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# Phase transition and landscape statistics of the number partitioning problem

## I Introduction

The relevance of the concepts and techniques of statistical physics to understanding the typical behavior of classes of optimization or decision problems had been pointed out by many authors already in the middle of the 1980s (see, e.g., Refs. Anderson:86 ; Mezard:87 ). However, it was only about ten years later, owing mainly to the finding of a ubiquitous peak in computational cost signaling a transition between easy and difficult instances of optimization problems, that the physics approach has succeeded to attract the attention of the computer science community (see, e.g., Refs. Kirkpatrick:94 ; Hogg:96 ; Hayes:97 ; Monasson:99 ; Martin:01 ). In particular, instances in the phase transition region are now routinely used to benchmark algorithms and search heuristics, and so a precise location of the critical point in addition to the estimate of the width of the transition region has gained considerable practical importance.

The specific optimization problem we consider here is the number partitioning problem (NPP), which is one of the basic NP-complete problems that form the core of the theory of NP-completeness Garey:79 . NPP has an easy formulation: Given $`N`$ not necessarily distinct positive numbers $`a_1`$, …, $`a_N`$ find a subset $`𝔛\{1,\mathrm{},N\}`$ such that

$$E(𝔛)=\left|\underset{j𝔛}{}a_j\underset{j𝔛}{}a_j\right|$$
(1)
is minimized. We remark that NPP can be regarded as a Mattis-like Ising spin model with Hamiltonian

$$H(𝔛)=E^2(𝔛)=\underset{i,j}{}a_ia_j\sigma _i\sigma _j$$
(2)
where $`\sigma _i=+1`$ if $`i𝔛`$ and $`\sigma _i=1`$ if $`i𝔛`$ Fu:89 . It is therefore natural to consider $`E`$ as an energy (cost) landscape over the hypercube; in other words, single spin flips are a natural way of defining a neighborhood relation for the NPP. For concreteness, we will assume from here on that the $`a_i`$s are independent, identically distributed random variables that take on integer values between $`1`$ and $`l`$ with equal probability.

A partition $`𝔓`$ is *perfect* if $`E(𝔓)=0`$ or $`1`$ for $`_ia_i`$ even or odd, respectively. The existence of perfect partitions depends on the accuracy to which the numbers $`a_i`$ are determined as well as on the size of the problem $`N`$. The crucial control parameter here is the ratio between the number of bits to which $`a_j`$ is specified and the problem size

$$\kappa =\frac{\mathrm{log}_2l}{N}.$$
(3)
The relevance of $`\kappa `$ can be appreciated by considering the annealed estimate of the expected number of perfect partitions, $`𝒮=2^N/l`$, so that $`\kappa =1(\mathrm{log}_2𝒮)/N`$ Gent:98 . Hence the annealed theory indicates that for $`\kappa <1`$ there is an asymptotically exponential number of perfect partitions, while for $`\kappa >1`$ the probability of finding a perfect partition is exponentially small. Extensive numerical simulations and statistical mechanics calculations corroborate the value $`\kappa _c=1`$ as the threshold separating the easy-to-solve from the hard-to-solve regimes Gent:98 ; Mertens:98 .

Probabilistic and statistical mechanics analyses of the ground states of the Hamiltonian (2) in the limit of infinite precision $`l\mathrm{}`$, in which the $`a_i`$s can be viewed as continuous variables, have of course failed to detect the phase transition (see, e.g., Refs. Fu:89 ; Karmarkar:86 ; Ferreira:98 ). The thermodynamics for general $`l`$ was ‘solved’ under the assumption of self-averaging of the random variables $`a_i`$, but that solution is not completely satisfactory since it predicts a negative entropy for $`\kappa >\kappa _c`$ Mertens:98 . Thus a reliable theory for the ground states of the NPP, probably based on the replica method, has yet to be obtained.

Generally, the aforementioned phase transition is defined as a transition from a region in the space of control parameters in which almost all instances have many solutions to a region in which almost all instances have no solution Kirkpatrick:94 ; Hogg:96 . Hence, the investigations have relied mainly on exhaustive search procedures, such as branch-and-bound algorithms, that guarantee the finding of the global optima, or on statistical mechanics calculations of the expected properties, such as the entropy, of the ground states. In this contribution we seek evidence of this easy/hard transition in the structure of the cost landscape of the optimization problem, focusing on the distribution of optima and on the distribution of cost barriers between these optima. To this end, we code the information about the paths of minimal cost leading to different optima in a tree structure, termed the barrier tree of the cost landscape. The leaves of this tree represent the local optima and the internal nodes the lowest-cost saddles connecting those optima. Barrier trees have been widely used to study protein Becker:97 ; Wales:98 ; Garstecki:99 , RNA Flamm:00a ; Flamm:02a , and spin-glass Nemoto:88 ; Ferreira:00a ; Fontanari:02a ; Hordijk:02  landscapes.

We find that the structure of the landscape, as measured by the local minima and their connecting saddle points, shows surprisingly little difference in the easy and hard regimes. The sharp transition between these two regimes is revealed only by the *difficulty* of the landscape, a parameter measuring the maximum ratio of energy barrier to energy gain for the escape from a metastable state, which is directly related to the optimal speed of convergence of simulated annealing Hajek:88 ; Catoni:92 ; Kern:93 ; Ryan:95 ; Catoni:99 . We stress that our goal here is not to locate the transition point, which can be achieved by simply looking at the value of the global energy minimum in an ensemble of randomly generated instances (in this sense, a barrier tree always contains the information on whether the given instance is easy or hard), but to seek evidences of the easy and hard regime on other global statistical properties of the energy landscape. Furthermore, we examine a remarkable conjecture about the equivalence between the infinite accuracy version of the NPP and the random cost problem Mertens:00 , and show that, despite the equivalence at the level of the energy distributions, their barrier trees are completely different.

## II Barrier Trees

The energy of the lowest saddle point separating two local minima $`x`$ and $`y`$ is

$$E[x,y]=\underset{𝐩_{xy}}{\mathrm{min}}\underset{z𝐩}{\mathrm{max}}E(z)$$
(4)
where $`_{xy}`$ is the set of all paths $`𝐩`$ connecting $`x`$ and $`y`$ by a series of subsequent spin-flips Nemoto:88 ; Vertechi:89 . The *barrier height* $`B(x)`$ of a metastable state $`x`$ is the minimum height of a saddle point that connects it with metastable state $`y`$ with strictly smaller energy $`E(y)<E(x)`$. In symbols,

$$B(x)=\mathrm{min}\left\{E[x,y]E(x)|y:E(y)<E(x)\right\}.$$
(5)
Since a direct evaluation of eq.(4) would require the explicit constructions of all possible paths it does not provide a feasible algorithm for determining $`E[x,y]`$ even if $`N`$ is small enough to allow an exhaustive survey of the landscape. The values of $`E[x,y]`$ and $`B(x)`$ can, however, be retrieved from the *barrier tree* of the landscape. The algorithm for constructing these barrier trees is presented in Flamm:00a ; Flamm:02a  (see also Ref. Ferreira:00a  for a detailed account of the algorithm in the spin-glass context). It is implemented in the barriers program 111The source code is available at http://www.tbi.univie.ac.at/$``$ivo/RNA/Barriers/., which constructs the tree from a sorted list of energy values of all spin configurations in the landscape. In a barrier tree, the leaves of the tree represent the local minima, and the internal nodes represent the saddles, with the barrier sizes given by the length of the branches connecting the local minima to their corresponding saddles. Fig. 1 illustrates typical barrier trees for the problems considered in this paper.

## III Depth and Difficulty

The depth $`D`$ and difficulty $`\psi `$ of a landscape are measures of the landscape structure that are directly related to the performance of simulated annealing Hajek:88 ; Catoni:92 ; Kern:93 ; Ryan:95 ; Catoni:99 . The depth of a landscape is defined as the maximum barrier height, $`D=\mathrm{max}B(x)`$, where the maximum is taken over non-global minima only. In particular, it can be shown that simulated annealing converges almost surely to a ground state if and only if the cooling schedule $`T_k`$ satisfies $`_{k0}\mathrm{exp}(D/T_k)=\mathrm{}`$ Hajek:88 . The *difficulty* of the landscape is a dimensionless quantity defined as

$$\psi =\mathrm{max}\left\{\frac{B(x)}{E(x)E(\mathrm{min})}\right\}$$
(6)
where $`E(\mathrm{min})`$ is the global energy minimum and, as before, the maximum is taken over local minima only. The difficulty $`\psi `$ is directly related to the optimal speed of convergence of simulated annealing. It is more convenient to work with the scaled quantity

$$\lambda =\mathrm{log}_2\left(\psi /2^N\right)=\mathrm{log}_2\psi N$$
(7)
instead.

We turn now to the evaluation of the effects on the depth and difficulty measures of a change in the accuracy of the $`a_i`$s for a fixed problem size. We find that, similarly to many other tree measures discussed in the next section, the depth measure $`D`$ is independent of the accuracy of the $`a_i`$s. The effects on the difficulty measure, on the other hand, are striking. Explicitly, in Fig. 2, where each symbol represents the result of the average over $`100`$ landscapes, we show that there is a scaling relation between the average difficulty and the accuracy of number representation: $`\lambda `$ converges to a unique function of $`(\kappa 1)N`$ for large $`N`$. This scaling function increases linearly for $`\kappa <1`$ and approaches a constant value of about $`2.0`$ for $`\kappa >1`$. Hence $`\lambda `$ viewed as a function of $`\kappa 1`$ exhibits a singularity at $`\kappa =1`$ since it increases linearly with a slope proportional to $`N`$ as long as $`\kappa <1`$ and tends towards a constant value for $`\kappa >1`$. Therefore the rescaled difficulty reflects the phase transition reported in previous analyses of the NPP, which have focused on the singular behavior of the probability of a perfect partition Gent:98 ; Mertens:98 .

A simple annealed-like argument to explain the behavior of the difficulty depicted in Fig. 2 goes as follows. In the easy regime we have more partitions (spin configurations) than different combinations of numbers, thus the global optimum will probably be a perfect partition, i.e., $`E_{\mathrm{min}}=0`$ or $`1`$, while the lowest metastable state will have $`E=2`$ or $`3`$. The height of the barrier separating them, however, is essentially the energy of a random configuration, i.e., $`B(x)=𝒪(l)`$, and the maximum barrier height will be among the largest numbers in the system, i.e., $`\mathrm{log}_2\psi \mathrm{log}_2l`$. Hence subtracting $`N`$ from both sides yields $`\lambda (\kappa 1)N`$ in the easy regime. In the hard regime we can only hope to cancel the leading $`N`$ bits in the optimal configuration, thus we expect a ground-state energy $`E_{\mathrm{min}}l/2^N`$, while the maximum barrier height is again $`𝒪(l)`$ yielding $`\mathrm{log}_2\psi N`$, which is then independent of $`\kappa `$. Of course, these crude estimates miss polynomial corrections such as the factor $`N^{1/2}`$ that appears in the rigorous computation of the ground-state energy Karmarkar:86 . Note, however, that we are considering $`\mathrm{log}_2E_{\mathrm{min}}`$, i.e., we ignore only logarithmic corrections which we would expect to arise for more careful estimates of $`\mathrm{log}_2B(x)`$ as well. As the values of $`\mathrm{ln}\psi `$ vary significantly among different landscapes with the same values of $`l`$ and $`N`$ it is not possible to obtain sufficiently accurate estimates of $`\lambda `$ that would reveal such corrections unambiguously.

## IV Measures of barrier tree shapes

Since a barrier tree embodies all the relevant quantitative information about the multi-valley structure of an energy landscape, it seems natural to ask if there is any trace of the easy/hard phase transition in the shape of the barrier trees of the NPP landscapes.

Before introducing the standard measures of tree shapes we will consider the effect of the accuracy $`l`$ on probably the main characteristic of a tree, namely, its number of leaves or minima $`n`$. In fact, it is tempting to associate the difficulty of a problem with the number of local minima (traps) in its energy landscape representation. Surprisingly, however, we find that the average fraction of local minima does not change with $`l`$ as soon as $`l>N`$, i.e., as soon as it becomes unlikely that adjacent configurations have the same energy, see Fig. 3. For very small values of $`l`$ the number of local optima depends strongly on how degenerate neighbors are treated (data not shown). The important point here is that the fraction of minima stays constant across the easy/hard transition and, in particular, it is given by the formula

$$n/2^N=\sqrt{24/\pi }N^{3/2},$$
(8)
which was obtained in the limit of infinite accuracy Ferreira:98 .

Now we consider five measures of tree shape that were originally used to study phylogenetic trees (see, e.g., Refs. Shao:90 ; Kirkpatrick:93 ) for the barrier trees resulting from NPP landscapes. These measures provide statistical information about the shape of the barrier tree, mainly its symmetry or balance, and ignore the branch lengths, i.e., the height of the barriers between minima, which were the object of the depth and difficult measures. Recently, we showed that these measures are capable of distinguishing between $`p`$-spin models with different values of $`p`$ Hordijk:02 .

Let $`d(i,j)`$ be the graph-theoretical distance between two nodes of the tree, i.e., the number of edges along the path that connects them. Furthermore, we denote the root of the tree by $`\mathrm{}`$. The *height* of a leaf $`k`$ is $`h_k=d(\mathrm{},k)`$. Equivalently, $`h_k`$ is the number of internal nodes between leaf $`k`$ and the root $`\mathrm{}`$ (inclusive). For each interior node $`i`$ we have two subtrees with $`r_i`$ and $`s_i`$ leaves, respectively. We assume $`r_is_i`$. The *subtree-height* of an interior node $`i`$ is $`m_i=\mathrm{max}_{kT_i}d(i,k)`$ where the maximum is taken over all leaves $`k`$ in the subtree $`T_i`$ below $`i`$, i.e., the subtree of which $`i`$ is the root.

With this notation we may define the following five characteristic values for the shape of a binary rooted tree:

1. $`H=\frac{1}{n}_{k=1}^nh_k`$ is the *average height* of a leaf in the tree.
2. $`\sigma _H=\sqrt{\frac{1}{n}_{k=1}^n\left(h_kH\right)^2}`$, is the standard deviation of the leaf height.
3. $`C=\frac{2}{n(n3)+2}_{i=1}^{n1}\left(r_is_i\right)`$ is a measure for the *imbalance* of trees with $`n>2`$.
4. $`B_1=_i\mathrm{}1/m_i`$ is the average inverse subtree height, where the sum is taken over all $`n2`$ internal nodes $`i`$ excluding the root $`\mathrm{}`$.
5. $`B_2=_{k=1}^n2^{h_k}h_k`$ is an alternatively weighted average leaf-height.

The physical meaning of $`H`$ and $`\sigma _H`$ is clear. We mention only that for random trees (e.g., trees produced by the neutral genealogical process Felsenstein:02 ) the expected value of $`H`$ increases as $`\mathrm{ln}n`$. In addition, $`\sigma _H=0`$ for a completely symmetric tree. The imbalance measure $`C`$ assigns a weight proportional to the the number of leaves to each one of the two subtrees branching out an internal node. These weight differences are then averaged and normalized over all internal nodes of the tree. The value of $`C`$ increases from 0 for a completely symmetric tree to 1 for a completely asymmetric tree. The statistic $`B_1`$ looks at the longest possible path $`m_i`$ from each internal node $`i`$ to any of the leaves in its subtree. The statistic $`B_2`$ is based on an index of information content. For highly asymmetric trees, such as those produced by $`p`$-spin landscapes Hordijk:02 , it will quickly converge to the value $`B_2=2`$. Both $`B_1`$ and $`B_2`$ have smaller values for increasingly asymmetric trees.

Somewhat surprisingly, neither of these measures exhibits a non-trivial dependence on $`\kappa `$, as shown in Fig. 4 for the measures $`C`$, $`B_1`$ and $`B_2`$. The other quantities $`H`$ and $`\sigma _H`$ behave analogously but have a larger scatter for large $`N`$. Therefore it is impossible to tell the easy from the hard regime by visual inspection of the barrier tree or by simply measuring branch lengths, as done in the depth measure. The only effective measure involves a nontrivial balance between branch lengths and leaf energies.

## V Truncated random energy model

A very interesting though poorly explored finding concerns the equivalence between the NPP in the limit of infinite precision, where the $`a_i`$ become real random variables distributed uniformly in the unit interval, and the symmetrized truncated random energy model (REM) or random cost problem Mertens:00 . In particular, for large problem sizes the energies of two or more distinct configurations of the NPP become statistically independent and the $`M=2^{N1}`$ distinct energies values for unconstrained partitions are distributed according to

$$P(E)=\frac{2}{\sqrt{2\pi \mu _{\mathrm{}}N}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{E^2}{2\mu _{\mathrm{}}N}\right)\mathrm{\Theta }(E)$$
(9)
where $`\mu _{\mathrm{}}=a^2=1/3`$ is the second moment of the $`a_j`$ in the corresponding number partitioning problem. Hence the bold claim that the NPP is essentially equivalent to a truncated REM Mertens:00 . The main application of Eq. (9) is the derivation of the probability density of the minimum energy $`E_{\mathrm{min}}`$ using trite arguments of extreme statistics Mertens:00 ,

$$\rho \left(E_{\mathrm{min}}\right)=MP\left(0\right)\mathrm{exp}\left[MP\left(0\right)E_{\mathrm{min}}\right],$$
(10)
from which the expected minimum energy follows trivially,

$$E_{\mathrm{min}}=\sqrt{2\pi /3}N^{1/2}2^N$$
(11)
in agreement with the known numerical Ferreira:98  and analytical Mertens:98  results for the NPP.

However, in order for the equivalence at the level of the energy distribution between the NPP and the truncated REM to have any use in guiding the design of search heuristics for the NPP, it is important that other features of the two problems, such as their multi-valley structures, are similar too. In fact, a glance at Fig. 1 is already sufficient to reveal the deep structural difference between the barrier trees of these problems, and the remainder of this section is aimed at quantifying these differences.

The expected number of minima can be easily calculated for any random energy model with finite probability density over the reals Derrida:81 ; Gross:84 . The argument goes as follows. Fix an arbitrary spin configuration $`\sigma =(\sigma _1,\sigma _2,\mathrm{},\sigma _N)`$ and consider all its N neighbors. Since we assign to each spin configuration a random energy value drawn from the continuous distribution (9) we conclude that (i) all these $`N+1`$ energies are distinct with probability 1; and (ii) $`E(\sigma )`$ is the smallest of the N+1 numbers with a probability of $`1/(N+1)`$. Hence $`\sigma `$ is a local minimum with probability $`1/(N+1)`$ and so the fraction of local minima is

$$n/2^N=1/\left(N+1\right)$$
(12)
which, for large $`N`$, is larger than the result for the NPP \[see Eq.(8)\] by a factor of order of $`N^{1/2}`$.

In Fig. 5 we present the tree size ($`n`$) dependence of the barrier tree measures $`C`$ and $`H`$ for the NPP and the symmetrized truncated REM. A useful standard here, also shown in this figure, is the random trees, generated as follows. First, create $`n`$ nodes (the leaves) and put them in a set $`A`$. Next, remove two random nodes $`x`$ and $`y`$ from $`A`$, create a new node $`z`$ and make $`x`$ and $`y`$ its two children, and put $`z`$ in the set $`A`$. Repeat this procedure until there is only one node left in $`A`$, which will be the root of the tree. Random trees are important from the biological viewpoint because they arise from the neutral genealogical process Felsenstein:02 . The symmetrized truncated REM presents the same scaling on $`n`$ as the $`p`$-spin models, namely, $`Hn`$ and $`C\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{ln}\left(n\right)`$ within the range of $`n`$ considered Hordijk:02 . Of course, since $`C[0,1]`$ this scaling cannot be valid for $`n\mathrm{}`$, but the double logarithmic dependence guarantees its validity for a very large range of tree sizes. Actually, as far as the five statistics introduced in Sec. IV are concerned, there is no significative differences between the symmetrized truncated REM and the standard REM, both models producing then extremely unbalanced trees. These measures, however, differ dramatically between the NPP and all previous spin-glass models analysed Hordijk:02 . Surprisingly, the NPP barrier trees are practically indistinguishable from random trees and, in particular, the tree measures obey the same scaling relation with the tree size, $`H\mathrm{ln}\left(n\right)`$ and $`C1/n`$. Hence these trees, in stark contrast with the $`p`$-spin model and REM barrier trees, become more and more balanced as $`n`$ increases.

Since the equivalence between NPP and the truncated REM discussed above was proved only in the case of infinite precision numbers (i.e., $`\kappa \mathrm{}`$) it provides no clues about the easy/hard phase transition that takes place at $`\kappa =1`$. Nevertheless, it is natural to ask if the integer counterpart of the truncated REM, obtained by considering the integer-valued energies $`E^{}=E`$ where $`E`$ is drawn from the distribution (9) with $`\mu _{\mathrm{}}`$ replaced by $`\mu _l=l(l+1)(2l+1)/6`$, exhibits a phase transition. This can easily be answered by calculating the probability that a partition is perfect (i.e., $`E_{\mathrm{min}}^{}=0`$ or $`1`$) which is given by

$$P_{\text{perf}}=_0^2𝑑E_{\mathrm{min}}\rho \left(E_{\mathrm{min}}\right)=1\mathrm{exp}\left(2\xi \right)$$
(13)
where $`\xi =2^N/\left(2\pi \mu _lN\right)^{1/2}`$. Although one clearly recovers the easy ($`P_{\text{perf}}1`$) and the hard ($`P_{\text{perf}}0`$) regimes depending on whether the ratio $`(\mathrm{log}_2l)/N`$ is very small or very large, respectively, there is definitely no phase transition separating them.

## VI Conclusion

Phase transitions in physical systems are characterized by the appearance of singularities in some observables, known as the order parameters of the system, such as, e.g., the gas density in the boiling transition. In the case of mean-field spin-glass models the order parameter directly reflects the hierarchical organization of pure states in a complex multi-valley structure Mezard:87 . Therefore one expects that some features of that structure must undergo abrupt changes when the critical point is approached. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the phase transitions take place at finite temperature, while a direct study of the landscape properties of spin-glass models based on natural quantities, such as saddle points and minima, is feasible at zero temperature only. In that sense, the easy/hard phase transitions in optimization problems Hogg:96  in general, and in the number partitioning problem (NPP) Gent:98 ; Mertens:98  considered here, provide a unique chance to study how the onset of the phase transition affects the organization of the metastable states of a disordered spin system.

Somewhat surprisingly, we find that almost all features of the landscape, which we have properly mapped into a tree structure through the barriers program, are insensitive to the onset of the easy/hard phase transition that takes place when the number of bits needed to specify a number $`a_i`$ equals the problem size, i.e., $`\kappa =(\mathrm{log}_2l)/N=1`$. Interestingly, only one of the measures studied, premonitorily termed difficulty in the mathematical literature of simulated annealing Catoni:92 , exhibits a singular behavior at the critical point. As a result, the quality of the optima found by simulated annealing will probably depend strongly on whether the control parameters set the instance in the easy ($`\kappa <1`$) or hard ($`\kappa >1`$) regime.

An important by-product of our study of the NPP landscape is the finding that the resulting barrier trees are very similar to random trees, and so they become completely balanced (symmetric) in the limit of large system sizes $`N`$ or, equivalently, large tree sizes $`n`$. These trees contrast drastically with the barriers trees resulting from the $`p`$ spin-glass, the random energy or the symmetrized truncated random energy landscapes, which become completely unbalanced in that limit. In this context, we note that although there is an equivalence at the level of the energy distribution between the NPP and the truncated random energy model, the statistical properties of their energy landscapes are very different, and probably so are the performances of local search heuristics in finding near-global solutions to these problems. Actually, the similarity of the NPP barrier trees with random trees may be part of the explanation for the failure of local search techniques to produce good solutions to this optimization problem.

### Acknowledgments

Thanks to Christoph Flamm at the University of Vienna, Austria, for his help with the barriers program. This research was supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), project 99/09644-9. The work of J.F.F. is supported in part by CNPq and WH is supported by FAPESP. P.F.S. gratefully acknowledges the hospitality of the Instituto de Física de São Carlos in Nov. 2002.


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# The history of the iron Kα line profile in the Piccinotti AGN ESO198-G24

## 1 Introduction

The discovery of the broadened and skewed fluorescent iron Kα line profile in the first “long-look” ASCA observation of MCG-6-30-15 (Tanaka et al. (1995)) fostered the hope that general relativistic effects could be observationally studied through X-ray spectroscopy of nearby Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). This hope was further strengthened by the discovery that about 50% of the known bright Seyfert 1s exhibit broad line profiles (Nandra et al. (1997)). It was reasonable to expect that the advent of Chandra and XMM-Newton would allow to significantly extend the depth and range of these studies.

These hopes are now facing a complex reality. In a few objects the existence of a relativistically broadened iron line profile is out of question (Nandra et al. (1999), Wilms et al. (2001), Turner et al. (2002), Fabian et al. (2002)). However, often the observed profiles do not match the theoretical calculations (Fabian et al. (1989); Laor (1991); Matt et al. (1992)). Electron scattering, as often observed in type 2 Seyferts (Ueno et al. (1994); Turner et al. (1997); Matt et al. (2000)), may help reconciling the difference between observed and theoretical line profiles produced in X-ray illuminated, relativistic accretion disks (Reeves et al. (2001); Matt et al. (2001)). Other pieces of evidence suggest constraints on the nature of the accretion: the disk may be truncated at a radius where relativistically broadened wings are negligible (see, e.g. the discussion in O’Brien et al. (2001)), or may develop a hot “skin” (Nayakshin et al. (2000), Ballantyne et al. (2001)), which may contribute to the iron line profile through transitions of highly ionized stages. Observations with the Chandra high-energy gratings (Yaqoob et al. (2001), Kaspi et al. (2002), Weaver (2001), and references therein) and with XMM-Newton (Gondoin et al. 2001a ; Gondoin et al. 2001b , Pounds et al. (2001); Petrucci et al. (2002)) have often unveiled narrow line components. When measured at the currently highest possible energy resolution, their intrinsic velocities are consistent with the width of the optical broad lines, suggesting an origin in the same medium. However, different origins (e.g.: scattering off the inner side of the molecular “torus” envisaged by the Seyfert unification scenarios; Antonucci & Miller (1985); Antonucci (1993)) cannot be ruled out. These narrow components have Equivalent Widths (EW) typically as large as $`100`$ eV, and may contribute as much as 50% to the total iron line flux (Weaver (2001)).

In this context, we present in this paper X-ray observations of the Seyfert 1 galaxy ESO198-G24 ($`z=0.0455`$). Relatively little is known on its X-ray spectral properties, despite the fact that it belongs to the Piccinotti sample (H0235-52; Piccinotti et al. (1982)), and hence it is one of the brightest AGN of the 2–10 keV sky. In their EXOSAT AGN survey paper, Turner & Pounds (1989) note that it exhibits a “canonical spectrum” (photon index, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.88\pm _{0.08}^{0.16}`$) with “no significant low-energy absorption”, and a 2–10 keV luminosity $`1.64\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1, about three times lower than during the HEAO-1 scans. In the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (Schartel et al. (1997)) a rather steeper soft spectral index was found ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.5\pm 0.1`$), again without any evidence for absorption. The 0.1–2.4 keV observed flux \[$`(5.33\pm 0.13)\times 10^{11}`$ erg cm-2 s-1\] corresponds to a luminosity of $`2.0\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1 once corrected for Galactic absorption ($`N_{\mathrm{H},\mathrm{Gal}}=3.2\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2; Dickey & Lockman (1990)) and extrapolated into the 2–10 keV band. Malizia et al. (1999) report a detection by BATSE, with a 2–100 keV flux of $`(5.3\pm 1.7)\times 10^{11}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. To our knowledge, no result has ever been published from ASCA, BeppoSAX or XMM-Newton observations of this source so far.

This paper attempts to address this lack in the literature. The log of the observations presented in this paper is reported in Table 1, together with the corresponding exposure times and count rates

in the energy bands where the spectral analysis discussed in Sect. 2 was carried out. The paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 describes the spectral analysis, employing phenomenological models only. A comparison of the observed fluorescent iron Kα line profiles with the predictions of theoretical models is presented in Sect. 3. The results are discussed in Sect. 4. Throughout this paper: energies are quoted in the source reference frame; uncertainties are at the 90% confidence level for one interesting parameter; $`H_0=50`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`q_0=0.5`$, unless otherwise specified.

## 2 Spectral results

### 2.1 XMM-Newton

In this paper only the time-averaged pn (Strüder et al. (2001)) spectrum in the 2–15 keV band will be presented. No significant spectral variability is associated with a $`\pm 7\%`$ flux fluctuation observed during the XMM-Newton observation. The source was outside the MOS1 field of view. The MOS2 exposure was performed in Timing Mode. The calibration of this mode is still preliminary, and the corresponding data will not de discussed in this paper. The pn observation was performed in Small Window Mode with the blocking optical Medium filter. Data were reduced with Sas v5.3.3 (Jansen et al. (2001)), using the most updated calibration files available as of July 1, 2002. A spectrum including single- and double-pixel events was extracted. It was verified that spectra extracted with either only single- or only double-pixel events are mutually consistent within the statistical uncertainties. Source spectra were extracted from a circular region of 1.8$`\mathrm{}`$ radius. Non X-ray background remained low throughout the observation, hence the whole integration time of the observation was used. Several recipes to extract the background spectra were compared, and yielded very similar results. The results presented in this paper were obtained with background spectra extracted from blank field templates available at the XMM-Newton Science Operation Center (Lumb et al. (2002)), and rescaled in order to match the observed spectrum in the 15–20 keV energy band. The background contributes around 3% and 8% of the total spectrum at 2 and 5.5 keV respectively, and is brighter than the source above 10 keV. The spectra used throughout this paper were rebinned in such a way that: a) the intrinsic energy resolution of the detectors is sampled by a number of spectral channels not larger than 3; b) each spectral bin has at least 50 counts, to ensure the applicability of the $`\chi ^2`$ test. The same criteria were applied for the BeppoSAX and ASCA spectra discussed later, but the number of counts in these cases was limited to 25.

All the models discussed in this Section and in the following ones are modified by photoelectric absorption, whose column density, $`N_\mathrm{H}`$, is constrained to be not lower than the contribution due to the interstellar matter in our Galaxy along the line-of-sight to ESO198-G24.

A simple power-law model is a marginally acceptable description of the pn spectrum ($`\chi ^2=146.5/114`$ degrees of freedom, dof). A count excess around 6 keV (observer’s frame) is present. The addition of a narrow (i.e. intrinsic width, $`\sigma `$, equal to 0) Gaussian emission profile to the best-fit power-law yields an improvement of the $`\chi ^2`$ by 18.3 for a decrease by 2 in the number of degrees of freedom (this quantity will be indicated as $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ hereinafter), significant at the 99.992% confidence level. Leaving the intrinsic width of the Gaussian profile free in the fit yields a further improvement in its quality ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =5.8/1`$, significant at the 98.8% confidence level). The best-fit parameters of the line are: $`\sigma =140\pm _{80}^{180}`$ eV, centroid energy $`E_\mathrm{c}=6.43\pm 0.07`$ keV, and $`EW=180\pm 70`$ eV. The centroid energy is consistent with Kα fluorescence from neutral or mildly ionized iron, and strictly inconsistent with species more ionized than Fexix. The intrinsic width is constrained to be larger than about 40 eV at the 90% confidence level for two interesting parameters (see Fig.1). The upper

limit is more loosely constrained, and widths as large as 0.5 keV are in principle possible.

The profile of the iron line may be more complex than a single broad Gaussian. A careful inspection of the residuals (see Fig. 2)

suggests an additional emission feature with $`E_\mathrm{c}5.4`$ keV (observer’s frame). If an additional Gaussian profile is added to the model, the quality of the fit is improved at the 96.3% confidence level ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =9.3/3`$). The best-fit values of this component are $`E_\mathrm{c}=5.70\pm _{0.12}^{0.07}`$ keV, $`EW=70\pm 40`$ eV and $`\sigma <280`$ eV. In order to compare its significance with the current systematic uncertainties of the pn response matrix, we analyzed pn public data of featureless calibration sources, acquired in Small Window Mode and reduced under the same conditions as the ESO198-G24 data. Typical systematic uncertainties (represented by the shaded area in Fig. 3) are $`\pm 5\%`$ in the 5–7 keV

band. We rule out therefore an instrumental origin for the $`E_\mathrm{c}5.7`$ keV feature. Table 2 summarizes the spectral

results.

The width of the $`E_c6.4`$ keV feature is not due to the presence of the additional line at $`E_c5.7`$ keV. If the data are fit with a model constituted by a power-law and one Gaussian profile, after removing the data points in the 5.0-5.5 keV energy range (observer’s frame), the parameters of the Gaussian profile are: $`E_c=6.43\pm 0.08`$ keV, $`\sigma =150\pm _{70}^{180}`$ eV, $`EW=200\pm _{80}^{100}`$ eV, therefore indistinguishable from those obtained with the complete model on the whole 2–15 keV energy band.

No further lines are statistically required by the fit. No evidence exists for photoelectric absorption edges in the pn spectrum either. The 90% upper limits on the optical depth of un-blurred Fei, Fexxv and Fexxvi K edges are 0.14, 0.24 and 0.30, respectively.

### 2.2 ASCA

ASCA data were retrieved from the public HEASARC archive as screened event lists. Data reduction followed standard procedures as described in, e.g., Guainazzi et al. (2000). Spectra of all the ASCA instruments were integrated on the whole elapsed time of the observation, after verifying that one can neglect spectral variability effects, and were simultaneously fit, allowing free normalization factors for the individual instruments to account for systematic uncertainties in the cross-normalizations ($`\pm 7\%`$). A simple power-law continuum modified by intervening photoelectric absorption yields a marginally acceptable fit to the data ($`\chi ^2=413.7/364`$ dof). The 2–10 keV flux is about two times weaker than in the XMM-Newton observation. The residuals exhibit a clear narrow excess feature at about 6 keV (observer’s frame). The addition of a narrow Gaussian profile largely improves the quality of the fit ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =28.7/2`$, significant at the 99.9998% confidence level). The centroid energy is again consistent with neutral or mildly ionized iron ($`E_c=6.40\pm _{0.05}^{0.09}`$). No additional improvement in the $`\chi ^2`$ is obtained if the line width is left free in the fit. The 90% upper limit on its $`\sigma `$ is 50 eV only. Similarly, the inclusion of a further Gaussian emission profile with $`E_c5.7`$ keV is not statistically required ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =4.2/3`$).

A summary of the best-fit results is shown in Table 2. The ASCA spectra and corresponding best-fit model are shown in Fig. 4.

### 2.3 BeppoSAX

BeppoSAX data were retrieved from the A.S.I. BeppoSAX Science Data Center (ASDC) public archive. Spectra from the Low Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (LECS, 0.1–4 keV; Parmar et al. (1997)) and the Medium Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (MECS, 1.8–10 keV; Boella et al. (1997)) were extracted from linearized and calibrated event lists, following standard recipes as detailed in, e.g., Guainazzi et al. (1999). Background spectra were extracted from blank sky field event lists provided by the ASDC, using the same area in detector coordinates as the source. Extraction radius were 8$`\mathrm{}`$ and 4$`\mathrm{}`$ for the LECS and the MECS, respectively. Background-subtracted spectra for the Phoswitch Detector System (PDS, 13–200 keV; Frontera et al. (1997)) were generated by plain subtraction of the 96 s duty-cycle intervals, when the collimators were pointing to the line of sight towards ESO198-G24 and to a region 3.5 degrees aside. Spectra were integrated on the whole elapsed time of the observation, after verifying that one can neglect spectral variability effects, and were simultaneously fit after applying correction factors, to account for known differences in the absolute flux cross-calibration of the instruments (in particular, a value of 0.84 was employed for the PDS versus MECS normalization; Fiore et al. (1998)).

A marginally acceptable fit ($`\chi ^2=170.3/144`$ dof) is obtained with the standard Seyfert 1 continuum model in the BeppoSAX energy bandpass (Perola et al. (2002)), i.e., a photoelectrically absorbed power-law, modified by Compton-reflection from cold matter (Lightman & White (1988), George & Fabian (1991), Magdziarz & Zdziarski (1995)). Assuming an inclination angle of the reprocessing matter $`i=25^{}`$, $`R`$111$`R`$ is proportional to the ratio between the normalizations of the reflected and of the primary continuum component. If the primary emission is isotropic, $`R=\mathrm{\Omega }/2\pi `$, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the solid angle subtended by the reflector to the primary continuum source. is comprised between 0.1 and 1.0 at the 90% level for two interesting parameters (cf. the left panel of Fig. 5).

Any thermal cut-off in the intrinsic power-law is constrained to lay at energies $`E_{\mathrm{cutoff}}\text{ }>150`$ eV at the same confidence level (cf. the right panel of Fig.5). The spectral index of the intrinsic power-law ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.79\pm 0.04`$) is remarkably close to the XMM-Newton and ASCA observed indices. The BeppoSAX best-fit parameters values are only marginally affected by different choices of the inclination angle, e.g.: $`R`$ changes by 0.1 and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ by 0.02 if $`i=45^{}`$.

Excess residuals around $`E6`$ keV (observer’s frame) again suggest emission from a fluorescent iron Kα line. The addition of a Gaussian profile yields an improvement in the quality of the fit by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =8.5/3`$, significant at the 93.5% confidence level. No conclusion can be drawn on the intrinsic width of the line profile. Its total EW does not exceed 130 eV. A summary of the best-fit results is shown in Table 2. The best-fit model and residuals are shown in Fig.6.

## 3 The history of the iron line profile in ESO198-G24

Table 2 summarizes the best-fit results for the ASCA, XMM-Newton and BeppoSAX observations of ESO198-G24, when the iron line is fit by a (combination of) Gaussian profile(s). These observations span a range of about 3 in 2–10 keV X-ray flux, whereas the spectral shape of the continuum does not exhibit significant changes. Anecdotically, the ASCA observation caught ESO198-G24 in its faintest state ever reported. Some of the properties of the iron line vary in a way, which is apparently correlated with the X-ray flux. The line EW decreases with increasing continuum flux, from $`EW320`$ eV in the weakest (ASCA) to the $`EW100`$ eV in the brightest (BeppoSAX) state. The narrow profile of the 6.4 keV emission line measured by ASCA ($`\sigma <50`$ eV) is formally inconsistent with the broad profile measured by XMM-Newton ($`\sigma 140`$ eV). The centroid energy is always consistent with that of fluorescent transitions of neutral or mildly ionized iron. However, alternative interpretations are possible, when the line profile is significantly broadened or skewed.

Broad and asymmetric iron line profiles in AGN are naturally explained as due to relativistic effects, affecting the photons emitted in an X-ray illuminated accretion disk (Fabian et al. (1989), Laor (1991), Matt et al. (1992)). If the line photons are emitted - originally with a monochromatic energy distribution - within a few gravitational radii from the source of an intense gravitational potential, the combination of kinematic (Doppler) and gravitational shifts over a range of disk annuli can produce significant broadening and skewing of the profile.

The iron line profile can be best studied in the pn spectrum, thanks to its combination of photon statistics and instrumental energy resolution. Bearing the above scenario in mind, the observed excess in the 5–6.5 keV (observer’s frame) energy range was fit with relativistic emission line profiles, as expected around a Schwarzschild (model diskline in Xspec; Fabian et al. (1989)) or a Kerr (model laor in Xspec; Laor (1991)) black hole. These models depend on a number of parameters: apart from the centroid energy and the normalization, the inner ($`r_i`$) and outer ($`r_o`$) radius of the line emitting region in units of Schwarzschild radii ($`R_S`$), the inclination of the accretion disk ($`i`$), and the power-law of the radial emissivity dependence ($`q`$). The available statistics is not sufficient to allow all these parameters to be simultaneously constrained by the fit. The fits were therefore performed in two steps. In the first step, all the parameters were left free to vary, and their confidence intervals calculated to determine which of them are unconstrained. The unconstrained parameters were then frozen to physically plausible values and/or intervals in the second step. The final results are summarized in Table 3.

The comparison between the best-fit relativistic profiles and the data is shown in Fig. 7.

Deviations between individual data points and the models are around $`\pm 1`$$`\sigma `$. Nonetheless, a description of the 5–6.5 keV (observer’s frame) excess in terms of a double Gaussian profile is better than the single relativistic profile at the 94.6% (Schwarzschild) and 96.5% (Kerr) confidence level, respectively. The relativistic profiles exhibit complementary virtues and problems. The Schwarzschild profile follows better the overall excess shape, but remains slightly below the observed blue peak; the Kerr profile does not “see” the read peak, of course. Interestingly enough, both models rules out that the bulk of the photons are originally emitted by He- or H-like iron, as $`E_c\text{ }<6.6`$ keV. The addition of a farther narrow line component underneath or besides the relativistically broadened profile yields a negligible improvement in the quality of the fit ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2\text{ }<2`$), even if the centroid energy of the narrow component is fixed to the value corresponding to a fluorescent neutral iron Kα line.

Limited constraints can be derived on the iron line shape from either the ASCA or the BeppoSAX observation. The ASCA line is clearly narrow and no hint of a broad component exists. Nonetheless, the upper limits on the EW of an underlying relativistic profile, with the same shape as observed by XMM-Newton, are not particularly demanding: 720 eV and 300 eV for a Schwarzschild and a Kerr profile, respectively (cf. Fig. 8).

In the BeppoSAX spectrum, due to the relative weakness of the iron line, and to the comparatively poorest energy resolution of the MECS detector, the question whether the line profile is broad or narrow remains basically unanswered.

## 4 Discussion

The history of the iron Kα line profile in ESO198-G24 can be summarized as follows (in order of increasing 2–10 keV flux):

* in the ASCA observation the line profile is narrow, and no indication of a broad component is present
* the XMM-Newton pn spectrum exhibits a broad line, centered at $`E_c6.4`$ keV, alongside with a possible (confidence level: 96.3%) additional feature at $`E_c5.7`$ keV. The latter feature does not correspond to any atomic transitions, and would therefore most likely belong to a relativistic profile together with the main “6.4 keV” component
* in the BeppoSAX observation the line has an EW by a factor 2 (3) fainter than in XMM-Newton (ASCA). It is impossible to tell whether its profile is narrow or broad

If the emission feature at $`E_c5.7`$ keV detected in the pn spectrum indeed belongs to a relativistic profile, the iron line complex observed in ESO198-G24 may be one example of “double-horned“ profile. Unfortunately, the statistics in the rather short XMM-Newton observation is not good enough to allow an unambiguous description in terms of a specific relativistically broadened profile. Models employing the Schwarzschild or Kerr kernel can equally well describe it form the statistical point of view (although the latter does not have any red peaks!). Interestingly enough, the best description of the excess in the 5–6.5 keV energy range (observer’s frame) is in terms of a combination of two Gaussians. The main reason for this is that the 5.7 keV and 6.4 keV features have comparable intensities (within a factor of 2), while keeping a separation $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/E0.15`$. They could hardly belong to a common standard single relativistic profile, because such a large relativistic broadening implies generally a much stronger blue peak (Fabian et al. (1989); Matt et al. (1991)). Changes in the basic relativistic profile model, such as absorption by inner shell transitions of ionized iron (as proposed by Sako et al. (2002)), or emission by a single ”flare”, which illuminates only a small fraction of the disk surface (as proposed by Nayakshin & Kazanas (2001) and Yaqoob et al. (2001)), do not yield any statistically significant improvements in the quality of the fit.

The EW of the line observed by BeppoSAX a few weeks later is by a factor of 2 weaker than measured by XMM-Newton, whereas the continuum flux was about 60% more intense. If the BeppoSAX profile is dominated by a broad component, this evidence suggests that the response time of the relativistic line to variations of the underlying continuum is probably larger than at least a few hours. If the solid angle subtended by the reprocessing matter and the spatial distribution of the intrinsic continuum did not change between the two observations (which is consistent with the closeness between the intrinsic spectral index measured by BeppoSAX and the observed spectral index measured by XMM-Newton), the larger EW of the relativistic profile in the pn spectrum can be explained by a delayed response to a brighter continuum flux state before the start of the pn exposure. The delay is at least of the order of the pn exposure elapsed time, i.e. $`\text{ }>2`$ hours, corresponding to a spatial scale of $`\text{ }>7R_SM_8^1`$, if $`M_8`$ is the black hole mass in units of $`10^8`$ solar masses. Fabian et al. (2002) point out similar problems to explain the short time scales variability pattern of the relativistic line in MCG-6-30-15. If the BeppoSAX profile is substantially ”contaminated” by a narrow component, the discrepancy between the broad component EWs is obviously even larger.

By contrast, the ASCA line profile is dominated by a remarkably narrow ”core”. Unresolved iron lines have been now quite commonly discovered both in Chandra grating (Yaqoob et al. (2001), Kaspi et al. (2002)) and in XMM-Newton observations (Gondoin et al. 2001a ; Gondoin et al. 2001b ; Reeves et al. (2001); Petrucci et al. (2002); O’Brien et al. (2001)). The two most plausible possibilities are Compton-reflection by matter far off the central engine (e.g., the “torus”), or gas clouds in the Broad Line Regions. The EW of the narrow line in ASCA ($`300`$ eV) is much larger than typically observed (50–100 eV). If it originates in the torus, one may expect $`EW100`$ eV if the torus subtends a solid angle $``$$`\pi `$ (Krolik et al. (1994); Ghisellini et al. (1994)). Such a large EW may be therefore indicative either of a strong (a factor $`\text{ }>`$10) iron overabundance or, more likely, of the “echo” of a brighter illuminating flux state. Our sparse knowledge of the historical X-ray light curve of ESO198-G24 indeed suggests a dynamical range of at least a factor 6 in the nuclear power.

## Appendix: On the ”X-ray Baldwin effect”

ESO198-G24 is one of the brightest Seyfert 1s where a fluorescent iron Kα line and a Compton reflection continuum have been simultaneously measured. The amount of reflection (assuming an inclination angle as derived by the fit of the iron line in the pn spectrum with a Schwarzschild profile: $`i=25^{}`$) is $`R=0.4\pm _{0.3}^{0.4}`$, about one-half the value expected if the reprocessing occurs in a plane-parallel, semi-infinite slab, and the primary emission is isotropic.

Nandra et al. (1997b) and Reeves & Turner (2000) discuss a possible “X-ray Baldwin effect”, whereby the intensity of the reprocessing features decreases with increasing AGN X-ray luminosity due to a higher degree of ionization of the accretion disk, which smears the spectral contrast between the reflected and direct continua and shifts the iron line centroid either to intermediate ionization stages, where resonant scattering may cause a reduction in the line flux (Matt et al. (1993), 1996), or to fully ionized stages. In ESO198-G24 there is no compelling evidence for high iron ionization stages to be responsible for the bulk of the line profile in any of the scenarios discussed in this paper. In order to test the dependence of the Compton reflection on the luminosity, we retrieved from the BeppoSAX public archive data for a sample of Seyfert galaxies (of both type 1 and 2), having a PDS count rate larger then $`0.35`$ s-1 222The sample includes: ESO191-G55, Fairall 9, IC 4329A, MCG 5-23-16, MCG 6-30-15, MCG-8-11-11, Mkn 509, NGC 2110, NGC 3516, NGC 3783, NGC 4151, NGC 4593, NGC 5506, NGC 5548, NGC 526A, NGC 7469, . Measurements for MCG 6-30-15 are taken from Guainazzi et al. (1999), for NGC 4151 from Schurch & Warwick (2002). We analyzed these observation, applying the standard Seyfert spectral template, as described in Perola et al. (2002), eventually modified for intervening photoelectric absorption in type 2 objects. The reprocessor is assumed always neutral, and the inclination angle as in Sect. 3. The $`R`$ versus 2–10 keV luminosity ($`L_X`$) plot is shown in Fig. 9.

There is no evidence for any correlations between these quantities, across the 2.5 dex span in luminosity.

###### Acknowledgements.

Comments by an anonymous referee strongly contributed to improve the quality of the presentation and sharpen the focus of this paper. This paper is based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the USA (NASA). The XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA) Development Team is gratefully acknowledged for its highly professional work. This research has made use of data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.


text:
# Formation and Evolution of Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Centers: Observational Constraints

## 1 Introduction

Deep X-ray surveys indicate that the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) is largely due to accretion onto supermassive black holes, integrated over cosmic time. In the soft (0.5-2 keV) band more than 90% of the XRB flux has been resolved using 1.4 Msec observations with ROSAT has98  and recently 1-2 Msec Chandra observations ros02 ; bra02  and 100 ksec observations with XMM-Newton has01 . In the harder (2-10 keV) band a similar fraction of the background has been resolved with the above Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys, reaching source densities of about 4000 deg-2.

The X-ray observations have so far been about consistent with population synthesis models based on unified AGN schemes com95 ; gil01 , which explain the hard spectrum of the X-ray background by a mixture of absorbed and unabsorbed AGN, folded with the corresponding luminosity function and its cosmological evolution. According to these models, most AGN spectra are heavily absorbed and about 80% of the light produced by accretion will be absorbed by gas and dust fab98 . In particular they require a substantial contribution of high-luminosity obscured X-ray sources (type-2 QSOs), which so far have only scarcely been detected.

Optical follow-up programs with 8-10m telescopes have been completed for the ROSAT deep surveys and find predominantly AGN counterparts of the faint X–ray source population schm98 ; leh01  mainly X–ray and optically unobscured AGN (type-1 Seyferts and QSOs) and a smaller fraction of obscured AGN (type-2 Seyferts). Optical identifications for the deepest Chandra and XMM-Newton fields are now approaching a completeness of 60-80% and find a mixture of obscured and unobscured AGN with an increasing fraction of obscuration towards fainter fluxes bar02 ; szo03 . Interestingly, first examples of the long-sought class of type-2 QSO have been detected in deep Chandra fields nor02 ; ste02 .

After having understood the basic contributions to the X-ray background, the general interest is now focussing on understanding the physical nature of these sources, the cosmological evolution of their properties, and their role in models of galaxy evolution. We know that basically every galaxy with a spheroidal component in the local universe has a supermassive black hole in its centre geb00 . The luminosity function of luminous X-ray selected AGN shows strong cosmological density evolution at redshifts up to 2, which goes hand in hand with the evolution of optically selected QSO and radio quasars, as well as the cosmic star formation history miy00 . At the redshift peak of optically selected QSO around z=2 the AGN space density is several hundred times higher than locally, which is in line with the assumption that most galaxies have been active in the past and that the feeding of their black holes is reflected in the X-ray background. While the comoving space density of optically and radio-selected QSO has been shown to decline significantly beyond a redshift of 2.7 ssg95 ; sha96 ; fan01 , the statistical quality of X-ray selected AGN high-redshift samples still needs to be improved miy00 . The new Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys are now providing strong additional constraints here.

In this review we compare the optical identification work in the two deepest Chandra fields, the Chandra Deep Field South and the Hubble Deep Field North and show preliminary results on the cosmological evolution of Seyfert galaxies.

## 2 The deepest Chandra Fields

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has performed deep X-ray surveys in a number of fields with ever increasing exposure times mus00 ; hor00 ; gia01 ; ste02  and has completed a 1 Msec exposure in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S, ros02 ) and a 2 Msec exposure in the Hubble Deep Field North (HDF-N, bra02 ). In Figure 1 (left), we show the colour composite Chandra image of the CDF-S. This was constructed by combining images, smoothed with a Gaussian with $`\sigma `$=1” in three bands (0.3-1 keV, 1-3 keV, 3-7 keV), which contain approximately equal numbers of photons from detected sources. Blue sources are those undetected in the soft (0.5-2 keV) band, most likely due to intrinsic absorption from neutral hydrogen with column densities $`N_H>10^{22}cm^2`$. Very soft sources appear red. A few extended low surface brightness sources are also readily visible in the image. Figure 1 (right) shows a similar image for the 970 ksec observation of the HDF-N, kindly supplied by N. Brandt bra01 . The corresponding 2 Msec image will be published soon.

The CDF-S was also observed with XMM-Newton for a net exposure of 500 ksec in July 2001 and January 2002 (PI: J. Bergeron, see has02 ). The EPIC cameras have a larger field-of-view than ACIS, and a number of new diffuse sources are detected just outside the Chandra image. X-ray spectroscopy of a large number of sources will ultimately be very powerful with XMM-Newton (see mai02  for the Lockman Hole).

## 3 VLT optical spectroscopy

Optical spectroscopy in the CDF-S has been carried out in 11 nights with the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the time frame April 2000 - December 2001, using deep optical imaging and low resolution multiobject spectroscopy with the FORS instruments with individual exposure times ranging from 1-5 hours. Some preliminary results including the VLT optical spectroscopy have already been presented nor02 ; ros02 . The complete optical spectroscopy will be published in szo03 .

Redshifts could be obtained so far for 169 of the 346 sources in the CDF-S, of which 123 are very reliable (high quality spectra with 2 or more spectral features), while the remaining optical spectra contain only a single emission line, or are of lower S/N. For objects fainter than R=24 reliable redshifts can be obtained if the spectra contain strong emission lines. For the remaining optically faint objects we have to resort to photometric redshift techniques. Nevertheless, for a subsection of the sample at off-axis angles smaller than 8 arcmin we obtain a spectroscopic completeness of about 60%. Including photometric redshifts wol01 ; mai03  this completeness increases to $``$ 80% for the CDF-S.

Figure 2 shows examples of six VLT spectra of CDF-S sources of sources which are selected from one of the two redshift spikes detected in the field at z=0.733 has02 ; szo03 ; gil03 . The objects are sorted according to their X-ray luminosity which is given in the figure together with the X-ray hardness ratio ($`HR=(HS)/(H+S)`$), where H and S are the count rates in the 2-7 keV and 0.5-2 keV, respectively. The spectrum in the upper left corresponds to a bona fide QSO, with a broad MgII line and a blue nonthermal continuum. This object has a high X-ray luminosity and soft X-ray spectrum consistent with its optical classification. The AGN indicators (broad lines, nonthermal continuum) in the upper row decrease in strength with lower X-ray luminosity and the optical spectrum becomes more and more dominated by the stars in the host galaxy (see also leh01 ). However, the X-ray luminosity and hardness ratios still indicate that the X-ray flux is dominated by type-1 AGN emission. In the lower row the X-ray luminosity still is above that of typical starburst galaxies and in addition the X-ray spectrum gets significantly harder, with hardness ratios above 0, indicating strongly absorbed X-ray continua. These objects are classified as Seyfert-2 galaxies, although their optical spectra do not necessarily reveal any AGN features. The spectrum in the lower left shows a Seyfert-2 galaxy with significant X-ray absorption and an AGN-type luminosity. The latter spectrum is characteristic for the bulk of the detected galaxies, which show either no or very faint high excitation lines indicating the AGN nature of the object, so that we have to resort to a combination of optical and X-ray diagnostics to classify them as AGN.

## 4 X-ray/optical classification

Following ros02 ; has02  we show in Figure 3 left the hardness ratio as a function of the luminosity in the 0.5-10 keV band for 165 sources for which we have optical spectra and rather secure classification in the CDF-S szo03 . The X-ray luminosities are not corrected for internal absorption and are computed in a critical density universe with $`H_0`$ = 50 km s-1 Mpc-1. Different source types are clearly segregated in this plane. Type-1 AGNs (black diamonds) have luminosities typically above $`10^{42}`$ erg s-1, with hardness ratios in a narrow range around HR$``$-0.5. Type-2 AGN are skewed towards significantly higher hardness ratios (HR¿0), with (absorbed) luminosities in the range $`10^{4144}`$ erg s-1. Direct spectral fits of the XMM-Newton and Chandra spectra clearly indicate that these harder spectra are due to neutral gas absorption and not due to a flatter intrinsic slope (see mai02 ; bau03 ). Therefore the unabsorbed, intrinsic luminosities of type-2 AGN would fall in the same range as those of type-1’s.

In Figure 3 we also indicate the type-2 QSOs (asterisks), the first one of which was discovered in the CDF-S nor02 . In the meantime, more examples have been found in the CDF-S and elsewhere ste02 . It is interesting to note that no high-luminosity, very hard sources exist in this diagram. This is a selection effect of the pencil beam surveys: due to the small solid angle, the rare high luminosity sources are only sampled at high redshifts, where the absorption cut-off of type-2 AGN is redshifted to softer X-ray energies. Indeed, the type-2 QSOs in this sample are the objects at $`L_X>10^{44}`$ erg s-1 and HR$`>`$-0.2. The type-1 QSO in this region of the diagram is a BAL QSO with significant intrinsic absorption.

About 10% of the objects have optical spectra of normal galaxies (marked with triangles), luminosities below $`10^{42}`$ erg s-1 and very soft X-ray spectra (several with HR=-1), as expected in the case of starbursts or thermal halos. Those at $`L_X<10^{41.5}`$ erg s-1 and HR$`<`$-0.7 are at particularly low redshifts. However, a separate subset has harder spectra (HR$`>`$-0.5), and luminosities $`>10^{41}`$ erg s-1. In these galaxies the X-ray emission is likely due to a mixture of low level AGN activity and a population of low mass X-ray binaries (see bar01 ). Therefore the deep Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys detect for the first time the population of normal starburst galaxies out to intermediate redshifts mus00 ; gia01 ; leh02 . These galaxies might become an important means to study the star formation history in the universe completely independently from optical/UV, sub-mm or radio observations.

Figure 3 (right) shows the same diagram for the spectroscopic identifications in the HDF-N bar02 . While the authors give only purely optical classification information for the X-ray counterparts (basically ”galaxy” or ”broad line object”), we have applied the above X-ray/optical classification scheme also to their catalogue. The corresponding diagram shows basically the same features: the X-rays show that type-1 (mainly broad-line) AGN cluster around HR$``$-0.5 and break the degeneracy between type-2 Seyferts and normal galaxies.

There is, however, one significant difference between the two identification samples: while the CDF-S identification catalogue szo03  includes 6 type-2 QSOs (see figure 3 (left)), which all are characterised by strong and narrow UV emission lines (Lyman-$`\alpha `$, CIV etc.) with almost absent continuum, the corresponding HDF-N catalogue bar02  lists only one possible type-2 QSO. A closer look to Figure 4 and the optical magnitudes of the CDF-S type-2 QSO shows that these objects are predominantly detected at redshifts z$`>`$2 and optical magnitudes R$`>`$ 24. One reason for the relative absence of this population in the HDF-N could be that a smaller number of identifications at R$`>24`$ exist in this survey compared to the CDF-S. However, a true field to field variation (cosmic variance) cannot be ruled out. At least in the CDF-S there is no significant variation of the ratio of type-1 to type-2 objects over the redshift range z=0.5-4.

## 5 The redshift distribution

The current spectroscopic/photometric completeness of the CDF-S and HDF-N identifications allows to compare the observed redshift distribution with predictions from X–ray background population synthesis models gil01 , which, due to the saturation of the QSO evolution predict a maximum at redshifts around z=1.5. Figure 5 shows two predictions of the redshift distribution from the Gilli et al. model for a flux limit of $`2.3\times 10^{16}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 in the 0.5-2 keV band with different assumptions for the high-redshift evolution of the QSO space density. The two models have been normalized at the peak of the distribution.

The actually observed redshift distribution of AGN selected from the HDF-N and CDF-S Chandra deep survey samples at off-axis angles below 10 arcmin and in the 0.5-2 keV band has been arbitrarily normalized to roughly fit the population synthesis models in the redshift range 1.5 - 2.5 and shown in Fig. 5 as histogram and data points. In the redshift range below 1.5 it is radically different from the prediction, with a peak at a redshift at z$``$0.7. This low redshift peak is dominated by Seyfert galaxies with X-ray luminosities in the range $`L_X=10^{4244}`$ erg/s. Since the peak in the observed redshift distribution is expected at the redshift, where the strong positive evolution of AGN terminates, we can conclude that the evolution of Seyfert galaxies is significantly different from that of QSOs, with their evolution saturating around a redshift of 0.7, compared to the much earlier evolution of QSOs which saturates at z$``$1.5. The statistics of the two samples is now sufficient to rule out the constant space density model at redshifts above 3, clearly indicating a decline of the X-ray selected QSO population at high redshift consistent with the optical findings. However, the statistical errors and the likely spectroscopic incompleteness still preclude a more accurate determination.

## 6 The ROSAT/Chandra luminosity function

To investigate in more detail, where the difference between the Chandra objects and the predictions, which are based on the ROSAT data originate from, we have calculated preliminary luminosity functions. For the first time the Chandra deep survey data were merged with the whole body of previously identified ROSAT AGN samples, used in miy00  to compute the AGN luminosity function. To make the analysis as complete and homogeneous as possible, we have selected only the type-1 AGN in all samples and treated only the detections and X-ray fluxes in the 0.5-2 keV band. Figure 6 shows the X-ray ”Hubble-Diagram” for the different samples, covering an unprecedented six orders of magnitude in flux limit and seven orders of magnitude in survey solid angle between the ROSAT Bright Survey and the Chandra Deep Survey. This diagram shows, that the new Chandra sources are predominantly Seyfert galaxies at a median luminosity of $`10^{43}`$ erg s-1 and a median redshift around 0.7.

A preliminary luminosity function was calculated using the $`V/V_a`$ method and is shown in two redshift shells (z=0.015-0.2 and z=1.6-2.3) in Figure 7 (left). The shape of the two luminosity function is significantly different, so that the cosmological evolution can be described neither by pure luminosity nor pure density evolution. The surprising result is, however, that the high-redshift luminosity function is almost horizontal at luminosities below $`10^{44}`$ erg s-1 and approaches the local space density in the Seyfert range. The strong positive density evolution, well known from previous AGN samples in the optical, radio and X-ray range, therefore only holds for relatively luminous AGN (i.e. QSOs), while the lower luminosity AGN (Seyfert galaxies) show much less or even negative density evolution.

To illustrate the different evolutionary behaviour for different luminosity classes in more detail we calculated space densities as a function of redshift for different luminosity classes: $`log(L_X)=`$42-43, 43-44 and 44-45, shown in Figure 7 (right). While the evolution of the highest luminosity class (44-45), the QSOs, follows very well the known strong positive evolution with an increase of almost two orders of magnitude in space density, saturating at z$`1.5`$, the evolution of lower luminosity classes is weaker and saturates at significantly later redshifts. The highest space density is achieved for the Seyferts of luminosity class 42-43 at redshifts around 0.7 at a space density about a factor of 10 higher than that of QSOs. Beyond z=0.7 there is a significant decline of the Seyfert space density. This is the reason, why the Chandra deep surveys are dominated by this type of object in this redshift shell and not, as originally expected by Seyfert galaxies at higher redshifts.

These, still preliminary, new results paint a dramatically different evolutionary picture for low-luminosity AGN compared to the high-luminosity QSOs. While the rare, high-luminosity objects can form and feed very efficiently rather early in the universe, the bulk of the AGN has to wait much longer to grow. This could indicate two modes of accretion and black hole growth with different accretion efficiency, as e.g. proposed in dus02 . The late evolution of the low-luminosity Seyfert population is very similar to that which is required to fit the Mid-infrared source counts and background (see e.g. fra02 ), however, contrary to what has been assumed by Franceschini et al., this evolution applies to all low-luminosity AGN (type-1 and type-2).

These results, however, have still to be taken with a grain of salt. First, the spectroscopic incompleteness in the Chandra samples is still substantial and before a formal publication of all spectroscopic and photometric redshifts is available, it is too early to draw final conclusions. Also, the derivation of the luminosity function and its evolution still needs to be confirmed by more modern methods (see e.g. schm99 ; miy01 ).

I thank the Chandra Deep Field South team for the good cooperation and the permission to use some data in advance of publication. I am grateful to Maarten Schmidt and Takamitsu Miyaji for the collaboration on the preliminary Chandra/ROSAT luminosity function.


text:
# Measuring Neutron Separation Energies Far from Stability

## Abstract

A method is proposed for the experimental measurement of neutron separation energies for nuclei far from stability. The procedure is based on determining cross sections for the production of nuclei, by projectile fragmentation, for which only protons are removed but for which the number of neutrons is left unchanged. A simple Abrasion-Ablation analysis leads to a cross section prediction which is sensitive to the neutron separation energy after a single parameter is adjusted in comparison with data. Examples which illustrate the method are presented.

Few experimentally measured values of neutron separation energies have been determined for nuclei near the neutron drip-line . However, it is precisely in this region that such information is particularly necessary for investigating nucleosynthesis, and for testing models of nuclear structure at the greatest distance from the valley of stability . As the values of $`N`$ and $`Z`$ move away from the valley of stability on the neutron-rich side, the neutron separation-energy systematically is reduced  due primarily to the asymmetry in the proton-neutron composition. This asymmetry is reflected by the value of the parameter $`\delta `$ which is defined as $`(NZ)/(N+Z)`$. The separation energies for nuclei with large asymmetry are often extrapolated from information available close to the valley of stability . This approach may be uncertain in describing how their values goes to zero with increasing $`\delta `$. However, this region tests the role of the symmetry energy most stringently in theoretical models, and hence provides information about the symmetry energy in the more general context of the nuclear equation-of-state . Thus, the systematic behavior of the separation energy with increasing values of $`\delta `$ offers direct evidence for such effects.

One of the most successful methods for the production of neutron-rich rare nuclides has been the fast projectile fragmentation process . This method has been used to extend the list of particle stable nuclei to the extremes . In most of the cases where the values of the neutron separation-energy have been measured, the values are in excess of $`5`$ MeV. In the case of nuclides very close to the drip-line the pairing energy may cause 2-neutron separation energies to be less than the 1-neutron separation energies. For those cases the lowest separation energy, referred to as $`S`$ in this article, be it for one or two neutrons, is the one of interest. In this paper we suggest that, under certain circumstances, the same measurement which provides the verification for the existence of a rare nucleus may also be used to estimate $`S`$.

One avenue to this information lies in the recent suggestion that “cold” fast fragmentation  seems an efficient method of producing these extremely rare nuclei. The simple scenario for this process follows the concepts of the Abrasion-Ablation (A-A) models . From that point of view, a direct reaction (abrasion) removes a number of nucleons, leaving the residue excited, and free to lose more nucleons by evaporation (ablation).

To minimize the uncertainties associated with the abrasion and ablation processes, we focus on the production of fragments where only protons and no neutrons are removed from the projectile, i.e., the abrasion process removes the protons, and leaves the residue with too little excitation energy to permit further loss of particles (neutrons). Such a production mechanism is referred as a “p-removal chain” in this article. If the residue is neutron-rich, it decays by neutron emission. Thus the upper limit on the excitation energy is the neutron separation-energy, $`S`$. It is this feature that provides the production cross section with the sensitivity to the separation energy. By limiting our attention to the nuclei produced in p-removal chains, we avoid the ambiguities related to specific evaporation models.

Using the frame work of the A-A model , the cross section to produce a nucleus with $`(Zx)`$ protons and $`N`$ neutrons from the fragmentation of a projectile with $`Z`$ proton and $`N`$ neutrons can be written as $`\sigma _x=Abr_xAbl_x`$. Here, the factor $`Abr_x`$ gives the cross section for removing $`x`$ protons (and no neutrons) by abrasion, and $`Abl_x`$ is the dimensionless probability that the residue will not further decay following the removal of those $`x`$ protons.

The factor $`Abr_x`$ can be estimated by the geometric overlap  of projectile with the target. This can provide the cross section for the removal of x particles . This cross section must then be multiplied by the probability that all the abraded particles are protons. By assuming that the positions of neutrons and protons in the projectile are uncorrelated, the probability that all $`x`$ of the abraded particles are protons can be written as $`(Z!/(Zx)!)/((N+Z)!/(N+Zx)!)`$. Both of these assumptions (geometric overlap and uncorrelated positions) are simplistic but their validity can be calibrated by comparison with a measured set of cross sections for projectile fragmentation where the separation energies of the resulting nuclei are known.

The crucial factor is $`Abl_x`$ which depends on both the distribution of excitation energy following the removal of $`x`$ protons, $`F_x(E^{})`$, and the separation energy, $`S_x`$, for the nucleus produced by this removal. Specifically, $`Abl_x`$ is the integral of the excitation function from zero to the separation-energy.

Clearly the form of the excitation function is a critical component of this procedure. The literature of A-A models suggests that this distribution function may be quite uncertain . Recent approaches  suggest that the distribution function, $`F_x(E^{})`$, is a convolution of $`x`$ distribution functions, $`f_1(e^{})`$, where $`f_1(e^{})`$ is the function for the removal of a single nucleon:

$$F_x(E^{})=\underset{i=1}{\overset{x}{}}(de_i^{}f_1(e_i^{}))\delta (\underset{i=1}{\overset{x}{}}e_i^{}E^{})$$
(1)
The functional form of $`f_1(e^{})`$ is, however, not well determined, and there is great uncertainty as to the mean value of the excitation energy, $`<e^{}>`$, it provides. Some of this uncertainty can be removed by fitting calculated cross sections to sets of measured cross sections. The fitting would be accomplished by the adjustment of $`<e^{}>`$.

One form of the suggested single particle excitation distribution, $`f_1(e^{})`$, widely used  is the “triangle” distribution. This has the form $`f_1(e^{})=2/E_m(1e^{}/E_m)`$ for $`e^{}<E_m`$ and the average excitation energy, $`<e^{}>`$ is $`E_m/3`$. A wide range values of $`E_m`$ have been suggested in different models . Convolution of this (triangle) single-particle distribution leads to a value for $`Abl_x`$ which is approximately $`(2S_x/(3<e^{}>))^x/x!`$, for $`S_x<<3<e^{}>`$. Exact values for $`Abl_x`$ can be obtained with

$$Abl_x=C_{tri}(x)(2S_x/(3<e^{}>))^x/x!,$$
(2)
where

$$C_{tri}(x)=\underset{s=0}{\overset{xs}{}}(S_x/(3<e^{}>))^s(x!^2/(s!(x+s)!(xs)!))$$
(3)
The value of $`C_{tri}(x)`$ goes to 1.0 for small values of $`(S_x/(3<e^{}>))`$, and $`Abl_x`$ is seen to be a function of the parameter $`(2S_x/(3<e^{}>))`$.

We have also considered a different form for the single-particle excitation function, i.e., the exponential function $`f_1(e^{})=1/<e^{}>\mathrm{exp}(e^{}/<e^{}>)`$ with an average excitation energy $`<e^{}>`$. A convolution of this function provides an $`x`$-particle distribution function of the form

$$F_x(E^{})=(E^{}/<e^{}>)^{x1}/(x1)!\mathrm{exp}(E^{}/<e^{}>)$$
(4)
When this function is integrated from zero to the separation energy $`S_x`$, one obtains a value for $`Abl_x`$ which is approximately $`(S_x/<e^{}>)^x/x!`$, and an exact expression can be calculated as a function of $`(S_x/<e^{}>)`$:

$$Abl_x=C_{exp}(x)(S_x/<e^{}>)^x/x!,$$
(5)
with

$$C_{exp}(x)=\underset{s=0}{}(S_x/<e^{}>)^s(x/((x+s)s!))$$
(6)
The value of $`C_{exp}(x)`$ goes to 1.0 for small values of $`(S_x/<e^{}>)`$.

For small values of $`S_x`$, the functional form of the $`Abl_x`$ (as a function of different parameters) is the same for the two single-particle distribution functions. For the “triangle” distribution the parameter is $`(2S_x/(3<e^{}>))`$, while for the exponential distribution the parameter is $`(S_x/<e^{}>)`$. Hence one might expect that a choice of $`<e^{}>`$ in the “triangle” distribution which is 2/3 the choice of$`<e^{}>`$ in the exponential distribution would predict similar cross sections. When the full $`x`$-particle excitation distributions are used, however, this scaling is only approximate.

For the nuclei in a given p-removal chain, estimates of unknown values of $`S_x`$ can be extracted from measured values of cross sections, $`\sigma _x`$, after a value of $`<e^{}>`$ has been adjusted to fit the data for nuclei with known separation energies.

In illustrative examples below we have found that we can, generally, well represent the data by first calculating $`Abr_x`$ using simple assumptions, and then adjusting the parameter $`<e^{}>`$ to give $`Abl_x`$. The assumptions for $`Abr_x`$ include both the estimation of the removal cross section from the geometric-overlap of target and projectile, and also the calculation of probability for obtaining pure proton removal by assuming uncorrelated positions for the nucleons. Any systematic correction required in $`Abr_x`$ may possibly be accommodated by adjusting $`<e^{}>`$ in $`Abl_x`$. The ambiguity in the choice of the single particle distribution function, $`f_1`$, prevents a unique determination of the mean excitation energy through the fitting. However, we do find interesting systematic changes in the required values of $`<e^{}>`$ which appear to depend on the mass and isospin values of the fragmenting projectile.

We have considered, for illustration, the p-removal chains given in reference for $`{}_{}{}^{208}Pb`$. $`{}_{}{}^{197}Au`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{136}Xe`$. We have also examined data in the literature for $`{}_{}{}^{86}Kr`$ , and $`{}_{}{}^{48}Ca`$ , and, in addition, preliminary results for $`{}_{}{}^{58}Ni`$ which is under current investigation . We first tested the form for the cross section suggested in the expressions of Eqs. 2 and 5, by fitting to data for the fragmentation production of nuclei where the separation energies are known. Both the “triangle”, and the exponential forms for the excitation functions were used, and fits to the data were achieved by adjustment of the respective values of $`<e^{}>`$.

In Fig. 1, we plot the fitted cross sections for the fragmentation of $`{}_{}{}^{86}Kr`$. The separation energies  are known for all first 5 members the p-removal chain (the data only covers 2-5). There are 3 degrees of freedom for this fit providing a $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom of .99 for the exponential distribution. The respective fitting values of $`<e^{}>`$ are 11.7 MeV for the “triangle” distribution, and 16.6 MeV for the exponential distribution.

In Table I we list the values of the $`\chi ^2`$/degree of freedom for fits to other data sets including only nuclei where the separation energies are known . Excellent fits can be achieved. We have also listed values of the fitting parameters $`<e^{}>`$ with estimates of deviations (both plus and minus) for 70% confidence. There are variations in the values of these fitting parameters from one reaction to the another. In each case an approximate ratio of approximately 2:3 is found for the values related to the “triangle” and the exponential $`f_1(e^{})`$ distributions with practically no difference in the resulting fits from the two distributions. Except for the $`Xe`$ fragmentation, the data and calculated values, based on the excitation energies which provide the best fit , are plotted in Figures 1 to 4. Preliminary results show similar behavior for the p-removal chain of $`{}_{}{}^{58}Ni`$ for which the chain has been measured through 8 p-removals .

While the current data is quite limited we also examined the predictive power of the method for nuclei where the separation energy is unknown, even lacking estimation by extrapolation. For this we looked at $`{}_{}{}^{204}Pt`$ which was measured in the chain from $`{}_{}{}^{208}Pb`$ projectile . In Fig.3 we show the best fit to the data for the first three nuclei in the chain, where separation energies are known or estimated . In the inserted graph we show the sensitivity to the assumed binding energies of the $`{}_{}{}^{204}Pt`$ using the values of $`<e^{}>`$ which best fit the first three members of the chain given in Table I. The apparent estimate for the separation energy is about 5 MeV with large uncertainty due to the experimental uncertainty in the measured cross section for $`{}_{}{}^{204}Pt`$. This value is well in line with systematic decrease of the separation energy with increased $`(NZ)`$.

We have also attempted to estimate the separation energy of $`{}_{}{}^{41}Al`$ which has recently been observed  for the first time. Even though the fragmentation of neutron-rich $`{}_{}{}^{48}Ca`$  has been studied intensely in the past few years, there is no systematic measurement of cross sections for the p-removal chain. The separation energies are not known for the nuclei with more than four protons removed. Some of the extrapolated values have uncertainties of much more than 1 MeV . Thus in principle the $`{}_{}{}^{48}Ca`$ would be a good place to fully examine our method. We have examined the existing data to make a rough estimate. We found the fragmentation cross sections have been measured from previous studies  for two nuclei, $`{}_{}{}^{45}Cl`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{44}Si`$, which have 3 and 4 protons removed from $`{}_{}{}^{48}Ca`$. This experiment used a target of $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$. Using the separation energies 6.241 MeV and 5.21 MeV  respectively for $`{}_{}{}^{45}Cl`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{44}Si`$ the fit parameters listed in Table I are obtained. We next examined the results from the experiment  which first observed the $`{}_{}{}^{41}Al`$ nucleus corresponding to the removal of 7 protons from the projectile. Unfortunately, these data were obtained with a $`{}_{}{}^{181}Ta`$ target. To connect this point with the other two points (obtained with a Be target), we used abrasion calculations which suggest that the difference in targets provides a cross section from Be which is 0.545 times the value obtained with a Ta target. The reduction arises primarily from the difference in the respective size of the impact parameters for the two targets. We plot in Fig. 4 a point for $`x=7`$ ($`{}_{}{}^{41}Al`$) at a cross section of $`4.4`$ pb, which is the value of $`8`$ pb , reported for the Ta target, scaled down by the estimated ratio of cross sections. (We have also scaled down the error bar.) The insert in Fig. 4 shows the dependence of the calculated cross section for $`x=7`$ as a function of the separation energy. The experimental uncertainty is high since only three events were observed . Even so, extraction of a value of $`3.5\pm 0.5`$ MeV would be consistent with the information in the inserted graph. We can not claim that this value is, indeed, the separation energy of $`{}_{}{}^{41}Al`$ due to the fact that two different targets were used, and there is a scarcity of information in the p-removal chain (For example, there are no measured cross-sections and no accurate separation energies for for x=5 and 6 ($`{}_{}{}^{43}P`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{42}Si`$) isotopes). However, this exercise shows the potential for extracting the separation energies for $`{}_{}{}^{44}S`$, $`{}_{}{}^{43}P`$, $`{}_{}{}^{42}Si`$, as well as $`{}_{}{}^{41}Al`$, the nuclei with 4, 5, 6, and 7 protons removed from $`{}_{}{}^{48}Ca`$. This might be accomplished with careful measurements of the complete p-removal chain from x=1 to 7 with one target and one beam energy. Specifically, additional data in the x=1-3 region where the $`S_x`$ values are known by observation will provide greater constraints on the values of $`<e^{}>`$.

Finally, we have examined the situation for the fragmentation of $`{}_{}{}^{197}Au`$ where a chain of 5 proton removal is reported in ref.  for a target of $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$ (solid points in Fig. 5. For the fragmentation of the $`{}_{}{}^{197}Au`$ using an $`{}_{}{}^{27}Al`$ target nuclei, there are p-removal cross sections up to x=3 . For the case of $`{}_{}{}^{197}Au`$ projectiles with $`{}_{}{}^{27}Al`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$ targets, abrasion estimates suggest a 5% reduction in going from the larger to the smaller target . The three open points in Fig. 5 are the $`{}_{}{}^{27}Al`$ data scaled down by 5%. They are consistently higher than the corresponding $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$ data (solid points). If we apply the fitting procedures to this set of data, using the values of $`<e^{}>`$ listed in Table I, we obtain a separation energy greater than $`7`$ MeV for both $`{}_{}{}^{193}Re`$, and $`{}_{}{}^{192}W`$ nuclei. These values are clearly inconsistent with systematic trends and expectations, both of which would have led to values below 7.0 Mev. For comparisions, the solid and dashed lines are calculations using the best fit $`<e^{}>`$ listed in Table I for $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$ (36.3 MeV) and for $`{}_{}{}^{27}Al`$ (32.2 MeV) targets, with the assumption of an exponential energy distribution. The upper and lower curve in each pair of lines use the separation energy of 7.0 and 6.5 MeV respectively as the separation energy for both $`{}_{}{}^{193}Re`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{192}W`$ nuclei. The calculated cross-sections are lower than the experimental values. In brief, the reported cross sections for the $`{}_{}{}^{197}Au+^9Be`$ reaction do not lead to reasonable separation energies for the last two members of the proton chain. The reasons for this failure are not clear at this time.

In summary, the illustrated calculations show that excellent agreement with fragment cross-sections, where the fragment neutron separation energies are known, can be obtained when the simple estimates are used with the Abrasion-Ablation model, and a single parameter, $`<e^{}>`$, is adjusted. The quality of agreement is equally good for both the “triangle” and the exponential single particle excitation distribution functions. The two distributions require values of the mean energy, which are approximately in the ratio of 2:3. The smaller the parameter the slower the fall of cross section with the number of protons removed. The quality of the fit inspires confidence in the use of the A-A model for calculating the p-removal chains. Once the parameter is determined for each chain the only remaining input is the set of separation energies. From some of the data in the literature we were able to suggest the power of the p-removal method for observing unknown separation energies in $`{}_{}{}^{204}Pt`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{41}Al`$. A puzzling disagreement was found for the unknown separation energies of $`{}_{}{}^{193}Re`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{192}W`$ in the chain reported for the fragmentation of $`{}_{}{}^{197}Au`$ when the target was $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$. Clearly, more data and more understanding of the uncertainties in the cross-section measurements are needed to confirm the utility of the method. Since the procedure may be generally applied to all p-removal chains, it opens an avenue for measuring separation energies for neutron rich nuclei near the drip-line as illustrated by the fragmentation of extremely neutron-rich projectiles such as $`{}_{}{}^{48}Ca`$. While the method can not compete with dedicated mass measurements where masses can be measured to uncertainties better than $`10^7`$ , the simplicity of cross section measurements with fragment separators may allow the wide use of this method to measure the separation energies for extremely neutron rich nuclei to a couple hundred keV as this energy decreases toward zero at the drip-line.

This work was supported in part by grants from the US National Science Foundation, PHY-0070161 and PHY-01-10253.

FIGURE CAPTIONS:

Figure 1. Measured cross sections (solid circles) for the production of p-removal nuclides with $`N=50`$, $`{}_{}{}^{86x}Z`$ from the fragmentation of $`{}_{}{}^{86}Kr`$ with a target of $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$ . Lines are predictions described in text using two different excitation distributions with the adjustment of a single parameter, given in Table I.

Figure 2. Measured cross sections for the production of p-removal nuclides with $`N=126`$,$`{}_{}{}^{208x}Z`$ from fragmentation of of $`{}_{}{}^{208}Pb`$ with a target of $`{}_{}{}^{63}Cu`$ . Lines are predictions described in text using two different excitation distributions with the adjustment of a single parameter, given in Table I. The insert shows the predicted cross-sections as a function of the separation energy for $`{}_{}{}^{204}Pt`$ nuclei. The horizontal solid and dashed lines are measured cross-sections.

Figure 3. Measured Cross sections for the production of p-removal nuclides with $`N=28`$,$`{}_{}{}^{48x}Z`$ from fragmenation of $`{}_{}{}^{48}Ca`$ with $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$ target  (solid points). Lines are predictions for x=1,2,3,4 described in text using two different excitation distributions with the adjustment of a single parameter, given in Table I. The open point for x=7 ($`{}_{}{}^{41}Al`$) is obtained from separate experiment with $`{}_{}{}^{181}Ta`$ target  and adjusted as describe in the text. The insert shows the predicted cross-sections as a function of the separation energy for $`{}_{}{}^{41}Al`$ nuclei. The horizontal solid and dashed lines are measured cross-sections.

Figure 4. Measured cross sections for the production of p-removal nuclides with $`N=118`$,$`{}_{}{}^{197x}Z`$ from a projectile of $`{}_{}{}^{197}Au`$ with $`{}_{}{}^{9}Be`$ target  (solid points). The open circle are data  for $`{}_{}{}^{197}Au+^{27}Al`$ scaled down by 0.95. Lines are predictions described in the text.