel contains species subjected to their own population dynamics. Denoting the solution of (5) after one period of the flow ($`L^T`$) by $`𝐆`$, the evolution rule for the interacting concentrations $`𝐂=(C_1,C_2,\mathrm{}C_n)`$ is expressed in terms of a map:

$$𝐂(t+1)=𝐆(𝐂(t))$$
(8)
As before, $`𝐆`$ will carry additional explicit time and space dependencies if (5) is not autonomous in space or time. The discrete-time version of Eq. (6) is:

$$𝐂(𝐅(𝐱),t+1)=𝐆(𝐂(𝐱,t)).$$
(9)
In the following we particularize this general approach to a particular model.

## III A PARTICULAR MODEL AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH A RANDOM LOGISTIC MAP

The main interest of our study is to consider the problem of how the spatial structure of the prey spatial distribution may affect the one of the predators. In this section we study a particular model and present its analogies with the random map. This will enable us to use the already known properties of this random map to get a further insight into the influence of the distribution of preys on the predator patterns. We will considered a single-species population dynamics, i.e. the predator evolves for fixed prey distribution, and under the influence of the flow, but the distribution of the prey is a non-dynamic variable, in the sense that it is not transported by the flow and is maintained at fixed values undisturbed by the predator action. This is the simplest setting in which the effects of a localized source of nutrients on an advected predator will show up.

The model is the following: the positions of the fluid parcels are advected by a standard map , i.e. a 2d symplectic map defined in the square of side $`2\pi `$ by

$`x(t+1)`$ $`=`$ $`(x(t)+K\mathrm{sin}y(t+1))\mathrm{mod}2\pi `$ (10)
$`y(t+1)`$ $`=`$ $`(y(t)+x(t))\mathrm{mod}2\pi `$ (11)
It is not integrable for $`K0`$. As $`K`$ increases chaotic regions occupy larger areas, and the original KAM tori (regular non-chaotic orbits) are successively destroyed. For $`K`$ large enough the KAM tori occupy a very small region and practically the whole phase space is a unique chaotic region.

The model is completed by stating the evolution rules for the predator-prey interactions. We denote with $`n(𝐱)`$ the stationary spatially inhomogenous distribution of preys, and with $`C(𝐱,t)`$ the concentration of predators in point $`𝐱`$ at time $`t`$. We take it to evolve in each fluid parcel according to the well known logistic map : $`C(t+1)=G(C)=rC(t)(1C(t))`$, but with a growth rate parameter $`r`$ determined by the presence of preys, i.e., $`r=\mu n`$. The complete evolution equation (9) is

$$C(𝐅(𝐱),t+1)=\mu n(𝐱)C(𝐱,t)(1C(𝐱,t)).$$
(12)
The standard map has been written in the compact form (7) with $`𝐱=(x,y)`$.

We now introduce the particular form of the localized prey distribution $`n(𝐱)`$:

$$r=\mu n(𝐱)=\{\begin{array}{cc}r_1& \text{if }x[\pi (1p),\pi (1+p)],y\hfill \\ r_0& \text{otherwise}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(13)
with $`0p1`$. We are suggesting a striped spatial distribution of the preys (with strip width $`2\pi p`$), which basically represents (due to the $`2\pi `$-periodicity of the flow) the simplest, space-periodic fashion to mimic a patchy distribution. A fraction $`p`$ of system area has the value $`r=r_1`$, and fraction $`1p`$, the $`r=r_0`$. The heuristic idea that will guide our analysis is that, if mixing provided by the advection map is strong enough, fluid parcels will visit regions with the different values of $`r`$ in a stochastic way, so that the Lagrangian evolution of the concentrations will be well described by a random logistic map, i.e. a map of the form

$$C(t+1)=a_tC(t)\left(1C(t)\right),$$
(14)
where the random variable $`a_t`$ can take only two values

$$a_t=\{\begin{array}{cc}r_0& \text{with probability }1p,\hfill \\ r_1& \text{with probability }p,\hfill \end{array}$$
(15)
and $`a_{t+1}`$ is independent of any previous $`a_t`$.

The random map (14) has been studied in  for $`r_0=1/2`$ and $`r_1=4`$. This corresponds to the situation in which for a value of $`r=r_0`$ the population dynamics is attracted by a fixed point, whereas chaotic population dynamics occurs for $`r=r_1`$. The alternancy in time of these two tendencies gives rise to nontrivial behavior. Numerical (and some analytical) computations  give the following results for (14) with $`r_0=1/2`$ and $`r_1=4`$, for different values of $`p`$:

* If $`pp_1=1/3`$ the Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda =lim_N\mathrm{}\frac{1}{N}_{i=0}^{N1}\mathrm{ln}\left|a_t\left(12C(t)\right)\right|`$ is negative, i.e. there is exponential convergence of two initially close sequences $`C(t)`$ generated with the same sequence $`a_t`$ but slightly different initial conditions $`C(0)`$. In this case, the sequences are attracted by $`C=0`$.
* If $`p_1pp_20.5`$ the Lyapunov exponent is negative again, but now the sequences do not converge to any fixed point. They wander in an irregular and seemingly chaotic manner (of the on-off intermittency type). The meaning of the negative value of $`\lambda `$ is that close initial values of $`C`$ evolve, under the same sequence $`a_t`$, towards the same irregular trajectory. This is a case of chaotic synchronization related to the phenomenon of synchronization by noise .
* If $`pp_2`$ the Lyapunov exponent is positive, i.e. there exponential divergence of two initially close sequences $`C(t)`$, behaving both chaotically.

As a first check confirming that our advection-population dynamics model is close to the random map when mixing is strong, we fix $`r_0=1/2`$ and $`r_1=4`$, as in . This describes a system in which predators are advected over regions in which not enough food is available ($`r_0=1/2`$ leads to population extinction) and over the strip-like regions in which preys are abundant (leading to chaotic population dynamics of the predators). We iterate (12) to obtain $`C(i)C(𝐱(i),i)`$, and then calculate the reaction Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda ^R`$ for our system:

$$\lambda ^R=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{N}\underset{i=0}{\overset{N1}{}}\mathrm{ln}\left|G^{}\left(C(i)\right)\right|=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{N}\underset{i=0}{\overset{N1}{}}\mathrm{ln}\left|\mu n\left(𝐱(i)\right)\left(12C(i)\right)\right|,$$
(16)
The initial condition $`C(𝐱,0)`$ was a smooth function proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}(x)\mathrm{sin}(y)`$. $`\lambda ^R`$ measures the rate of convergence or divergence of two initially similar concentration values $`C`$ at the same fluid particle. In Fig. 1 we show $`\lambda ^R`$ as a function of $`p`$ for different values of $`K`$. When $`K`$ is increased above a high enough value (e.g. $`K9`$, for which the standard map shows a unique ergodic chaotic region ), $`\lambda ^R`$ approaches the Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda `$ of the random map . On the other side, when $`K`$ is small, this correspondence is lost.

Therefore, exploiting this equivalence we can study different regimes of our system depending on the value of the parameter $`p`$. In particular, the spatial patterns of the advected field are strongly dependent of the value of $`\lambda ^R`$. Next section is dedicated to the study of these structures.

## IV PREDATOR SPATIAL STRUCTURES

The three regimes described above for the random map are also found for the behavior of the Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda ^R`$ as a function of $`p`$ in our advection model, with just some minor quantitative differences, e.g. in the values of $`p_1`$ and $`p_2`$ (in particular, in most of our calculations we take $`K=9`$, which gives $`p_10.34`$ and $`p_20.48`$). These three regimes give rise to the following different predator spatial structures:

* For $`pp_1`$, the concentration of predators vanishes in all the space. The nutrient area is too small to support a stable population.
* If $`p_1pp_2`$, a typical spatial pattern appears. A relatively high, but very intermittent, concentration of predators appears in the area occupied by preys. Moreover, the concentration pattern displays fractal features.
* If $`pp_2`$, the spatial concentration of predators shows a random pattern. No typical structure seems to emerge.

Whereas the result for case i) is self-evident, cases ii) and iii) need a more elaborated study. We proceed in the following subsections.

### A Case $`p_1pp_2`$

The regime which we have labeled above with ii) is characterized by a negative reaction Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda ^R`$. In this case, we observe numerically (see Fig. 4) the existence of a typical structure of the reactive field, which follows the strip-like structure of the preys. Moreover, a fractal pattern seems to be displayed by the distribution. Let us proceed to a quantitative characterization of these features.

References  and  study the general continuous-time case of a chemically or biologically decaying field (thus with a negative reaction Lyapunov exponent) advected by a chaotic 2d flow. Since periodic velocity fields are used, it is straightforward to apply the results in these papers to our case with discrete time. Nevertheless, a fundamental assumption in these studies is that a source term in the equations, analogous to our prey distribution, is a smooth function of space. The quantitative results of  would fail (see e.g. Eq. (10) in ) when discontinuities are present in the source, as in our localized prey distribution (13). Therefore, in our calculations, and with the view on characterizing the spatial patterns, we will use a continuous approximation to the previous step function describing the distribution of nutrients, which would allow us to compare our results (in the regime of $`\lambda ^R<0`$) with those in . The approximation is performed by truncating the Fourier transform of the step function of width $`p`$ (Eq. (13) and smoothing properly the coefficients . The final expression we use is:

$$n(x,y)=\frac{1}{2\pi }\left(\pi +\frac{7p}{2}\right)+\underset{k=N,k0}{\overset{N}{}}\left(1\frac{|k|}{N+1}\right)(1)^k\frac{7}{2\pi k}\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{kp}{2}\right)\mathrm{cos}(kx),$$
(17)
for any $`0x,y2\pi `$ and $`N=10`$. Fig. (2) shows a $`1d`$ cut of this smoothed distribution of nutrients.

A quantitative characterization of the observed structures can be performed in terms of structure functions. In particular, the structure function of order one, $`S_1`$, is defined by:

$$S_1(\delta 𝐱)=\left|C(𝐱+\delta 𝐱)C(𝐱)\right|,$$
(18)
where $`<\mathrm{}>`$ indicates an average taken over the different spatial points $`𝐱`$ along a line in the system. In  the scaling of $`S_1`$ is calculated with the result $`S_1(\delta 𝐱)|\delta 𝐱|^\alpha `$ when $`\delta 𝐱0`$, with $`\alpha \frac{|\lambda ^R|}{\lambda ^F}`$ when $`\lambda ^R<0`$ and $`\lambda ^F>|\lambda ^R|`$, being $`\lambda ^F`$ the Lyapunov exponent of the Lagrangian motion (4). The above expression for $`\alpha `$ is just an approximation to which multifractal corrections should be in principle added , but we are not going to consider them here.

The Lyapunov exponent of the standard map, for $`K`$ high enough, is given  by: $`\lambda ^F\mathrm{ln}(K/2)`$. In our calculations for $`K=9`$ we are in the above mentioned conditions, that is, $`\lambda ^F>|\lambda ^R|`$ for all the values of $`p`$.

Fig. (3) shows $`|\lambda ^R|`$ as a function of $`p`$ for $`K=9`$ (the smooth approximation to the spatial distribution of preys is used). In addition, we have numerically calculated the scaling exponent $`\alpha `$ of $`S_1`$ in lines across the central strip of nutrients, and multiplied it by $`\mathrm{ln}(9/2)\lambda ^F`$ for different values of $`p`$. The agreement between both quantities is quite good for $`p`$ near $`p_1`$, confirming the expression $`\alpha \frac{|\lambda ^R|}{\lambda ^F}`$, although it gets worse as $`pp_2`$. The reason for this are the already mentioned multifractal corrections to the scaling exponent of the structure function, but a deeper discussion about this will be given in a subsequent work. The agreement allows us to understand the pattern displayed in Fig. (4) in terms of the filamental fractal patterns discussed in  for continuous-time dynamics. The observed fractal structures are revealing the stable and unstable manifolds (local contracting and expanding directions) attached to each point of the phase space of the standard map. It should be noted however that there is here a much larger amount of irregularities at small scales than in the patterns analyzed in . The reason is the much more irregular dynamics associated to the logistic map considered here. The Lagrangian evolution of $`C(t)C(𝐱(t),t)`$ is related to the one of the logistic random map, which is of the on-off intermittency type. Models considered in  displayed simple local relaxation behavior. The small-scale structure seen in Fig. 4 will introduce stronger multifractal corrections in higher order structure functions. We finally remark that when a discontinuous distribution of preys such as (13) is considered, the relationship $`\alpha \frac{|\lambda ^R|}{\lambda ^F}`$ is not satisfied at all.

### B Case $`p>p_2`$

Now we proceed to study the case $`p>p_2`$. In this regime, the reaction Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda ^R`$ is positive, i.e. the chemical or biological part of our system is also chaotic.

The patterns calculated in this regime have random appearance, being dominated by strong small-scale irregularity with very small amount of structure (see Fig. 5). In fact, the scaling exponents of the first-order structure function are close to zero, as corresponding to a random discontinuous field.

This random structure is easy to understand once one has realized that $`\lambda ^R>0`$ in this range of $`p`$: neighboring sites, even if they have initially nearly similar concentration values, and even when they remain close for long time so that they experience close values of the sequence $`𝐱(t)`$, will unavoidably develop growing differences in in concentration values, thus leading to the observed discontinuities at small scales.

## V DISCUSSION

Summing up, spatial structures with fractal features (of filamental type) appear for the predator field in a range of values of the size of the nutrient patch $`p`$. An increasing amount of small-scale randomness appears when $`p`$ is increased, until structure is finally lost. The analogy with the random map model has allowed us to understand this behavior as being originated by the change in the value of the reaction Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda ^R`$ when $`p`$ is varied. In particular, structure is lost when $`\lambda ^R`$ becomes positive. For $`p`$ small enough, global extinction occurs, since most of the system has a parameter value for which $`C=0`$ is the only attractor.

Our results have been obtained for a particular set of coupled maps, and for a specific nutrient distribution. We do not expect major qualitative changes in the above findings if the standard map is replaced by a different advecting flow, as long as the Lyapunov exponent $`\lambda ^F`$ takes the same value. This belief is supported by the more detailed arguments of Refs.  and  for the time-continuous case. It should be said however that the quantitative strength of multifractal corrections to simple expression such as $`\alpha \frac{|\lambda ^R|}{\lambda ^F}`$ will depend on the particular flow chosen.

Our choice of the logistic map as the population dynamics to study is certainly important for the results obtained. Our results should describe the behavior under other population models as long as their parameters take values favoring chaotic oscillations in a localized portion of space, and favoring relaxation to a fixed point in the rest. The election of the logistic map has allowed the use of results known for random logistic maps, thus helping to interpret the different patterns in terms of the value of $`\lambda ^R`$ and its relationship with $`\lambda ^F`$. Those quantities would be the right tool for the interpretation of advection-reaction patterns in other population or chemical models.

Diffusion has been discarded in the present work. We expect that its only effect would be to smooth out any small-scale fractal or random structure below a size of the order of $`\sqrt{D/\lambda ^F}`$. In fact, our numerical calculations have an effective diffusion which comes from our minimal spatial resolution. As mentioned above, a more controlled way to introduce diffusion is to perform explicitly, after each map operation, an average of the concentrations of fluid particles closer than the diffusion length.

We finally mention that the map approach turns out to be an extremely efficient method from the numerical point of view, as compared to direct solution of partial differential equations such as (1) or other continuous approaches.

## VI Acknowledgments

C.L. acknowledges a TAO (Transport processes in the Atmosphere and Oceans) exchange grant of the European Science Foundation. Financial support from CICyT (Spain) project MAR98-0840 is also acknowledged.

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# Interpretation of the First Data on Central Au+Au Collisions at √𝑠 = 56 and 130 A GeV

## Acknowledgements

S.J. was supported by the Director, Office of Energy Research, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Division of Nuclear Physics, and by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Nuclear Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098. J.K. was supported by the Department of Energy under grant DE-FG02-87ER40328.

## Figure Captions

Figure 1: The charged hadron rapidity distributions for central Pb+Pb collisions (SPS) and Au+Au collisions (RHIC) at the indicated energies. The SPS data is from NA49  and the RHIC data is from PHOBOS . The solid (top) curves are LEXUS, the dashed (middle) curves are the wounded nucleon model, and the dot-dashed (bottom) curves are the collective tube model.


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# ASCA Observation of an “X-ray Shadow” in the Galactic Plane

## 1  INTRODUCTION

The 0.1 $``$ 0.3 keV band diffuse X-ray background (DXB) emission in the Galactic plane has been attributed to the emission from the Local Hot Bubble (LHB): an $``$106 K plasma filling an extensive cavity, where absorbing neutral material is difficient, with an average radius of $``$100 pc around the solar system (Cox & Reynolds, 1987; Snowden et al., 1998). At $`>`$2 keV it has been known that there exists unresolved DXB emission along a thin disk of the plane ($``$60 $`<`$ l $`<`$ 60): the so-called Galactic ridge X-ray emission (GRXE) (Worrall et al., 1982; Warwick et al., 1985). The detection of the Fe K line emission, with a scale height of $``$100 pc (Yamauchi & Koyama, 1993), revealed the thermal origin of the GRXE (Koyama et al. 1986a, ). Unresolved point sources would be insufficient to produce the observed X-ray flux (Yamauchi et al., 1997; Yamasaki et al., 1997), and the bulk of the GRXE appears to have diffuse origins such as multiple supernova remnants (Koyama et al. 1986b, ; Kaneda et al., 1997; Valinia & Marshall, 1998). The implied temperature for the thermal plasma to make up the 2 $``$ 10 keV GRXE ranges $``$107.5 $``$ $``$108 K (Koyama et al. 1986a, ; Kaneda et al., 1997; Yamauchi et al., 1997; Valinia & Marshall, 1998).

The nature of the 0.5 $``$ 2 keV band DXB along the plane is elusive. The presence of a few million K Galactic gas beyond the LHB and nearby supernova remnants has been suggested in order to incorporate the observed soft X-ray emission in the plane (Nousek et al., 1982). The distribution and the spectral properties of the X-ray emitting material along the line of sight have yet to be known. One of the major advances in the study of the 0.5 $``$ 2 keV band Galactic DXB in the plane came with the detection of “X-ray shadows” cast by distant molecular clouds. The X-ray shadows in the DXB as detected with mosaics of the ROSAT PSPC pointed observations in the Galactic plane have recently revealed the existence of a highly enhanced X-ray emitting region (i.e., the derived X-ray background intensity beyond the absorbing molecular clouds is more than an order of magnitude brighter than the nominal high latitude intensity) around the Galactic center: the Galactic X-ray bulge (GXB) (Park et al., 1997; Almy et al., 2000; Park et al., 1998, P98 hereafter). The estimated plasma temperature of the GXB is $``$106.6-6.7 K. These results are in good agreement with the ROSAT all-sky survey (RASS) data analysis in the general direction of the Galactic center (Snowden et al., 1997). P98 further suggested that the angular extension of the GXB along the first quadrant of the plane may be confined by the molecular ring at l $``$ 25.

The results of these X-ray shadow studies also suggest that there exists a substantial fraction of DXB emission originating foreground to the absorbing molecular clouds, which are located at 2 $``$ 3 kpc from the Sun. The “foreground component” was tentatively attributed to the emission from a $``$107 K plasma based on a band-fraction analysis (Park, 1998). The extensive spectral analyses of individual DXB components along the line of sight were however infeasible with the ROSAT PSPC data due to the limited spectral capabilities of the PSPC mosaics.

In order for a spectral study of the Galactic DXB originating foreground to the X-ray shadow clouds, we carried out an ASCA observation in the direction of l, b = 25.6, 0.78. The l, b = 25.6, 0.78 direction is toward a Galactic molecular cloud which was recently reported to cast an X-ray shadow in the 0.5 $``$ 2.0 keV band (P98). The existence of the dense molecular cloud with a well-established kinematic distance (d $``$ 3 kpc) is expected to provide a useful constraint for the spatial distribution of the DXB emission along the line of sight. In other words, in the soft energy band ($`<`$2 keV), the molecular cloud is optically thick and the distance to the cloud ($``$3 kpc) sets a limit for the X-ray emitting region, or regions, along the line of sight. The contribution from unresolved stellar sources to the observed 0.5 $``$ 2 keV band DXB in the plane has been shown to be small (Schmitt & Snowden, 1990; Wang, 1992; Ottmann & Schmitt, 1992). ASCA observations of the Scutum arm region (l $``$ 28 $``$ 29) have also demonstrated that only $``$1% of the DXB emission in the plane is from unresolved point sources (Yamauchi et al., 1997). The bulk of the DXB in the plane is therefore truly diffuse. We can thus perform the spectral study of the 0.5 $``$ 2 keV Galactic DXB emission, the bulk of which is diffuse and originates within $``$3 kpc from the Sun. Utilizing the full effective energy range of ASCA, the overall spectrum is analyzed and is compared with the previous studies of the GRXE which were performed at different directions in the sky. The observation is described in §2. The analysis and results are presented in §3 and the implications are discussed in §4. A summary and the conclusions are presented in §5.

## 2  OBSERVATION

The ASCA observation in the direction of $`l,b=25.6^{},0.78^{}`$ was carried out on 1998 March 31 during the AO6 phase. The data from the Gas Imaging Spectrometer (GIS) were obtained in the pulse-height (PH) mode and the total exposure for each detector (GIS2 and GIS3) is $``$38 ks. For the analysis the data are integrated over two detectors for the inner 30 diameter circular region. The pointing direction ($`l,b=25.6^{},0.78^{}`$) is centered on a Galactic molecular cloud which has an angular extent of $``$1 to cast a deep X-ray shadow in the 0.5 $``$ 2.0 keV band (P98). The exposure and vignetting corrected GIS images are displayed in Figure 1. Figure 1a is the hard band (2.0 $``$ 9.0 keV) image and Figure 1b is the soft band (0.8 $``$ 2.0 keV) image of the inner 30 diameter region. The observed count rate is 0.18 $`\pm `$ 0.002 counts s-1 within 30 diameter in the 0.8 $``$ 9.0 keV band. There is a faint point-like source detection within 30 diameter, at RA(J2000)=18h 34m 52s.3, Dec(J2000)=$``$06 16 37$`\mathrm{"}`$.1, in the 0.8 $``$ 9 keV band. The source counts within 3 radius detection circle is, however, small ($``$1% of the total counts).

The Solid-state Imaging Spectrometer (SIS) imposes some problems for the study of faint diffuse background emission. The SIS has experienced a decrease in detector efficiency and an increasing divergence from the GIS spectra since the early phase of the mission due to the accumulated radiation damage and the increasing fluctuation of the dark current. This degradation of the SIS performance can be substantial for the faint X-ray background spectra since the position depenedence of the SIS performance change is not known for the diffuse background emission. The SIS also has a smaller effective area which also makes it inappropriate for the study of the faint diffuse background emission. The count rate for the SIS is $``$0.07 counts s-1 even with the full effective solid angle ($``$480 arcmin2), which is only $``$39% of the GIS count rate of the inner 30 diameter region. Considering that the photons detected near the edge of the nominal field of view may not be useful for the analysis, the number of utilizable photons with the SIS would be smaller than that of the GIS (30 diameter) at least by a factor of 4 $``$ 5. In this paper we thus present only the GIS result which is free from systematic uncertainties and more reliable than SIS.

## 3  ANALYSIS & RESULTS

### 3.1  X-ray Images

The observed X-ray emission is smooth with no significant contribution from point sources (Figure 1). In order to investigate the distribution of the X-ray intensity over the field of view, radial profiles of the observed count rates for the non-cosmic X-ray background (NXB), data, and the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) components are compared. The NXB counts can be extracted with the night-Earth data. The night-Earth data are available from the HEASARC ASCA Guest Observer Facility (GOF), which is an accumulation of the data from 1993 June to 1999 August. Since the night-Earth background is known to have long-term variations over the years, the data taken only between 1998 January and 1998 May are extracted in order to accomodate the observation dates of our data. The CXB can be obtained with the “blank-sky” data released by the ASCA GOF at HEASARC, which are point-source removed high latitude observations taken between 1993 June and 1995 December. Since the CXB is presumably isotropic over the entire sky with no intensity variations, the blank-sky data can be utilized to test the angular distribution of our data. The observed data, night-Earth and blank-sky data are extracted in the soft (0.8 $``$ 2 keV), the hard (2 $``$ 9 keV), and the total (0.8 $``$ 9 keV) band and the count rates are integrated over the annular bins of 1.5 within the 15 radius circular region.

The radial profiles of the 0.8 $``$ 9 keV band average count rates in each bin are displayed in Figure 2. In Figure 2, the open-squares are observed data, filled-circles are the night-Earth count rates, open-circles are (data $``$ night-Earth), and filled-squares are blank-sky. Although the night-Earth background generally has higher intensity around the edge of the detector (Ishisaki, 1996), the effect is negligible within 15 from the center (Figure 2). Assuming the CXB intensity distribution is uniform over the sky, the intensity distribution of the X-ray data can be investigated by calculating the intensity ratio between the observed data and the blank-sky data. In Figure 2, the histograms present the radial profiles (arbitrarily scaled) of the data to blank-sky intensity ratio where the night-Earth contribution is subtracted from both. Within 15 radius of the nominal field of view, no statistcally significant intensity variation is observed. The same analysis has been performed in the soft and the hard band. The results from these subbands also indicate no significant intensity variations over the field.

Since the effect of the shadow is not explicitly seen in the images, off-cloud observations may be necessary to assure the utility of the X-ray shadow in constraining the distribution of the soft DXB emission along the line of sight. No such observations are currently available leaving it for follow-up observations. The solid angle of our data is however only 30 diameter and is completely within the angular extent of the shadow. No intensity variation in the soft band image is thus not surprising considering no significant column variations around the central region of the cloud (P98) and the limited field of view for the data covering only the central region of the shadow. The smooth distribution in the hard band image may also be reasonable since the cloud is most likely transparent on average in the 2 $``$ 9 keV band ($`\tau `$ $``$ 1). There may be some contribution from the off-cloud emission due to the “stray-light” effect (see §3.2). For example, the contribution from offset angle $`>`$ 1 is expected to be $`<`$ 15% of the total counts in the 1 $``$ 2 keV band (the contribution in the hard band is expected to be smaller) (Ishisaki, 1996). The bulk of the observed flux in the soft band is thus assumed to arise in on-cloud region presumably representing the X-ray emission originating in the foreground of the cloud.

### 3.2  Background subtraction & Energy response

The study of the diffuse background emission with ASCA is substantially affected by the stray light, which is a “leakage” of the photons from outside of the nominal field of view due to the broadly extended ASCA mirror responses (Serlemitsos et al., 1995). A specific energy response of the detector must be generated to resolve this problem. For this purpose an ancillary response file (ARF) for the diffuse emission is generated through ray-tracing, assuming an uniform X-ray emitter having 1.5 radius. This technique is essentially identical to those by Kaneda et al. (1997) and Valinia et al. (2000). Although the diffuse ARF is created for the Galactic diffuse emission, it is also used in determining the normalization for the extragalactic power law. This specific ARF is utilized in the following spectral analysis.

As the first step of the spectral analysis the NXB is subtracted using night-Earth data. The extragalactic power law component of the DXB (presumably from unresolved AGNs) then needs to be considered since the contribution from this component in the photon energy of $`>`$2 keV is significant even in the plane. The power law component of the DXB has been extensively studied with high latitude data and can be described with a photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ $``$ 1.4 in the 2 $``$ 10 keV band (Gendreau, 1995; Chen et al., 1997). This extragalactic power law component is included in the spectral fitting as a fixed component. In order to produce an appropriate normalization of the power law component, blank-sky data are fitted with a simple power law model in the 0.8 $``$ 9 keV band after subtracting the NXB. The best fit photon index is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 1.46 ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$ = 1.69) which is consistent with previous results (Ishisaki, 1996). A range of absorbing column density NH = 3 $``$ 5 $`\times `$ 1022 cm-2 should be considered for the power law component accounting for the absorption by the Galactic plane asumming an average space density of 1 cm-3 in the Galactic disk. We found that the difference due to the assumed NH values in this range does not affect the fit, and a fixed value of NH = 4 $`\times `$ 1022 cm-2 is used for the analysis.

### 3.3  Spectral Analysis

#### 3.3.1  Raymond-Smith Model Fit

The observed spectrum should be associated with the GRXE, considering the observed direction and the effective energy band. For the study of the GRXE, optically thin thermal plasmas both in ionization equilibrium and non-equilibrium have been considered by previous authors (Koyama et al. 1986a, ; Yamasaki et al., 1997; Kaneda et al., 1997; Yamauchi & Koyama, 1995; Valinia & Marshall, 1998). With the Ginga data Yamauchi & Koyama (1995) have shown that the GRXE continuum temperature of 5 $``$ 10 keV is too high for the detected 6.7 keV Fe line assuming an ionization equilibrium, and suggested a non-equilibrium state for the GRXE. A non-equilibrium ionozation model was used by Kaneda et al. (1997) with ASCA data and the best fit temperature of $``$7 keV was obtained for the hard component. On the other hand, presence of a power-law hard-tail in the GRXE spectrum in addition to the thermal components has been suggested (Yamasaki et al., 1997; Valinia & Marshall, 1998). As a matter of fact, the GRXE as observed with RXTE was suggested to arise from an $``$2 $``$ 3 keV plasma in an ionization equilibrium as well as from a power law component of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ $``$ 1.8 which dominates at $`>`$10 keV (Valinia & Marshall, 1998). The ionization state of the GRXE has thus been uncertain and the previous results have been dependent on different assumptions in the models.

Considering the complex nature of the modeling GRXE plasma, in this paper, we assume that thermal plasmas are in ionization equilibrium, as a first step toward the understanding of the nature of “X-ray shadow”. Our results in this paper may be subject to the assumption of ionization equilibrium, on which further investigations will be required. The spectral fitting is first performed with an absorbed Raymond-Smith (RS) model assuming thermal equilibrium. The best fit plasma temperature is kT = 6.30$`{}_{1.25}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+2.58}`$ keV with an absorption of $`N_H=0.55_{0.14}^{+0.13}\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 (the errors refer to a 90% confidence level, hereafter), where we used standard single absorption model (see §3.3.2). The best fit model is displayed in Figure 3. In Figure 3 the fixed extragalactic power law component is represented with a dashed line and the contribution is shown to be limited at $`E>2`$ keV due to the absorption by the plane. It is clearly observed that the data are in good agreement with the model only at $`>`$2 keV (Figure 3), and the fit is unacceptable ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$ = 3.63) at $`<`$2 keV, the DXB in which energy band is motivation of the present work.

A second RS component is then added in the model. The fit is now good even at $`<`$2 keV ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$ = 0.92) and the overall statistics also improved ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$ = 0.59) (Figure 4). The soft component (kT = 0.64$`{}_{0.16}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.13}`$ keV with $`N_H`$ = 1.21$`{}_{0.29}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.23}`$ $`\times `$ 1022 cm-2) makes up most ($``$75%) of the 0.5 $``$ 2.0 keV band emission and the contribution from this component to the 2 $``$ 10 keV band count rate is small ($``$6%). The hard component (kT = 3.71$`{}_{0.79}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+1.50}`$ keV) dominates the observed spectrum at $`>`$2 keV and produces $``$68% of the count rates in the 2 $``$ 10 keV band. The implied absorbing column of the hard component, $`N_H`$ = 2.47$`{}_{0.94}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+1.13}`$ $`\times `$ 1022 cm-2, indicates that this component originates beyond the molecular cloud.

Even though the overall fit is good, the two component RS model imposes some descrepancies in the soft band. Since the molecular cloud is optically thick ($`\tau `$ 1.7 on average between 0.5 and 2 keV, P98) and so casts a deep X-ray shadow in the 0.5 $``$ 2.0 keV band DXB, the bulk of the soft component must originate in the foreground of the cloud. The best fit absorbing column of the soft component ($`N_H=1.21\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2), however, indicates a distance of $`>`$3 kpc through the emission region assuming an average space density of 1 cm-3 in the plane. This distance suggests that the soft X-ray emitting region substantially extends beyond the cloud, which is inconsistent with the foreground origin for the soft component.

Furthermore, we found that this soft component does not agree with the ROSAT data on the same region. For a comparison with the ROSAT data, the best fit model is convolved with the ROSAT PSPC response and a hardness ratio is calculated. The 1.5 keV band (0.73 $``$ 2.04 keV, corresponding to the R6 + R7 band for the ROSAT PSPC) to 0.75 keV band (0.44 $``$ 1.21 keV, corresponding to the R4 + R5 band for the ROSAT PSPC) (Snowden et al., 1994) hardness ratio of the count rates for the modeled spectrum is 2.4. This hardness ratio is substantially higher than the observed value, 1.4, of the foreground count rates of the X-ray shadow in the same region as detected with ROSAT (P98).

#### 3.3.2 Continuous Absorption Model

We have assumed a single “foreground” absorbing column for each RS component while, in reality, the X-ray emitting plasma and the absorbing material is more likely interspersed along the line of sight (Jakobsen & Kahn, 1986). In order to investigate effects of the intermixture of the absorbing material and the X-ray emitting plasma, Kaneda (1996) has considered the “multi-absorption model” and found that the effect in the overall ASCA bandpass was not significant compared to the single foreground absorption. The “multi-absorption” model is still a more realistic picture especially in the soft band ($`<`$ 2 keV) where the absorption is more sensitive to the distribution of the absorbing material along the line of sight.

In the following, we thus investigate both of the single and the “continuous” absorption model for the soft band emission. The single absorption is the case that the absorber is in front of the emitter, where we take the standard interstellar absorption model, such that $`\mathrm{exp}(N_H\sigma _H)`$ is multiplied to the thermal plasma model. Here, $`N_H`$ is the hydrogen column density, and $`\sigma _H`$ is the average cross section per hydrogen atom by Morrison & McCammon (1983). We also consider the case that the emitter and absorber are completely intermingled and distributed uniformly along the line of sight. For this “continuous absorption model” we use the formula, $`(1\mathrm{exp}(N_H\sigma _H))/(N_H\sigma _H)`$ instead. It is likely that the true distribution of the emitter and absorber will be somewhere in-between, so the model parameter ranges (such as $`N_H`$) we obtain using the two absorption models are considered to be conservative limits. For the hard component ($`>`$ 2 keV), where the effect of the distribution of the absorbing material is not significant, only the single absorption utilizing the standard interstellar absorption is used in the following analysis.

#### 3.3.3 Two Bremsstrahlung Models plus Gaussian Line Fits

The observed soft X-ray spectrum cannot be properly represented with the two component RS model, because the required soft component column density is too high and the hardness ratio is inconsistent with the ROSAT result (§3.3.1). Note that the required column density would become even higher if we use the continuous absorption model (§4.1). Origin of the descrepancies may be in part due to our assumption of the full ionization equilibrium of the plasma. The soft band X-ray emitting plasma in the plane has been suggested to be in a non-equilibrium state (Kaneda et al., 1997) while we have assumed a thermal equilibrium. At least the RS model appears not effective to fit “unresolved” lines in the soft band spectrum as suggested by a systematic deviation in the residuals from the best fit model at $`E<2`$ keV (Figure 4). As an attempt to improve the soft band spectral fitting, we fit the spectrum with two component thermal bremsstrahlung model with separate Gaussian components for the candidate atomic emission lines.

Kaneda et al. (1997) have detected several atomic line emission (e.g., Ne K, Fe L, Mg K, Si K, etc.) at $`<`$ 2 keV in the Galactic plane DXB spectra, and our data show marginal evidence for emission lines at $``$1.8 keV and $``$1.3 keV in addition to the Fe line at $``$6.7 keV (Figure 4). We thus fitted the observed spectrum with two component bremsstrahlung and three Gaussians. The best fit temperature for the continuum to make up the soft band emission is kT $``$ 10 keV with low absorption and the hard band emission is from kT $``$ 2 keV plasma being absorbed by $`N_H`$ $``$ 3 $`\times `$ 1022 cm-2. Although the overall fit is good ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$ = 0.48), the best fit parameters appear unphysical by presenting a very high temperature plasma with a small absorption and a lower temperature plasma with a large absorption. This is unrealistic, since in the neighborhood of solar system, such a high temperature diffuse emission has not been detected. Also, this result contradicts with the more extensive observations of the GRXE by Kaneda et al. (1997), such that low temperature component is dominant in the lower energy band and so is the high temperature component in the higher energy band.

Although a simultaneous fitting with both soft and hard components is supposed to be ideal, such fitting is infeasible with low statistics of our data as we discussed above. We therefore decompose the observed spectrum in the hard and soft band to fit separately. Since the hard component shows a simpler spectral structure and has been more extensively studied by previous authors, we fit the hard component first and then fit the soft component with the hard component parameters fixed at the best fit values. For the hard component fitting a conservative cut-off at 3 keV, where the hard component dominates the observed GRXE spectrum (Kaneda et al., 1997), is taken for our data; i.e., in the 3 $``$ 9 keV band, the spectrum is fitted with a thermal bremsstrahlung and a Gaussian line in order to determine the center energy of the Fe K line. The best fit line energy is 6.62$`{}_{0.14}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.13}`$ keV where the continuum temperature is kT = 3.67$`{}_{1.67}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+4.16}`$ keV with an absorption of $`N_H`$ $``$ 2.1 $`\times `$ 1022 cm-2 ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$ = 0.45). The temperature and the absorption values seem reasonable since previous observations indicate that the GRXE at 2 $``$ 10 keV is from a kT = a few keV plasma and that is distributed along a thin disk of the plane (Yamasaki et al., 1997; Koyama et al. 1986a, ; Kaneda et al., 1997). The line width was fixed at zero assuming a narrow emission line. When the line width is allowed to vary the best fit value is 233 eV with the uncertainty covering zero, which makes the narrow line assumption reasonable.

After determining the continuum temperature for the hard component and the Fe K line energy, the line energies and continuum temperature for the soft band emission are fitted. Another bremsstrahlung model and two Gaussian components are added in the 0.8 $``$ 9 keV band. The best fit line energies are 1.83$`{}_{0.06}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.07}`$ keV and 1.23$`{}_{0.08}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.05}`$ keV. The line widths are again set to zero assuming narrow lines as well as to help constrain fitted parameters. The best fit continuum temperature is kT = 0.92$`{}_{0.39}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.41}`$ keV. The associated absorption is negligible and a 2$`\sigma `$ upper limit of 4.8 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 is obtained with the continuous absorption model. This implies a relatively nearby distance scale (probably $`<`$1.5 kpc, assuming a space density of 1 cm-3) through the X-ray emitting regions, which is in good agreement with the assumption of the foreground (to the cloud) origin of the soft component. The overall fit is good with $`\chi _\nu ^2`$ = 0.45. The best fit model is displayed in Figure 5 and the model paramters are presented in Table 1. In Table 1 the results from the same model fitting with the single absorption for the soft component are also presented. The difference in the best fit parameters between the two models are insignificant. The 1.83 keV line can be identified with the Si K line. The identification of the “1.23 keV line” is unclear and may represent a blend of unresolved lines such as Mg K (1.35 keV) and Fe L (1.08 keV) lines as detected by Kaneda et al. (1997) toward the Scutum arm region.

#### 3.3.4 Parameters of the Soft and Hard Components

The soft component (with the continuous absorption) makes up 76% of the total count rate in the 0.5 $``$ 2.0 keV band. After deabsorbing the spectrum, the 0.5 $``$ 2.0 keV band surface brightness is 2.36 $`\times `$ 10-8 ergs s-1 cm-2 sr-1. Assuming 1 kpc of the emitting region along the line of sight, the volume emissivity is 9.6 $`\times `$ 10-29 ergs s-1 cm-3. The total luminosity is 1.8 $`\times `$ 1036 ergs s-1 assuming a disk-like emission region with thickness of 200 pc and a radius of 1 kpc. The modeled plasma parameters with the single absorption for the soft component are almost identical to those with the continuous absorption and thus are not separately presented in this paper.

The best fit parameters for the hard continuum are kT = 3.67 keV, with $`N_H`$ = 2.1 $`\times `$ 1022 cm-2. The hard component is responsible for 70% of the total count rate in the 2 $``$ 10 keV band. After removing the absorption, the estimated surface brightness is 1.1 $`\times `$ 10-7 ergs s-1 cm-2 sr-1 in the 2 $``$ 10 keV band. Assuming $``$15 kpc for the depth of the emitting region along the line of sight, the volume emissivity can be estimated to be $``$2.99 $`\times `$ 10-29 ergs s-1 cm-3. For the emission volume of $``$1.8 $`\times `$ 1066 cm3 (assuming a thin disk with a radius of 10 kpc and a thickness of 200 pc), the 2 $``$ 10 keV total luminosity is estimated to be $``$5.4 $`\times `$ 1037 ergs s-1.

## 4  DISCUSSION

The RS model appears not successful in describing the data and we found that a two component bremsstrahlung model with separate Gaussians for the candidate emission lines are more successful to describe our data. Although the inclusion of simple Gaussians in the model is rather arbitrary and may not adequately represent the complicated spectral structure, the overall spectrum is the most effectively described with the separate Gaussian components. The fitting with separate Gaussians thus likely help represent the observed spectrum at least as an approximation. In the following sections the results are, therefore, discussed based on the model with separate Gaussians and two component bremsstrahlung.

### 4.1  The Soft Component

The best fit plasma temperature for the soft component is kT = 0.92 keV (continuous absorption) $``$ 1.02 keV (single absorption), which is higher than that of the GXB (kT = 0.35 keV) (Snowden et al., 1997). Park (1998) has suggested that the foreground DXB emission (originating at $`<`$3 kpc) of the 0.5 $``$ 2 keV band X-ray shadows in the l, b = 10, 0 and l, b = 25, 0.5 directions may arise from a kT $``$ 0.9 keV plasma. Kaneda et al. (1997) demonstrated that the soft component of the GRXE toward the Scutum arm region (l = 28 $``$ 29) has a temperature of kT = 0.8 keV. The present results are in good agreement with these previous works. Due to the opacity of the absorbing molecular cloud, the bulk of the soft component can be assumed to arise in the foreground of the cloud. The modeled absorbing column is small ($`<`$ 5 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2) and is in good agreement with this assumption.

Although the model fitting with the ASCA data is not sensitive to the low columns ($`<`$5 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2) providing only an upper limit, we may further constrain the column density by using ROSAT results. Figure 6 compares the modeled 1.5 to 0.75 keV hardness ratios with the ROSAT data. Since the absorbing column is not constrained, the modeled hardness ratios are presented in a range within the upper limit ($`<`$5 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 for both continous and single absorptions). The measured hardness ratio of the ROSAT data for the same region is $``$1.4 (P98). The uncertainty of the ROSAT measurement (Note: this measurement is independent of the plotted NH range in Figure 6) is displayed as the area between the dotted horizontal lines in Figure 6. The ROSAT measurement of the hardness ratio can be obtained in the model with NH $``$ 3 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 for the continous absorption and NH $``$ 1 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 for the single absorption. Assuming a space density of 1 cm-3, these absorbing columns imply a distance of $`<`$1 kpc through the soft X-ray emitting regions. The direct comparison between the modeled flux and the measured ROSAT flux is complicated since the ROSAT data have been obtained from a mosaic of several pointings reflecting a mixture of different vignettings and responses. In Figure 6, the overall spectra with the single absorption are harder and show a larger divergence from the ROSAT measurement than the continuous absorption model. The harder spectra for the single absorption is perhaps as expected since the soft photons are to be more absorbed by the “single foreground” absorbing column where the same “total” absorption is considered as is with the continuous absorption. In order to demonstrate the effects of the continuous absorption, comparisons between the spectral models fitted to our data with the continuous and the single absorption (for the soft component) are presented in Figure 7 and Figure 8. Figure 7a and Figure 7b compare two models where the “total” absorption is fixed at 1 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 for the soft component while Figure 8a and Figure 8b are where the column is 3 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2. All other parameters are the best fit values to fit the data used in this paper. It is evident that the effect of the distribution of the absorbing material is small with a low column and that is more significant with a larger column where more soft photons ($`<`$1 keV) are absorbed with the single absorption. Since the single absorption with 1 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 and the continuous absorption with 3 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 have almost identical spectral shape at even below 1 keV, further distinctions between them may be infeasible even by using the ROSAT results. The reality is most likely in between these two extreme cases and so these two columns ($``$1 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 and $``$3 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2) may represent a range of the actual absorption through the soft X-ray emitting regions.

After deabsorbing the spectrum, the average values of the modeled 0.5 $``$ 10 keV band surface brightness, volume emissivity, and the total luminosity with the $`N_H`$ in the range of 1 $``$ 3 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 are 0.27 $`\times `$ 10-7 ergs s-1 cm-2 sr-1, 1.11 $`\times `$ 10-28 ergs s-1 cm-3, and 0.2 $`\times `$ 1037 ergs s-1, respectively. The modeled average surface brightness in the 0.5 $``$ 10 keV band ($``$0.27 $`\times `$ 10-7 ergs s-1 cm-2 sr-1) of the unabsorbed soft component is substantially lower than the previous result at b = 0 toward the Scutum arm ($``$2 $`\times `$ 10-6 ergs s-1 cm-2 sr-1) (Kaneda et al., 1997). It may be due to the “high” latitude of the current data (centered on b = $``$0.8) as the DXB near the plane has significant flux variations along the latitudes (Kaneda et al., 1997). The low surface brightness may also indicate a soft X-ray flux variation along the Galactic longitudes. With the estimated volume emissivity the mean electron density of the plasma can be calculated by the relation, $`ϵ`$ = $`n_e^2`$$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$(T), where $`ϵ`$ is the emissivity, and $`n_e`$ is the electron density. The cooling function $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$(T) is estimated to be,

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }(T)=6.2\times 10^{19}T^{0.6},0.009keV<kT<3.4keV$$

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }(T)=2.5\times 10^{27}T^{0.5},kT>3.4keV$$

(McKee & Cowie, 1977). The estimated electron density is 0.0017 cm-3. The thermal pressure ($`p/k`$) can then be estimated as $`p/k`$ = 2$`n_e`$T assuming the adiabatic phase of the plasma. In Table 2, the modeled parameters with the $`N_H`$ in the range of 1 (the single absorption) $``$ 3 (the continuous absorption) $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 are presented as an average value of each parameter for the given range of the $`N_H`$ column.

### 4.2  The Hard Component

A hard component with kT = 5 $``$ 10 keV ($``$8 keV on average) has been reported for the GRXE (Koyama et al. 1986a, ; Kaneda et al., 1997; Yamauchi et al., 1997). The present result implies that the hard component of the Galactic X-ray background in the plane is from a kT = $``$3.7 keV plasma. While the uncertainty associated with this temperature is large, it is still relatively lower than the previous results. The difference in the hard component temperature may be due to the assumptions in the model fittings. We have assumed an ionization equilibrium for the thermal plasma and no contribution from a power law hard tail in the model. A broad range of the plasma temperature for the hard component has been obtained with various data depending on different assumptions within the model fittings (see §3.3.1). With the current ASCA data it is however infeasible to test different models and assumptions with meaningful statistics leaving such investigations in the future works.

The origin of the “lower” temperature might also be associated with the complicated Galactic structure in the l $``$ 25 direction. The l $``$ 25 direction of the plane has been suggested to be a “transition” region between the GXB and the molecular ring (P98). The angular extension of the molecular ring ($``$60 $`<`$ l $`<`$ 60) (Dame et al., 1987) is coincident with that of the GRXE. The molecular ring may trace the active star-forming regions in the Galaxy and be spatially correlated with the emitting regions of the GRXE as suggested by Yamauchi & Koyama (1993). The estimated temperature of the GXB plasma is most likely kT = 0.35 keV (Snowden et al., 1997; Park, 1998). Assuming that the l $``$ 25 direction beyond the absorbing cloud is a transition region between the GXB and the hard component GRXE, the relatively lower temperature of the present data may reflect the existence of the “cooler” GXB plasma along the line of sight. Observations at various longitudes along the plane will be necessary to test this speculation.

Assuming that the hard component occupies a thin disk along the plane (with a thickness of $``$ 200 pc, and a radius of $``$ 10 kpc), the 0.5 $``$ 10 keV total luminosity is $``$1.0 $`\times `$ 1038 ergs s-1. This total luminosity is in good agreement with the previous results for the hard component GRXE ($``$1 $``$ 2 $`\times `$ 1038 ergs s-1) (Worrall et al., 1982; Koyama et al. 1986a, ; Kaneda et al., 1997; Valinia & Marshall, 1998). The estimated electron density is $``$0.0018 cm-3 and the thermal pressure is $`p/k`$ = 1.5 $`\times `$ 105 K cm-3.

## 5  SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The Galactic X-ray background emission in the direction of l, b = 25.6, 0.78 is observed with ASCA. The observed pointing direction is toward a dense molecular cloud which casts an X-ray shadow in the 0.5 $``$ 2 keV band. The kinematic distance to the cloud (3 kpc) and the presence of the soft X-ray shadow makes it feasible to study the spectral properties of the Galactic X-ray background emission originating in the foreground of the Galactic X-ray bulge yet beyond the Local Hot Bubble.

The observed spectrum can be fitted with a two component thermal plasma model while candidate atomic emission lines are separately fitted with narrow Gaussian profiles. The soft component is from a kT = $``$1 keV plasma with low absorption and dominates the observed spectrum at $`<`$2 keV. When compared with the ROSAT data, the absorbing column for the soft component is most likely in the range of $``$1 $``$ 3 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2 depending on the specific distributions of the absorbing material along the line of sight. This range of the absorbing column implies a distance scale of $`<`$ 1 kpc through the soft component X-ray emitting regions. These results indicate that the 0.5 $``$ 2 keV soft X-ray background emission in the Galactic plane arises from an $``$107 K thermal plasma within $``$1 kpc from the Sun, at least in the l $``$ 25 direction.

The hard component is from a kT = $``$3.7 keV plasma and absorbed by the Galactic disk. The best fit temperature is relatively lower compared to the previous studies of the GRXE. The difference in the continuum temperature may reflect the assumptions in the given model fitting or may be due to the complexity of the Galactic DXB emitting regions along the line of sight. Follow up observations of the Galactic DXB for various directions along the plane with XMM-Newton and/or Chandra will be necessary to address the complicated nature of the Galactic DXB along the plane.

The authors thank S. Snowden for valuable discussion, and A. Valinia for helpful comments at the early stage of this work. We also thank the referee for the constructive comments. This work was supported by USRA and NASA Cooperative Agreement NCC 5-356.


text:
# Negatively Charged Excitons and Photoluminescence in Asymmetric Quantum Wells

## I Introduction

The optical properties of a quasi-two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in a high magnetic field $`B`$ have been widely studied both experimentally  and theoretically.  The 2DEG is usually realized in semiconductor quantum wells (QW) or heterojunctions (HJ). In the QW’s, where electrons ($`e`$) and valence holes ($`h`$) are confined in the same 2D layer, the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum shows emission from the radiative states of neutral ($`X=e+h`$) and charged ($`X^{}=2e+h`$) excitons interacting with one another and with free electrons.

The existence of a bound $`X^{}`$ complex was first predicted by Lampert  in bulk semiconductors; however, it could not be observed experimentally because of the small binding energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. It was later shown by Stebe and Ainane that the $`X^{}`$ binding is significantly enhanced in 2D systems. Indeed, the $`X^{}`$ state with $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of about 3 meV has been detected by Kheng et al. in a CdTe QW. The subsequent extensive experimental and theoretical  studies established that the $`X^{}`$ occurs in form of a number of different bound states. The state observed by Kheng et al. was the singlet, $`X_s^{}`$, whose total electron spin $`J`$ is zero. This is the only bound $`X^{}`$ state in the absence of a magnetic field.

MacDonald and Rezayi showed that the decoupling of optically active excitons from electrons in the lowest Landau level (LL) due to the “hidden symmetry” causes unbinding of the $`X_s^{}`$ (and other optically active complexes larger than $`X`$) for $`B\mathrm{}`$. However, a different bound $`X^{}`$ state exists in this limit. It is a triplet $`X_{td}^{}`$ with $`J=1`$ and finite angular momentum $`=1`$. Since both the hidden symmetry and the angular momentum conservation independently forbid recombination of an isolated $`X_{td}^{}`$ in the lowest LL, its optical lifetime $`\tau _{tb}`$ in high magnetic fields is expected to be long and determined by scattering and/or disorder.

The fact that the $`X_{td}^{}`$ binding energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{td}`$ decreases with decreasing $`B`$ implies a singlet–triplet crossing in the $`X^{}`$ spectrum at a certain $`B`$, estimated as about 35 T for a 10 nm GaAs QW. Although the PL experiments in high magnetic fields indeed show emission from a pair of $`X^{}`$ states, neither the crossing has been found nor the intensity $`\tau ^1`$ of the peak assigned to the triplet state increased with increasing $`B`$ or decreasing electron density. This apparent discrepancy between theory and experiment has been recently resolved by a numerical discovery of yet another $`X^{}`$ state, a “bright” triplet $`X_{tb}^{}`$. The $`X_{tb}^{}`$ state has $`=0`$, $`J=1`$, large oscillator strength $`\tau _{tb}^1`$, and small binding energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{tb}`$, and occurs in high magnetic fields in QW’s of finite width.

While the identification of the experimentally observed triplet as the $`X_{tb}^{}`$ state explains its small binding energy, the fact that the more strongly bound $`X_{td}^{}`$ state is not observed confirms its very long optical lifetime $`\tau _{tb}`$. The reason why $`\tau _{tb}`$ remains large in the presence of surrounding electrons (although the $`e`$$`X^{}`$ scattering breaks the $`=0`$ selection rule for an isolated $`X^{}`$) is the short range of $`e`$$`X^{}`$ repulsion which causes Laughlin $`e`$$`X^{}`$ correlations and the effective isolation of all $`X^{}`$ states from the 2DEG.  These correlations are also responsible for the insensitivity of the PL spectra of QW’s to the electron density, and for the success of its description in terms of the $`X^{}`$ quasiparticles and their single particle properties such as binding energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, PL energy $`\omega `$, or oscillator strength $`\tau ^1`$.

The major difficulty in comparing the numerical and experimental data is that most experiments are carried out in asymmetrically doped QW’s  or HJ’s in which an electric field perpendicular to the 2DEG modifies confinement and leads to displacement of electron and hole layers. This displacement or separation between the electron and hole layers, has been ignored in the existing realistic calculations (which take into account the finite widths of the electron and hole layers, LL mixing, etc.), although from more idealized calculations (zero layer widths and no LL mixing) it can be expected to weaken the $`X^{}`$ binding, possibly in a different manner for different $`X^{}`$ states.

In this paper we incorporate the finite electron–hole layer displacement $`\delta `$ into the model used earlier to study the $`X^{}`$ states in narrow symmetric QW’s. Using exact numerical diagonalization in Haldane’s spherical geometry  we examine the dependence of binding energies of all different bound $`X^{}`$ states on both magnetic field and the displacement. In addition to the bright singlet $`X_s^{}`$ (denoted here by $`X_{sb}^{}`$) and two triplets, $`X_{td}^{}`$ and $`X_{tb}^{}`$, we identify a dark singlet $`X_{sd}^{}`$ with angular momentum $`=2`$ which occurs at $`\delta >0`$, in analogy to a known $`D^{}`$ (charged donor) state at the same $``$. We demonstrate that the binding energies of all $`X^{}`$ states strongly depend on $`\delta `$. Most sensitive is the $`X_{sb}^{}`$ state which unbinds when $`\delta `$ reaches merely $`510`$% of the QW width (depending on $`B`$).

Two major conclusions follow from this result: (i) In the presence of even small layer displacement, the singlet–triplet crossing in the $`X^{}`$ spectrum shifts to a considerably lower magnetic field (e.g., from 35 T in a symmetric 10 nm GaAs QW to 16 T for $`\delta =0.5`$ nm). We expect that this could stabilize the hypothetical two-component incompressible fluid states involving long-lived $`X_{td}^{}`$ quasiparticles  and enable its detection in transport experiments. (ii) The observation of strongly bound $`X^{}`$ states in an experimental PL spectrum implies zero or very small layer displacement in the sample (compared to the QW width). While for asymmetrically doped QW’s the displacement can be decreased due to electron–hole correlations in the direction perpendicular to the QW, the interpretation of PL spectra of HJ’s in terms of $`X^{}`$ recombination is questionable.

## II Model

In order to preserve a 2D symmetry of a QW in a finite-size calculation, the electrons and the holes are confined to a Haldane sphere of radius $`R`$. The magnetic field $`B`$ normal to the surface is due to a Dirac magnetic monopole in the center of the sphere. The monopole strength $`2S`$ is defined in the units of elementary flux, $`\varphi _0=hc/e`$, so that $`2S\varphi _0=4\pi R^2B`$, and the magnetic length is $`\lambda =R/\sqrt{S}`$.

The single-particle orbitals are called monopole harmonics. They are the eigenstates of angular momentum:

$`L^2|S,l,m`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}^2l(l+1)|S,l,m`$ (1)
$`L_z|S,l,m`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}m|S,l,m,`$ (2)
and their energies,

$$\epsilon _{Slm}=\mathrm{}\omega _c\left(n+\frac{1}{2}+\frac{n(n+1)}{2S}\right),$$
(3)
form $`(2l+1)`$-fold degenerate shells (LL’s) labeled by $`n=lS=0`$, $`1`$, … and (in the limit of large $`2S`$) separated by the cyclotron energy $`\mathrm{}\omega _c=\mathrm{}eB/\mu c`$ (where $`\mu `$ is the effective electron or hole cyclotron mass).

The parameters we used for calculation are appropriate for GaAs/AlGaAs QW’s of width $`w=10`$ nm and Al concentration $`x=0.33`$. In such structures, mixing between the light- and heavy-hole subbands in the valence band is not very strong and both electrons and (heavy) holes can be described in the effective mass approximation. The valence subband mixing enters the model through the dependence of the effective cyclotron mass of the hole $`\mu _h`$ on the magnetic field (after Cole et al.). We omit the Zeeman splitting of electron and hole spin states $`|\sigma `$ and only discuss the Coulomb part of the binding energy. While the actual electron and hole $`g`$-factors depend on the QW width  and magnetic field and on the wavevector $`k`$ (and thus on a particular $`X`$ or $`X^{}`$ wavefunction), they mainly affect the stability of spin-unpolarized complexes and much less the splitting of PL peaks for a given polarization of light. We also neglect mixing between different electron and hole QW subbands and the (weak) electron–hole correlations in the direction perpendicular to the QW (along the $`z`$ axis). Instead, we use effective widths of electron and hole layers, $`w_e^{}`$ and $`w_h^{}`$, and their effective displacement $`\delta `$, which account both for actual widths and displacement of single-particle wavefunctions and for the effects of QW subband mixing and correlations.

Thus, the single-particle states used in our calculation are labeled by a composite index $`i=[n,m,\sigma ]`$ and describe an electron or a heavy hole with spin projection $`\sigma `$, whose in-plane quantum numbers are $`n`$ and $`m`$, and the wavefunctions in the $`z`$-direction are fixed and controlled by $`w_e^{}`$, $`w_h^{}`$, and $`\delta `$. The electron–hole Hamiltonian can be generally written as

$$H=\underset{i,\alpha }{}c_{i\alpha }^{}c_{i\alpha }\epsilon _{i\alpha }+\underset{ijkl,\alpha \beta }{}c_{i\alpha }^{}c_{j\beta }^{}c_{k\beta }c_{l\alpha }V_{ijkl}^{\alpha \beta },$$
(4)
where $`c_{i\alpha }^{}`$ and $`c_{i\alpha }`$ create and annihilate particle $`\alpha `$ ($`e`$ or $`h`$) in state $`i`$, and $`V_{ijkl}^{\alpha \beta }`$ are the Coulomb matrix elements. While the 3D Coulomb matrix elements for an arbitrary electron and hole density profiles $`\varrho (z)`$ can be integrated numerically,  we make the following approximation. For the density functions in the $`z`$-direction we take $`\varrho (z)\mathrm{cos}^2(\pi z/w^{})`$, that is, we replace the actual QW by one with infinite walls at the interface and a larger effective width $`w^{}`$. For a 10 nm GaAs QW’s the best fits to the actual wavefunctions are obtained for $`w_e^{}=13.3`$ nm and $`w_h^{}=11.5`$ nm. The effective 2D interaction

$$V(r)=\pm 𝑑z𝑑z^{}\frac{\varrho (z)\varrho (z^{})}{\sqrt{r^2+(zz^{})^2}},$$
(5)
is approximated by $`V_d(r)=\pm 1/\sqrt{r^2+d^2}`$, where the parameter $`d`$ accounts for the finite widths and displacement of the layers. For the $`e`$$`e`$ repulsion we take $`w^{}=w_e^{}`$ and $`d=w^{}/5`$, and for the $`e`$$`h`$ attraction $`w^{}=\frac{1}{2}(w_e^{}+w_h^{})`$ and $`d=w^{}/5+\delta `$. The 2D matrix elements of $`V_d(r)`$ are close to the 3D ones and can be evaluated analytically.

The Hamiltonian $`H`$ is diagonalized numerically for the system of two electrons and one hole, in the basis including up to five LL’s ($`n4`$) with up to $`2S+1=21`$ orbitals in the lowest LL. The eigenstates are labeled by two total angular momentum quantum numbers, $`L`$ and $`L_z`$, and the total spin of the pair of electrons, $`J=0`$ or 1. The conservation of two orbital quantum numbers in a finite Hilbert space is the major advantage of using Haldane’s spherical geometry to model an infinite planar system with the 2D translational symmetry. The pair of numbers, $`L`$ and $`L_z`$, correspond directly to a pair of conserved quantities on a plane: total angular momentum projection $``$ and an additional number $`𝒦`$ associated with the partial decoupling of the center-of-mass motion in a magnetic field.  On a sphere, the states within a LL have different $`L_z`$ and the same $`L`$, and on a plane, they have different $`𝒦`$ and the same $`=+𝒦`$.

The conservation of $`L`$ (or $``$) in the calculation is essential to identify of the $`X^{}`$ optical selection rules. Since the optically active electron–hole pair has $`L=0`$ ($`=0`$) and the electron left behind after the $`X^{}`$ recombination has $`l=S`$ ($`=0`$), only those $`X^{}`$ states at $`L=S`$ ($`=0`$) are radiative (“bright”). Other (“dark”) states cannot recombine unless the 2D symmetry and the resulting angular momentum conservation are broken (e.g., in a collision with an impurity or another particle).

The spherical model obviously has some limitations and the most important one is modification of interactions due to the surface curvature. However, if the correlations modeled have a finite (short) range $`\xi `$ that scales with $`\lambda `$ (as it is for the electron–hole correlations that cause binding of the $`X^{}`$ states), $`\xi `$ can be made small compared to $`R`$ at large $`2S`$ and the finite-size effects are eliminated in the $`2S\mathrm{}`$ limit.

## III Results and Discussion

The $`2e+h`$ low energy spectra for two different values of $`B=17`$ and 52 T, and at $`\delta /\lambda =0`$ and 0.1 are shown in Fig. 1.

The calculation was carried out for $`2S=20`$ and including five LL’s ($`n4`$). We have checked that these numbers are sufficient to obtain quantitatively meaningful results. The energy $`E`$ is measured from the exciton energy $`E_X`$, so that for the bound $`X^{}`$ states below the dotted lines, the vertical axes show the negative of their binding energy, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=EE_X`$. Singlet ($`J=0`$) and triplet ($`J=1`$) states are marked with open and full dots, respectively. The energy is plotted as a function of total angular momentum and each data point represents a degenerate $`L`$-multiplet.

The states of particular interest are the bound states with the largest $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and/or the bright states at $`L=S`$. Depending on $`B`$ and $`\delta `$, we identify all or some of the following bound $`X^{}`$ states in the spectrum: bright singlet $`X_{sb}^{}`$ at $`L=S`$ ($`=0`$), dark singlet $`X_{sd}^{}`$ at $`L=S2`$ ($`=2`$), bright triplet $`X_{tb}^{}`$ at $`L=S`$ ($`=0`$), and dark triplet $`X_{td}^{}`$ at $`L=S1`$ ($`=1`$). As shown in Fig. 1(ac), in the absence of layer displacement the $`X_{sb}^{}`$ is the ground state at the lower magnetic field of $`B=17`$ T, but at a higher magnetic field of $`B=52`$ T it is $`X_{td}^{}`$ that has the lowest energy. Another bright state $`X_{tb}^{}`$ occurs in the spectrum, but it has higher energy than $`X_{sb}^{}`$ or $`X_{td}^{}`$ at all fields. There is also a dark $`X_{sd}^{}`$ state that becomes bound at a sufficiently large $`B`$, but it is not expected to affect the PL spectrum because it is neither radiative nor strongly bound at any $`B`$. The situation is dramatically different when a finite layer displacement is included in Fig. 1(bd). For $`\delta =0.1`$ $`\lambda `$, the binding energies of all $`X^{}`$ states are significantly reduced. The most affected is the bright singlet $`X_{sb}^{}`$ which is no longer the ground state even at a relatively low magnetic field of $`B=17`$ T. It is quite remarkable that a displacement as small as $`\delta =0.62`$ nm (at $`B=17`$ T) or $`\delta =0.36`$ nm (at $`B=52`$ T), that is only a few percent of the QW width of $`w=10`$ nm and certainly could be expected in asymmetric QW’s, causes such reconstruction of the $`X^{}`$ spectrum. The ground state transition from the bright singlet to the dark triplet induced at lower $`B`$ is similar to that caused by a magnetic field at $`\delta =0`$.

The effect of the layer displacement on the dependence of the $`X^{}`$ binding energies on the magnetic field is shown in Fig. 2.

At $`\delta =0`$, the binding energies of the two bright states remain almost constant over a wide range of $`B`$, in contrast to the two dark states which quickly gain binding energy when $`B`$ increases. As found in the previous studies, this different $`\mathrm{\Delta }(B)`$ dependence results in a singlet–triplet ground state transition at $`B35`$ T. At a small displacement of $`\delta =0.5`$ nm, the binding energy of the bright singlet $`X_{sb}^{}`$ decreases rather quickly as a function of $`B`$, more so than the binding energies of other $`X^{}`$ states. As a result, the singlet–triplet transition occurs at a much lower magnetic field of $`B16`$ T and the bright singlet unbinds completely at $`B`$ larger than about 60 T. Actually, neither bright state is strongly bound at $`B>60`$ T, while the binding energies of both dark states remain fairly large (e.g., $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{sd}=1.0`$ meV and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{td}=1.7`$ meV at $`B=60`$ T).

To illustrate the effect of the layer displacement on the $`X^{}`$ states most clearly, in Fig. 3 we plot the $`X^{}`$ binding energies as a function of $`\delta `$ for two values of the magnetic field.

In both frames, $`\delta `$ goes from 0 to 0.1 $`\lambda `$ (where $`\lambda =6.2`$ and 3.6 nm at $`B=17`$ and 52 T, respectively). For $`B=17`$ T the ground state transition from $`X_{sb}^{}`$ to $`X_{td}^{}`$ occurs at $`\delta =0.4`$ nm and for $`B=52`$ T the $`X_{td}^{}`$ is the ground state at all displacements. It is clear that the displacement has more effect on the binding energy of $`X_{sb}^{}`$ than on the binding energy of the next most strongly bound state, $`X_{td}^{}`$. This can be understood by noting that the $`X_{sb}^{}`$ complex has smaller $`||`$ and thus smaller average electron–hole distance $`r_{eh}`$, and that the effect of a finite $`\delta `$ in $`V_d(r)`$ decreases as $`r`$ increases.

Let us point out that the binding energies obtained here are rather sensitive not only to $`B`$ or $`\delta `$, but also to other details of our model, including some of its simplifications or approximations. For example, a slightly different approximation used here to calculate the $`e`$$`h`$ Coulomb matrix elements at $`\delta =0`$ resulted in smaller binding energies compared to Ref.  (although the difference in $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ appears to be similar for all $`X^{}`$ states, and the singlet–triplet crossing is obtained at the same $`B`$, which means that the difference between the models affects $`E_X`$ rather than $`E_X^{}`$). Whittaker and Shields showed that even in narrow QW’s the inclusion of higher QW subbands and electron–hole correlations in the $`z`$-direction enhances somewhat the $`X^{}`$ binding, specially that of the $`X_{sb}^{}`$ state. Based on their calculation, one can expect that our values obtained in the lowest subband approximation are underestimated by up to 0.5 meV, depending on $`B`$ and the particular $`X^{}`$ state. Despite the difficulty with obtaining definite values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, two conclusions arising from our calculation seem quite important and at the same time independent of the approximations made.

(i) Even a small displacement of electron and hole wavefunctions in the $`z`$-direction shifts the singlet–triplet transition to a considerably lower value of the magnetic field. Therefore, the theoretical value of $`B35`$ T for the crossing in a 10 nm well must be understood as the upper estimate, and in an experimental sample the crossing can occur at any smaller value. This effect broadens the range of magnetic fields in which the $`X_{td}^{}`$’s together with electrons are both most stable and long-lived quasiparticles in the electron–hole system. It thus seems that the proposed incompressible fluid states of $`X_{td}^{}`$’s and electrons could be observed more easily in slightly asymmetric QW’s.

(ii) The binding energies of both bright $`X^{}`$ states are strongly sensitive to the layer displacement. Therefore, the recombination from strongly bound $`X^{}`$ states observed in an experimental PL spectrum implies zero or very small displacement in the sample (compared to the QW width). The parameter $`\delta `$ used in our model describes displacement of electron and hole wavefunctions in the $`z`$-direction within a particular bound $`X`$ or $`X^{}`$ state and must be distinguished from the bare displacement $`\delta _0`$ of single-electron and single-hole wavefunction due to an external electric field (e.g., caused by a charged doped layer). It is therefore possible that even in strongly asymmetric QW’s, the electron–hole correlations in the $`z`$-direction (which favor small displacement) dominate the effect of external electric field (which causes displacement), and the resulting $`\delta `$ is much smaller than $`\delta _0`$. If correct, this picture of symmetry (partially) restored by correlations explains the success of “symmetric models” to describe a wide class of symmetric and asymmetric QW’s (and invalidates the use of the lowest subband approximation with $`\delta _0`$ taken for unbound particles). However, it does not seems possible that any $`X^{}`$ states should form in HJ’s where the electrons are confined in a narrow 2D layer and the holes remain outside of this layer. Consequently, the interpretation of multiplets in the PL spectra of HJ’s in terms of $`X`$ and $`X^{}`$ recombination seems questionable. A recent alternative interpretation involves coupling of a distant hole to (Laughlin) charge excitations of the 2DEG and formation of bound and radiative (fractionally charged) excitonic complexes of a different type.

## IV Conclusion

Using exact numerical diagonalization in Haldane’s spherical geometry, we have studied the effect of the displacement $`\delta `$ of electron and hole layers on the binding energies of the $`X^{}`$ states formed in narrow asymmetric QW’s in high magnetic fields $`B`$. Depending on $`B`$ and $`\delta `$, different bound $`X^{}`$ states were identified in the $`2e+h`$ spectrum: bright singlet $`X_{sb}^{}`$, dark singlet $`X_{sd}^{}`$, bright triplet $`X_{tb}^{}`$, and dark triplet $`X_{td}^{}`$. The binding energies of all $`X^{}`$ states quickly decrease as a function of $`\delta `$. The most sensitive is the strongly bound $`X_{sb}^{}`$ state, and even at displacements very small compared to the QW width, the magnetic field induced transition from this bright ground state to the dark $`X_{td}^{}`$ ground state occurs at significantly lower values of $`B`$. The critical displacement for which the bright $`X^{}`$ states unbind is only $`510`$% of the QW width (depending on $`B`$). Therefore, detection of the $`X^{}`$ recombination in an experimental PL spectrum implies virtually no displacement of electron and hole layers (within the observed $`X^{}`$ states). While in asymmetric QW’s small values of $`\delta `$ can result from electron–hole correlations, the interpretation of the PL spectra of HJ’s in terms of $`X^{}`$’s is questionable.

## Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank S.A. Crooker (LANL Los Alamos) for helpful discussions. The authors acknowledge partial support of Grant DE-FG02-97ER45657 from the Materials Science Program – Basic Energy Sciences of the US Department of Energy. I.S. and A.W. acknowledge partial support of Grant 2P03B11118 from the Polish Sci. Comm.