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# X-ray Thread G0.13-0.11: A Pulsar Wind Nebula?

## 1 Introduction

The region around the dynamic center of our Galaxy is very active recently in massive star formation (e.g., Figer et al. 1999), which should have yielded various high-energy products such as supernova remnants (SNRs) and neutron stars (e.g., Morris & Serabyn 1996; Cordes & Lazio 1997; Wang, Gotthelf & Lang 2002). Young and fast-rotating neutron stars, in particular, may be observable as pulsars, although none is yet known within $`1^{}`$ radius of the Galactic center (GC). Detection of radio pulsars in the GC region is difficult, because of the severe radio wave scattering by intervening interstellar ionized gas (Cordes & Lazio 1997). On the other hand, two of the polarized radio nonthermal filaments (NTFs; in the Radio Arc and G359.96+0.09) show flat or slightly rising positive spectral indices — a characteristic of Crab-like pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe; e.g., Anantharamaiah et al. 1991). Chandra observations have further revealed various diffuse X-ray filaments with unusually hard spectra, which are also signatures of PWNe. However, no specific link has so far been proposed between such radio/X-ray features and PWNe.

Here we report a strong candidate for a PWN that links an X-ray thread G0.13-0.11 and the prominent NTFs in the Radio Arc region (Galactic longitude $`l0^{}.2`$; Fig. 1; Yusef-Zadeh, Morris, & Chance 1984). This X-ray thread G0.13-0.11 was first apparent in the images of Yusef-Zadeh et al. (2002). The diffuse X-ray emission from the neighboring molecular cloud G0.13-0.13 (Oka et al. 2001) has been further investigated by Yusef-Zadeh, Law, & Wardle (2002). They considered the X-ray thread as part of a large-scale diffuse feature that emits the 6.4-keV fluorescent line, which results from the filling of K-shell vacancies of neutral or weakly-ionized irons (Koyama et al. 1996; Wang, Gotthelf, & Lang 2002; Wang 2002; Yusef-Zadeh, Law, & Wardle 2002). Because the prominent X-ray thread is on the side of the molecular cloud that is opposite to Sgr A, they concluded that the 6.4-keV line emission could not represent the reflection of a possible recent radiation burst from the central massive black hole. However, our examination of related Chandra observations shows that the 6.4-keV line is clearly not associated with the X-ray thread G0.13-0.11, although the molecular cloud is indeed a strong 6.4-keV line emitter (e.g., Fig. 2; Wang 2002). We have conducted morphological and spectral analyses of both G0.13-0.11 and an embedded point-like source. This X-ray study, together with an investigation of the radio emission from the region, has led us to conclude that G0.13-0.11 most likely represents a PWN.

## 2 Observations and Astrometry Calibration

Our study used all existing Chandra observations of the region around G0.13-0.11; this field is shown in Fig. 1 with the important features labelled. In addition to the cycle-1 observation (50 ks; Obs. ID #945), which was used in Yusef-Zadeh et al. (2002) and Yusef-Zadeh, Law, & Wardle (2002), we included the recent GC ridge survey data (Obs. ID #2273, 2276, 2282 and 2284 — $`11`$ ks each; Wang, Gotthelf, & Lang 2002) and the cycle-1 observation pointed at Sgr A (50 ks; Obs. ID #242). The X-ray data calibration, including the CTI correction (Townsley et al. 2001), has been described by Wang, Gotthelf, & Lang (2002) and will be further detailed by Wang et al. (2002).

We searched for X-ray sources in individual observations (Wang, Gotthelf, & Lang 2002). The source position centroids are uncertain, both statistically and systematically. The statistical uncertainty depends on the count rate of a source and on the point spread function, which is a function of the off-axis angle of the source in an observation. In order to correct for the systematic pointing offset, we select sources with 2$`\sigma `$ statistical uncertainty radii less than $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$.

We examined position coincidences between the X-ray sources detected in the deep observation (ID #945) and various optical/near-IR objects (e.g., ESO/ST-ECF USNO-A2.0 and 2MASS catalogs). While no coincidence was found within the 2$`\sigma `$ statistical uncertainty radii of the X-ray source centroids, we considered objects projected within the 3′′ radii of the X-ray sources. The foreground F0 star, HD316314 (B=9.94, V=9.51) stands out, which is the brightest optical object within the radii. The corresponding point-like X-ray counterpart has an ACIS-I count rate of 0.026 $`\mathrm{counts}\mathrm{s}^1`$ and a very soft spectrum. A match between the X-ray centroid and the Tycho Reference Catalog position of the star ($`17^\mathrm{h}46^\mathrm{m}39\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}075,28^{}53^{}51\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}73`$; Hog et al. 1998) requires a shift of the X-ray image: 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$27 to the west and 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$00 to the north. Making this shift leads to the finding of several other associations between optical/near-IR objects and X-ray sources (position coincidences within the 2$`\sigma `$ statistical uncertainty radii). The limiting R-band magnitude for the selected optical objects, for example, is 17.5. From the residual optical/X-ray position offsets of these associations, we infer that the positional inaccuracy after the correction has been made should be less than $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}3`$. The location of the Quintuplet cluster is also indicated in Fig. 1. This GC cluster contains numerous massive stars including the luminous Pistol Star (Figer et al. 1999). However, we detect only one possible X-ray counterpart of a cluster member. We find no counterpart for the bright X-ray source just north of G0.13-0.11, which is not considered to be part of the X-ray thread (right panel in Fig. 1).

The focus of this paper is the X-ray thread G0.13-0.11 that borders a bow-shaped radio protrusion from the sheath of prominent NTFs and surrounds an embedded point-like X-ray source CXOGCS J174621.5-285256 ($`17^\mathrm{h}46^\mathrm{m}21\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}51,28^{}52^{}56\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ with an 1$`\sigma `$ statistical uncertainty of $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}15`$), marked as “pulsar?” in Figs. 1-2. We have carefully examined possible counterparts of this source in other wavelength bands. The nearest optical/near-IR object around the X-ray source is U0600-28642574 (B=17.5) at RA, Dec $`=17^h46^m21^s.81,28^{}52^{}56\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}0`$ (J2000), about 4$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$0 from the X-ray centroid. This separation far exceeds the position uncertainty of the X-ray source. Furthermore, the optical and near-IR colors of U0600-28642574 suggest that it is a nearby late-type star (later than M0) with little interstellar extinction, which is inconsistent with the large column density inferred from the X-ray spectrum (§3). We thus conclude that CXOGCS J174621.5-285256 and U0600-28642574 do not represent the same object.

## 3 X-ray Properties of G0.13-0.11

Fig. 2 presents a close-up of the G0.13-0.11 field. The X-ray thread G0.13-0.13 extends $`40^{\prime \prime }`$ to the southeast from the source CXOGCS J174621.5-285256 and has an intrinsic width of $`2^{\prime \prime }`$. Fig. 3 shows potential instrumental effects in the same region as in Fig. 2. The morphology and intensity of the northwestern part of G0.13-0.11, in particular, are weakly constrained because of the poor counting statistics within a gap between CCD chips of the observation #945. The intrinsic morphology of G0.13-0.11 could be quite symmetric about the source, and thus more extensive to the northwest. Fig. 4 compares the radial surface brightness profile of the source and the telescope point spread function at the position of the observation # 945. It is clear that the source is point-like and cannot simply be a bright clump of G0.13-0.11.

Fig. 5 shows the spectra of both G0.13-0.11 and CXOGCS J174621.5-285256. We extracted the spectral data from the observation # 945, which was also used by Yusef-Zadeh, Law & Wardle (2002). As shown in Fig. 2, the extraction radius for CXOGCS J174621.5-285256 is 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5, and a rectangular region is used for G0.13-0.11. The 6.4-keV line is completely absent in the X-ray spectra of both sources.

While the limited quality of the X-ray data alone does not allow for a serious testing of spectral models, we consider various possible origins of the X-ray emission. For example, although an one-temperature Raymond-Smith thermal plasma model gives a statistically acceptable fit, the inferred temperature has a 99$`\%`$ lower limit of 8 keV, which is too high to be consistent with a thermal supernova remnant interpretation. Assuming a two-temperature thermal plasma model does not solve the problem. The temperatures, if allowed to change freely, converge to the same values as high as 64 keV. If one temperature is fixed at a value of about a few keV, the other component, assuming a much higher temperature, then dominates the overall X-ray spectrum. In short, a thermal model with a temperature of a few keV has a too steep spectrum to be consistent with the data.

Furthermore, to match the observed flat spectrum with a low energy cutoff requires large amounts of absorption, which in turn demands a high emission measure. For instance, assuming that the plasma has a single temperature of 2 keV and that the depth of the X-ray-emitting region is comparable to the width ($``$2$`\mathrm{}`$) of G0.13-0.11, we estimate the absorbing gas column density (90% confidence interval) as 5.0(3.5-6.5)$`\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 and a thermal pressure of $`2\times 10^7\mathrm{dyn}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. This pressure appears too great for the thermal gas to be confined. Even within the brightest NTFs, the dominant magnetic field pressure is $`4\times 10^8\mathrm{dyn}\mathrm{cm}^2B_{\mathrm{mG}}^2`$, where $`B_{\mathrm{mG}}`$ is the magnetic field strength in units of milli-Gauss (e.g., Yusef-Zadeh & Morris 1987). Therefore, both the high surface brightness and the flat spectral characteristics strongly suggest that the X-ray emission from G0.13-0.11 is nonthermal.

We have also tested the bremsstrahlung spectral model proposed by Valinia et al. (2000). In this case, K-shell vacancies of iron atoms are produced by collisions with low energy cosmic-ray electrons. The model is approximately a combination of a power law with an energy slope of 1.4 and a Gaussian line centered at 6.4 keV. The predicted flux ratio of the 6.4-keV line to the 2 – 10 keV continuum is about 1/26. The spectrum of G0.13-0.11, however, shows no sign of the 6.4-keV line. We can rule out the line-to-continuum flux ratio with a confidence of $`3\sigma `$.

A simple power law gives satisfactory fits to the X-ray spectra of both the thread G0.13-0.11 and the point-like source CXOGCS J174621.5-285256 (Fig. 5). The best-fit energy slope is 0.9(0.2 – 1.8) for the source and 1.8(1.4 – 2.5) for the thread. The jointly-fitted X-ray-absorbing gas column density is $`5.9(4.09.1)\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. The column densities, if fitted separately for the two spectra, are consistent with each other, albeit with larger uncertainties. There is also statistically marginal evidence for the steepening of the power law with the distance from the source. The background-removed count flux ratio of the 4 – 8 keV band over the 2 – 4 keV band is 1.24$`\pm `$0.24 in the portion of the thread close to the source (the part of the rectangular box northwest to the dashed line in Fig. 2) and 0.92$`\pm `$0.19 in the portion away from the source (southeastern part). We infer the total absorption-corrected luminosity as $`L_x4.2(3.2)\times 10^{33}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for the thread and $`1.9(7.5)\times 10^{32}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for the source in the 0.1 – 2.4 keV (2 – 10 keV) band, respectively.

## 4 Interpretation: An X-ray-emitting Pulsar Wind Nebula?

The above morphological and spectral results place tight constraints on the nature of the point-like source CXOGCS J174621.5-285256 and the X-ray thread G0.13-0.11. The only satisfactory interpretation that we have found is that these X-ray sources represent an isolated young pulsar and its PWN, which are likely located near the GC, consistent with the X-ray absorption measured. In this scenario, the X-ray emission from the PWN, results naturally from the synchrotron cooling of shocked pulsar wind particles (electrons and positrons). Using the empirical relation between $`L_x`$ and the spin-down luminosity ($`\dot{E}`$) for X-ray-emitting pulsars (Becker & Trümper 1997) or for pulsar+PWN systems (Seward & Wang 1998), we estimate $`\dot{E}`$ for the putative pulsar to be a few times $`10^{35}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1`$, typical of an X-ray-emitting pulsar. The power law spectra we obtained for these sources are also characteristic of such a pulsar and its PWN (e.g., Gotthelf & Olbert 2002).

The X-ray morphology of our proposed pulsar/PWN system, however, is quite unique. We speculate that the slightly-curved linear morphology is due to the strong and organized interstellar magnetic field environment of the GC region (Lang et al. 1999 and references therein). Studies of the interaction between the NTFs and molecular clouds indicate a magnetic field strength of $`0.11`$ mG along the NTFs (e.g., Yusef-Zadeh & Morris 1987; Anantharamaiah et al. 1991; Morris & Serabyn 1996 and references therein), although the magnetic field may be weaker in the general interstellar medium. The orientation of the magnetic field (traced by radio polarization) in the vicinity of G0.13-0.11 follows the long axis of the NTFs in the Radio Arc, i.e., nearly perpendicular to the Galactic plane (Yusef-Zadeh & Morris 1987). Fig. 1 shows that the X-ray thread has a similar orientation, though not aligned with any particular NTF. This similarity indicates that the PWN may be confined by the local magnetic field.

X-ray emission traces high-energy particles in the PWN, which are most likely accelerated at the reverse shock of the pulsar wind and then move primarily along magnetic field lines. The expansion of the shocked pulsar wind (unlikely to be freely expanding) should have a velocity smaller than the thermal velocity of $`c/\sqrt{3}`$. The X-ray-emitting synchrotron lifetime of the particles is short, $`\tau (1.3\mathrm{yrs})ϵ^{0.5}B_{\mathrm{mG}}^{1.5}`$, where $`ϵ`$ is the X-ray photon energy in units of keV. From the characteristic angular scale of 40′′ from CXOGCS J174621.5-285256 to the southeastern end of G0.13-0.11, we infer $`B0.3`$ mG. Furthermore, the balance between the ram-pressure of the pulsar wind and the magnetic field pressure gives a characteristic scale of $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}04B_{\mathrm{mG}}^1[\dot{E}/(10^{35}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1)]^{1/2}`$ at the distance of 8 kpc. Because this scale should be smaller than the observed width ($`2^{\prime \prime }`$) of the X-ray thread G0.13-0.11, we have $`B0.02`$ mG. The required magnetic field thus seems to be quite reasonable for the general interstellar medium in the GC region.

## 5 Radio Emission Possibly Associated with G0.13-0.11

Our interpretation of the X-ray thread G0.13-0.11 as the leading-edge of a PWN also predicts the presence of an extended radio-emitting region. The radio synchrotron lifetime of an electron is on the order of $`(2\times 10^4\mathrm{yrs})\nu _{\mathrm{GHz}}^{0.5}B_{\mathrm{mG}}^{1.5}`$, about four orders of magnitude longer than the X-ray-emitting particle lifetime. Therefore, the radio emission in such a system represents the accumulation of pulsar wind material and traces the overall morphology (and “history”) of the PWN.

We have obtained and reprocessed archival radio data of this region originally observed with the VLA at 20 and 6 cm in the DnC and CnB array configurations (Yusef-Zadeh et al. 1984, Yusef-Zadeh & Morris 1987) in order to compare these images to the distribution of X-ray emission and to study the spectral properties of the radio emission.

### 5.1 Radio Morphological Properties

An examination of the radio images shows no counterpart of the X-ray source CXOGCS J174621.5-285256. This is not a surprise even if the source is a young pulsar. The pulsed radio emission may be beamed away from us, or the heavy interstellar scattering may have significantly diffused the emission (Cordes & Lazio 1997).

Fig. 1 shows that the curvature of the X-ray thread G0.13-0.11 closely corresponds to the edge of a protrusion of diffuse radio emission from the southwestern edge of the prominent Radio Arc NTFs. This combination of the features suggests that our proposed PWN is produced by a pulsar moving in a strong and organized magnetic field environment. Morphologically, G0.13-0.11 differs from the Crab Nebula, in which its corresponding pulsar is deeply embedded. Instead, G0.13-0.11 shows similarities to ram-pressure confined PWNe, such as the Duck/PSR1757-24 (Thorsett et al. 2002) and LMC SNR N157B/PSR J0537-6910 (Wang et al. 2001), both of which show offsets of X-ray-emitting pulsars from radio peaks. In these latter systems, the X-ray emission arises from freshly shocked pulsar winds (thus from regions close to the pulsars) whereas radio emission arises from particles swept up (into a “trail”) by the ram-pressure over the lifetime of the nebula. However, in the case of G0.13-0.11, the magnetic field likely plays a dominant role in confining and transporting shocked pulsar wind particles. As a result, a moving pulsar would leave a PWN (a bow-shaped trail of shocked wind particles) that expands primarily along the direction of magnetic field lines.

The morphological properties of the protrusion, the NTFs, and G0.13-0.11 together suggest a likely trajectory of the pulsar from the northeast to the present position. In this scenario, the synchrotron-emitting relativistic particles from the passing pulsar would cause the NTFs in the Radio Arc to be illuminated. The NTF (marked as “curved NTF” in Fig. 1) that apparently most adjacent to G0.13-0.11 also shows more curvature than any of the other NTFs in the Radio Arc. The curvature of the NTFs and G0.13-0.11 may be a result of the balance between the magnetic field tension and the thermal pressure of the PWN. For the pulsar to cross the Radio Arc NTFs and the protrusion ($`4^{}`$ or 10 pc at the GC) requires $`10^5\mathrm{years}(v_p/100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1)^1`$, where $`v_p`$ is the pulsar proper motion speed. Interestingly, this time is consistent with the spin-down age ($`10^410^6`$ years) of the pulsar expected from the observed X-ray luminosity (Becker & Trümper 1997), and may be compared to the radio synchrotron lifetime of the particles.

### 5.2 Radio Spectral Index

We have examined the radio spectral index in the NTFs and in the protrusion of radio emission just below the NTFs (Fig. 6). We have obtained comparable spatial resolutions ($``$ 10″) by using the 20-cm CnB array data and the 6-cm DnC data. One concern, of course, is that the lack of total radio power in these interferometric observations may affect the absolute measurement of the spectral index. The globally averaged 20/6-cm spectral index over a circular region of 2′ radius centered at RA, Dec (J2000) $`=17^h46^m30^s,28^{}51^{}30^{\prime \prime }`$. gives a value of $`\alpha `$$``$+0.1 (where Sν $``$ $`\nu ^\alpha `$). This value is consistent with the average spectral index ($`\alpha `$$``$+0.2$`\pm `$0.1) measured by Reich et al. (1988) for the Radio Arc, using single-dish data. Using well-matched interferometric data therefore does not seem to significantly bias the spectral index measurement.

While the nature of the flat or slightly positive spectral index remains unclear, we speculate that the radio-emitting particles in the Radio Arc NTFs are not accelerated by shocks, which would yield a steep (negative index) synchrotron spectrum. In our interpretation, the particles represent the thermalized pulsar wind. Because the wind is believed to be ultra-relativistic and to be thermalized at the reverse shock, no acceleration is required for radio synchrotron particles. The thermalization alone would result in a Maxwellian particle energy distribution. The particles on the lower energy part of this distribution could give rise to a positive spectral index of the radio synchrotron emission. This interpretation is similar to the idea that the positive spectral index could be a result of the synchrotron emission from particles of a mono-energetic distribution (e.g., Reich et al. 1988). In contrast, X-ray-emitting synchrotron particles, which should be on the higher energy side of the Maxwellian distribution, require acceleration in the PWN, most likely at the reverse shock.

We may further expect to detect the aging of the radio-emitting particles in the PWN as a function of the distance from the pulsar. In the protrusion of diffuse radio emission directly adjacent to G0.13-0.11 (Fig. 6), the limited signal-to-noise ratio of the radio data allows for only an estimate of the integrated spectral index of $`\alpha +0.3`$. However, across the Radio Arc, we investigated the distribution of spectral index (Figs. 6-7). Along all three cross-cuts, the spectral indices of the NTFs have an average value of $``$ +0.4 at the southwestern edge of the Radio Arc, and steepen to an average value of $``$ -0.1 in the northeastern (i.e. toward the numbers labelled 1-3) region. This spectral index steepening is consistent with our interpretation that the particles are being supplied by the pulsar along its northeast-to-southwest trajectory.

## 6 Conclusions

We have studied the X-ray thread G0.13-0.11 and the embedded point-like X-ray source CXOGCS J174621.5-285256 as well as the adjacent nonthermal radio emission in the Radio Arc region. The morphological and spectral properties of these features appear to be consistent with our PWN interpretation. We hope that this study will stimulate observational and theoretical studies to further explore the connection between pulsars and various nonthermal features observed in the unique GC environment. The ultimate confirmation of the PWN interpretation requires the detection of the pulsed signal from the putative pulsar, which could be achieved with future radio and/or X-ray observations with fast timing capabilities.

We thank the referee B. Aschenbach for valuable comments that helped to improve the presentation of the work, which was supported by the SAO grant G01-2150A.


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# Principles, Progress and Problems in Inflationary Cosmology

## I Introduction

With the recent high-accuracy measurements of the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) (see Fig. 1 ), cosmology has become a quantitative science. There is now a wealth of new data on the structure of the Universe as deduced from precision maps of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, from cosmological redshift surveys, from redshift-magnitude diagrams of supernovae, and from many other sources. Standard Big Bang (SBB) cosmology provides the framework for describing the present data. The interpretation and explanation of the existing data, however, requires us to go beyond SBB cosmology and to consider scenarios like the Inflationary Universe in which space-time evolution in the very early Universe differs in crucial ways from what is predicted by the SBB theory. Since inflationary cosmology at later times smoothly connects with the SBB picture, we must begin this article with a short review of the framework of SBB cosmology.

Standard big bang cosmology rests on three theoretical pillars: the cosmological principle, Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and the assumption that matter is a classical perfect fluid. The cosmological principle concerns the symmetry of space-time and states that on large distance scales space is homogeneous and isotropic. This implies that the metric of space-time can be written in Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) form. For simplicity, we consider the case of a spatially flat Universe:

$$ds^2=dt^2a(t)^2\left[dr^2+r^2(d\vartheta ^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\vartheta d\phi ^2)\right].$$
(1)
Here, $`t,r,\theta `$ and $`\phi `$ are the space-time coordinates, and $`ds`$ gives the proper time between events in space-time. The coordinates $`r,\vartheta `$ and $`\phi `$ are “comoving” spherical coordinates, and $`t`$ is the physical time coordinate. Space-time curves with constant comoving coordinates correspond to the trajectories of particles at rest. If the Universe is expanding, i.e. the scale factor $`a(t)`$ is increasing, then the physical distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }x_p(t)`$ between two points at rest with fixed comoving distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }x_c`$ grows as $`\mathrm{\Delta }x_p=a(t)\mathrm{\Delta }x_c`$.

The dynamics of an expanding Universe is determined by the Einstein equations, which relate the expansion rate to the matter content, specifically to the energy density $`\rho `$ and pressure $`p`$. For a Universe obeying the cosmological principle (and neglecting the possible presence of a cosmological constant) the Einstein equations reduce to the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) equations

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{k}{a^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{8\pi G}{3}}\rho `$ (2)
$`\dot{\rho }`$ $`=`$ $`3H(\rho +p),`$ (3)
where $`H=\dot{a}/a`$ is the Hubble expansion rate, and an overdot denotes the derivative with respect to time $`t`$.

The third key assumption of standard cosmology is that matter is described by a classical ideal gas with some equation of state which is conveniently parametrized in the form $`p=w\rho `$ which some constant $`w`$. For cold matter, pressure is negligible and hence $`w=0`$. For radiation we have $`w=1/3`$. In standard cosmology, the Universe is a mixture of cold matter and radiation, the former dominating at late times, the latter dominating in the early Universe. In this case, the FRW equations can be solved exactly, with the result that the Universe had to be born in a “Big Bang” singularity.

SBB cosmology explains Hubble’s redshift-distance relationship, and it explains the abundances of the light elements Helium, Deuterium and Lithium. These nucleosynthesis predictions of the SBB model depend on a single free parameter (which is the present ratio of the number densities of baryons to photons), and thus the fact that the abundances of more than one element can be matched by adjusting this ratio is remarkable. Most importantly, SBB cosmology predicts the existence and black-body spectral distribution of a microwave cosmic background radiation, the CMB. The precision measurement  of the spectrum of the CMB is a triumph for SBB cosmology (see Fig. 1).

However, the triumph of the CMB also leads to one of several major problems for SBB cosmology: within the context of this theory, there is no explanation for the high degree of isotropy of the radiation. As is illustrated in Fig. 2, at the time the microwave radiation last scattered (which occurred when the temperature was about a factor $`10^3`$ of the present temperature), the maximal distance which light could have communicated information starting at the Big Bang (the forward light cone) is much smaller than the distance over which the microwave photons are observed to have the same temperature (the past light cone). This is the famous “horizon problem” of SBB cosmology. Within the context of SBB cosmology it is also a mystery why the Universe today is observed to be approximately spatially flat, since a spatially flat Universe is an unstable fixed point of the FRW equations in an expanding phase. This problem is called the “flatness problem”. Finally, as illustrated in Fig. 3, within standard cosmology there is no causal mechanism which can explain the nonrandom distribution of the seed inhomogeneities which develop into the present-day large-scale structure. This constitutes the “formation of structure problem”. Under the assumption that only gravity is responsible for the development of inhomogeneities on cosmological scales, the seeds for fluctuations must have been correlated at the time $`t_{eq}`$, the time when the energy densities in cold matter and radiation were equal (which occurred when the Universe was about $`10^4`$ of its present size) when inhomogeneities can first start to grow by gravitational instability. But, at that time, the forward light cone was smaller than the separation between the seeds.

Standard Big Bang cosmology is also internally inconsistent as a theory of the very early Universe. We know that at very high energy densities which the theory predicts in the initial stages, the description of matter as a classical ideal gas is invalid. Since quantum field theory is a better description of matter at high energies, this naturally leads us to consider quantum field theory as the description of matter which must take over in the very early Universe, and this realization led to the discovery of the inflationary scenario. What follows is a brief overview of principles, progress and problems in inflationary cosmology. For more details, the reader is referred to .

## II The Inflationary Universe Scenario

The inflationary Universe scenario  is based on the simple hypothesis that there was a time interval in the early Universe beginning at some time $`t_i`$ and ending at a later time $`t_R`$ (the “reheating time”) during which the scale factor is exponentially expanding. Such a period is called “de Sitter” or “inflationary”. The success of Big Bang nucleosynthesis demands that this time interval was long before the time of nucleosynthesis. It turns out that during the inflationary phase, the energy of matter is stored in some new form (see below). At the time $`t_R`$ of reheating, all this energy is released as thermal energy. This is a nonadiabatic process during which the entropy of the Universe increases by a large factor.

Independent of any specific realization, the above simple hypothesis of inflation leads immediately to possible solutions of the horizon, flatness and formation of structure problems. Fig. 4 is a sketch of how a period of inflation can solve the horizon problem. During inflation, the forward light cone increases exponentially compared to a model without inflation, whereas the region over which isotropy is observed is not affected. Hence, provided inflation lasts sufficiently long, the forward light cone at the time of last scattering of CMB photons can be made larger than the region from which the microwave photons are reaching us today.

Inflation also can solve the flatness problem. The key point is that at the time of reheating, the entropy of the Universe increases by a large factor, and this drives the Universe towards spatial flatness, as can be seen from the FRW equations. In fact, one of the key predictions of inflationary cosmology is that the Universe should be spatially flat to great accuracy (although it is possible to construct special models of inflation which produce any given deviation from spatial flatness).

Most importantly, inflation provides a mechanism which in a causal way generates the primordial perturbations required to explain the nonrandom distribution of matter on the scales of galaxies and galaxy clusters, and to produce small-amplitude anisotropies in the CMB. At any given time, microphysics can act coherently on scales up to the Hubble radius $`H^1(t)`$. The key point is that during the inflationary period the Hubble radius is constant, whereas the physical length scale associated with fluctuations which have fixed comoving scale increases exponentially. Thus, as is depicted in Fig. 5, provided that the inflationary period is sufficiently long, all comoving scales of cosmological interest today had a physical wavelength smaller than the Hubble radius in the early stages of inflation. Thus, it is possible without violating causality to have a mechanism which generates microscopic-scale fluctuations during the period of inflation whose wavelengths then get stretched exponentially so that they can become the seeds for structure in the present Universe.

As will be discussed in Section 4, the density perturbations produced during inflation are due to quantum fluctuations in the matter and gravitational fields$`^{\text{[6, 7]}}`$. These fluctuations are continously generated during the period of inflation. Once the physical wavelength equals the Hubble radius, the vacuum oscillations freeze out, the quantum state is squeezed, and the highly squeezed state at late time appears as a state with a large number of particles, representing the density fluctuations at late times. The amplitude of these fluctuations is given by the Hubble expansion rate $`H`$. Since $`H`$ is approximately constant during the period of inflation, this mechanism of quantum vacuum fluctuations freezing out and becoming classical density fluctuations leads to the prediction that the spectrum of fluctuations should be scale invariant, i.e. the physical measure of the amplitude of fluctuations at late times should be independent of the wavenumber $`k`$:

$$k^3|\delta _k|^2=\mathrm{const},$$
(4)
where $`\delta _k`$ is the fractional energy density fluctuation in momentum space. Thus, independent of the specific mechanism which drives inflation, as long as the expansion is almost exponential, the spectrum of fluctuations is predicted to be almost scale-invariant. As will be discussed in Section 4, this quantitative prediction of inflationary cosmology is confirmed by observations. However, as will be mentioned in Section 5, this prediction may depend on unstated assumptions about the trans-Planckian physics.

## III How to Obtain Inflation

Because in the year 1980, when inflationary cosmology was being developed, quantum field theory was the best available description of matter at high energies such as must have occurred close to the Big Bang, it in retrospect seems obvious to turn to it for a possible implementation of the inflationary Universe scenario. Since scalar matter field are supposed to play an important role in high energy physics, in particular for implementing the spontaneous breaking of internal gauge symmetries, it is necessary to consider the role of such fields in cosmology.

If we assume that Einstein’s equations remain valid in the early Universe, then it follows from the FRW equations (2) that an equation of state with negative pressure $`p\rho `$ is required to obtain exponential inflation. In order to obtain an accelerated expansion (“generalized inflation”), an equation of state with $`p<(1/3)\rho `$ is needed. In the context of renormalizable quantum field Lagrangians, it is only scalar fields which provide the possibility to obtain inflation. From the action of a scalar quantum field $`\phi `$ (in an expanding space-time) it immediately follows that the energy density and pressure of such a field are given by

$`\rho `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\dot{\phi })^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2a^2}}(\phi )^2+V(\phi )`$ (5)
$`p`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\dot{\phi })^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6a^2}}(\phi )^2V(\phi ),`$ (6)
where $`V(\phi )`$ is the potential energy density. It thus follows that if the scalar field is homogeneous and static, but the potential energy positive, then the equation of state $`p=\rho `$ necessary for exponential inflation results. This is the idea behind potential-driven inflation.

Guth’s initial hope was that the same scalar field responsible for the spontaneous symmetry breaking of a unified gauge symmetry could be the inflaton, the field responsible for inflation. However, this hope cannot be realized since the potential of such a scalar field is too steep in order to provide a period of more than a few Hubble times $`H^1`$ during which the field kinetic energy remains negligible. This follows almost immediately by considering the variational equation of motion for $`\phi `$, which in the absence of spatial gradients becomes

$$\ddot{\phi }+3H\dot{\phi }=V^{}(\phi ),$$
(7)
where a prime denotes the derivative with respect to $`\phi `$.

Although at the present time there are many models for inflation, there is no single convincing one. Chaotic inflation  is a prototypical model. It assumes the existence of a new scalar field, the “inflaton” with a smooth potential (see Fig. 6). The inflaton is so weakly coupled that it does not start out in thermal equilibrium in the early Universe. Most of the phase space of initial conditions consists of values of $`\phi `$ which are large (compared to the Planck scale). It follows from the equation of motion (7) that for such initial conditions the scalar field will roll slowly (in the sense that $`\ddot{\phi }3H\dot{\phi }`$) for a long (compared to $`H^1`$) time, thus yielding inflation. Once $`\phi `$ drops much below the Planck scale, the kinetic energy begins to dominate, the field oscillates around its minimum and releases its energy to regular matter via interaction terms in the Lagrangian.

## IV Progress in Inflationary Cosmology

Simple prototypical models of inflation predict a scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic fluctuations (adiabatic in this context means that the energy density fluctuations in all components of matter are proportional), and this will arise naturally in the context of inflation if during the phase of inflationary expansion a single scalar field dominates the dynamics). This prediction of the inflationary scenario has recently been confirmed to high accuracy by the measurements of CMB anisotropies. Microwave anisotropies are usually quantified by expanding the temperature maps into spherical harmonics and calculating the power at different values of the angular quantum number $`l`$. Fig. 7  shows a compilation of the recent measurements. The predictions of a theory based on a scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic fluctuations with a background cosmology which is taken to be dominated today by a remnant cosmological constant which contributes $`70\%`$ to the density required for a spatially flat Universe (most of the other $`30\%`$ is believed to be made up of cold dark matter) fits the data very well, whereas a model with a background dominated by cold dark matter does not reproduce the observed details of the spectrum in the region of the oscillations of the spectrum.

Note the oscillations in the spectrum at values of $`l`$ larger than $`100`$. These “acoustic” oscillations are an imprint of the coherence of the primordial fluctuations. Refer to Fig. 8 for a sketch of the mechanism by which density fluctuations induce CMB anisotropies. If we imagine the inhomogeneities as a superposition of plane waves (which evolve independently in the early Universe since their amplitudes are small), then inflation predicts that these waves start oscillating with the same phase at the time when the wavelength equals the Hubble radius. Thus, when measured at the time of last scattering, the phase of the wave is a periodically varying function of $`l`$. Maxima and minima of the waves result in maxima of the temperature anisotropies on the corresponding angular scales, nodes of the waves result in minima (see e.g.  for a detailed discussion of the physics of the acoustic oscillations).

The theoretical understanding of the theory by which quantum vacuum fluctuations on microscopic scales evolve to give rise to classical inhomogeneities on cosmological wavelengths is one of the main areas of progress in inflationary cosmology. Since it is necessary to propagate the fluctuations on scales larger than the Hubble radius, the Newtonian theory of cosmological perturbations obviously is inapplicable, and a general relativistic analysis is needed. On these scales, matter is essentially frozen in comoving coordinates. However, space-time fluctuations can still increase in amplitude. In principle, it is straightforward to work out the general relativistic theory of linear fluctuations. One linearizes the Einstein and scalar matter field equations about an expanding FRW background cosmology. Tedious but straightforward algebra gives a set of coupled linear differential equations for the metric and matter perturbations.

At the level of linear fluctuations, perturbations with different wavelengths decouple. Hence, the analysis becomes simple if we work in momentum space. Furthermore, there are several independent degrees of freedom. First, there are gravitational waves, space-time perturbations which do not couple to matter. Next, there are vector perturbations which correspond to rotational degrees of freedom. Finally, there are the scalar metric fluctuations, space-time inhomogeneities produced by matter perturbations. The scalar metric fluctuations are the most difficult to analyze, in particular since one must be careful to isolate the physical degrees of freedom from gauge artefacts, modes which correspond to space-time coordinate transformations. For matter described by a single scalar field, as is the case in many prototypical inflationary models, there is only one matter fluctuating degree of freedom. According to the Einstein equations, matter fluctuations are coupled to corresponding scalar metric perturbations. There can be no scalar metric fluctuations without matter inhomogeneities. Thus, restricting attention to scalar metric fluctuations of one particular wavelength, there is only one physical degree of freedom. This implies that the analysis of scalar metric fluctuations is reducible to the theory of a single free scalar field (free because we are dealing with linear fluctuations) in a time-dependent background (the time-dependence is set by the background cosmology).

As mentioned earlier, the primordial fluctuations in an inflationary cosmology result from quantum fluctuations. At the linearized level, the equations describing both gravitational and matter perturbations can be quantized in a consistent way (for a detailed review see ). The first step of this analysis is to expand the gravitational and matter action to quadratic order in the metric and matter fluctuation variables. Focusing on the scalar metric perturbations, it turns out that one can express the resulting action in terms of a variable $`v`$ which is the coordinate-invariant scalar matter field fluctuation

$$v=a\left(\delta \phi +\frac{(\phi ^{(0)})^{}}{}\mathrm{\Phi }\right).$$
(8)
Here, $`\phi ^{(0)}`$ is the background scalar matter field, $`\delta \phi `$ is the scalar field fluctuation, a prime denotes the derivative with respect to conformal time $`\eta `$ ($`\eta `$ being defined by $`dt=ad\eta `$), $`=a^{}/a`$, and $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the generalized Newtonian gravitational potential (in a coordinate system in which the metric tensor - including fluctuations - is diagonal, $`2\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the perturbation of the time-time component of the metric). It can then be shown that the action $`S_2`$ for the fluctuations reduces to the action of a single gauge invariant free scalar field (namely $`v`$) with a time dependent mass  (the time dependence reflects the expansion of the background space-time)

$$S_2=\frac{1}{2}𝑑td^3x\left(v^2(v)^2+\frac{z^{\prime \prime }}{z}v^2\right),$$
(9)
where the function

$$z=\frac{a\phi _0^{}}{},$$
(10)
a function of the background fields, determines the effective mass for the field $`v`$. The action $`S_2`$ has the same form as the action for a free scalar matter field in a time dependent gravitational or electromagnetic background, and we can use standard methods to quantize this theory (see e.g. ). Each momentum mode of the field obeys a harmonic oscillator equation with time dependent mass. The time dependence of the mass is reflected in the nontrivial form of the solutions of the mode equations. Let us now follow the evolution of a particular mode from the beginning of inflation until late times. The mode starts out in its vacuum state when its wavelength is smaller than the Hubble radius. While the wavelength remains smaller than the Hubble radius, the mode functions oscillate since the time dependence of the mass is negligible, as can be seen from (9). However, once the mode crosses the Hubble radius, the spatial gradient term becomes negligible and the mass term begins to dominate. The mode function thus no longer oscillates, but its amplitude begins to grow as $`vz`$. This corresponds to squeezing of the vacuum state and corresponds to the generation of fluctuations. This calculation can be followed up to the time the mode re-enters the Hubble radius at late times. It turns out (see Section 5) that the amplitude of the resulting density generically is predicted to be several orders of magnitude larger than what is compatible with current observations, unless some parameter in the quantum field theory Lagrangian is set to a value much smaller than would be inferred from dimensional analysis.

## V Problems of Inflationary Cosmology

In spite of the spectacular success of the inflationary scenario in predicting a spectrum of microwave anisotropies and large-scale density fluctuations in excellent agreement with the recent observation, scalar field-driven inflationary models suffer from some serious conceptual problems.

The main success of inflationary cosmology is that it provides a causal theory for the generation of large-scale cosmological fluctuations. However, this success directly leads to a major problem for most realizations of scalar field-based models of inflation studied up to now. It concerns the amplitude of the density perturbations which are induced by quantum fluctuations during the period of accelerated expansion as discussed in the previous section. Unless a parameter in the scalar field potential is set to have a value several orders of magnitude smaller than what would be given by dimensional analysis, the models predict an amplitude of the fluctuation spectrum several order of magnitude larger than the predicted amplitude. For example, in a model with a single inflaton field with quartic potential, the quartic coupling constant $`\lambda `$ must be of the order of $`10^{12}`$ in order that the resulting amplitude of fluctuations agrees with observations. This situation is clearly unsatisfactory for a cosmological scenario motivated by the desire to eliminate cosmological fine-tunings. There have been many attempts to justify such small parameters based on specific particle physics models, but no single convincing model has emerged. However, this is probably the least serious of the problems mentioned here.

In many models of inflation, in particular in chaotic inflation, the period of inflation is so long that comoving scales of cosmological interest today correspond to a physical wavelength much smaller than the Planck length at the beginning of inflation. In extrapolating the evolution of cosmological perturbations according to linear theory to these very early times, one is implicitly making the assumption that the theory remains perturbative to arbitrarily high energies, and that the classical theory of general relativity remains the appropriate framework for describing space-time. Both of these assumptions are clearly not justified. It has recently been shown that some (admittedly quite violent) changes to the physics on length scales smaller than the Planck length can lead to a spectrum of density fluctuations totally different from what the usual theory predicts . This can be called the “trans-Planckian problem” for inflationary cosmology. On the other hand it shows that in an inflationary Universe, the spectrum of fluctuations can potentially be used to explore Planck-scale physics, thus turning the “problem” into a “window” of opportunity. Planck-scale physics may not only alter the spectrum of fluctuations, it can also dramatically alter the background cosmology, as is seen in “Pre-big-bang Cosmology” , a string-motivated dilaton-gravity model which undergoes a dilaton-dominated phase of super-exponential expansion.

Scalar field-driven inflation does not eliminate singularities from cosmology. Although the standard assumptions of the Penrose-Hawking theorems (the theorems which is the context of Einstein gravity coupled to classical fluid matter show that an initial cosmological singularity is inevitable) break down if matter has an equation of state with negative pressure, as is the case during inflation, nevertheless it can be shown that an initial singularity persists in inflationary cosmology . This implies that the theory is incomplete. In particular, the physical initial value problem is not defined.

The Achilles heel of our current inflationary models in without doubt the “cosmological constant problem”. There is some as of yet unknown mechanism which prevents the bare cosmological constant, which in theories with quantum fields is predicted to be at least 62 orders of magnitude larger than the observational limit (this number comes from assuming the cancellation of vacuum energies on scales larger than the supersymmetry breaking scale taken to be about $`1`$TeV), from gravitating. How do we know that this unknown mechanism does not also lead the transient “cosmological constant” given by the potential energy of the scalar field to be gravitationally inert, thus eliminating the basis of scalar field-driven inflation?

## VI Future Directions

In the light of the problems of scalar field potential-driven inflation discussed in the previous sections, many cosmologists have begun thinking about new avenues towards early Universe cosmology which, while maintaining (some of) the successes of inflation, address and resolve some of its difficulties. In the same way that inflationary cosmology builds on and transcends standard big bang cosmology by making use of a new theory of matter (quantum field theory in the case of inflation), it is quite likely that a resolution of the problems of inflationary cosmology will once again come from an improved description of matter at high energies. The main candidate at the moment for such a theory is string theory. String theory, in fact, will also lead to a modified picture of space-time at short distances, and may allow a unified quantum description of both the background space-time and of the cosmological fluctuations.

There are at least two ways in which an improved cosmological model could come about. It is possible that a better understanding of string theory will lead to a convincing realization of inflation which does not suffer from the problems mentioned in the previous section, and that many of the cosmological predictions of inflation for present day observations would remain unchanged. However, it is also possible that string theory will provide alternatives to inflationary cosmology, a possibility which would lead to clear observational signatures.

There are several reasons to hope that string theory might lead to an improved realization of inflation. One reason is that the vacuum space of string theory is a complicated moduli space, and the individual directions in this space (e.g. radii of extra dimensions) can be associated with scalar fields with potentials which vanish at the perturbative level. It is hoped that nonperturbative corrections might generate in a natural way the flat potentials required for inflation. The realization that string theory contains higher dimensional fundamental objects called branes has led to speculations that our space-time might be a brane in a higher dimensional space-time. These “brane-world” scenarios have opened new avenues to realizing inflation in the context of string theory (see e.g.  for a recent attempt and for references to earlier work).

However, it is also possible that string theory will generate an alternative to inflationary cosmology which maintains most of the successes of inflation, but at the same time gives rise to predictions with which this new theory can be distinguished from inflation. One approach which has received a lot of recent attention is pre-big-bang cosmology , a theory in which the Universe starts in an empty and flat dilaton-dominated phase which leads to super-exponential expansion. A nice feature of this theory is that the mechanism of acceleration is completely independent of a scalar field potential and thus independent of the cosmological constant issue. Pre-big-bang cosmology in its simplest realizations does not give rise to a spectrum of scale-invariant adiabatic fluctuations. Rather, the spectrum is isocurvature (see e.g.  for a recent review and original references). Another recent attempt to provide an alternative to inflation in the context of string theory is the “Ekpyrotic Universe” scenario , a nonsingular cosmological model designed to solve the problems of SBB cosmology mentioned in Section 1 and to provide a spectrum of scale-invariant adiabatic perturbations without any period of acceleration (see, however,  for criticisms of this scenario).

It is, however, also possible that some of the problems of inflationary cosmology mentioned in Section 5 can be addressed within the context of more conventional physics (general relativity plus quantum field theory). In particular, it is possible that some of the problems are consequences of neglecting the intrinsically nonlinear structure of general relativity (see e.g.  for some speculations along these lines).

###### Acknowledgements.

I am grateful to Douglas Scott for providing Figures 1 and 7. This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy under Contract DE-FG02-91ER40688, Task A.


text:
# Recurrent microblazar activity in Cygnus X-1?

## 1 Introduction

Cygnus X-1 is the most extensively studied black hole candidate in the Galaxy. It is a very bright X-ray binary with a compact object of $`10.1`$ $`M_{}`$ and a companion O9.7 Iab star of $`17.8`$ $`M_{}`$ (Herrero et al. 1995), at an estimated distance of $`2`$ kpc (e.g. Gierliński et al. 1999 and references therein). As in other sources of this type, the X-ray emission switches between soft and hard states, being most of the time in the latter. The spectrum in both states can be approximately represented as the sum of a blackbody plus a power law with exponential cut-off (e.g. Poutanen et al. 1997). During the soft state the blackbody component is dominant and the power law is steep, with a photon spectral index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2.8`$ (e.g. Frontera et al. 2001). During the hard state more energy is in the power law component, which is then harder, with photon indices $`1.6`$ (e.g. Gierliński et al. 1997). The blackbody component is usually understood as emission from a cold, optically thick accretion disk, whereas the power law component is thought to be originated in an optically thin hot corona by thermal Comptonization of disk photons (Poutanen et al. 1997, Dove et al. 1997). The hot corona would fill the inner few tens of gravitational radii around the black hole. The accretion disk penetrates only marginally in the coronal region. In the hard state the thermal X-ray emission is dominated by the corona, with typical luminosities of a few times $`10^{37}`$ erg s-1. In the soft states, the disk approaches to the black hole and then most of the energy dissipation occurs through it (Poutanen et al. 1997; see also Poutanen & Coppi 1998). Cygnus X-1 has a persistent, mildly variable, compact continuum counterpart of flat spectrum (e.g. Pooley et al. 1999). During many years, evidence for non-thermal radio jets in Cygnus X-1 was lacking, despite the efforts of the observers (e.g. Martí et al. 1996). Finally, the jet was detected by Stirling et al. (2001) at milliarcsecond resolution using VLBA observations. The jet-like feature extends up to $`15`$ mas with an opening angle of less than 2 degrees. The spectum seems to be flat, and no counterjet is observed. The total radio emission at 8.4 GHz is $`11`$ mJy, with variations of $`2`$ mJy over timescales of 2 days (Stirling et al. 2001). The average angle with the line of sight, if the jet is perpendicular to the disk, seems to be $`30^{}`$ (Fender 2001). Very recently, the Interplanetary Network detected a transient soft-gamma ray event from the general direction of Cygnus X-1 (Golenetskii et al. 2002). Analysis of previous data indicates that at least other two events were observed during 1995. These latter events were also detected by BATSE instrument on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, suggesting that they were originated in Cygnus X-1 (Schmidt 2002). The luminosities above 15 keV of the outbursts were in the range $`12\times 10^{38}`$ erg s-1, much higher than the typical thermal luminosity in the hard state. In this letter we suggest that these flaring events can be interpreted in terms of non-thermal microblazar activity (Mirabel & Rodríguez 1999). We study the effects of the interaction of the relativistic jet with the ambient photon fields from the accretion disk, the corona, and the companion star, and we calculate the expected non-thermal contribution to the keV-MeV spectrum. The recurrent character of the events can be explained through variable Doppler boosting originated in the precession of the jet (Kaufman-Bernadó et al. 2002). In the next section we present the model, and then we discuss the implications.

## 2 Non-thermal high-energy emission for Cygnus X-1

We shall consider the effects of the injection of a relativistic leptonic jet at a few Schwarzschild radii from the central black hole and its subsequent propagation through the ambient photon fields (see a sketch of the situation in Figure 1). The individual electrons have Lorentz factors $`\gamma `$ in the lab frame and the flow is assumed to have a bulk Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. In accordance to the disk/jet symbiosis model (e.g. Falcke & Biermann 1999, Markoff et al. 2001) and the estimated accretion rate of Cygnus X-1 ($`10^8`$ $`M_{}`$ yr-1, e.g. Poutanen et al. 1997), we adopt a mean particle density $`n=10^{14}`$ cm-3 for the jet at $`10r_\mathrm{s}`$ from the black hole. The electron energy distribution will be assumed to be a power law given by (in the lab frame, Georganopoulos et al. 2001): $`n(\gamma )=\frac{k}{4\pi }D^{2+p}\gamma ^pP(\gamma _1D,\gamma _2D,\gamma )`$, where $`k`$ is a constant and $`D=\left[\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(1\beta \mathrm{cos}\varphi \right)\right]^1`$ is the usual Doppler factor: $`\beta `$ and $`\varphi `$ are the bulk velocity in units of $`c`$ and the viewing angle, respectively. The function $`P`$ is 1 for $`\gamma _1D<\gamma <\gamma _2D`$ and 0 otherwise.

The jet will traverse first the coronal region. The parameters that characterize this region and its photon field in the hard state change with time. We shall assume here the typical values given by Poutanen et al. (1997) in their Table 1. All photon fields that interact with the jet are shown in Figure 2. The photon field of the corona is assumed to be isotropic. External inverse Compton interactions with these photons can be treated using the head-on approximation in the Klein-Nishina regime since $`\gamma ϵ_01`$, with $`ϵ_0`$ the average energy of the coronal photons in units of the electron rest energy ($`ϵ_0m_\mathrm{e}c^2100`$ keV). The reader is referred to Georganopoulos et al. (2001) for details of calculation. In the case of the photons from the accretion disk and the companion star we can work in the Thomson regime, taken into account that the photons from the disc come from behind the jet, introducing an additional factor $`(1\mathrm{cos}\varphi )^{(p+1)/2}`$ that reduces the effects of beaming (Dermer et al. 1992). The stellar photons, instead, can be treated as an isotropic field. The emerging spectrum of the specific luminosity can be approximated by a power law of index $`(p1)/2`$ in the Thomson regime (Georganopoulos et al. 2001, 2002; Kaufman-Bernadó et al. 2002). When $`\gamma _2\gamma _1`$ this can be written as:

$`L_ϵ={\displaystyle \frac{dL}{dϵd\mathrm{\Omega }}}D^{2+p}{\displaystyle \frac{kV\sigma _\mathrm{T}cU2^{p1}}{\pi ϵ_0(1+p)(3+p)}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ}{ϵ_0}}\right)^{(p1)/2},`$ (1)
where $`\sigma _\mathrm{T}`$ is the Thomson cross section, $`V`$ is the interaction volume, and $`U`$ is the average energy density of the photon field. In the Klein-Nishina regime, where numerical integrations are necessary, the results significantly depart from a power law, resulting in a softer spectrum. The Compton losses in the different regions will modify the injected electron spectrum, introducing a break in the power law at the energy at which the cooling time equals the escape time. This will occur at (e.g. Longair 1997): $`\gamma _\mathrm{b}=(3m_\mathrm{e}c^2)/(4\sigma _\mathrm{T}\mathrm{\Gamma }^2Ut_{\mathrm{esc}})`$. Here $`t_{\mathrm{esc}}`$ is average time spent by the particles in the field region (typically $`t_{\mathrm{esc}}l/c`$, with $`l`$ the linear size), and the rest of the symbols have their usual meanings. The spectrum will steepen from an index $`p`$ to $`p+1`$ for energies higher than $`\gamma _\mathrm{b}`$. After the interaction of the jet with the coronal region, the modified spectrum will be injected in the stellar photon field region, suffering further losses and modifications. In our calculations we have adopted two different values for the original electron energy index: a hard index $`p=1.5`$ and a steeper index $`p=2.3`$. The jet was assumed forming an angle of 30 degrees with the line of sight, and a bulk Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=5`$ was adopted. The initial part of the jet was modeled as a cylindrical structure; the coronal region, following Poutanen et al. (1997), was considered as a spherical region of $`500`$ km in radius. Gamma-rays produced within this region will be mostly absorbed in the local field through pair creation. Using the simple formulae by Herterich (1974) along with the adopted parameters for the coronal region, we estimate an optical depth $`\tau 1`$ for photons of 5 MeV. The probability for a 10 MeV photon to escape from the corona is only 0.1.

The results obtained for the different models are shown in Figures 3 and 4. There, we show the different components due to external Compton scattering of the different photon fields in the lab frame, for the different injected electron distributions we have assumed. This non-thermal contribution should be added to the thermal components shown in Figure 2 in order to recover the total emission. We can see that the non-thermal emission is dominated by the up-scattering of the stellar photons. Above 5 MeV almost all energy flux comes from this component. For a viewing angle of 30 degrees, we still have the thermal emission dominating by a factor of 5. But if we introduce the gravitational effects of the companion star, then precession of the disk should occur (Larwood 1998, Kaufman-Bernadó et al. 2002). In Figure 5 we show the modification of the beaming amplification factor of the external inverse Compton emission for a precessing angle of 16.5 degrees. The time axis is normalized in units of the period $`T`$. We see that there is a variation of about 1 order of magnitude in the emission measured in the observer’s frame because of the precession. This means that when the jet is closer to the line of sight, the non-thermal luminosity can reach values of $`10^{38}`$ erg s-1, as observed in the recurrent outbursts detected by the Interplanetary Network. The transit through the peak of flux magnification can be very fast in the observer’s frame, leading to quick and transient states when the total flux is dominated by the non-thermal contribution.

The angular velocity of the tidally induced precession can be approximated by $`\omega _\mathrm{p}3Gm\mathrm{cos}\theta /4r_\mathrm{m}^3\omega _\mathrm{d}`$ (Katz 1980, Romero et al. 2000), where $`\theta `$ is the half-opening angle of the precession cone, $`m`$ is the mass of star, $`r_m`$ is the binary separation, and $`\omega _\mathrm{d}`$ is the Keplerian velocity of the accretion disc, which can be written in terms of the mass $`M`$ of the black hole as $`\omega _\mathrm{d}=(GM/r_\mathrm{d}^3)^{1/2}`$ . For $`\theta =16.5`$ deg as we have assumed, the observed orbital period of 5.6 days, and a precessing period of $`140`$ days (Brocksopp et al. 1999, see below), we get a disk size of $`3.9\times 10^{11}`$ cm, quite reasonable for a wind-accreting system like Cygnus X-1.

## 3 Discussion

The above outlined model incorporates the different known components of Cygnus X-1, accretion disk, corona, stellar companion, and relativistic jet, in an integrated picture where transient non-thermal outbursts are a natural and expected result. The amplitude of these outbursts can be similar to what has been recently observed in some intriguing flaring episodes in this source. Our model is different from the model recently proposed by Georganopoulos et al. (2002) not only because we incorporate the effects of precession, but also because we do not attempt to explain the bulk of X-ray emission as non-thermal all the time. This emission is normally dominated by thermal Comptonization in the hot corona around the black hole, except during the microblazar phase, and in this case we incorporate the effects of the interaction of the jet with the corona in our calculations. We emphasize that, as it is shown in Figures 3 and 4, during the transient microblazar phase the X- and soft $`\gamma `$-ray spectrum will be softer than in the normal hard state, when the coronal emission dominates. This is an unavoidable consequence of the steepening produced by Compton losses in the injected electron spectrum and can be used to test our proposal, not only through new observations of Cygnus X-1, but also of other potential microblazars as LS5039 (Paredes et al. 2000). Recently, Brocksopp et al. (1999) have found multiwavelength evidence for the presence of a $`142.0\pm 7.1`$ days period in Cygnus X-1. The optical and X-ray period seem to be originated in the precession of the accretion disc (Brocksopp et al. 1999), whereas the modulation at radio wavelengths is probably produced by the associated precession of the jet (see Pooley et al. 1999). The morphology of the extended radio jet, with a clear bend, is also consistent with a precession of the inner beam (Stirling et al. 2001). The periodic signal in the radio lightcurve, however, is not expected to be as strong as at high energies since the magnification factor for the synchrotron emission goes as $`D^{(3+p)/2}`$, whereas for the external Compton component it goes as $`D^{2+p}`$ (Georganopoulos et al. 2002). The time lag between the two high-energy flares observed in 1995 is $`75`$ days, about a half of the value reported by Brocksopp et al. (1999), but since Cygnus X-1 is a wind-accreting system variations in the period along a span of several years are possible. Certainly, more observations on longer time spans are necessary to constrain the dynamical models. In the model presented here the duty cycle of the blazar phase is rather small, $`10\%`$. Future X-ray observations of non-thermal flares can be used for a better determination of the geometric parameters. An interesting feature of our model is that most of the gamma-rays produced within the coronal region will be absorbed by pair production. Sooner or later these pairs will annihilate producing a broad, blueshifted feature in the MeV spectrum. Details of calculation of the emerging spectrum are beyond the scope of this Letter (see Abraham et al. 2001), but it is clear that the forthcoming INTEGRAL satellite will be able to probe Cygnus X-1 spectrum and its temporal evolution at this energy range, helping to test and constrain the model here proposed. Hopefully, very soon we will be able to clarify the role played by non-thermal processes in this fascinating object.

###### Acknowledgements.

G.E.R. is mainly supported by Fundación Antorchas. Additional support comes from the research grants PICT 03-04881 (ANPCT) and PIP 0438/98 (CONICET). He is grateful to Isabelle Grenier for useful discussions and to the staff of the Service D’Astrophysique, Centre d’Etudes de Saclay, where part of his research for this project was carried out. I.F.M. acknowledges support from grant PIP 0049/98 and Fundación Antorchas. This research benefited from the ECOS French-Argentinian cooperation agreement.


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# Kolmogorov Scaling for the ϵ-entropy in a Forced Turbulence Simulation [1]

## Abstract

We have shown that the $`ϵ`$-entropy determined from the time-series of the velocity fluctuation in a forced turbulence simulated by the lattice Boltzmann method obeys the Kolmogorov scaling. Keywords: forced turbulence, Kolmogorov scaling, $`ϵ`$-entropy, lattice Boltzmann method

Turbulence is one of the typical phenomena with multiscale motions. Each phenomena of a scale strongly couples with all the other scales of turbulent motion. In order to analyze such a system a scale-dependent entropy, the so-called $`ϵ`$-entropy, works well. For example, the time series of the velocity fluctuation in turbulence leads to a non-trivial scaling relation of the $`ϵ`$-entropy, $`h(ϵ)ϵ^3`$, expected from the Kolmogorov scaling. The existing experimental data are consistent with this scaling. In this Short Note we try to show the consistency of the scaling with the simulation on the basis of the lattice Boltzmann method which is one of the easiest ways to simulate turbulence.

The distribution function $`f_i(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ of the particle with the velocity $`\stackrel{}{c}_i`$ at position $`\stackrel{}{r}`$ and time $`t`$ obeys the lattice Boltzmann equation

$$f_i(\stackrel{}{r}+\stackrel{}{c}_i,t+1)f_i(\stackrel{}{r},t)=\omega [f_i(\stackrel{}{r},t)f_i^0(\stackrel{}{r},t)],$$
(1)
where we have adopted the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) model for the collision term and the time step has been chosen as unity. The position $`\stackrel{}{r}`$ of the particle is restricted on the cubic lattice and the lattice spacing is chosen as unity. The local equilibrium distribution $`f_i^0(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ is assumed to be given as

$$f_i^0(\stackrel{}{r},t)=w_i\rho [1+3(\stackrel{}{c}_i\stackrel{}{u})+\frac{9}{2}(\stackrel{}{c}_i\stackrel{}{u})^2\frac{3}{2}(\stackrel{}{u}\stackrel{}{u})].$$
(2)
The density $`\rho `$ and the velocity $`\stackrel{}{u}`$ of the fluid are given by the sum of the contributions of the particles as $`\rho =_if_i(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ and $`\rho \stackrel{}{u}=_if_i(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{}{c}_i`$, respectively. Using the multiscale analysis the Navier-Stokes equation, which is supposed to be able to describe turbulence, is derived from the present BGK lattice Boltzmann equation and the corresponding viscosity $`\nu =(1/\omega 1/2)/3`$.

In the following we use a 15-velocity model and $`\stackrel{}{c}_i`$ is chosen as $`\stackrel{}{c}_1=(0,0,0)`$, $`\stackrel{}{c}_i=(\pm 1,0,0),(0,\pm 1,0),(0,0,\pm 1)`$ for $`i=2,3,\mathrm{},7`$ and $`\stackrel{}{c}_i=(\pm 1,\pm 1,\pm 1)`$ for $`i=8,9,\mathrm{},15`$. Then the weight factor $`w_i`$ for the local equilibrium distribution is determined as $`w_1=2/9`$, $`w_i=1/9`$ for $`i=2,3,\mathrm{},7`$ and $`w_i=1/72`$ for $`i=8,9,\mathrm{},15`$. The relaxation frequency $`\omega `$ is chosen as $`\omega =1.94`$.

In order to simulate forced turbulence we add the forcing term $`\stackrel{}{g}_i\stackrel{}{F}(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ due to an applied body force $`\stackrel{}{F}(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ to the right hand side of eq. (1). In order to reproduce the Navier-Stokes equation we should choose as $`\stackrel{}{g}_i=\stackrel{}{c}_i/10`$ for the present 15-velocity model. For simplicity we apply a solenoidal force in $`y`$-direction, $`\stackrel{}{F}=(0,F_y(z,t),0)`$, and $`F_y(z,t)`$ is a Gaussian white noise whose variance $`\sigma `$ is a function of the lattice coordinate in $`z`$-direction, $`\sigma =|0.01\times \mathrm{sin}(2\pi k_fz/L)|`$, where $`L`$ is the linear dimension of the simulation region of cubic box and $`L=100`$ ($`1x,y,z100`$). We have adopted the periodic boundary condition. Although we have chosen as $`k_f=4`$, the results of the simulation is insensitive to the choice.

In the initial state of the simulation the fluid density is uniform, $`\rho =1`$, and the spatial distribution of the fluid velocity $`\stackrel{}{u}`$ is Gaussian with the variance $`\sigma =\sqrt{0.0075}`$.

The Reynolds number $`R`$ for our simulation is estimated as $`R=\sqrt{\stackrel{}{u}^2}L/2\pi \nu `$ and time-dependent as shown in Fig. 1. Here $`\mathrm{}`$ represents the spatial average. In our simulation we can realize a turbulent state for relatively small Reynolds number, since we add random force.

We focus our attention to the time series of the $`y`$-component $`u_y(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ of the fluid velocity $`\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ as shown in Fig. 2, since our system is anisotropic due to the forcing. This turbulent signal is characterized by the exit-time $`\tau (ϵ;\stackrel{}{r})`$ at position $`\stackrel{}{r}`$. At the exit-time $`t=\tau (ϵ;\stackrel{}{r})`$ the first exit satisfying the condition, $`|u_y(\stackrel{}{r},t_0+t)u_y(\stackrel{}{r},t_0)|>ϵ/2`$, occurs. The time $`t`$ is measured from $`t_0`$ and $`t_0=1000`$ in our simulation regarding the states at the first 1000 time-steps as transitional.

The mean of the exit-time, $`\tau (ϵ)\tau (ϵ;\stackrel{}{r})`$, is related to the $`ϵ`$-entropy, $`h(ϵ)`$, as

$$h(ϵ)\frac{1}{\tau (ϵ)}.$$
(3)
In the region where Kolmogorov’s 4/5 law holds the velocity difference between two points behaves as $`|\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r}+\stackrel{}{R},t_0)\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r},t_0)||\stackrel{}{R}|^{1/3}`$. Under the assumption of Taylor’s hypothesis, $`[\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r},t_0+t)\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r},t_0)][\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r}+\stackrel{}{R},t_0)\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r},t_0)]`$, with $`|\stackrel{}{R}|=Ut`$, where $`U`$ is the mean velocity for large scale sweeping, we obtain

$$|\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r},t_0+t)\stackrel{}{u}(\stackrel{}{r},t_0)|t^{1/3},$$
(4)
as a mean-field description. Thus the definition of the exit-time leads to $`\tau (ϵ)^{1/3}ϵ`$. From eq. (3) we can conclude that $`h(ϵ)ϵ^3`$ in the above mean-field sense.

In accordance with the above scaling analysis our simulation data for $`1/\tau (ϵ)`$ shown in Fig. 3 have the scaling region for $`ϵ>ϵ_0`$ where $`ϵ_00.04`$. Thus by simulation we have established that $`h(ϵ)ϵ^3`$. For $`ϵ<ϵ_0`$, namely for short-time events, we can not expect the scaling, since the mean-field assumption for large scale sweeping is valid for the average of many events and not applicable to a few events at short time-interval. These behaviors are consistent with the experimantal data. For $`ϵϵ_0`$ the exit in the simulation occurs within the time step.

In summary we have shown that the velocity fluctuation in a forced turbulence simulated by the lattice Boltzmann method leads to the $`ϵ`$-entropy scaling, $`h(ϵ)ϵ^3`$, expected from the Kolmogorov scaling. Although the scaling relation is a robust result of the mean-field description, the intermittent aspects of turbulence are beyond the scope of the present study.

This work was supported in part by a Grand-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.