text:
# A Submillimetre Imaging Polarimeter at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope

## 1 Introduction

Linear polarization of submillimetre continuum radiation is associated with optically-thin synchrotron emission, and with partial magnetic alignment of elongated dust grains. In both cases, magnetic morphology can be deduced from the directions of polarization vectors, and these techniques are much less subject to confusion than in the optical and radio regimes, where scattering and Faraday rotation dominate the polarized signal. In the submillimetre, the limitations are that the data are only sensitive to the net plane-of-the-sky magnetic field direction within the telescope beam, and that there is no direct information on magnetic field strengths. However, with the capability to detect levels of linear polarization of 1% or less, considerable magnetic structure information can be obtained. The importance of magnetic fields is now being realised in sources ranging from disks around young stellar objects to the inner jets in active galactic nuclei (Tamura et al., 1999; Nartallo et al., 1998).

Observing techniques at submillimetre wavelengths have matured considerably in the last decade, particularly with the introduction of the first generation of continuum cameras. The chief difficulty for ground-based observations is the high opacity and time variability of the Earth’s atmosphere, and these problems are critical for polarimetry. Atmospheric absorption can be largely overcome by building telescopes at suitable high, dry sites, such as Mauna Kea in Hawaii (summit altitude 4200m), and by observing in frequency ‘windows’ away from oxygen and water absorption lines. Under the best conditions, the zenith transmission is then about 80% at a wavelength of 850 $`\mu `$m, and as much as 40% at shorter wavelengths such as 450 $`\mu `$m. The other problem affecting the quality of flux measurements is atmospheric instability, especially emissivity changes on short timescales of a few seconds. This is a particular challenge for polarimetric observations, which require measurements accurate to better than 1% over periods of minutes to hours, and necessitates sophisticated techniques for removing sky-level changes.

Submillimetre polarimetry using single-pixel photometers began about a decade ago (e.g., Flett & Murray, 1991), and a number of important detections were made both in the (sub)millimetre (e.g., Kane et al., 1993; Greaves et al., 1997; Glenn et al., 1999) and with complementary studies of warmer sources in the far-infrared (e.g., Novak et al., 1989). These observations were extremely laborious, but a major breakthrough has been made with the arrival of sensitive submillimetre and far-infrared cameras. With the inclusion of polarimeters — typically based on rotating half-wave plate designs and either internal or external to the cryogenically cooled instrument — polarization imaging of a wide variety of sources has now become feasible. A complete introduction has been presented by Hildebrand et al. (2000). In this paper, we describe observations and techniques with the new imaging polarimeter111The SCUBA Polarimeter has been funded jointly by the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the NAOJ and JSPS of Japan. SCUBA was funded by the JCMT Development Fund supported by PPARC, the National Research Council of Canada and the Netherlands Organisation for Pure Research, and built by the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, now the UK Astronomy Technology Centre. used with SCUBA, the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array (Holland et al., 1999) at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea.

## 2 Instrument Design and Performance

The general design of the polarimeter has been described by Murray et al. (1997). It is an external module that fits over the SCUBA cryostat window, and comprises a rotating half-waveplate and a fixed photo-lithographic grid (‘analyser’) (Figure 1). The waveplate is stepped to a series of fixed angles, which has the effect of rotating the incoming source plane of polarization, by twice the physical angle of rotation. The grid, with a 10 micron line spacing (of etched copper on a mylar substrate), efficiently reflects one plane of polarization that is fixed in the SCUBA reference frame. The net effect (Figure 2) is to select out a fixed component of a rotated linearly polarized signal, so that the SCUBA bolometers see a modulated signal of the form

$$S(\delta )=1/2[I_u+I_p(1+cos(4\delta 2\theta ))].$$
(1)
Here $`I_u`$ is the unpolarized intensity, $`I_p`$ describes the modulating polarized component above the minumum observed signal $`I_u`$, $`\delta `$ is the waveplate angle, and $`\theta `$ is the position angle of the polarization in a suitable co-ordinate frame. The factor of $`1/2`$ arises because one plane of polarization is reflected by the analyser; this contrasts with cameras designed specifically for polarimetry, which typically use a waveplate inside the instrument and measure both planes of polarization using two separate detector arrays (Dowell et al., 1998).

### 2.1 Waveplate design

The waveplates are made of birefringent quartz, cut to a thickness to retard one plane of polarization by half a wavelength relative to the orthogonal plane, on emerging from the plate. Since SCUBA has filters for observing at a wide range of wavelengths, from 0.35 to 2 mm, an achromatic design was adopted following the Pancharatnam method (Murray et al., 1997; Title & Rosenberg, 1981). This uses a sandwich of an odd number of individual half-waveplates whose ‘fast’ axes of polarization are offset by $`\pm 60^{}`$. The effect is a combined plate whose fast-axis direction ($`\varphi `$) is slightly wavelength-dependent, but with very good polarization modulation efficiency (PME) over a broad range of wavelengths. The plates were wax-bonded and then held in place in mounting rings. A good transmission ($`\eta `$) was achieved using single-layer polypropylene coatings to reduce reflections at the plate surfaces.

For the SCUBA polarimeter, two achromatic designs were used: one with three quartz plates to cover the 1.1, 1.35 and 2 mm bands and one with five plates for the 350, 450, 750 and 850 $`\mu `$m bands. Because SCUBA has single photometers at the millimetre wavelengths and full imaging arrays at the submillimetre wavelengths, the plates are known as ‘photometric’ and ‘array’ for convenience.

### 2.2 Performance on the JCMT

The performance of the waveplates on the telescope was first measured in October 1997, and the results are given in Table 1. Excellent PME values were measured, close to 100% at all wavelengths, and it was even found possible to operate the photometry plate in second order (3$`\lambda `$/2) at the array wavelengths. (This has advantages for complex observing programmes, because the polarimeter need not be removed to change the plate.) Nominally, measured polarization percentages should be divided by the PME to obtain the true values, but in practice this small correction is usually neglected. The transmission properties met the specifications for a single-layer coating, except at the shortest observing wavelengths, and it is suspected that re-coating and bonding of the plate might be necessary to improve this.

### 2.3 Reproducibility

An important part of the commissioning test was to confirm that the results agreed with previous polarimetric observations, from the JCMT and elsewhere. Tests included both low and high polarization sources: for example,

* 850 $`\mu `$m polarization of the DR21 cloud core was measured to be 1.70 $`\pm `$ 0.27% at $`22\pm 4^{}`$, whereas Minchin & Murray (1994) found 1.8 $`\pm `$ 0.3% at 17 $`\pm `$ 4 at 800 $`\mu `$m
* a flux peak in the Crab Nebula was detected at 1350 $`\mu `$m with 25.9 $`\pm `$ 0.6% polarization at 148 $`\pm `$ 1, while Flett & Murray (1991) obtained 25 $`\pm `$ 2% at 144 $`\pm `$ 2 at 1100 $`\mu `$m.

These results were from previous photometric polarimetry at the JCMT, and are for dust and synchrotron emission respectively. Since the previous instrument had no imaging capability, reproducibility in this mode relied on data from other telescopes: for example, our 850 $`\mu `$m polarization map of OMC1 (Coppin et al., 2000) is very similar to the 350 $`\mu `$m results of Schleuning (1998, his Figure 5). The position angles of dust polarization should be wavelength-independent provided that the telescope beams sample the same grain population and line-of-sight (Hildebrand et al., 2000).

### 2.4 Sensitivity limits

The sensitivity for polarization measurements is determined essentially by the sensitivity of SCUBA, with additional effects of the transmission through the polarimeter and the limiting accuracy of corrections for sky fluctuations. The critical quantity is the polarized flux: the product of percentage polarization and mean flux. With the previous JCMT polarimeter used on a single-bolometer detector, UKT14, the smallest polarized flux that could be measured was about 100 mJy at 800 $`\mu `$(Murray et al., 1997). This is equivalent, for example, to p = 1% in a 10 Jy source, such as one of the brightest Galactic protostars.

With the SCUBA polarimeter, the expected sensitivity can be derived by considering the magnitude of the fractional polarization, as obtained by subtracting signals at two waveplate angles and dividing by their sum222Two waveplate angles 45 apart will have the largest and smallest observed signals, $`I_{max}`$ and $`I_{min}`$, and it can be demonstrated from Equation 1 that $`(I_{max}I_{min})/(I_{max}+I_{min})`$ is equivalent to the polarization fraction, $`p=I_p/(I_u+I_p)`$. For convenience we re-write $`p=(R1)/(R+1)`$ where $`R=I_{max}/I_{min}`$, and differentiate this to give $`dp=2/(R+1)^2dR`$. For small polarizations $`R1`$ so $`dpdR/2`$. Then as the two $`I`$ measurements are independent, $`dR/R=\sqrt{2}dI/I`$ and combining the last two expressions, $`dp=dI/I\times 1/\sqrt{2}`$ in the limit $`R1`$.. The error on the polarization fraction is $`1/\sqrt{2}`$ times the fractional intensity error, so half as much time is needed as would be for a measurement of $`I`$ alone. However, this is cancelled by a factor of twice as much time that arises because half the photons are lost to reflection off the analyser. Finally there is another time factor of four because four waveplate positions are needed to obtain the two orthogonal linear polarization components (Stokes parameters). This determines the signal-to-noise on the polarization percentage, $`\sigma _p`$, for a given integration time $`t`$:

$$t=4/\eta \times N\times (\mathrm{NEFD}\sigma _p/pF)^2$$
(2)
where NEFD and $`F`$ are the noise equivalent flux density and source flux in mJy/$`\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}`$ and mJy respectively, and $`p`$ is the fractional polarization (e.g. 0.01 for 1%). The factor N is the inverse of the fraction of time spent on one spatial point, so it is 1 for photometric polarimetry, 4 for imaging polarimetry at beam width spacings, and 16 for a Nyquist-sampled polarization map.333The SCUBA beams are spaced two beam widths apart on the sky, so that at beam width resolution a bolometer is effectively looking at a particular point for 1/4 of the time. Since the array is undersampled, the telescope secondary mirror is ‘jiggled’ to fill in the image; the polarization maps are usually sampled every 6′′ but smoothed to about beam width spacing to improve $`\sigma _p`$. For an extended source, smoothing with e.g. a Gaussian function includes more flux and hence reduces $`t`$ to obtain a given $`\sigma _p`$.

At the primary observing wavelength of 850 $`\mu `$m, the NEFD is 70 mJy/$`\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}`$ under the best conditions, and a 1 hour integration would give a 3$`\sigma `$ detection for a polarized flux $`p\times F=15`$ mJy in a beam-spaced map, or 7.5 mJy for photometry. This signal-to-noise is sufficient to determine magnetic field directions to 0.5 radians / 3 (Naghizadeh-Khouei & Clarke, 1993), or about $`\pm 10^{}`$, and the sensitivity is more than an order of magnitude better than with the UKT14 polarimeter. The faintest sources actually detected have had fluxes of about 0.2 Jy per beam and polarizations of a few percent; scientifically, large samples of protostars, faint Galactic clouds and AGN can now be detected. Also, types of sources that were previously impossible can now be studied, including asteroids, pre-stellar cores and nearby starburst galaxies.

## 3 Instrumental limitations

### 3.1 Main-beam instrumental polarization

The absolute accuracy of any polarization measurement depends on how reliably instrumental effects can be subtracted. For the SCUBA polarimeter the main problem is instrumental polarization (IP), which is dominated by the woven Goretex windblind through which the JCMT observes. The thread spacing, which is approximately 0.5 mm, is slightly different in the vertical and horizontal directions and this affects the relative transmissions, particularly at a wavelength of 450 $`\mu `$m which is closest in size. The solution would be to either roll back the windblind (a half-hour labour-intensive operation that is only possible on rare occasions of very low windspeed) or add a second orthogonal sheet of Goretex in the beam to induce IP cancellation. The latter has been tried and reduced the IP by a factor of at least three at 450 $`\mu `$m; further experiments are ongoing but this is not yet the standard observing mode.

The IP in the main beam of the telescope has been measured using planets, assumed to be unpolarized (e.g., Clemens et al., 1990), and the results are listed in Table 2. At the primary wavelength of 850 $`\mu `$m the measured IP values are very stable and can be subtracted to an accuracy of about $`\pm 0.25`$%, the measurement uncertainty for individual bolometers. Global differences, such as off-axis effects in the three rings of bolometers that form the hexagonal close-packed array, are 0.1% or less, and for the central array bolometer (used for photometric polarimetry) the measurement error has been reduced to about $`\pm 0.06`$%. Fewer data are available at other wavelengths but generally a very accurate measurement can be made during a particular observing run. Values tend to be stable over time, taking into account that the angles must be corrected for telescope elevation. The observed $`\theta `$ is $`\theta _0`$ plus elevation, due to the alt-az telescope mounting and the fact that SCUBA is aligned with the elevation axis but is fixed on the Nasmyth platform. This angle relation is quite reliable, with deviations of around $`\pm 15^{}`$ at extreme elevations, for the 850 $`\mu `$m pixels at the array edges that are furthest from the optical axis.

### 3.2 Sidelobe polarization

The sidelobes of the telescope beam have low intensity-amplitudes (e.g. $`<1`$% at 850 $`\mu `$m at $`>40^{\prime \prime }`$ from Jupiter in Figure 3), but different reflection and scattering effects for the two incoming planes of polarization can still produce instrumental ‘sidelobe polarization’. This needs to be considered when observing extended sources, or faint objects next to much brighter ones, as the sidelobe IP can be considerable, and is additional to the main-lobe IP that has been measured using a compact planet.

In theory, a polarization map of an extended unpolarized source (generally Jupiter), made with the same primary dish surface and secondary mirror chop throw as the source observations, can be used for an exact subtraction of sidelobe IP. An example of such a map is shown in Figure 3, after subtraction of the standard main-lobe instrumental polarization. However, in practice it is often easier simply to estimate the error induced by the sidelobe effects. The most extreme case is seen with large chop throws of the secondary mirror (the maximum reccomended is $`\pm 180^{\prime \prime }`$) in a non-azimuthal direction. In this case, there are residual vectors towards about half of Jupiter’s disk, with magnitudes up to 3%, although when averaging over this area (diameter of 40 arcsec) the net effect is only 0.25%. For smaller or azimuthal chop throws, the net residual is similar or lower and only about 1 in 10 individual points has a significant vector. Thus if the observer is interested in average polarization of an extended source, the error is quite small, but more careful calculations are required for data on a single map point in an extended region.

Additional problems arise if trying to extract source polarization when there is a much brighter object nearby in the field. In Figure 3, there are vectors averaging $`6`$% around Jupiter, although the largest tend to be at large radii where the power in the beam is low. A good general method is to set a threshold of source polarization percentage, above which sidelobe IP is not a serious contaminant, and to base this threshold on the relative polarized flux contributions. For example, if the instrumental polarized flux is half that of the source polarized flux, then in the worst case the two effects have orthogonal Stokes parameters, and the error in $`\theta `$ for the source will be $`1/2\mathrm{tan}^10.5`$ or only 13. (If the effects are parallel, then the error will instead be in $`p`$, which is generally of less scientific importance.)

Taking into account the beam power profile, this criterion for the minimum believable source polarization percentage can be written

$$p_{crit}2\times p_{sl}P_{sl}(F_{sl}/F)$$
(3)
where the three terms on the right-hand side are the IP at the relevant point in the sidelobe, the power here relative to the main beam, and the ratio of the flux of the object in the sidelobe to the flux in the main lobe. Thus sidelobe polarization can often be non-critical if the first two terms are small, even if there is a bright object in the sidelobe ($`F_{sl}>>F`$). As a quantitative example, Greaves (2002) observed polarization in the jets of the proto-planetary nebula CR 2688, at positions offset 15′′ from the central star. The ratio $`F_{sl}/F`$ was 3.6, the average $`p_{sl}`$ was 3% and the power at the edge of the main beam was $`P_{sl}0.06`$. Using Equation 3, the polarization of the southern jet was found to be believable because the measured value of 1.9% exceeded $`p_{crit}`$ evaluated at 1.3%. At larger offsets, the critical product of power and IP tends to be smaller: for example the values $`<0.01`$ and $`15`$% (Figure 3) give a smaller product than in the CRL 2688 case. The most critical quantity in individual sources is thus the flux ratio: very high contrasts will mean that faint regions need to be highly polarized to give usable results.

## 4 Observing Techniques and Data Reduction

Data acquisition and reduction are based on extensions to standard techniques used at the JCMT; more details of the standard procedures are given in Holland et al. (1998); Holland et al. (1999), Jenness & Lightfoot (1998) and Jenness et al. (2000). For polarimetry, standard imaging or photometry observations are made at a set of waveplate positions (normally 0, 22.5, 45, 67.5, 90… 337.5), and these data are fitted to detect the sinusoidal signal modulation from rotating the incoming polarization vector. Using a complete cycle is intended to eliminate other modulations such as reflections off the waveplate. An alternative to fitting is direct subtraction of data taken at different angles, as for example, $`pcos(2\theta )`$ can be found from $`(S(45)S(0))/(S(45)+S(0))`$ and $`psin(2\theta )`$ from $`(S(67.5)S(22.5))/(S(67.5)+S(22.5))`$ (Equation 1); this method is entirely valid and gives both Stokes parameters directly, but is less often used. For an excellent introduction to polarization observing procedures and limitations, see also Hildebrand et al. (2000).

### 4.1 Observing modes

Three observing modes have been adapted for use with the polarimeter. These are photometry, where a single bolometer observes a fixed point; jiggle-mapping, where the secondary mirror is jiggled to obtain an image of one SCUBA field-of-view, using all the bolometers in an array; and scan-mapping, where the telescope scans across a source and the data from all bolometers are reconstructed to give large images. All of these modes use chopping of the secondary mirror to remove the sky emission; photometry and jiggle-mapping also nod the source between left and right beams halfway through an observation to minimise sky gradients. For polarimetry, the only difference is that a complete standard observation is made at each waveplate angle before moving on to the next angle.

The first two polarimetry modes are fully commissioned, and the third has been proven experimentally but is not yet fully integrated. All six of the available SCUBA wavelengths have been used, but only a small number of observations have been made with the 350/750 $`\mu `$m filter combination or using the 2 mm photometric pixel (less than 1% each of the total number of observations). Thus the best quantified performance is at 850 and 1350 $`\mu `$m; 450 $`\mu `$m data are obtained simultaneously with 850 $`\mu `$m but are often not usable due to poor atmospheric transmission. Scan-mapping has been tested only at 850 $`\mu `$m.

The photometry mode is most suited to sources with accurately known positions that are smaller than the telescope beam width (8, 15 and 24 arcsec at 450, 850 and 1350 $`\mu `$m). The off-source bolometers remain ‘switched-on’ and can be used to subtract residual sky signals (not possible with the individual photometric pixels at 1350 and 2000 $`\mu `$m). Typically the secondary mirror chops between on- and off-source with a 1 arcmin throw, to allow subtraction of the sky DC-level, and 8 seconds of data are obtained at each of the 16 waveplate positions. The chop takes place at a rate of 7.8 Hz, and the telescope nods so that the source moves from the left beam to the right beam after 4 seconds. A small grid of points can be used rather than a fixed point but this in not generally done. Integrations of up to about 20 seconds can provide higher signal-to-noise in stable conditions, but generally many short integrations are co-added.

The jiggle map mode is typically used for sources bigger than the beam but smaller than the 2.3 arcmin array field-of-view in at least one dimension. If the source is larger, two effects can corrupt the polarization measurement (Matthews et al., 2001). Firstly, the maximum recommended chop throw is 3 arcmin, so sources larger than this will be ‘self-chopped’. In practice sky noise subtraction requires several emission-free bolometers, so the setting of the zero level will be inaccurate if the source dimensions approach 3 arcmin; an incorrect zero-level changes $`I_u`$ and so alters the percentage polarization. Secondly, if there is emission in the reference, i.e. nominally off-source, beams it may well be polarized and this can corrupt the on-source polarized signal in both magnitude and direction. A limit can be estimated where the reference polarization is not known, but this may not set useful constraints: for example, faint outer regions in some dust clouds can be up to $`15`$% polarized (e.g., Matthews et al., 2001).

A 16-point jiggle sequence with the secondary mirror gives an 850 (or 750) $`\mu `$m image with a point every 6 arcsec, so is slightly better than Nyquist (half-beam) sampled. The simultaneous data at 450 (or 350) $`\mu `$m are undersampled, since the points are only a little better than a beam width apart, and a 64-point jiggle sequence with 3 arcsec sampling is required if these data are of importance. The simpler jiggle takes 32 seconds to complete at each waveplate position, and the more complete jiggle takes 128 seconds, so the former is preferable for greater sky stability.

The scan map mode has been tested at 850 $`\mu `$m only, on a few sources with sizes of about 6–10 arcmin. The technique used is to scan the telescope across the source in any suitable direction, while chopping in RA or Dec. Using two different chop throws in each direction, for a total set of four, has been found to give good reconstructed images; further details of this ‘Emerson II’ technique are given by Jenness et al. (2000). It is important to scan off-source so that a true baseline can be established and set to zero in each individual waveplate image, before the polarization reduction is done.

The scan rate used is 48 arcsec per second, so sampling every 1/8th second gives points 6 arcsec apart, the same as in jiggle mapping. The minimum number of waveplate positions needed to deduce the Stokes parameters is four, so scan map polarimetry is rather time-consuming, for example, taking 30 minutes for one dataset on a 400 arcsec square area. This compares to three minutes or less for a set of Stokes parameters in the other modes, so scan map polarization measurements require more stable conditions.

### 4.2 Data reduction techniques

Two separate software packages are used for the data reduction: one for photometric polarimetry (SIT: Nartallo, 1995) and one for imaging polarimetry (POLPACK: Berry & Gledhill, 2000). The reduction philosophy is the same in both cases, and in fact POLPACK can handle single-pixel ‘images’, while SIT is more optimised for inspecting the results of individual waveplate cycles on a single point.

The raw data are reduced (Jenness et al., 2002) by extracting the chopped signals, flatfielding, and correcting for atmospheric extinction using a skydip. This is a series of measurements of sky emission at different elevations, made either with the JCMT at the observing wavelength, or taken from the 1.3mm database recorded at the adjacent Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) and extrapolated in wavelength. The next refinement is to subtract rapid changes in sky emission (to a greater accuracy than achieved simply by chopping: (Holland et al., 1999)) by shifting the mean level using blank bolometers in the array, or in scan-mapping, subtracting smoothed data seen by each bolometer over 2 seconds. This ‘sky noise’ is spatially correlated over the array diameter (Jenness, Lightfoot & Holland, 1998).

The main lobe instrumental polarization is then removed on a bolometer-by-bolometer basis using the expression:

$$S_{corrected}\frac{S_{measured}}{1+p_{IP}(e)\mathrm{cos}(4\delta 2\theta _{IP}(e))}$$
(4)
where $`p_{IP}(e),\theta _{IP}(e)`$ are the percentage and direction of instrumental polarisation at elevation $`e`$ (a constant percentage is generally assumed). This is an approximation of

$$S_{corrected}=S_{measured}S_{mean}p_{IP}(e)\mathrm{cos}(4\delta 2\theta _{IP}(e))$$
(5)
and is valid for instrumental polarizations of up to a few percent. The former expression is prefered as the mean flux level is not easily determined prior to regridding — the bolometer jiggles to different source positions and thus only part of the data stream refers to a particular spatial point. Also, not exactly the same point is seen by this bolometer for the next waveplate angle, because of sky rotation (SCUBA does not use an image de-rotator).

In imaging mode the data are then regridded to a rectangular array, removing pixels from the edge that are affected by regridding edge effects in order to simplify mosaicing. For scan map data, a Fourier deconvolution is used to remove the chop signature and combine the four different chopped maps (Jenness et al., 2000).

The Stokes parameters I, Q, U are then extracted by fitting the signal in each pixel as a function of waveplate angle; errors are supplied by comparing signals at identical or equivalent waveplate positions (e.g. 0, 90, 180 and 270; see Eq. 1444Scan map observations are sufficiently time-consuming that only the angles $`\delta =0,22.5,45,67.5^{}`$ may be used, in which case the same angle in different cycles should be compared.) In SIT, the Q and U are then listed and statistical tests can be used to reject anomalous fits before calculating averages and deducing $`p,\theta `$. In POLPACK, an I, Q, U data-cube is generated and a catalogue of vectors produced corresponding to all the image pixels. When combining different data sets (a set contains 16 waveplate positions) it was determined that the best results were obtained by coadding the IQU cubes rather than adding more data to the fit. As more data were added to the fit the signal-to-noise did not increase in the expected way, suggesting that it was susceptible to DC-level differences amongst the observations.

Various binning and selection procedures can be used to improve the polarization signal-to-noise. Typical criteria are $`p/\delta p>3`$ (i.e. $`\delta \theta <10^{}`$) and an upper limit such as $`\delta p<12`$% to eliminate biased data. Because the waveplate angles increase step by step, a linear drift in the sky transmission can force, for example, a positive Q and U, and these spurious fits tend to produce a high $`p`$, especially in regions of low I. Thus a $`\delta p`$ criterion can eliminate such data with a large scatter between good and inaccurate fits. For example, four measurements with similar $`\theta `$ but $`p=3,3,3,9`$% would give an average $`p`$ of 4.5% and a standard error of 1.3% (hence $`p/\delta p=3.5`$). This dataset is clearly biased by the last measurement, but could be eliminated with a $`\delta p<`$ 1% criterion. This entire reduction process has been automated using the ORAC-DR data reduction pipeline (Economou et al., 1998; Jenness & Economou, 1999).

## 5 Scientific capability

Science targets so far observed include asteroids, planetary nebulae, supernova remnants, T Tauri star disks, accreting protostars, pre-stellar cores, Bok globules, dark cloud filaments, high-mass star-forming clouds, the Galactic Centre including the black hole Sgr A\*, the starburst galaxy M82, the ultraluminous galaxy Arp 220 and a number of variable AGN or ‘blazars’. Results have been discussed by Tamura et al. (1999); Matthews & Wilson (2002); Davis et al. (2000); Ward-Thompson et al. (2000); Henning et al. (2001); Vallée et al. (2000); Feldman et al. (2000); Aitken et al. (2000); Greaves et al. (2000); Marscher et al. (1999), among others. Many of these objects have sub-Jy fluxes per beam, and were not feasible to observe before SCUBA; they are also very difficult for other ground-based instruments such as the HERTZ polarimeter-camera used at the CSO, which operates in the more challenging 350 $`\mu `$m band (Dowell et al., 1998). Examples of some typical observations are described below; the imaging results shown in the figures have not previously been published.

### 5.1 Polarimetric Photometry

Sgr A\*, the massive black hole candidate at the centre of the Galaxy, was observed polarimetrically by Aitken et al. (2000). Crucial observations were made at 1350 and 2000 $`\mu `$m in the photometric mode, to establish the polarization spectrum in the millimetre regime as well as at submillimetre wavelengths. These were the first detections of linear polarization of Sgr A\*, and they showed a dramatic $`90^{}`$ shift in position angle around 1 mm wavelength, which implies self-absorption in a very compact emission region of only a few Schwarzschild radii (Aitken et al., 2000; Bromley et al., 2001; Liu & Melia, 2002). The 1350 and 2000 $`\mu `$m detections were each significant at the 10 sigma level after about 15 minutes of integration. An example of the fitted results from one waveplate cycle (2 minutes of data) is shown in Figure 4.

It is now routinely possible to detect polarized emission from compact radio sources. A $`5\sigma `$ detection of a 0.5–10 Jy source can be made in 30–60 minutes, depending on the fractional polarization (values of 2–40% have been observed). Large levels of polarization indicate that the magnetic field must be quite highly ordered, and allow its direction to be inferred without worrying about opacity effects. Comparisons with quasi-simultaneous results from 7 mm very long base line interferometry show that, in many cases, the angle of submillimetre polarization matches that very close to the base of the sub parsec-scale jet, and/or the structural position angle of the jet (Stevens et al. in prep.).

One of the faintest photometric detections with the UKT14 polarimeter was the HH24MMS protostar observed by Greaves, Holland & Ward-Thompson (1997) at 800 $`\mu `$m. This result was confirmed with the SCUBA polarimeter at 850 $`\mu `$m: HH24MMS was 3.7 $`\pm `$ 1.3% polarized at 95 $`\pm `$ 10 in the earlier data and the new measurement was 3.82 $`\pm `$ 0.61% at 109 $`\pm `$ 5. Thus results published with the old instrument appear to be quite reliable, but now much fainter targets can be detected.

### 5.2 Polarimetric Imaging of Single Fields

Jiggle map polarimetry has been used for a wide variety of targets: Figure 5 illustrates results for the high-mass star-formation region W3. The two bright cores contain the luminous clusters of young stellar objects IRS5 and IRS4 (left and right respectively), plus an extended envelope. The image illustrates the care that must be taken to chop in the direction of the faintest extended emission (here at a position angle of $`20^{}`$ east-of-north and 2.5 throw); there are some minor discrepancies with the 350$`\mu `$m polarization map of Schleuning et al. (2000), which can plausibly be explained by their larger (and more suitable) $`6.3^{}`$ chop throw. Examination of a JCMT archival 850 $`\mu `$m scan-map shows that the faintest regions with plotted vectors in Figure 5 have in the worst cases up to 25% relative flux in one of the off-beams. Although no large-scale polarization data are available, we can estimate that a 10% polarization at this off-point would seriously contaminate a 2.5% on-source vector.

Projects on regions such as W3 are producing very valuable information on different magnetic morphologies in clouds with more or less active star formation and varying core and star masses (Matthews & Wilson, 2002, 2000; Coppin et al., 2000; Davis et al., 2000; Fiege & Pudritz, 2000). Also, the marked decrease in polarization with increasing flux can be used to test models of field lines that are tangled or turbulent within the beam, and/or models of grains that are less well aligned in dense cores (Ostriker et al., 2001; Arce et al., 1998).

The faintest targets detected with jiggle map polarimetry have fluxes of about 0.2 Jy/beam and a few percent polarization. This covers a wide range of Galactic interstellar clouds and also the closest star-forming galaxies (Greaves et al., 2000). Observing efficiency compared to previous point-by-point magnetic field mapping has been greatly increased: for example, the 800$`\mu `$m polarimetry of the W3-IRS4 core reported by Greaves et al. (1999) required one hour of observation per spatial point, whereas the data in Figure 5 took a similar time for 78 detected points going down to much lower flux limits.

### 5.3 Polarimetric Scan-mapping

Scan map polarimetry is still under development, but initial tests on the polarized synchrotron emission of the Crab Nebula gave very good results (Figure 6). The 850 $`\mu `$m polarization was very similar between scan map observations and a standard jiggle map (of the central 3 arcmin); percentages and angles differed by only 1% and 6 (the latter is probably dominated by rotation of a few degrees during each 30 minute map sequence). The angles also agree very well with 9 mm results published by Flett & Henderson (1979). However, the SCUBA data improve our understanding of the (sub)millimetre polarization pattern from 90 to 15 arcsecond resolution, greatly clarifying the geometry around features such as the emission ‘arm’ to the north-west. The average flux and polarization for the Crab Nebula are 1 Jy/beam and 25%, and $`5\sigma `$ detections were obtained in one hour of observing. A more typical source with an equivalent polarized flux, such as a 5 Jy/beam, 5% polarized dust cloud, should be detectable in the same time.

## 6 Current and Future Developments

Work is ongoing on automating scan-map polarimetry and expanding the use of 450 $`\mu `$m polarimetry. The latter will give a factor of two improvement in spatial resolution over 850 $`\mu `$m but not all the IP data have been obtained. Fast corrections for atmospheric changes are also being tested, utilising a water vapour radiometer (Wiedner et al., 2001) in the JCMT’s receiver cabin. This monitors the profile of the 183 GHz atmospheric absorption line about every second, and thus gives a very precise transmission measurement along the same line-of-sight as the source. Some tests have also been made of a ‘continuous spinning’ mode, as an alternative to stepping the waveplate to discrete angles. By analysing the power spectrum of the signal, it is possible to detect the intensity of the polarized signal (a modulation every 90), and the position angle can also be measured by retaining information on orientation as a function of time. This should be a very fast method of detecting strong sources, and rapid spinning (e.g. $`>1`$ Hz) would eliminate most problems with the sky changing before the complete polarized modulation has been detected.

Finally, a replacement camera is currently being built by the UK Astronomy Technology Centre. With SCUBA-2 and a new polarimeter, there should be a factor of 2.5 decrease in NEFD, a factor of 16 increase in imaging speed due to instantaneous full-sampling (no jiggling) and a 15-fold increase in field-of-view, combining to give an improvement in polarization imaging power for large sources of $`1500`$.

## 7 Summary

An efficient polarimeter coupled with a very sensitive submillimetre camera has facilitated a major advance in ground-based imaging polarimetry. The variety of science targets has also expanded, with almost every category of Galactic source of dust and synchrotron emission becoming available, as well as a number of extragalactic objects. Investigations of the dust polarization spectrum can also be made, especially in conjunction with 60–350 $`\mu `$m polarization data from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and the CSO (Hildebrand et al., 2000; Dotson et al., 2000). This reveals unique information about the relation of grain alignability and emissivity, particularly in mixed grain populations (Greaves et al., 1999; Hildebrand et al., 1999). Finally the multi-wavelength capability of the SCUBA Polarimeter covers both the high-frequency end of synchrotron spectra and the long-wavelength tail of dust spectra, where both effects are generally optically thin and easiest to interpret.

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The JCMT is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of PPARC of the UK, the Netherlands OSR, and NRC Canada. We acknowledge the software and support provided by the Starlink Project which is run by CCLRC on behalf of PPARC. We especially wish to thank the many members of JCMT staff involved in commissioning and maintaining the SCUBA Polarimeter.


format: text

text:
# Evidence for an intermediate mass black hole and a multi-zone warm absorber in NGC 4395

## 1 Introduction

NGC 4395 is a nearby ($`d`$ 2.6 Mpc) dwarf galaxy containing an active nucleus. The nucleus harbors a small black hole of mass less than $`8\times 10^5`$ M \[Filippenko & Ho 2003\]. The optical emission-line spectrum of the nucleus is dominated by non-stellar emission, reminiscent of normal Seyfert galaxies but with a much lower luminosity \[Ho et al. 1997\]. Indeed, NGC 4395 is one of the lowest-luminosity AGN, with an absorption-corrected 2–10 keV luminosity of $`4\times 10^{39}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$. However, in contrast to other low luminosity active nuclei, which are usually found at the centers of galaxies having large bulges and which exhibit weak X-ray variability \[Ptak et al. 1998\], NGC 4395 has no significant bulge and shows strong X-ray variability. Interestingly, it appears to lie on the anti-correlation between X-ray variability amplitude and luminosity found in higher luminosity Seyfert nuclei \[Nandra et al. 1997\]. In terms of a possible link between black hole mass and X-ray variability, NGC 4395 is therefore of great interest, given the fact that it is one of the few objects containing a small black hole of well-determined mass.

It is a well-established fact that the X-ray light curves of active galaxies show a red-noise characteristic, and approximating the power spectrum with a power law typically gives slopes of 1.5–2 on time scales of hours to days. Evidence for a flattening of the power-law slope on longer time scales, similar to that found in Galactic Black Hole Candidates (GBHC) but scaled to much shorter time scales, has been found in some active galaxies. Being a low-mass black hole AGN, NGC 4395 provides us with an opportunity to examine the interesting part of the power spectrum with a relatively short monitoring time compared with its higher luminosity counterparts.

In addition to extreme X-ray flux variability, NGC 4395 is also known to exhibit interesting spectral variability as well. The source was previously observed by ASCA in 1998, and an analysis by Iwasawa et al. (2000) found the time-averaged X-ray spectrum to be well-described by a power-law continuum with a photon index of 1.5–2, with heavy absorption below $``$ 3 keV and marginal evidence for iron line emission at $``$ 6.4 keV. During a large flare in the 1998 observation, the spectrum was observed to vary dramatically below 3 keV, with the absorption appearing to lessen considerably between 1–2 keV. A single-zone warm absorber was found to give a physically inconsistent description of the active/quiescent states, and a two-zone warm absorber consisting of a constant and a variable component was proposed to explain the observed spectral variability.

In this paper, we present the results of an analysis of a week-long ASCA observation of NGC 4395, focusing on the temporal and spectral variability of the X-ray source. Since the previous observation was only a half-day in duration, the conclusions reached in this analysis represent a significant improvement in our understanding of this source.

## 2 Observation and Data Reduction

NGC 4395 was observed by ASCA from 2001 May 25 to 2001 June 1, for a total exposure time of 640 ks. Data reduction was carried out using the method of Iwasawa et al. (2000). Following GTI filtering, the good exposure time was approximately 300 ks for the SIS and 280 ks for the GIS. The mean count rates for the SIS/GIS (using the large-aperture region – see below) were $`0.075/0.079`$ cts/s in the 2–10 keV band and $`0.038/0.028`$ cts/s in the 1–2 keV band. The observed 2–10 keV flux averaged over the whole observation is $`4.7\times 10^{12}`$$`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, very similar to that obtained from the previous short ASCA observation, while the source is highly variable. The time-averaged 1–2 keV flux is $`3.1\times 10^{13}`$$`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, somewhat higher than the corresponding flux of $`2.6\times 10^{13}`$$`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$of the previous ASCA observation.

Several circumnuclear X-ray sources are known to exist within 10 arcmin of the nucleus of NGC 4395 \[Moran et al. 1999, Lira et al. 1999, Iwasawa et al. 2000\]. In this observation, we could only detect the brightest of these background sources, corresponding to source E of Moran et al. (1999), a very soft source located $`2.8`$ arcmin away from the nucleus, with X-ray emission peaking below 1 keV. We have checked that the mean fluxes from source E and the nucleus in various energy bands are in agreement with the previous ASCA observation within 15 per cent, and that source E does not show significant variability. Therefore, we have chosen to use in this analysis the source regions defined by Iwasawa et al. (2000) in their analysis of the previous observation. We briefly describe here the definition of these regions. Since the flux of source E is negligible relative to the nucleus above $`2`$ keV, we use photons collected from a large-aperture (6 arcmin diameter) circular region around the nucleus (but excluding a small 1 arcmin circular region around source E) for analysis above 2 keV. Below 2 keV, the contamination due to source E becomes non-negligible owing to the broad point spread function of the ASCA X-ray telescope. In fact it may be as high as 70% in the large-aperture region. To minimize this contamination we use instead a small-aperture (3 arcmin diameter) region around the nucleus for any analysis requiring data below 2 keV (e.g. analysis of the warm absorber) so that the contamination from the source E in the 1–2 keV band should be less than 10 per cent (see Iwasawa et al. 2000).

## 3 Timing Analysis

### 3.1 X-ray Light Curves

The strong X-ray variability of NGC 4395 suggested by the previous short ASCA observation is confirmed in this long observation, as can be seen in the light curve shown in Fig. 1. The light curve is the sum of the SIS and GIS light curves and includes background subtraction. Each point represents a full 256-s of good exposure time. The source is seen to vary wildly on timescales of hours or less. In several instances, the count rate was observed to change by nearly an order of magnitude on time scales of $`2000`$ s; the most dramatic example is shown in the inset of Fig. 1.

The energy dependence of the normalized excess variance $`\sigma _{\mathrm{rms}}^2`$ (see Nandra et al 1997 for the definition) of the light curve is plotted in Fig. 2. On a wide range of timescales, the strongest variability is found in the 1–2 keV band. As mentioned above, any contamination from source E has little effect on this excess variability in this energy range. The variability of the warm absorber, and not of the primary continuum, is likely to be the main contributor to the peak in the RMS variance spectrum. Indeed, in the context of the multi-zone warm absorber model to be discussed in detail in Section 4.2, we see that the variability in the 1–2 keV band can be attributed to rapid changes in a highly ionized, dense absorber located close to the source.

### 3.2 The Power Density Spectrum

The power density spectrum (PDS) of NGC 4395 was computed for the 1.2–10 keV band light curve using data from all four detectors following the method of Hayashida et al. (1998). The one difference with the method of Hayashida et al. (1998) was that geometric rather than arithmetic averaging was employed to smooth the PDS. Smoothing the logarithm of the PDS instead of the PDS itself tends to give a less biased estimate of the PDS when the number of points in each frequency bin is small \[Papadakis & Lawrence 1993\]. 5760-s bins were used to obtain the low frequency PDS and 128-s bins to obtain the high frequency PDS. These binsizes were also chosen so as to avoid frequencies around $`10^4`$ Hz, where contamination from the orbital period of the spacecraft produces a spurious peak in the PDS. Segments with less than four time bins were not used in the calculation in an attempt to limit the effect of red-noise leak. The low frequency PDS was smoothed with $`N=5`$ and the high frequency PDS with $`N=25`$.

The result of the calculation using the 1.2–10 keV light curve is shown in Fig. 3. We report a possible detection of a break in the power spectrum. A single power-law with best-fit slope $`\alpha =1.29\pm 0.04`$ gives a relatively poor description of the PDS ($`\chi ^2=37.6`$ for 24 degrees of freedom). A broken power-law with $`\alpha _1=0.98\pm 0.18`$ ($`f<f_\mathrm{b}`$), $`\alpha _2=1.78\pm 0.19`$ ($`ff_\mathrm{b}`$), and break frequency $`f_\mathrm{b}=3.2_{1.6}^{+3.2}\times 10^4`$ Hz gives an improved fit ($`\chi ^2=27.9`$ for 22 degrees of freedom). The improvement is significant at a 96% confidence level according to the standard F-test. We note, however, that the F-test is a crude measure of significance and must be interpreted with caution. In particular, it does not take into account systematic biases such as aliasing and red-noise leak which could cause the spurious detection of a break.

The PDS was also calculated using the 2–10 keV light curve to check whether variability of the warm absorber below $``$ 2 keV could have a significant effect on the parameters of the measured power spectrum. The broken power law slopes, and more importantly, the location of the break measured from the 2–10 keV band PDS agrees within errors with those quoted above. It was noted in Section 3.1 that the RMS variance spectrum peaks in the 1–2 keV band, most likely due to changes in the warm absorber and not the source itself. However, the fact that the break in the PDS is present and has the same frequency (within errors) in both the 1.2–10 keV band and the 2–10 keV band suggests that the break is an intrinsic feature of the source. Indeed, since the shape of the PDS is similar between the bands, the 1.2–10 keV band PDS seems to provide a measure of the intrinsic source variability. The additional effect of the variable warm absorber is undetectable in the PDS owing to its limited bandwidth (1.2–2 keV), the high intrinsic variability of the source, and the large uncertainties of the measured PDS.

The shape of the PDS is remarkably similar to those of Galactic Black Hole Candidates (GBHC) in the low state. The PDS of Cygnus X-1, among the most famous and well-studied GBHC, has been measured to very high accuracy over nearly five decades in frequency in a number of observations \[Gilfanov et al. 1999, Nowak et al. 1999, Belloni & Hasinger 1990\]. It too exhibits a spectral steepening from $`\alpha 1`$ to $`\alpha `$ 1.5–1.7 as one increases in frequency, while at lower frequencies the PDS hits a “knee” and becomes nearly flat. This three-component behavior has also been observed in several other GBHC (e.g. Miyamoto 1992). While a longer observation is needed to test for the presence of a flat component at very low frequencies in the PDS of NGC 4395, the similarity of the two higher-frequency components to the power spectra of GBHC suggests that the physical processes that give rise to X-ray variability in GBHC are similar to those of NGC 4395. A better understanding of the X-ray variability of the former, enabled by their much higher signal-to-noise and shorter variability time scales, might therefore lead to improved knowledge of NGC 4395.

As a preliminary attempt at a comparison, we can use the striking similarity between the power spectra of NGC 4395 and Cyg X-1 in order to obtain an estimate of the black hole mass of the former, following the scaling method of Hayashida et al. (1998). We shall describe the technique and results in detail in Section 5. Here, we merely note that in the analysis of the previous short ASCA observation by Iwasawa et al. (2000), the mass of NGC 4395 was estimated using the PDS to be about $`3\times 10^4\mathrm{M}_{}`$. The PDS obtained in that analysis, however, consisted of only a handful of points, and so neither the break frequency nor the slope of the PDS could be measured. Instead, the authors used a template PDS taken from NGC 4051, which breaks from $`\alpha =0.28`$ to $`\alpha =2.01`$, and scaled it to the PDS of NGC 4395 with the break frequency as a free parameter. With the much more detailed power spectrum from the current observation, we are actually able to both measure the break frequency and the spectral slopes, and we see that in fact the NGC 4051 PDS is a very poor template for NGC 4395.

## 4 Spectral Analysis

### 4.1 Time-Averaged Spectrum: Warm Absorber and Iron K$`\alpha `$ Line

The X-ray spectrum of NGC 4395 is known to be heavily absorbed by what is thought to be ionized material along the line of sight (the so-called warm absorber). With non-negligible absorption extending up to or even beyond 3 keV, the likely presence of a broad iron line around 5–7 keV, a reflection hump from the disk starting at $``$ 10 keV, and an iron K edge around 8 keV due to the warm absorber, obtaining a reliable value for the continuum photon index is a highly non-trivial task. Fig. 4 shows the result of a preliminary power-law fit to the SIS in the 3–10 keV continuum band, extrapolated to lower energies. The residuals at $``$ 6 keV are highly suggestive of iron-line emission. The extrapolation to lower energies reveals the tell-tale signature of warm absorption: a blend of absorption lines and edges due to partially-ionized, obscuring material.

The best-fit photon index for this simple power-law fit was unusually hard, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1`$. A hard photon index ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }0.6`$) was also recently reported by Moran et al. (2001) during a recent 17 ks Chandra observation of NGC 4395. The discrepancy between the photon index measured in the present analysis and that of Moran et al. (2001) might be explained by the effects of photon pile-up. The same Chandra data analyzed by Moran et al. (2001) were found to be affected by the CCD pile-up \[Davis 2001\], despite the attempt of reducing it by using faster readout. On the other hand, pile-up should be completely neglible in the ASCA data of the present analysis. The point spread function of ASCA is far broader than that of Chandra, and there is correspondingly very little chance in the ASCA data of more than two photons falling into a single pixel within a single readout for a faint source such as NGC 4395. Two important effects of the pile-up are: 1) the light curve has reduced flux peaks where the pile-up occurs; and 2) the spectrum is distorted to have a harder slope than is actually present. The second effect might have resulted in the very small photon index measured by Moran et al. (2001). The range of X-ray flux variations in NGC 4395 is quite large: from very low count rates where the pile-up is negligible to high count rates where significant pile-up occurs. The high-flux state is where the spectral softening due to 1–2 keV flux increase has been found in the two ASCA observations (e.g., see Fig. 6). The spectral distortion due to the pile-up would reduce this spectral softening for high flux state if it was not corrected, affecting a spectral variability study. In any case, it is extremely unlikely that these low photon indices are associated with the intrinsic source spectrum, given the standard mechanism of continuum production via inverse-Compton scattering of thermal disk photons off a hot, optically-thin corona \[Moran et al. 2001\]. A more plausible explanation is that the source has an intrinsically steep spectrum, that is then modified, perhaps by obscuring material along the line of sight, to produce a flat spectrum. Moran et al. (2001) suggest that this obscuring material could be due to neutral “partial covering” components. As they note in their paper, however, this partial-covering model predicts a strong Fe K edge near 7 keV that is not observed. Below, we will consider another possible explanation for the flatness of the continuum, namely that the (multi-zone) warm absorber is so heavily ionized, that absorption above 3 keV flattens the observed spectrum.

To investigate the residuals at 6 keV, a relativistically broadened 6.4 keV iron line was added to the spectrum using the diskline model in xspec \[Fabian et al. 1989\]. The free parameters were the inclination angle $`\theta _0`$ and emissivity index $`\alpha `$ of the accretion disk, and the total line flux $`F_{\mathrm{K}\alpha }`$. The inner and outer radii were frozen at 6 $`r_\mathrm{g}`$ and 100 $`r_\mathrm{g}`$. In addition, cold absorption was included (with the column density as a free parameter) in order to model the effect of the warm absorber above 2 keV. Since we only expect to see the smooth tails of the ionized warm absorber edges above 2 keV, these can be approximated phenomenologically by the wabs neutral absorption model in xspec. Finally, the effects of neutral reflection by the accretion disk were taken into account by using pexrav instead of a simple power-law for the underlying continuum. The power-law index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and overall normalization were left free to vary. The remaining pexrav parameters were frozen at reasonable values: the high-energy cut-off, reflection fraction, and iron abundance were fixed to 200 keV, 1, and $`1\mathrm{Z}_{}`$, respectively.

The model was fit to data between 2–10 keV from all four detectors. An acceptable fit was obtained with $`\chi ^2=1431.6/1423`$ dof, representing an improvement of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=16.3`$ with three additional parameters over pexrav plus cold absorption alone, and an improvement of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=30.2`$ with three additional parameters over a power law plus cold absorption alone. The best-fit absorption column density was $`1.32_{0.18}^{+0.08}\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2, while the best-fit photon index was $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.46_{0.06}^{+0.02}`$. The iron-line parameters were well-constrained: $`\theta _0=49_4^{+8}`$ degrees, $`\alpha =2.7_{1.0}^{+0.8}`$, $`F_{\mathrm{K}\alpha }=1.4_{0.4}^{+0.3}\times 10^5`$ ph s-1 cm-2 (corresponding to an equivalent width of $`310_{90}^{+70}\mathrm{eV}`$).

We estimate the detection of a broad iron line in NGC 4395 to be significant at the $`99\%`$ level based on an F-test using a single-gaussian fit to the iron line. The free parameters of the single-gaussian fit were the line energy $`E_0`$ and the width $`\sigma `$, as well as the overall normalization. The line width was either frozen at $`\sigma 0`$ for a narrow line, or allowed to vary for a broad line. The result of the fits was $`\chi ^2=1436/1424`$ dof vs. $`\chi ^2=1430/1423`$ dof for a narrow line vs. a broad line. The best fit line parameters were $`E_0=6.32_{0.03}^{+0.07}`$ keV for the narrow line and $`E_0=6.26\pm 0.20`$ keV, $`\sigma =0.89_{0.21}^{+0.31}`$ eV for the broad line. This significant detection of a broad iron line represents an improvement over the marginal detection in the previous ASCA observation of Iwasawa et al. (2000), thanks to the much larger signal-to-noise of this observation. The detected iron line is plotted in Fig. 5 as the ratio of the SIS spectrum to the best-fit continuum model. The strength and broad width of the line is evident.

The spectrum below 4 keV was modeled using a cloudy v90.04 table model, which describes one-zone, equilibrium, photoionized absorption \[Ferland 1991\]. As mentioned in Section 2, small-aperture spectra were used for the analysis of the warm absorber, so as to minimize contamination due to nearby circumnuclear sources. In order to remain consistent with the continuum fit above 2 keV, the cloudy photon index was frozen at $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.46`$. The free parameters of the fit were thus the column density and ionization parameter of the warm absorber. The overall $`\chi ^2`$ of the fit was acceptable (256.4/243 degrees of freedom), but obvious trough-like residuals around 1.5–2 keV strongly suggested a more complex pattern of absorption not well-accounted for by cloudy alone. Also, we will see in Section 4.2 that the single-zone cloudy model fails to adequately describe the flux-binned spectra. In particular, the pattern of absorption in the low-flux state cannot be modelled using our simple single-zone cloudy model.

The addition of two absorption edges (the multiplicative edge model in xspec) did the trick: the residuals were smoothed out, and the individual $`\chi ^2`$s in the fit to the flux-binned spectra were all good (see Section 4.2). The best-fit parameters for the cloudy plus edges model are shown in the first row of Table 1. We note that the two extra absorption edges are fairly deep – compare, for instance, with the results of Otani et al. (1996) for MCG–6-30-15. Note also that the inclusion of the two edges is strongly favored by the F-test: a $`\chi ^2`$ of 229.9/239 dof with the edges, versus a $`\chi ^2`$ of 256.4/243 dof corresponds to an F-test confidence level $`>99\%`$. The depth of these edges and the F-test both strongly suggest a more complex picture of ionized absorption than that of the simple single-zone cloudy model.

A promising alternative is the multi-zone warm absorber consisting of two or more partially-ionized, absorbing regions with different physical properties and lying at different positions along the line of sight. Spectral variability studies have strongly implied the existence of a multi-zone warm absorber in several sources, including MCG–6-30-15 \[Otani et al. 1996, Morales et al. 2000\], NGC 3516 \[Kriss et al. 1996\], and recently NGC 4051 \[Collinge et al. 2001\]. In the previous short ASCA observation of NGC 4395, a two-zone warm absorber (one constant and less ionized, the other variable and more ionized) was argued for based on an unphysical decrease in column density and ionization parameter observed during a flare \[Iwasawa et al. 2000\].

The result of a two-zone warm absorber fit to the time-averaged spectrum (below 4 keV) is shown in the first row (flux bin 0) of Table 2. The model used was a hybrid cloudy/absori model, with the former (latter) used to model the constant (variable) component. The ionization parameters and column densities of the two models, along with the underlying photon index, were left free to vary. The temperature of the accretion disk in absori was fixed to $`10^6`$ K. The model clearly describes the time-averaged spectrum well. The column density and ionization parameter of the constant component agrees well with the cloudy plus edges fit described previously (see the first row of Table 1). This gives us confidence in the validity of the arguments above for the necessity of a more complex, multi-zone warm-absorber model. As another consistency check, the column densities of the two zones are in rather good agreement with those obtained in the previous observation \[Iwasawa et al. 2000\]. Meanwhile the ionization parameters, especially of the variable component, are considerably higher than before.

In their recent analysis of a 17 ks Chandra observation of NGC 4395, Moran et al. (2001) also find that a two-zone warm absorber model can provide a satisfactory fit to the time-averaged data. However they fix the underlying photon index to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.56`$, based on a previous single-zone warm absorber fit. In our analysis, with our much larger statistical sample, we are able to fit independently for the photon index in the 2–10 keV range with a more sophisticated model consisting of a power-law, reflection, and broad iron line. As a result, we find a much steeper, less exotic photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.46`$. We are therefore led to a conclusion quite different from that of Moran et al. (2001): NGC 4395 possesses an intrinsically steep power-law continuum with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.46`$, which is subsequently flattened and modified by multi-zone, ionized absorption, especially around 1.5–2 keV.

A more revealing test of the two-zone warm absorber model is whether it can describe the response of the spectrum to changes in source flux. In the next section, we shall use time-resolved spectral analysis to investigate whether the multi-zone model proposed previously for NGC 4395 can still provide an adequate description of the data, given the higher signal-to-noise and longer exposure time of this observation.

### 4.2 Time-Resolved Analysis: Multizone Warm Absorber

To investigate the spectral variability of the warm absorber, the data were binned with respect to $`F_{1.25}`$, the SIS0 count rate in the 1.2–5 keV band. Three bins were used, chosen to contain approximately the same number of counts, and defined to be $`F_{1.25}<0.025`$ cts/s, $`0.025F_{1.25}<0.04`$ cts/s, and $`F_{1.25}0.04`$ cts/s. The bins are numbered 1–3 in order of increasing flux; flux bin 0 denotes the time-averaged spectrum.

The spectral ratios between the data in flux bins 0–3 and the best-fit time-averaged cloudy plus edges model are plotted in Fig. 6. The model clearly gives a reasonable fit to the time-averaged data, although the residuals still suggest the presence of a complex of weak absorption edges (and possibly emission lines) that our simple two extra edges fail to take into account. In flux bins 1–3, the 3–10 keV count rates have been renormalized to that of the time-averaged spectrum. Since the 3–10 keV count rate should be largely unaffected by absorption, the renormalized ratios plotted here should give at least an approximate idea of the variation in absorption. From the plots, it is clear that the warm absorber is changing dramatically with flux. In the low flux bin (bin 1), the spectral ratio reveals a shape characteristic of one or more absorption edges. As we increase in flux, the warm absorber appears to decrease in strength, suggesting that the elements responsible for it are being pushed to higher ionization states due to the increased amount of incident radiation.

We can confirm this interpretation by fitting the cloudy plus edge model to the flux-binned spectra. The photon index, being poorly-constrained, was fixed to the best-fit value of the time-averaged 2–10 keV spectrum. The cloudy column density and the threshold energies of the edges were tied between the flux-binned spectra. The result of the fits are shown in rows 2–4 of Table 1. The $`\chi ^2`$ is clearly acceptable in the individual flux bins. Also, as mentioned in Section 4.1, the two additional edges are necessary in order to obtain a good fit in the first flux bin. Redoing the fit with cloudy alone results in $`\chi ^2`$s of 118.8/89, 107.3/103, and 85.8/96 dof in flux bins 1-3, respectively. Comparing with the $`\chi ^2`$ column in Table 1, we see that two additional edges have a very significant impact on the low-flux bin. The fits confirm the existence of a constant underlying warm-absorber component – while intriguing, the increase in ionization parameter $`\xi `$ from the second to the third flux bin is not statistically significant. The spectral variation across flux bins observed in Fig. 6 is primarily accounted for by changes in the optical depths of the photoionization edges. We therefore make the obvious identification of the constant and variable warm absorber with the parameters of cloudy and of the extra edges, respectively.

The two-zone warm absorber model confirms this identification. Fits using the cloudy/absori model described in Section 4.1 were performed with the column densities of the constant and variable components frozen tied between the flux bins. The results are shown in rows 2–4 of Table 2. The two-zone model describes well the spectral variation with flux, and the variable component behaves in the expected manner, increasing in ionization parameter with increasing source flux. There is strong evidence, therefore, in favor of the two-zone warm absorber model proposed for NGC 4395 by Iwasawa et al. (2000). Absorption around 1.5–2 keV implies that the variable zone is, on average, highly ionized. Depending on the ionization state of the zone, the dominant absorption at these energies should be due to He/H-like Mg and Si. We should note that the high ionization of the variable absorber in all flux states provides an a posteriori justification for our model consisting of simple multiplication of the two absorbers (cloudy $`\times `$ absori). This is fortunate, since the proper approach – in which the output from the inner absorber is used as the input for the outer one – would have proved much more difficult.

Perhaps it is also worthwhile to note that the slight increase in the ionization parameter of the constant component ($`\xi _c`$) from the second to the third bin persists in the cloudy/absori fit. But again it is not statistically significant. In spite of this, it is still very interesting that the ionization parameter of the variable component ($`\xi _v`$) seems to level off in the high-flux state. Combining this fact with the slight increase in $`\xi _c`$ leads us to suggest the following interpretation of the flux-binned fit: the variable component, assumed to be closer to the nuclear source, becomes completely ionized, and therefore transparent, in the high-flux state. As a result, the constant outer absorber begins to be ionized, and its ionization parameter increases.

A more detailed interpretation of our results and a more general discussion of the warm absorber in NGC 4395 would be too extensive to include in this paper. We should point out that some of the properties of a warm absorber in a small black hole, low luminosity system such as NGC4395 are expected to differ from those in ordinary Seyferts. For instance, the variability time scale of a warm absorber around a normal Seyfert is typically months to years, if the ionized gas is coming from the inner edge of a torus around 1 pc \[Kriss & Krolik 2001\]. On the other hand, $`10^3`$-s variability in the warm absorber of NGC 4395 is entirely possible, given the low luminosity and high ionization parameter of this source. The properties of warm absorbers in low-luminosity systems such as NGC 4395 is an interesting topic in its own right, and we postpone a more complete discussion to a future publication.

## 5 Discussion: Estimating the Black Hole Mass

The break in the power spectrum from $`\alpha 1`$ to $`\alpha 1.8`$ at $`3.2\times 10^4\mathrm{Hz}`$ found in Section 3.2 gives us a characteristic variability timescale for NGC 4395. Assuming that the variability timescale of a source scales roughly with its size (i.e. a larger source has a longer variability timescale), we can use the measured break frequency and the PDS of a more well-studied source such as Cyg X-1 to obtain an estimate of the black hole mass of NGC 4395. This method has been previously applied to several AGN (e.g. Nowak et al. 2000, Hayashida et al. 1998, Iwasawa et al. 2000), and tends to give mass estimates lower (by as much as 1 or 2 orders of magnitude in some cases) than those obtained from other methods such as X-ray variability, emission line broadening, and modeling the big blue bump \[Hayashida et al. 1998\].

The $`\alpha 1`$ to $`\alpha 1.8`$ break frequency of Cyg X-1 is known to fluctuate between 1–10 Hz \[Belloni & Hasinger 1990\] over time. The mass of Cyg X-1 is estimated to be $`10`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ \[Herrero et al. 1995\]. Therefore, if the break frequency scales with the size of the system, we estimate the mass of NGC 4395 to be $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}10^410^5`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$. This is at the high end of the hard upper limit of $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}<8\times 10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$ obtained in recent kinematical studies by Filippenko et al. (2002); but it is encouraging that it is in complete agreement with their “most probable” range. We can also compare the PDS of NGC 4395 with those of other AGN which have independent, accurate mass measurements. Perhaps the best example of an AGN with a well-determined power spectrum and mass is NGC 5548. Reverberation mapping and kinematical studies of NGC 5548 give a central black hole mass of $`(6.8\pm 2.1)\times 10^7\mathrm{M}_{}`$ \[Peterson & Wandel 1999\], and the PDS agrees with that of Cyg X-1 with a frequency scale factor of $`10^5`$$`10^6`$ \[Chiang et al. 2000\]. Using NGC 5548 as a template would therefore imply $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}10^5`$ $`M_{}`$ in NGC 4395, in agreement (albeit at the high end) with the estimate using Cyg X-1.

NGC 4395 is a bulgeless dwarf galaxy (or with a very faint bulge of late spiral). Based on a study of M33, a nearby bulgeless galaxy, Gebhardt et al. (2001) suggest that no supermassive black hole is present in a galaxy with no bulge. They pointed out that a black hole of 100 $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ is sufficient for the luminosity of the active nucleus of NGC 4395 if it is operating at the Eddington limit. The bulge luminosity of NGC 4395 is indeed very low ($`M_{\mathrm{B},\mathrm{bulge}}=10.36`$, Ho et al 1997), similar to that of the nucleus of M33, indicating that the black hole driving the active nucleus of NGC 4395 could be as small as 100 $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$. However, while there is an order of magnitude uncertainty in our estimate, the X-ray variability results appear to favor the black hole mass to be much larger. The estimates using the optical emission-line properties have also given similar results (Lira et al 1999; Kraemer et al 1999). We also point out that considerable obscuration to the nucleus of NGC 4395, as revealed by hard X-ray observations, leads to the true (optical) nuclear luminosity being underestimated. With a modest bolometric correction ($`L_{\mathrm{bol}}/L_{210\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}}=10`$), the mean absorption-corrected 2–10 keV luminosity of $`4\times 10^{39}`$$`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ requires a black hole of $`300M_{}`$ operating at the Eddington limit. The observed light curve shows that the X-ray flux occasionally reaches 6 times higher than the mean value, which implies an even heavier black hole of $`2\times 10^3M_{}`$. Moreover, the fact that Seyfert galaxies usually operate at a fraction (a few per cent) of their Eddington luminosity points to that the black hole in NGC4395 might in fact be as large as $`10^4`$$`10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$. Therefore, either NGC 4395 might be peculiar in that it has a supermassive black hole at the center despite the lack of a significant bulge, or the X-ray source in NGC 4395 exhibits variability in a way which apparently does not scale by the black hole mass.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Simon Vaughan for insights into the subtleties of PDS and timing analysis, Raquel Morales for useful discussions regarding the multi-zone warm absorber and Luis Ho for information on thier unpublished result on the black hole mass of NGC 4395. For support, we thank the Herchel Smith Fellowship (DCS), PPARC (KI), and the Royal Society (ACF).


text:
# The impact of 𝜶/𝐅𝐞 enhanced stellar evolutionary tracks on the ages of elliptical galaxies

## 1 Introduction

The analysis of elliptical galaxy absorption lines in the early 90s revealed an inadequacy of standard models to recover the Mg and Fe Lick indices measured in these galaxies. The failure was attributed to element abundance ratios different from solar. More specifically, an enhanced ratio of $`\alpha `$-elements (e.g. Mg, O, Ca, etc.) with respect to iron was the most straightforward interpretation (Worthey et al., 1992). Recently an accurate model calibration with metal-rich globular clusters has confirmed the early suggestion (Maraston et al., 2003). In fact, standard stellar population models are found to be unable to recover the indices also of Bulge globular clusters that are known, from high-resolution spectroscopy of individual stars, to have enhanced $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ ratios. These findings call clearly for an update of the standard models, in particular for the inclusion of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhancement.

Therefore, in Thomas, Maraston, & Bender (2003, hereafter TMB) we present the Lick absorption indices of simple stellar population models (SSP) which, for the first time, are computed for variable element abundance ratios, in particular $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$. The key ingredient in the models is the response of absorption lines to the abundance variations of individual elements in the stellar atmospheres. This is the major effect to be taken into account (see also Trager et al., 2000). The secondary effect of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhancement on SSP models comes from the adopted stellar evolutionary tracks, since the element abundance variations in a star affect also the star’s evolution and opacities, hence the effective temperature. This secondary effect has been neglected in the TMB models, because they are based on the SSPs of Maraston (1998), which use solar-scaled tracks (Cassisi et al., 1997). However, the TMB models are calibrated with globular clusters and reproduce very well their metallicities and $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ ratios in the metallicity range up to solar. This does not come as a surprise, since the difference between $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced and solar-scaled stellar evolutionary tracks is negligible at low metallicities (Salaris & Weiss, 1998; Salasnich et al., 2000; VandenBerg et al., 2000; Kim et al., 2002).

A larger difference is found at super-solar metallicities (Salasnich et al., 2000). More specifically, $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks have hotter turnoffs and hotter giant branches owing to the lower opacities of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar atmospheres (Salasnich et al., 2000; VandenBerg et al., 2000; Kim et al., 2002). Maraston et al. (2003) explore the effect on SSP models. They show that SSPs using $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced tracks have moderately weaker metallic (e.g., $`\mathrm{Mg}b`$, $`\mathrm{Fe}`$) indices, and significantly stronger Balmer ($`\mathrm{H}\beta `$) indices for the same age and metallicity. The aim of this paper is to estimate this effect on the TMB models, and to discuss the impact on the ages, metallicities, and $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ ratios derived for elliptical galaxies.

The paper is organized as follows. Sect. 2 gives a brief overview of the development and current status of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar evolutionary tracks. The modified TMB models are described in Sect. 3 and compared with elliptical galaxy data in Sect. 4. The results are summarized and discussed in Sect. 5.

## 2 A brief history of $`𝜶\mathbf{/}\mathrm{𝐅𝐞}`$ enhanced stellar tracks

The development of stellar evolutionary tracks with chemical mixtures different from the solar proportions has made major progress in the last years. Based on the assumption that the abundance ratio of elements with high ionisation potential (HPE: C, N, O, Ne) to the elements with low ionisation potential (LPE: Mg, Si, S, Ca, Fe) remains constant relative to the solar ratio in an $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced isochrone, Salaris et al. (1993) find that an $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced isochrone is cooler than the solar-scaled one and can be mimicked by a solar-scaled isochrone with higher metallicity. The reason for the validity of this metallicity-scaling is that the HPE control the temperature of the turnoff, while the LPE impact on the red giant branch (see also discussion in Trager et al., 2000), so that the constancy of the HPE/LPE ratio ensures the shape of the stellar evolutionary track not to vary.

But the ratio of HPE to LPE is actually super-solar for realistic $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced mixtures, and the shape of the isochrone is not conserved (Weiss et al., 1995). Most importantly, Salaris & Weiss (1998) find that for $`[\mathrm{HPE}/\mathrm{LPE}]0.1`$ the turnoff and also the red giant branch of an $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced isochrone are bluer than that of a solar-scaled one, in contrast to the results of Salaris et al. (1993). However, the study of Salaris & Weiss (1998) is restricted to sub-solar metallicities. Recently, Salasnich et al. (2000) published a set of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced ($`[\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}]=0.3`$) stellar tracks for super-solar metallicities. The authors confirm the conclusion found by Salaris & Weiss (1998) at low metallicities: ’at the same evolutionary stage, the solar-scaled track is fainter, cooler, and older than the $`\alpha `$-enhanced one’ (Salasnich et al., 2000). VandenBerg et al. (2000) and Kim et al. (2002) come to the same conclusion.

## 3 The modified TMB model

We consider the synthetic Lick indices of three different sets of SSP models (see Table 1).

1. The TMB model for $`[\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}]=0.3`$ (Model 1).
2. A modification of Model 1 that includes additionally the effect of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar evolutionary tracks (Model 2).
3. The standard solar-scaled ($`[\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}]=0.0`$) model (Model 3).

Model 1 and Model 2 have the enhanced $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ ratio $`[\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}]=0.3`$. In both, the element abundance effects on the strength of the absorption features, i.e. on the Lick indices, are taken into account as described in detail in TMB. The impact of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhancement on the underlying stellar evolutionary tracks, instead, is neglected in Model 1 but considered in Model 2 as explained in the following.

In both models the stellar evolutionary tracks (solar-scaled) are taken from Cassisi et al. (1997) and S. Cassisi (1999, private communication). As these authors do not yet provide stellar tracks for non-solar element ratios, in Model 2 we mimic the effect of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhancement on the stellar tracks by means of the work of Salasnich et al. (2000). Their stellar tracks are used in a differential way in order to be independent of intrinsic differences with respect to the stellar tracks of Cassisi et al. (1997). More specifically, we use the fluxes in the lines and in the continua of the SSP models of Maraston et al. (2003) computed with the solar-scaled and the $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks of Salasnich et al. (2000), in order to determine the fractional flux changes caused by the $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks. Model 2 is then obtained by applying these fractional changes to the fluxes in the lines and continua of Model 1.

## 4 Comparison with elliptical galaxies

In this section we compare the Lick indices $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$, $`\mathrm{Mg}b`$, and $`\mathrm{Fe}`$ of the three model flavors of Table 1 with observational data of early-type galaxies.

The data sample comprises 126 objects, 71 of which are field and 55 cluster objects, containing roughly equal fractions of elliptical and lenticular (S0) galaxies. The sample is constructed from the following sources: 41 Virgo cluster and field galaxies (González, 1993), 32 Coma cluster galaxies (Mehlert et al., 2000), and 53 mostly field galaxies (the highest quality data from Beuing et al. 2002) selected from the ESO–LV catalog (Lauberts & Valentijn, 1989). For sake of homogeneity, in all cases the central line-strength indices within 0.1 $`r_\mathrm{e}`$ are considered. A detailed assessment of the stellar population parameters of the data and the discussion in the context of galaxy formation is given in Thomas et al. (2002).

### 4.1 $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ ratios

Fig. 1 shows Model 1 and Model 2 for various ages and metallicities as dashed and solid lines in the $`\mathrm{Mg}b`$-$`\mathrm{Fe}`$ plane. Grey circles are the early-type galaxy data quoted above. Black squares are the two Bulge clusters NGC 6528 and NGC 6553 from Puzia et al. (2002).

The inclusion of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks (Model 2) has only a negligible impact on the models in the $`\mathrm{Mg}b`$-$`\mathrm{Fe}`$ plane. This is consistent with the conclusion of Maraston et al. (2003) for the solar-scaled models that the decrease of metallic line strengths like $`\mathrm{Mg}b`$ and $`\mathrm{Fe}`$ due to the $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhancement of the stellar tracks is comparable. This ensures that consistent $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ ratios are derived irrespective of whether we adopt Model 1 or Model 2.

For comparison, the solar-scaled model (Model 3) is shown as dotted lines in Fig. 1. It becomes obvious that the major effect of element abundance variations is the direct response of the absorption lines, as accounted for in the TMB models (Model 1).

### 4.2 Ages and metallicities

In Fig. 2, $`\mathrm{Mg}b`$ and $`\mathrm{Fe}`$ of Model 1 and Model 2 are plotted vs. $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$. Consistent with Maraston et al. (2003), Model 2 has significantly stronger $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ lines (by up to $`0.26`$ Å at 15 Gyr) than Model 1, because of the hotter turnoffs of the $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks. The strengthening of $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ conspires with the weakening of the metallic lines such that going from Model 1 to Model 2 the grid moves along the lines of constant metallicity. Apparently, in current stellar evolution models enhancing the $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ element ratio and decreasing the age have very similar effects on a stellar isochrone. This implies that the same metallicities are derived from Model 1 and Model 2.

In contrast, ages are severely affected. Model 2 predicts significantly stronger $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ indices at the same age and metallicity, which leads to the derivation of considerably older ages. The decision whether Model 1 or Model 2 is more appropriate relies on the calibration with globular clusters for which ages and element abundances are independently known. The ages derived from Balmer lines for the two solar metallicity Bulge globular clusters NGC 6528 and NGC 6553 with SSP models using $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks are in better agreement with the ages inferred from color-magnitude diagrams (Maraston et al., 2003). This is visualized in Fig. 2 with the globular clusters being the filled squares. However, the uncertainties are too large to allow for a firm conclusion in favor of Model 2.

Since the relative increase of the $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ line-strength due to $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced tracks increases with metallicity, the discrepancy between the ages obtained with Model 1 and Model 2 is more pronounced for elliptical galaxies than for the most metal-rich globular clusters. A considerable fraction of the data lies significantly below the 15 Gyr line of Model 2 (Fig. 2). Model 2 yields ages up to $`30`$ Gyr (in extrapolation), while with Model 1 we obtain ages not older than $`15`$ Gyr for the same data set.

## 5 Discussion and Conclusion

We complement our study of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar population models of Lick absorption indices (Thomas et al., 2003, TMB) by comparing two sets of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced models. In both models the major effect from $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhancement on Lick indices is accounted for through a modification of the stellar absorption line-strengths using the response functions of Tripicco & Bell (1995). One set of models, however, uses solar-scaled (Model 1, equivalent to the TMB model), the other $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced (Model 2) stellar evolutionary tracks. Here we compare the $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ ratios, metallicities and ages that are derived for elliptical galaxies from Model 1 and Model 2.

Because of the hotter red giant branches of the $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks, Model 2 has weaker metallic index line-strengths than Model 1. The hotter turnoffs of the $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks lead to considerably larger Balmer line indices ($`\mathrm{H}\beta `$) in Model 2. Both $`\mathrm{Mg}b`$ and $`\mathrm{Fe}`$ indices are reduced almost equally, so that the determination of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ ratios for stellar systems is not significantly affected. The decrease of the metallic indices and the increase of $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ conspire in a way that also consistent metallicities are obtained with Model 1 and Model 2.

The age derivation for metal-rich stellar populations, instead, is severely affected by the use of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks. The stronger $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ lines of Model 2 with respect to Model 1 imply significantly older ages. The higher the metallicity the more pronounced is this increase of $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ in Model 2, and average ages up to $`30`$ Gyr are obtained for early-type galaxies.

Such high ages appear larger than current estimates of the age of the universe ($`15`$ Gyr, Ferreras, Melchiorri, & Silk, 2001) as constrained by cosmic microwave background (Knox et al., 2001) and high-redshift supernova (Riess et al., 1998; Perlmutter et al., 1999) measurements. This may indicate that the bluing of the stellar tracks due to $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced chemical mixtures at super-solar metallicities is overestimated in current stellar evolution models.

The key check, whether $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhancement is described adequately in the stellar evolutionary tracks, is the comparison with globular cluster data. However, at metallicities well below solar, where plenty of data of globular clusters are available, the effect of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhancement on stellar evolution is negligible. Around solar metallicity the effect is appreciable, but the presently available calibrations do not provide a clear answer. The comparison with the color-magnitude-diagram of 47 Tuc suggests that the Red Giant Branch of the Salasnich et al. (2000) $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced tracks is indeed too warm (Schiavon et al., 2002). The integrated absorption indices of the two Bulge clusters NGC 6528 and NGC 6553 are consistent with both $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced and solar-scaled stellar tracks, as discussed before. At metallicities above solar, where the impact of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced stellar tracks becomes most significant and the ages of ellipticals become alarmingly high, globular clusters are not available. We are trapped in the usual dilemma for the stellar population models of elliptical galaxies. Hence, further investigations on the effect of $`\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}`$ enhanced mixtures on stellar evolutionary tracks at super-solar metallicities would be very valuable.