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# Description of a quantum convolutional code

## Description of the code —

The particular code we wish to present is best described by using the stabilizer formalism Gottesman (1997). This provides a simple way to understand the encoding and decoding operations. Moreover, the error syndromes can be easily identified, which considerably simplifies the description of the error estimation algorithm. We use the following standard notations for the Pauli operators acting on a single qubit:

$$X=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 1\\ 1& 0\end{array}\right),Y=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& i\\ i& 0\end{array}\right),Z=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(1)
so that $`ZX=Y`$. The identity matrix will be denoted by $`I`$. Since convolutional codes are designed to deal with a stream of information qubits, the number of generators of the stabilizer group will possibly be infinite. However in practice, transmission starts and ends at a given time, which means that we only consider generators made of a finite number of Pauli operators.

The code subspace is described by the generators of its stabilizer group, $`S`$. These generators are given by:

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccccc}M_0\hfill & =& X& Z& I& I& I& I& I& I& \text{},\hfill \\ M_1\hfill & =& Z& X& X& Z& I& I& I& I& \text{},\hfill \\ M_2\hfill & =& I& Z& X& X& Z& I& I& I& \text{},\hfill \\ M_3\hfill & =& I& I& Z& X& X& Z& I& I& \text{},\hfill \\ M_4\hfill & =& I& I& I& Z& X& X& Z& I& \text{},\hfill \\ M_{4i+j}\hfill & =& \multicolumn{9}{c}{I^{5i}M_j,0<i,1j4,}\\ M_{\mathrm{}}\hfill & =& \multicolumn{2}{c}{\mathrm{}}& I& I& I& I& Z& X& .\hfill \end{array}$$
(2)
It is easy to check that all the generators commute and are independent. Thus, the code subspace (i.e. the largest common eigenspace of the generators with eigenvalue $`+1`$) is non-trivial.

An important point to address when considering stabilizer codes is the ability to manipulate encoded information. Namely, we want to find the encoded Pauli operators $`\overline{X}_i`$, $`\overline{Z}_i`$ corresponding to logical qubit $`i`$. These operators must satisfy the following relations:

$`\overline{X}_i,\overline{Z}_iN(S)S,`$ (3)
$`[\overline{X}_i,\overline{X}_j]=0,`$ (4)
$`[\overline{Z}_i,\overline{Z}_j]=0,`$ (5)
$`[\overline{X}_i,\overline{Z}_j]=0,ij,`$ (6)
where $`N(S)`$ denotes the normalizer of $`S`$. Equation (3) states that the encoded Pauli operators leave the code subspace globally invariant, but have a non-trivial action on its elements, while the Equations (4-6) ensure that manipulating qubit $`i`$ does not affect other qubits. There exists a great choice of different sets of such operators, however they are not equivalent in the perspective of effectively manipulating the encoded quantum information in an easy way: in practice only those with a small number of terms different from the identity are useful. For our particular example, such set exists and has a structure invariant by a shift of five qubits:

$$\begin{array}{cccccccccc}\overline{X}_1\hfill & =& I& Z& I& X& I& Z& I& I\mathrm{},\\ \overline{Z}_1\hfill & =& I& Z& Z& Z& Z& Z& I& I\mathrm{},\\ \overline{X}_n\hfill & =& \multicolumn{8}{c}{I^{5n}\overline{X}_1,n>1,}\\ \overline{Z}_n\hfill & =& \multicolumn{8}{c}{I^{5n}\overline{Z}_1,n>1.}\end{array}$$
(7)
Hence, a unitary transformation on a single encoded qubit will in general be implemented by a unitary transformation on five physical qubits.

At this point, one can wonder what in this code differs from a generic block code. The answer to this question comes from the particular structure of the stabilizer generators: beside $`M_0`$ and $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$, the generators of the stabilizer group can be casted into sets of constant size (e.g. four), each set acting on a fixed number (e.g. seven) of consecutive qubits. In addition, each set has a fixed overlap (e.g. of two qubits) with the set immediately before and immediately after. This very peculiar structure defines quantum convolutional codes and we can prove Ollivier and Tillich  that this implies the possibility of online encoding and the existence of an efficient error estimation algorithm.

## Encoding circuit —

As explained in D. Gottesman’s Ph.D. thesis Gottesman (1997), there are various ways to realize the encoding into the code subspace. However, for convolutional codes, they are not equivalent: standard encoding circuits usually require to wait until the last ‘to-be-protected’ qubit has been obtained before sending the encoded state. In this section, we explain how to take advantage of the structure of the stabilizer generators to overcome this limitation and encode the qubits online. We first exhibit a map from the computational basis of the ‘to-be-protected’ qubits to a basis of the code subspace. As a second step, we derive the quantum circuit implementing this map in a unitary way.

More precisely, consider the following set of states:

$`\left\{|\psi (c_1,c_2,c_3,\mathrm{})\right\}_{c_i\{0,1\}}=`$ (8)
$`\left\{P|0,0,0,0,0,c_1,0,0,0,0,c_2,0,0,0,0,c_3,\mathrm{}\right\}_{c_i\{0,1\}},`$
where $`P=_i(I+M_i)/\sqrt{2}`$ is the projection operator onto the code subspace. Since $`\overline{Z}_i`$ commutes with all the generators of the stabilizer group, the following equation holds for any element of the set:

$`\overline{Z}_iP|0,0,0,0,0,c_1,0,0,0,0,c_2,0,0,0,0,c_3,\mathrm{}=`$ (9)
$`(1)^{c_i}P|0,0,0,0,0,c_1,0,0,0,0,c_2,0,0,0,0,c_3,\mathrm{}.`$
This implies that $`\{|\psi (c_1,c_2,c_3,\mathrm{})\}_{c_i\{0,1\}}`$ is an orthonormal basis of the code subspace. Hence, the natural encoding consists in mapping the computational basis of the ‘to-be-protected’ qubits, $`\{|c_1,c_2,c_3,\mathrm{}\}_{c_i\{0,1\}}`$ into the basis $`\{|\psi (c_1,c_2,c_3,\mathrm{})\}_{c_i\{0,1\}}`$.

In practice, to encode a stream of qubits $`q_i`$, we first add to it ancillary qubits in the $`|0`$ state such that the ‘to-be-protected’ qubit $`i`$ is now at the position $`5i+1`$. Then, we need to implement $`P`$ for these specific input states as a unitary transformation onto the whole Hilbert space. This can be done in full generality as explained in Gottesman (1997), and gives the encoding circuit of Fig1. From this simple example, it is easy to understand that the possibility of online encoding for quantum convolutional codes is a consequence of the finite extension of the support of the generators of the stabilizer group and of the encoded Pauli operators. Also note that alternative encoding methods can be found and can be relevant when considering some specific applications, but these issues are beyond the scope of this letter.

## Error propagation and online decoding —

Due to their very specific nature, convolutional codes propagate information contained in a given qubit to its successors (see again Fig1). During the decoding process (i.e. the inverse of encoding) this can actually become a problem: an error affecting a finite number of qubits before decoding can propagate through the decoding circuit and finally affect an infinite number of qubits. Such error is called catastrophic. It is worth mentioning that this issue is to the quantum domain: classical convolutional encoders might have catastrophic errors Johannesson and Zigangirov (1999); Lee (1997). Fortunately, in both cases, non-catastrophic encoders exist. More precisely, given a specific encoder one can find a procedure to determine whether it has catastrophic errors or not. For classical codes this is a well known result established by Massey and Sain Massey and Sain (1968). For the quantum domain, we can show Ollivier and Tillich  that the circuit of non-catastrophic encoders fulfills the following requirement: its gates form a finite number of layers and commute with each other inside a layer. The idea behind this theorem is simple. In general, an error affecting some qubits will propagate to all the other qubits involved in a gate with the erroneous ones. When those qubits are further used in other gates the error continues to propagate until no more gates are applied. The commutation relation together with the finiteness of the number of layers ensures that, for any finite size error, only a finite number of gates will enter in the propagation process. Thus all errors are non-catastrophic. Fig2 illustrates this ‘pearl-necklace’ structure for our example, and thus proves that our rate $`1/5`$ quantum convolutional code is non-catastrophic.

Moreover, it can be shown that this condition implies the existence of a forward decoding scheme: there is no need to wait for the last qubit to start decoding (see Fig2). For non-catastrophic codes, both encoding and decoding can be done online Ollivier and Tillich .

## Maximum likelihood error estimation —

An error correcting code aims at protecting information sent over a noisy communication channel by letting the receiver infer which error possibly affected the information. This is the role of the error estimation algorithm. On average, the correct information is most often retrieved when the estimated error coincides with the most likely error. Thus, it is both of theoretical and practical relevance to have an efficient maximum likelihood error estimation algorithm for our quantum convolutional codes. In this section, we exhibit such algorithm. It is indeed the quantum analogue of the well-known Viterbi algorithm for classical convolutional codes. The Viterbi algorithm realizes a maximum likelihood error estimation on all memoryless channels with a complexity linear in the number of encoded bits. This explains why classical convolutional codes are so widely used for reducing the noise on communication channels.

Our algorithm for quantum convolutional codes processes the information obtained through the syndrome in order to infer the most likely error. The circuit for obtaining the syndromes follows the usual phase estimation scheme: an ancillary qubit is prepared in the $`|0`$ state; undergoes a Hadamard transform; controls the application of one of the generator $`M_i`$ of the stabilizer group; again undergoes a Hadamard transform; and is finally measured in the $`\{|0,|1\}`$ basis. Then, the algorithm updates a list of maximum likelihood error candidates by looking at a small number of syndromes at a time, and by taking local decisions. It is preceded and followed by appropriate initialization and termination steps.

The initialization step lists all error candidates, $`\{E_j^0\}_j`$, for the first two qubits which are compatible with the syndrome $`M_0`$. There are exactly $`8=4^2/2`$ of them (there are $`4^2`$ different operators with support on the first two qubits, but the constraint associated with $`M_0`$ divides this set into two equal parts). This list constitutes the input of the main loop of the algorithm. At step $`i`$, the algorithm constructs a list of some most likely error candidates, $`\{E_j^i\}_j`$ compatible with the syndromes $`M_0`$ to $`M_{4i}`$. Each candidate $`E_j^i`$ is thus specified only on qubits $`1`$ to $`5i+2`$. The crucial point of the algorithm is to maintain a fixed size of this list, and hence to avoid the exponential blow up that would arise when listing all error candidates compatible with these syndromes. More precisely, $`E_j^i`$ is a most likely candidate whose restriction on qubit $`5i+1`$ and $`5i+2`$ is prescribed by the index $`j`$ running over the set of $`16`$ possible errors affecting those two qubits. The computation of any error candidate $`E_k^{i+1}`$ is easily achieved provided $`\{E_j^i\}_j`$: consider the set of all possible extensions of the error candidates $`E_j^i`$ to qubit $`5i+3`$ to $`5i+7`$ with the prescribed error $`k`$ at position $`5i+6`$ and $`5i+7`$. It is easy to check that any such element is now compatible with syndromes $`M_0`$ to $`M_{4(i+1)}`$. The specific candidate $`E_k^{i+1}`$ is chosen to be the most likely operator among the elements of the latter set (in case of tie, one is chosen at random). This procedure is continued until reaching $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$, which again selects half of the candidates. The termination of the algorithm outputs the most likely candidate among the remaining ones. This constitutes the most likely error given the value of all the syndromes for the received stream of qubits Ollivier and Tillich .

The main property used to prove this fact is related to the structure of the generators of the stabilizer group: the value of the syndromes associated to $`M_{4i+1}`$ to $`M_{4i+4}`$ depend on the syndromes $`M_0`$ to $`M_{4i}`$ only through the error operators at position $`5i+1`$ and $`5i+2`$. Thus, taking a sequence of local decisions allows to construct a list of error candidates among which one will coincide with the most likely error until qubit $`5i+2`$ while maintaining a linear complexity of the algorithm as the number of encoded qubits increases. Note that, the error maximizing the likelihood is known when the last syndrome is measured. Hence, it is in principle necessary to wait till the end of the transmission to actually correct the estimated error. However, as for the classical Viterbi algorithm, numerical simulations show that the different candidates at a given step coincide with the most likely error except on their last few positions. Thus, in practice it is possible to estimate the error online. In addition, we want to stress, that without increasing its complexity, this algorithm can take into account all memoryless quantum channels even if the single qubit error probabilities are not constant in time. For example, one could imagine that the qubits are photons sent through an optical fiber, and that the probabilities are evaluated by sending probe photons containing no useful information. Finally, as the codes described here are the exact translation to the quantum setting of the classical convolutional codes, one can also derive suboptimal error estimation algorithms (for their classical analogues see Johannesson and Zigangirov (1999); Lee (1997)). Most importantly, quantum convolutional codes can be decoded iteratively and allow quantum turbo decoding Ollivier and Tillich .

## Conclusion —

In this letter, we presented the theory of quantum convolutional codes by an example. We gave explicitly the associated encoding and decoding circuits, as well as a low complexity maximum likelihood error estimation algorithm. We believe that such codes could be used to reduce errors for long distance quantum communications provided that we are able to perform a small and fixed number quantum gates with good fidelity. Moreover, the tools developed for quantum convolutional codes can be used to translate other families of classical codes to the quantum domain, like for instance low density parity check codes.

###### Acknowledgements.

Part of this work was done when H.O. was visiting the Perimeter Institute and the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Canada. Useful discussions with J. Kempe, R. Laflamme and D. Poulin are gratefully acknowledged.


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# On the Excitation of Double Giant Resonances in Heavy Ion Reactions

## 1 Introduction.

Giant Resonances (GR) are considered as one of the most important elementary modes of excitation in nuclei harak . They are generally interpreted as harmonic density vibrations around the equilibrium distribution of the nucleons. Within this point of view one should also expect to observe higher-lying states of the harmonic spectrum such as, for instance, the two-phonon Double Giant Resonance (DGR). The existence of the double-phonon excitation of low-lying collective vibrational states has been known for a long time, but it is only recently that the multiple excitations of GR have been systematically observed (for a complete review see ref.rev  and harak  and references therein).

Interest in this subject has been renewed by recent experiments with relativistic heavy-ion beams, where inelastic cross sections for the excitation of the dipole DGR have been precisely measured. The theoretically calculated cross sections – when performed within the framework of the standard harmonic model – systematically underestimate the experimental data by as much as a factor of two. This unexpected enhancement of the cross sections puts in evidence shortcomings in either the description of the structure of the modes or in the formulation of the reaction mechanism. Attempts to improve over this situation have followed different paths.

The microscopic understanding of these resonances, for instance, has been taken beyond the simple superposition of the 1p-1h configurations to include couplings to 2p-2h, 3p-3h and/or states of higher complexity wam ; pon ; ber . Residual interactions give rise to anharmonicity in the energy spectrum cat  and, also, appreciable changes in the structure of the wave functions. Recently, a systematic study of the anharmonicity in the dipole DGR has been carried out for several nuclei pon2 . This study, based on a quasiparticle RPA, has shown an effect of few hundred keV. The same order of magnitude had been found in ref. lan  for $`{}_{}{}^{P}208`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{C}40`$. These effects have been taken into account in macroscopic models that add small anharmonic contributions vol ; bor  to the otherwise harmonic hamiltonian in the presence of an external time-dependent field. Depending on the magnitude of these anharmonic terms the inelastic cross sections for the population of the dipole DGR can reach values which are close to the experimental data. Microscopic calculations in the context of the RPA approximation, have also succeeded in reducing the discrepancy between the experimental data and the theoretical predictions down to the level of a few per cent lan . Another approach to the problem that has been examined car ; wei  exploits the so-called Brink-Axel hypothesis brax . It also seems possible, through this formalism, to obtain enhancements in the population of states in the energy range around the DGR.

In this paper we set to investigate the role of the nuclear coupling in the excitation of GR’s and DGR’s and its interplay with the long-range Coulomb excitation mechanism. Furthermore, we study the consequences of the spreading of the strength distribution of the single giant resonance on the inelastic cross section for both the GR and DGR. These topics have been previously explored in the literature. In refs. cat87 ; lan2 ; and  nuclear and Coulomb interactions where taken into account for medium-heavy nuclei at low bombarding energy (around 50 MeV/A). While these studies put in evidence interference effects between the two excitation mechanisms there was no clear resolution concerning what could be actually attributed to each of them. Also, the role played by the resonances’ width on the reaction cross sections was covered in refs. can ; ber96 ; wei . The analyses, however, were done only for the case of the Coulomb excitation mechanism and lead to somewhat ambiguous results.

We shall do this survey within a simple reaction model that has the virtue of conforming to the standard treatment of inelastic excitations which is familiar to many active participants in this field. Our original intention was limited to investigate the qualitative dependence of the probabilities of excitation of the Double Giant Resonances as a function of several global parameters such as the excitation energies, bombarding energies, multipolarity, anharmonicity, width, etc. In the process of refining the computer programs we used to obtain these global trends we ended up with a quite transparent and yet powerful tool that – we believe – can be useful for the experimentalists to make quantitative predictions for measurements in a wide variety of circumstances. With this very practical purpose in mind we shall take in this contribution the width of the states as a free parameter. We shall also limit our calculations to the non-relativistic regime and, for the different examples, consider the excitation of single- and double-phonon Giant Quadrupole Resonances.

Following this Introduction we describe in Sect. II the formalism employed to make our estimates. Relevant results for the reaction 40Ar + 208Pb are given with an abundance of illustrations in Sect. III. The conclusions that can be inferred from these examples are also the subject of this Section. Some concluding remarks are left for Sect. IV.

## 2 The Model

The excitation processes of the one and two-phonon states are calculated within the framework of the standard semiclassical model of Alder and Winther ald  for energies below the relativistic limit. According to this model for heavy ion collisions, the nuclei move along a classical trajectory determined by the Coulomb plus nuclear interaction. We will explore the energy range from few MeV up to hundreds of MeV per nucleon. During their classical motion the nuclei are excited as a consequence of the action of the mean field of one nucleus on the other. The excitation processes are described according to quantum mechanics and they are calculated within perturbation theory.

We assume that the colliding nuclei have no structure except for the presence, in the target, of one and two-phonon states whose energies are $`E_1`$ and $`E_2=2E_1`$, respectively. For the ion-ion potential we have used the Coulomb potential for point charged particles and the Saxon-Woods parametrization of the proximity potential $`U_N(r)`$ that are commonly used in heavy ion collisions win .

In the theory of multiple excitations the set of coupled equations describing the evolution of the amplitudes in the different channels can be solved within the perturbation theory. We can write the probability amplitude to excite the $`\mu `$ component of the one-phonon state with multipolarity $`\lambda `$ as

$$a_{\lambda \mu }^{(1)}(t)=(i/\mathrm{})_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑tF_{\lambda \mu }(r(t),\widehat{r}(t))e^{iE_1t/\mathrm{}},$$
(1)
where the integrals are evaluated along the classical trajectories $`𝐫(t)`$. In this equation the main ingredient is the coupling form factor

$$F_{\lambda \mu }(r(t),\widehat{r}(t))=f_\lambda (r)Y_{\lambda \mu }(\widehat{r}),$$
(2)
chosen according to the standard collective model prescription land . For a given multipolarity $`\lambda `$ the radial part assumes the form

$$f_\lambda (r)=\frac{3Z_pZ_te^2}{(2\lambda +1)R_C}\beta _\lambda ^C\left(\frac{R_C}{r}\right)^{\lambda +1}\beta _\lambda ^NR_T\frac{d}{dr}U_N(r).$$
(3)
The deformation parameters $`\beta `$ determine the strength of the couplings, and they are normally directly associated with the $`B(E\lambda )`$ transition probability. The expression for the nuclear component of the form factor is not valid for $`\lambda =1`$. In this case the inelastic form factor is obtained from the Goldhaber-Teller or Jensen-Steinwendel models. The $`Z_p`$ ($`Z_t`$) denotes the charge number of the projectile (target), while $`R_C`$ and $`R_T`$ are the Coulomb and matter radii of the target nucleus.

In a similar way, the amplitude for populating the two-phonon state with angular momentum $`L`$ and projection $`M`$ can be obtained as

$`a_{LM}^{(2)}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`(1/\mathrm{})^2{\displaystyle \underset{\mu }{}}\sqrt{(1+\delta _{\mu ,M\mu })}`$ (4)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑tF_{\lambda ,M\mu }(𝐫(t))e^{i(E_2E_1)t/\mathrm{}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^t}𝑑t^{}F_{\lambda ,\mu }(𝐫(t^{}))e^{iE_1t^{}/\mathrm{}}`$
Solving the classical equation of motion we can calculate for each impact parameter $`b`$ the excitation probability $`P^{(1)}(b)`$ and $`P^{(2)}(b)`$ to populate the single- and the double-phonon state. These are given by

$$P^{(1)}(b)=\underset{\mu }{}|a_{\lambda \mu }^{(1)}(t=+\mathrm{})|^2$$
(5)
and

$$P^{(2)}(b)=\underset{L}{}P_L^{(2)}=\underset{LM}{}|a_{LM}^{(2)}(t=+\mathrm{})|^2.$$
(6)
In order to get the corresponding cross sections we have then to integrate the probabilities $`P^{(\alpha )}`$’s ($`\alpha `$ =1,2)

$$\sigma _\alpha =2\pi _0^{\mathrm{}}P^{(\alpha )}(b)T(b)b𝑑b.$$
(7)
Generally, in Coulomb excitation processes the transmission coefficient is taken equal to a sharp cutoff function $`\theta (bb_{min})`$ and the parameter $`b_{min}`$ is chosen in such a way that the nuclear contribution is negligible. We want to take into account also the contribution of the nuclear field so in our case T(b) should be zero for the values of $`b`$ corresponding to inner trajectory and then smoothly going to one in the nuclear surface region. This can be naturally implemented by introducing an imaginary term in the optical potential which describes the absorption due to non elastic channels. Then the survival probability associated with the imaginary potential can be written as

$$T(b)=\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{2}{\mathrm{}}_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}W(r(t))𝑑t\right\},$$
(8)
where the integration is done along the classical trajectory. The imaginary part $`W(r)`$ of the optical potential was chosen to have the same geometry of the real part with half its depth.

The excitation processes of both single and double GR can change significantly when one takes into account the fact that the strength of the GR is distributed over an energy range of several MeV. Among the few standard choices for the single GR strength distribution, we will assume a Gaussian shape, with a width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1=2.3\sigma `$ which we will take as a parameter, of the following form

$$S(E)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }\sigma }\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{(EE_1)^2}{2\sigma ^2}\right\}.$$
(9)
Calculations have been also performed with a Breit-Wigner shape yielding similar trends. However, the Gaussian form guarantees a better localization of the response and prevents superposition of the modes for the largest widths (for a further discussion see ref. ber ).

To get the cross section to the one-phonon state one then defines a probability of excitation per unit of energy,

$$dP^{(1)}(E,b)/dE=S(E)\underset{\mu }{}|a_{\lambda \mu }^{(1)}(E,t=+\mathrm{})|^2,$$
(10)
where the single amplitudes $`a_{\lambda \mu }^{(1)}(E,t)`$ are obtained as before, but with a variable energy $`E`$. The probability of exciting the double-phonon state is then obtained by folding the probabilities of single excitation, in the form

$$dP^{(2)}(E,b)/dE=𝑑E^{}\frac{dP^{(1)}(E^{},b)}{dE}\frac{dP^{(1)}(EE^{},b)}{dE}.$$
(11)
The total cross section for one- and two-phonon states can then be constructed as

$$\sigma _\alpha =2\pi _0^{\mathrm{}}_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{dP^\alpha }{dE}(E,b)T(b)b𝑑b𝑑E.$$
(12)
Due to the Q-value effect it is clear that one expects a distortion in the shape of the distribution of the cross section which will favor the lower part of the distribution in energy.

## 3 Results

We show in Fig. 1 the dependence on the impact parameter of the excitation probabilities for the one- and two-phonon states of the Giant Quadrupole Resonance in lead. The reaction we have chosen for this illustration is 40Ar + 208Pb at a bombarding energy of 40 MeV per nucleon. The deformation parameters have been chosen equal $`\beta ^C=\beta ^N=0.07`$, in agreement with the currently estimated value for the $`B(E2)`$. The range of impact parameters given in the figure covers the relevant grazing interval, and in a classical picture (including both Coulomb and nuclear fields) yields scattering angles between $`3.4`$ and $`5.5`$ degrees. In the strictly harmonic case the probabilities for excitation of the double-phonon state can of course be constructed from those corresponding to the single-phonon; they are both explicitly given here for a matter of later convenience. Each frame displays a set of three curves that allows us to compare the individual contributions of the Coulomb and nuclear fields to the excitation process and put in evidence a value of $`b12.5`$ fm for the maximum (destructive) interference between the competing mechanisms.

We use the same reaction as in Fig. 1 to illustrate the effect of the reaction Q-values on the transition probabilities. The dependence of the single-step inelastic excitation to the one-phonon state of energy $`E_{_{GQR}}`$ and the sequential process feeding the double-phonon state at twice this value are shown in Fig. 2. As before, the three curves in each frame display the separate contributions of the Coulomb and nuclear fields and the combined total. Two values of the impact parameter have been chosen specifically to cover a situation of nuclear ($`b`$=12 fm) and Coulomb ($`b`$=13 fm) dominance. The results show – even in a linear scale – a somewhat moderate dependence with the frequency of the mode. This is due to the relatively high bombarding energy chosen in this example, for which the time-dependence of both the Coulomb and nuclear excitation fields are quite well-tuned to the intrinsic response.

There is a qualitative difference in the effective collision time for Coulomb and nuclear inelastic processes that is worth mentioning. We refer to the dependence, for a given bombarding energy, of the excitation probabilities for the one- and two-phonon states on the impact parameter. Because of the long range of the formfactors the change of the effective collision time $`\tau `$ for Coulomb excitation follows a different law than the one corresponding to the nuclear inelastic processes. It can be estimated that $`\tau __C/\tau __NA_\lambda \sqrt{b}`$, where the proportionality factor $`A_\lambda `$ is a monotonically decreasing function of the multipolarity $`\lambda `$. For all multipolarities, however, $`\tau __C`$ is larger than $`\tau __N`$. It follows from these arguments that the adiabatic cut-off function that affects the transition amplitudes for Coulomb excitation varies significantly over the large range of impact parameters that contributes to this process. For the nuclear field a favorable matching between effective collision times and the intrinsic period of the mode applies, on the other hand, to most of the relevant partial waves. This can be understood by examining Fig. 3, where the probability for excitation of the one-phonon level is plotted as a function of the energy of the mode for three impact parameters, $`b`$=10, 15 and 20 fm. Two sets of curves are shown, corresponding to Coulomb and nuclear excitation only. In both instances the probabilities are normalized to their values for $`E_{_{GQR}}`$=0 MeV to emphasize the different character of the response. Notice, for instance, that for $`E_{_{GQR}}`$=20 MeV the role of the Coulomb field for $`b`$=20 fm would be effectively quenched by two orders of magnitude in spite of its long range. (This is of course in addition to the gradual reduction of the transition amplitudes caused by the slow $`r^{(\lambda +1)}`$ dependence of the couplings.)

We use Fig. 4 to illustrate the dependence of the excitation probabilities upon the bombarding energy. For this we take a value of $`E_{_{GQR}}`$=11 MeV, close to the actual excitation energy of the Giant Quadrupole Resonance in lead. The impact parameter $`b`$ is set to 12.5 fm, which provides the condition in which the importance of the Coulomb and nuclear excitations become comparable. Of course it is also the choice of impact parameter that yields the maximum (negative) interference between the two reaction mechanisms. What we see is a rapid increase of the probabilities for the one-phonon and two-phonon levels up to a bombarding energy of about 50 MeV/nucleon. After that a gradual decline sets in up to about 400 MeV/nucleon, an energy beyond which a relativistic formalism must be implemented. The trend, however, is not to be significantly altered and, in view of these results one cannot but wonder about the actual need of exploiting relativistic bombarding energies to probe the excitation of double-phonon giant resonances in nuclei. In principle, and entirely from an adiabatic point of view, the higher the bombarding energy the better. Yet, optimal matching conditions reach saturation and one cannot ignore the fact that, beyond this point, one can no longer expect a further enhancement of the excitation probabilities. Quite on the contrary, the interaction time is effectively reduced up to a point where (as the figure shows) the excitation of the modes becomes less and less favored (see caption to Fig. 5 and, also, ref. ber96 ).

In Fig. 6 we display the cross section for the excitation of the GQR and DGQR as a function of the bombarding energy in MeV per nucleon. This observable quantity combines the effect of all impact parameters and the plot puts in evidence a quite interesting feature. Notice that at all bombarding energies the population of the one-phonon state is dominated by the Coulomb formfactors. At the two-phonon level, on the other hand, it is mostly the nuclear coupling that determines the outcome. To understand the origin of this exchange of roles it may be helpful to re-examine Fig. 1. We have here to pay attention to the dependence of the ratio between the probabilities for nuclear and Coulomb excitation in the relevant range of impact parameters, 11-13 fm. (To this end the display factor of 30 introduced for the case of the two-phonon state is of no consequence.) The enhanced logarithmic slopes for the DGQR resulting from the squaring of the one-phonon probabilities suffice to give the leading edge to the nuclear couplings. This realization has major consequences insofar as the global properties of the excitation of the GQR and DGQR is concerned. In fact, the transition probabilities will inevitably reflect the different characteristics of the reaction mechanism that it is mostly responsible for the population of one state or the other.

Q-value considerations have such a pronounced effect on the excitation probabilities that it is clear that they will play an important role when one takes into account the sizable width of the one- and two-phonon states. Suppose that instead of having the total strength of the mode at a fixed value $`E_{_{GQR}}`$ we distribute it with the profile of a Gaussian distribution of width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. If the energy of the mode is quite off the optimal Q-value window one should expect that the distribution of measured cross sections will follow a quite different law. In fact, whenever the dynamic response in the vicinity of $`E_{_{GQR}}`$ is a rapidly changing function of the energy (see, for instance, Fig.5 for $`E`$=10 MeV/A) the experimental distribution will be significantly distorted and shifted towards lower energies. We illustrate this aspect in Fig. 7, where the distribution of Coulomb excitation probabilities for the one-phonon state, $`dP^{(1)}/dE`$, is shown for different impact parameters and bombarding energies. In each frame the shaded curve shows the Gaussian distribution of strength that is the input to the calculation. Notice that all distributions have been normalized in order to emphasize the effect of interest and to eliminate the over-all dependence on $`b`$ and $`E`$ discussed earlier. As it follows from our considerations one can easily see that the smaller distortion corresponds indeed to the smaller impact parameters and/or the larger bombarding energies.

The distortion of the line profile at the one-phonon level increases as a function of the width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, as it is clearly seen in Fig. 8, where reaction cross sections (i.e. the result of an integration over impact parameters) are shown for a typical value of the bombarding energy. For the larger width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=6 MeV the apparent shift of the distribution is large enough as to place most of the cross section outside of the initial range set by the Gaussian curve. The effect seems to be more noticeable at the two-phonon level, as shown on the right-hand-side of the figure. According to our previous discussion, it is the Coulomb excitation mechanism that contributes most to the difference between the strength and cross section profiles.

From the energy distributions displayed in Fig. 8 one can calculate the total one- and two-phonon cross sections, by integrating over the excitation energy. The global effect of the finite width is shown in Fig. 9, where the total cross sections for different values of the width are compared with the corresponding values for sharp resonances. The enhanced excitation in the lower part of the distribution leads to a global enhancement in the case of the Coulomb field. As a consequence, a corresponding enhancement is present in the combined Coulomb+nuclear case in the one-phonon excitation, which is dominated by the Coulomb interaction. On the contrary, being the two-phonon cross section predominantly due to the nuclear process, no appreciable variation is predicted for this case with finite values of the width.

Since the effect of the width arises from the Q-value kinematic matching conditions, variations are expected with the bombarding energy. In particular one expects that the effects will tend to vanish at high bombarding energies. This is illustrated in Fig. 10, where the total one- and two-phonon cross sections for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 4 MeV are compared to the corresponding values for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 0 as a function of the incident energy.

## 4 Conclusions and remarks

We have implemented a simple scheme to calculate the excitation probabilities for the single and double Giant Resonance as a function of several global parameters such as excitation energies, bombarding energies, width etc. We have assumed that the colliding nuclei have no structure except for the presence, in the target, of one and two-phonon states. The excitation processes have been calculated within a semiclassical model and according to perturbation theory. Since both nuclear and Coulomb interaction are taken into account the cross sections are calculated by integrating over all range of impact parameter with an imaginary potential that takes care of the inner trajectories. The formalism has been applied to the excitation of giant resonances in a typical heavy ion reaction, 40Ar + 208Pb. In our examples, we have limited our calculation to the giant quadrupole resonance.

The role of the nuclear interaction and its interplay with the long-ranged Coulomb field has been studied. The presence of nuclear coupling modifies the mechanism excitation of both the GR and the DGR, the effect being strongly evident in the latter. This has been ascribed to the difference in the effective collision time which, together with the qualitative $`r`$ dependence of the form factors, produces a different dependence of the transition probabilities on the reaction Q-value. Hence, the excitation of GR is dominated by the Coulomb interaction while it is mostly the nuclear coupling which determines the population of the DGR.

We have also studied the consequences of the spreading of the strength distribution of the single giant resonance on the inelastic excitation of the GR and DGR. Q-value considerations play an important role when the width of the one- and two-phonon states are considered. Cross section dependence on both the width of the distribution and the incident energy has been considered. When compared with the corresponding values for sharp resonances, the cross sections for GR and DGR calculated with only the Coulomb field increase as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ increases. These results are qualitatively similar to the one obtained in ref. wei  where the relativistic Coulomb excitation of dipole giant resonance (GDR) and double GDR are calculated within a random matrix theory including the Brink-Axel hypothesis. When the nuclear interaction is switched on, the enhancement for the single GR is maintained while the two-phonon cross section presents no variation with the case of finite value of the width. Also for the dependence on the incident energies has been found the same trend. This is due to the fact that the two-phonon cross section is predominantly governed by nuclear processes.

## 5 Acknowledgment

This work has been partially supported by the Spanish-Italian agreement between CICyT and INFN and by the Italian MIUR under contract PRIM 2001-2003 Fisica teorica del nucleo e dei sistemi a molti corpi.


text:
# The Contribution of Particle Impact to the Production of Fe K𝛼 Emission from Accreting Black Holes

## 1 Introduction

An iron K$`\alpha `$ emission line at 6.4 keV is commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and Galactic black hole candidates (GBHCs). The equivalent widths (EWs) of the lines are usually $``$100–300 eV (Mushotzky, Done & Pounds, 1993; Nandra et al., 1997; Reeves & Turner, 2000), suggesting that a significant column of iron is necessary to produce the required emission. This was confirmed with the discovery of the Compton reflection hump between 20–30 keV (Pounds et al., 1990; Nandra & Pounds, 1994) which is a natural outcome of X-ray reprocessing in optically-thick material (Lightman & White, 1988; Guilbert & Rees, 1988). In some cases, sensitive observations of the Fe K$`\alpha `$ line have found them to possess broad low-energy wings, consistent with the profile expected from a spinning accretion disk close to the black hole (see the reviews by Fabian et al. (2000) and Reynolds & Nowak 2003). These relativistically broadened lines have been seen in both AGN (e.g., Tanaka et al., 1995; Nandra et al., 1997, 1999; Fabian et al., 2002) and GBHCs (e.g., Martocchia et al., 2002; Miller et al., 2002a, b, c), and provide strong evidence that the optically-thick reflector responsible for the shape of the X-ray continuum is the inner region of the accretion disk. Thus, there has been considerable attention paid in recent years to the Fe K$`\alpha `$ line and X-ray reflection features in accreting black holes, as they may probe the physics of the flows only a few Schwarzschild radii from the event horizon.

The phenomenology outlined above has given rise to a theoretical framework in which the X-rays are generated by some process in a corona above the accretion disk (Galeev, Rosner & Vaiana, 1979; Haardt & Maraschi, 1991; Haardt & Maraschi, 1993; Haardt, Maraschi & Ghisellini, 1994). Roughly half of the X-ray power illuminates the disk, is reprocessed, and then reemitted as a reflection spectrum which carries the Fe K$`\alpha `$ line and reflection hump (George & Fabian, 1991; Matt, Perola & Piro, 1991). The iron line is produced by fluorescence; that is, incoming X-rays (usually in the form of a power-law) with energies greater than 7.1 keV can remove a K shell electron from an iron atom or ion. The excited ion can then relax by a radiative transition into the K shell, or by the expulsion of an outer shell electron (the non-radiative Auger effect). With this mechanism the flux in the line is directly proportional to the ionizing flux (Basko, 1978; Bai, 1979), so that changes in the illuminating continuum should give rise to correlated changes in the Fe line flux. However, long monitoring campaigns of certain bright AGNs have shown that, at least in those sources, the Fe K$`\alpha `$ line exhibits weak variability on short timescales despite large changes in the continuum (e.g., Chiang et al., 2000; Reynolds, 2000; Vaughan & Edelson, 2001). Revisions to the standard disk-corona model are necessary to explain this behavior (Reynolds, 2001; Fabian & Vaughan, 2003; Ballantyne, Vaughan & Fabian, 2003).

Fluorescence from photoionization is not the only mechanism able to generate an iron K line. Electron bombardment of the accretion disk can also produce line emission from iron if the kinetic energy of the particle is greater than 7.1 keV. This process has been used to explain enhanced line emission from the Sun (e.g., Zarro, Dennis & Slater, 1992), where electrons energized in the solar corona travel down magnetic field lines and strike the photosphere (Dennis & Schwartz, 1989). As accretion disks likely also possess such magnetized coronae (Merloni & Fabian, 2001), it is possible that similar situations would arise and result in Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission by electron bombardment.

In accretion disk coronae there exists a bath of thermal electrons with temperature $`kT100`$$`200`$ keV (which generates the primary X-ray power-law through Comptonization of the disk UV photons). There may also be a non-negligible amount of non-thermal electrons present in the corona. Evidence for these particles has been found in Compton Gamma-ray Observatory observations of Cyg X-1 in its soft state (Gierliński et al., 1999) and GRS 1915+105 (Zdziarski et al., 2001). These data, when combined with simultaneous hard X-ray observations, show that the X-ray power-law extends to energies $`>600`$ keV. Such spectra can be well fit by a model of Comptonization in a hybrid thermal/non-thermal plasma (Coppi, 1999). At present there are no analogous observations for radio-quiet AGN, but it is expected that the disk-corona physics will be similar for the two systems.

Proton illumination will also produce Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission in a manner analogous to electron bombardment. This may occur in a geometry where the optically thick accretion disk is disrupted into a hot ion flow close to the black hole (e.g., Meyer & Meyer-Hofmeister, 1994; Różańska & Czerny, 2000a; Manmoto et al., 2000; Manmoto & Kato, 2000; Meyer, Liu & Meyer-Hofmeister, 2000; Spruit & Deufel, 2002). This configuration may be relevant to GBHCs in the low/hard state (Esin, McClintock & Narayan, 1997; Done & Życki, 1999; Barrio, Done & Nayakshin, 2003) and low luminosity AGNs (e.g., Quataert et al., 1999). In this scenario, the accretion energy is envisaged to be dissipated into the protons within the central optically thin flow, which then rapidly reach the virial temperature as they can be thermally decoupled from the electrons (Shapiro, Lightman & Eardley, 1976). The majority of the accretion energy is carried into (or advected) into the black hole by the protons with little or no observational signatures. Thus, these “advection dominated accretion flows” (ADAFs) can be very radiatively inefficient (Ichimaru, 1977; Rees et al., 1982; Narayan & Yi, 1994). However, if the optically thick disk partially overlaps with the ADAF (for example, in the region where evaporation of the disk is taking place), then the hot protons in the ADAF will interact with the disk, significantly heating its surface (Spruit & Haardt, 2000; Deufel & Spruit, 2000; Deufel, Dullemond & Spruit, 2002) and possibly producing Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission. Proton impact ionization would also be relevant if a two-temperature corona exists above an untruncated accretion disk (Di Matteo et al., 1997).

If energetic coronal electrons (in an accretion disk-corona model) or virialized protons (in a truncated disk-ADAF model) strike the accretion disk they would produce Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission. If this process is sufficiently efficient it could generate an observable line that is not strongly correlated with the continuum (e.g., Petrucci et al., 2002). This paper considers Fe K$`\alpha `$ production from particle impact onto accretion disks and compares it with the more traditional mechanism of photoionization. We consider incident beams consisting of thermal or non-thermal electrons and virialized protons. The goal is to evaluate under which circumstances, if any, particle bombardment will be an important contributor to the Fe K$`\alpha `$ line. The theory needed to calculate the expected line flux is outlined in the next section, and Section 3 presents the results. In Section 4 we consider the implications of the computations on particle acceleration mechanisms and the two different models of accretion geometry. A summary and our conclusions are presented in Section 5.

## 2 Mechanisms of Fe K$`\alpha `$ Production

### 2.1 Electron Bombardment

Consider a beam of electrons incident on the normal of an accretion disk with a spectral flux of $`𝒩_E`$ electrons cm-2 s-1 keV-1 at kinetic energy $`E`$. In both AGN and GBHCs the disk is hot enough so that both hydrogen and helium are fully ionized. Therefore, each incident electron will lose energy by Coulomb interactions with the hydrogen ions as it travels through the disk (Emslie, 1978):

$$\frac{dE}{dt}=2\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }\frac{nv}{E},$$
(1)
where $`e`$ is the electron charge in e.s.u., and $`n`$, $`v`$ and $`E`$ are the instantaneous total hydrogen number density, electron velocity and energy, respectively. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the Coulomb logarithm

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{Eb_0}{e^2}\right),$$
(2)
where $`b_0`$ is the maximum impact parameter for the scattering event. Equation 1 differs from the classic analysis by Spitzer (1962) by ignoring the the correction due to thermal motion of the target electrons (Emslie, 1978). This “cold target” approximation holds if $`EkT`$, where $`T`$ is the electron temperature of the accretion disk. Since we are interested in incoming electrons with $`E>\chi `$, where $`\chi =7.112`$ keV is the ionization potential for neutral iron, this condition will hold for both AGN ($`kT10`$ eV) and GBHC ($`kT500`$ eV) disks.

As each incident electron decelerates111About 10-5 of the energy lost by the electron through scattering is radiated away as bremsstrahlung emission in the X-ray band, with the remainder ending up as heat (see, e.g., Tatischeff, 2002). This radiation is ignored here. from its initial energy $`E_0`$ it can eject a K shell electron from iron as long as it energy remains above $`\chi `$. Thus, the resulting Fe K$`\alpha `$ line flux in photons cm-2 s-1 is (e.g., Emslie et al., 1986)

$$_{ei}=\frac{1}{2}\beta \omega _0^{\mathrm{}}𝒩_E(E_0)\left[_{E=E_0}^{E=\chi }\sigma _{ei}(E)n_{\mathrm{Fe}}v(E)𝑑t\right]𝑑E_0,$$
(3)
where $`\omega `$ is the K fluorescence yield of iron, $`\beta `$ is the K$`\alpha `$ to K$`\beta `$ branching ratio, $`\sigma _{ei}`$ is the K-shell ionization cross-section of iron due to electron impact, and $`n_{\mathrm{Fe}}`$ is the number density of iron atoms. The inner integral in the above equation counts the number of Fe K$`\alpha `$ photons produced by an electron with initial energy $`E_0`$ as it loses energy passing through the disk. This then must be integrated over the distribution of initial electron energies to find the total Fe K$`\alpha `$ line flux. The factor of one-half in front of the expression accounts for the fact that roughly half of the K$`\alpha `$ photons produced will be emitted away from the disk surface. We assume here, and in the treatment for photoionization described below, that all of the line photons emitted toward the surface escape to infinity.

Equation 1 can be used to rewrite the above expression in a more useful form:

$$_{ei}=\frac{1}{2}\frac{\beta \omega A_{\mathrm{Fe}}}{2\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\chi ^{\mathrm{}}𝒩_E(E_0)\left[_\chi ^{E_0}\sigma _{ei}(E)E𝑑E\right]𝑑E_0,$$
(4)
where $`A_{\mathrm{Fe}}`$ is the abundance of iron relative to hydrogen in the disk, and we have changed the lower limit of the outer integral to the iron K-shell ionization energy (lower energies cannot produce K$`\alpha `$ lines). Note that this expression is independent of the density distribution of the target.

Of course, electrons with larger energies travel a greater distance before their kinetic energy falls below $`\chi `$. Emslie (1978) showed that an electron with initial energy $`E_0`$ will have an energy $`E=E_0(16\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }N_\mathrm{H}/E_0^2)^{1/3}`$ after traversing a hydrogen column $`N_\mathrm{H}`$. Therefore, the minimum initial energy needed by an electron to just be able to K-shell ionize an iron atom after passing through a column $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ is the solution of

$$E_{\mathrm{min}}^36\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }N_\mathrm{H}E_{\mathrm{min}}\chi ^3=0.$$
(5)
Using this relation to replace the infinity in the outer integral of equation 4, will allow us to calculate $`_{ei}`$ as a function of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ into the accretion disk.

### 2.2 Proton Bombardment

If protons are the incident particles then the equation for the energy loss rate is modified only222Strictly speaking, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is a function of the reduced mass of the scattering interaction and so will change with the different incident particle. However, the dependence is logarithmic in nature and so can safely be neglected. by a factor of $`m_p/m_e`$ (Emslie, 1978):

$$\frac{dE}{dt}=2\pi e^4\frac{m_p}{m_e}\mathrm{\Lambda }\frac{nv}{E},$$
(6)
where $`m_p`$ is the proton mass, $`m_e`$ is the electron mass, and now $`E`$ is the kinetic energy of the impacting proton. Note that protons lose their energy much more rapidly than electrons. As before, we have assumed the “cold target” approximation which in this case requires $`E(m_p/m_e)kT`$. For AGN disks, this condition implies $`E18`$ keV, while it is $`E900`$ keV for the hotter GBHC disks. The virial temperature for a proton a distance $`r`$ away from a black hole is $`kT_{\mathrm{vir}}=156(r/R_\mathrm{S})^1`$ MeV, where $`R_\mathrm{S}=2GM/c^2`$ is the Schwarzschild radius for a black hole of mass $`M`$. Therefore, assuming the protons in the ADAF reach the virial temperature, their energies will be greater than 1 MeV if $`r<100`$ $`R_\mathrm{S}`$ and so equation 6 will be valid for both AGN and GBHCs.

We can now write down the analogous expression to equation 4 for the Fe K$`\alpha `$ line flux due to proton impact:

$$_{pi}=\frac{1}{2}\frac{\beta \omega A_{\mathrm{Fe}}}{2\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }}\frac{m_e}{m_p}_\chi ^{\mathrm{}}𝒫_E(E_0)\left[_\chi ^{E_0}\sigma _{pi}(E)E𝑑E\right]𝑑E_0,$$
(7)
where $`𝒫_E`$ is the spectral proton flux (protons cm-2 s-1 keV-1) normally incident on the disk, and $`\sigma _{pi}(E)`$ is the K-shell ionization cross-section of iron due to a proton with kinetic energy $`E`$. This expression differs notably from equation 4 by a factor of $`m_e/m_p`$, therefore, unless this is compensated by the cross-section, protons will be a much less significant producer of Fe K$`\alpha `$ photons than electrons.

After passing through a column $`N_\mathrm{H}`$, a proton with initial energy $`E_0`$ will have an energy (Emslie, 1978)

$$E=E_0\left(14\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(\frac{m_p}{m_e}\right)\frac{N_\mathrm{H}}{E_0^2}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(8)
Therefore, as with the electrons (eq. 5), we can calculate the minimum kinetic energy a proton must have to just be able to ionize iron at the bottom of a column $`N_\mathrm{H}`$:

$$E_{\mathrm{min}}=\sqrt{\chi ^2+4\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }(m_p/m_e)N_\mathrm{H}}.$$
(9)
Replacing the infinity with $`E_{\mathrm{min}}(N_\mathrm{H})`$ in the outer integral in equation 7 gives the total Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux produced through a column $`N_\mathrm{H}`$.

### 2.3 Photoionization

There are many previous studies which have computed the Fe K$`\alpha `$ fluxes expected from photoionization (Hatchett & Weaver, 1977; Basko, 1978, 1979; Bai, 1979). In this work, however, we will use the simplest expression for the line flux:

$$_{\mathrm{photo}}=\frac{1}{2}N_\mathrm{H}A_{\mathrm{Fe}}\omega \beta _\chi ^{\mathrm{}}F_ϵ(ϵ)\sigma _{\mathrm{photo}}(ϵ)𝑑ϵ,$$
(10)
where $`F_ϵ(ϵ)`$ is the photon flux (ph cm-2 s-1 keV-1) incident on the normal of the accretion disk at energy $`ϵ`$, and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{photo}}`$ is the K-shell photoionization cross-section of iron. As in the expression for electron impact production of Fe K$`\alpha `$ (eq. 4), this equation assumes that iron is the only metal in the gas. Furthermore, equation 10 is only valid in the optically-thin limit. That is, we are ignoring any attenuation of the incident X-rays or the outgoing Fe K$`\alpha `$ line photons. Therefore, we are limited to columns $`N_\mathrm{H}1/(1.2\sigma _\mathrm{T})=1.25\times 10^{24}`$ cm-2, where $`\sigma _\mathrm{T}`$ is the Thomson cross-section, and we have assumed a 10% abundance of helium (by number). The implications of limiting the calculations to Thomson thin columns are considered in the next section.

### 2.4 Charge Exchange

Another particle process that can produce Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission is charge exchange collisions. These are reactions of the following form: $`\mathrm{Fe}^{q+}+\mathrm{A}\mathrm{Fe}^{(q1)+}+\mathrm{A}^+`$, where A is usually H, H2, or He. The product Fe ion is often left in an excited state and will produce line emission as it relaxes. This collision differs from those described above in that the Fe ion is the energetic particle and the hydrogen or helium atom is the target. This process may be important for explaining the strong and broad K$`\alpha `$ lines from hydrogenic and helium-like Fe observed in the Galactic ridge X-ray emission (Tanaka, Miyaji & Hasinger, 1999; Tanaka, 2002). In this case, highly ionized Fe ions in the cosmic-ray distribution interacting with neutral Galactic gas would produce the needed line emission.

For the accretion disk scenario that is considered here, it is unlikely that charge exchange will be an important process, as there are very few neutral H and He atoms available for the reaction. Other metal ions could act as donors in a collision with Fe, but, for typical cosmic abundances, encounters with the correct kinematics would be extremely rare. However, charge exchange may possibly be relevant to iron K lines emitted from the molecular torus of AGN unification schemes (e.g., Ghisellini, Haardt & Matt, 1994; Krolik, Madau & Życki, 1994) if there is a flux of energetic Fe ions incident on this gas.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Electron Impact Versus Photoionization

To determine how efficient electron impact is in producing an Fe K$`\alpha `$ line in comparison to photoionization, we calculate the ratio of equations 4 and 10:

$$\frac{_{ei}}{_{\mathrm{photo}}}=\frac{_\chi ^{E_{\mathrm{min}}(N_\mathrm{H})}𝒩_E(E_0)\left[_\chi ^{E_0}\sigma _{ei}(E)E𝑑E\right]𝑑E_0}{2\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }N_\mathrm{H}_\chi ^{\mathrm{}}F_ϵ(ϵ)\sigma _{\mathrm{photo}}(ϵ)𝑑ϵ}.$$
(11)
Considering this ratio will also help negate the effects of absorption and scattering on the K$`\alpha `$ line that were ignored in the individual expressions. This value will nevertheless be only a upper limit, because in the true Thomson thick case high energy photons can scatter down to energies where they can ionize iron and produce a K$`\alpha `$ photon. Some fraction of the line photons will escape the layer, but to accurately treat this process requires a numerical prescription.

The K-shell photoionization cross-section ($`\sigma _{\mathrm{photo}}`$) was taken from the tabulation by Verner & Yakovlev (1995). The empirical fit formula of Hombourger (1998) was used to compute the cross-section for K-shell ionization by electron impact333There is a misprint in the expression for $`G_r`$ in the paper by Hombourger (1998), so the form quoted by Quarles (1976) was used in its place.. These cross-sections are plotted between $`\chi `$ and 200 keV in Figure 1, where the x-axis is used for both photon energy and electron kinetic energy. $`\sigma _{\mathrm{photo}}`$ is roughly proportional to $`ϵ^3`$ and so falls off much more rapidly than $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ei}}`$; however, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{photo}}`$ is significantly greater than $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ei}}`$ for energies below 40 keV.

A power-law photon spectrum was assumed for all the calculations described below: $`F_ϵ(ϵ)=F_0(ϵ/\chi )^\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.7,1.8,1.9`$ or $`2.0`$ is the photon index. For each value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ the spectrum was normalized so that the total energy flux between $`\chi `$ and 200 keV at the surface of the disk was 1 keV cm-2 s-1. A value of 25 is chosen for the Coulomb logarithm $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (Brown, 1971), but, as will be seen below, the results are insensitive to its value.

The value of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ and equation 5 determines the upper-limit to the outer integral in the numerator of equation 11. K$`\alpha `$ photons produced by electrons with kinetic energies larger than this are accounted for in a later bin where the column is large enough for the energy of those electrons to pass below $`\chi `$. Since the largest column we consider is $`10^{24}`$ cm-2, there is a slight error as we do not count any Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission produced by electrons that can pass through this column. However, equation 5 shows that only electrons with kinetic energies greater than $`3.5`$ MeV can still ionize iron beyond a column of $`10^{24}`$ cm-2. For the electron distributions we consider, there is a negligible amount of electrons with $`E>3.5`$ MeV, so this slight error will not impact the results.

#### 3.1.1 Power-law $`𝒩_E`$

Modeling of the hard X-ray tails in the GBHCs Cyg X-1 and GRS 1915+105 have shown that the non-thermal electrons responsible for this emission can be described as a soft power-law (Gierliński et al., 1999; Zdziarski et al., 2001). Therefore, we first consider electron distributions of the form $`𝒩_E(E/\chi )^\gamma `$, where $`\gamma =1,2,3`$ or $`4`$ is the number index. As with the photon distribution, the incident electron power-laws are normalized such that the total energy flux between $`\chi `$ and $`200`$ keV is 1 keV cm-2 s-1. In this way, roughly the same amount of energy is being deposited into the material by both the electrons and photons.

Figure 2 shows the results of computing the ratio $`_{ei}/_{\mathrm{photo}}`$ for the different values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`\gamma `$. Each panel shows the results for an individual photon index, while the different lines denote the electron number index. In every case considered here the Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux from electron impact is a small fraction of that produced by photoionization. The maximum ratio found is $`_{ei}/_{\mathrm{photo}}0.01`$ when $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.7`$, $`\gamma =1`$ and the Thomson depth ($`\tau _\mathrm{T}=1.2\sigma _\mathrm{T}N_\mathrm{H}`$) is $`10^3`$. The ratio then drops rapidly as the column increases as less and less electrons are able to penetrate further into the gas. The only exception is for $`\gamma =1`$. This electron spectrum is very flat so that the energy flux per decade actually increases with energy, and so there are many high energy electrons that can still ionize Fe K$`\alpha `$ at larger column densities. The electron K-shell cross-section is close to a constant at high energies (Fig. 1), which helps keep the ratio roughly the same as the column increases. However, even with this extreme spectrum, electron impact is still an inefficient method to produce Fe K$`\alpha `$ photons.

As $`\gamma `$ is increased, the ratio at all $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$ drops. This is a result of the shape of the cross-section which peaks at electron energies of $`20`$ keV and not at the the ionization threshold, $`\chi `$ (Fig. 1). Therefore, when the electron spectrum softens, more electrons have lower energies, below the peak in the cross-section, and the Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux decreases accordingly.

There is also a slight change in $`_{ei}/_{\mathrm{photo}}`$ with the photon-index. The ratio lowers as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ increases because for softer photon spectra there are more photons at lower energies, which is where $`\sigma _{\mathrm{photo}}`$ is larger. This increases the number of K$`\alpha `$ photons emitted, and therefore decreases the ratio.

#### 3.1.2 Thermal $`𝒩_E`$

Observations by BeppoSAX have shown that many Seyfert 1 galaxies have high energy cutoffs between 100-300 keV (Matt, 2001). If the hard X-rays in these AGN are produced by thermal Comptonization, then such measurements can constrain the temperature of the coronal electrons by $`kTE_c/2`$, where $`E_c`$ is the cutoff energy. We now consider the production of Fe K$`\alpha `$ photons by electrons in a thermal distribution, described by a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution with $`kT=100,200,300`$ or $`400`$ keV. As before, the electron spectra were normalized so that the total energy flux incident on the gas between $`\chi `$ and 200 keV was 1 keV cm-2 s-1, the same as for the photon spectra.

Figure 3 plots the Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux ratio between electron impact and photoionization for electrons in a thermal distribution. Again, the flux of K$`\alpha `$ photons produced by the electrons is $``$ 1 per cent of that generated by photoionization. An interesting difference between the thermal and power-law electron distributions is that the largest flux ratio occurs some distance into the layer for a Maxwellian population and not at the surface, as was found with the power-law. This is because the number of electrons in the thermal distribution peaks at energies $`kT`$, and can thus ionize Fe to larger columns. Therefore, the maximum ratio moves to greater $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$ for larger $`kT`$.

Except for the lowest columns, $`_{ei}/_{\mathrm{photo}}`$ increases with $`kT`$. The total number of electrons in the distribution grows with $`kT`$, and, since the spectrum is normalized so that the energy deposited between $`\chi `$ and 200 keV is the same for each case, the excess electrons are found at higher energies. This fact, combined with relative flatness of the K-shell cross-section (Fig. 1), explains the small increase in $`_{ei}/_{\mathrm{photo}}`$ with $`kT`$.

### 3.2 Proton Impact Versus Photoionization

We form the ratio of Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux produced by proton impact to that generated by photoionization by using equations 7 and 10:

$$\frac{_{pi}}{_{\mathrm{photo}}}=\frac{m_e}{m_p}\frac{_\chi ^{E_{\mathrm{min}}(N_\mathrm{H})}𝒫_E(E_0)\left[_\chi ^{E_0}\sigma _{ei}(E)E𝑑E\right]𝑑E_0}{2\pi e^4\mathrm{\Lambda }N_\mathrm{H}_\chi ^{\mathrm{}}F_ϵ(ϵ)\sigma _{\mathrm{photo}}(ϵ)𝑑ϵ}.$$
(12)
The calculation of the denominator of equation 12 is unchanged from the previous section (e.g., $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=25`$). The K-shell ionization cross-section for proton impact was computed by using the empirical formula of Romo-Kröger (1998). This cross-section is plotted along with the ones for photoionization and electron bombardment in Figure 4. Unfortunately, the formula is only valid for proton kinetic energies less than $`50`$ MeV. Through equation 9, this limits the column density that can be probed to be $`<3\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2.

#### 3.2.1 Thermal $`𝒫_E`$

This section considers the Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux produced by a distribution of protons at the local virial temperature, $`kT_{\mathrm{vir}}`$. This situation may be applicable to the case where a relatively cold, thin accretion disk overlaps with a hot, ADAF-like flow (Deufel et al., 2002). Due to the 50 MeV cutoff in the proton impact cross-section, we are limited to proton spectra which do not have many particles above this energy. A Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution is assumed for the particles, and three cases are considered: $`kT=1.56,3.12`$ and $`6.24`$ MeV. These values correspond to the virial temperature at $`100`$, $`50`$ and $`25`$ $`R_\mathrm{S}`$, respectively. The proton spectra are normalized so that the total energy flux incident on the gas is 1 keV cm-2 s-1. The Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux produced by the incident protons will be compared with that from a power-law photon spectrum, which is normalized to 1 keV cm-2 s-1 between $`\chi `$ and 200 keV.

The results are show in Figure 5. For each case, it is found that the protons produce a negligible amount of Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission as compared to photoionization. This is in part due to the normalization conditions. The spectra were normalized so that both the protons and the photons deposited the same amount of energy (per unit area, per unit time) into the material. As the majority of the protons carried 2-3 orders of magnitude more energy than a typical incident photon, there are far fewer protons in the illuminating distribution than photons (this should be contrasted with the situation described in § 3.1, where there was roughly equal numbers of electrons and photons). However, even if the spectra were normalized to the same number flux, the Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission produced by protons would still be much less than that from photoionization.

Of the three values of $`kT_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ considered, it is the middle one ($`kT_{\mathrm{vir}}=3.12`$ MeV) that results in the largest $`_{pi}/_{\mathrm{photo}}`$, due to the peak in its energy flux residing closest to the maximum cross-section (Fig. 4). On the other hand, it is the $`kT_{\mathrm{vir}}=1.56`$ MeV spectrum that has the greatest ratio at low $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$. This is because this distribution has a large number of relatively low energy particles which stop quickly in the gas, and so produce their K$`\alpha `$ photons close to the surface. The other distributions predominantly have much high energy particles which can penetrate through to larger columns. One other effect that is noticeable in Fig. 5 is the decrease in $`_{pi}/_{\mathrm{photo}}`$ as the photon-index, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, increases. As explained in Sect. 3.1.1, the softer photon spectra have more photons at low energies, where the cross-section is larger, and will produce more K$`\alpha `$ photons, thereby lowering the ratio.

## 4 Discussion

We have shown that particle impact is an inefficient method to produce Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission as compared to photoionization (see also Basko 1979). In this section, we attempt to place this result in the wider context of accretion disk models and particle acceleration mechanisms. We begin with the electron bombardment results and their relation to models of coronae above geometrically thin disks. Proton impact and the two-component disk model is discussed at the end of the section.

### 4.1 Electrons in Accretion Disk Coronae

It has been argued for some time that the energy responsible for heating the electrons in an accretion disk corona is carried and released by magnetic fields expelled from the disk surface (e.g. Galeev et al., 1979; Di Matteo, 1998). The magnetic energy (ultimately derived from the magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) turbulence in the body of the disk; Miller & Stone 2000) would then be liberated by reconnection events with neighboring field lines, in a deliberate analogy to flares in the lower solar corona. Some fraction of this energy is deposited into electrons which end up in a thermal distribution. The remaining energy would then be used to accelerate particles (mostly electrons) to high energies. A key parameter is the fraction of energy that is funneled into the non-thermal particles for a given event. Unfortunately, as is discussed below, that number is not well constrained.

X-ray observations have shown that, in the accretion disk environment, the newly energized coronal particles give up their energy to the soft X-ray/UV photons from the accretion disk. This results in the standard hard X-ray Comptonized power-law that is the hallmark of these sources. The very hard X-ray tails observed in the spectra of Cyg X-1 and GRS 1915+105 show that the non-thermal particles are involved in this process. The results of § 3.1 have shown that for electrons to be an important contributor to Fe K$`\alpha `$ production then $`10^2`$$`10^4`$ times more energy has to be deposited into the disk by particles then by the Comptonized photons. For this scenario to be viable, most of the electrons in the corona would have to not lose their energy to Comptonization, implying a very low Compton $`y`$ parameter. However, the observed photon-indices and high energy cutoffs show that $`y1`$ in most of these systems (Petrucci et al., 2001); therefore, Comptonization is important. Alternatively, due to outflows in the corona, the hard X-rays may be beamed away from the disk resulting in a very small radiation flux on the surface (Beloborodov, 1999). This scenario is also unlikely, as particles would have to be both outflowing (to beam the hard X-rays away from the disk) and streaming toward the disk to generate the Fe K$`\alpha `$ line. Furthermore, the Compton reflection hump seen in many Seyfert 1s show that roughly half the observed X-ray flux must be intercepted by optically thick material. Perhaps a more fundamental problem with a very strong particle flux on the disk surface, is that $`99`$% of the incident energy goes into heat and not radiation (Tatischeff, 2002). This would lead to a strong expansion of the surface layers and perhaps lead to evaporation, as is envisaged in the proton-illuminated disks (Deufel et al., 2002), which would certainly affect the observed optically-thick signatures such as the Compton-reflection bump.

On the other hand, the non-thermal particles are likely to be tied to the magnetic field lines in the corona. Thus, there may be a large particle flux at the position of the magnetic footpoints on the surface of the accretion disk. In these very local positions, the electron flux may be much higher than the radiation flux and Fe K$`\alpha `$ may be dominated by the electron impact process. Indeed, such bright spots are seen on the surface of the Sun as sources of hard X-rays (Hudson et al., 1994; Kundu et al., 1995). However, such small regions are unlikely to be detected amidst the unresolved accretion disk emission.

The dominance of the Comptonized hard X-ray power-law in the spectra of accreting black holes implies that the acceleration of non-thermal particles in the corona is not highly efficient. This conclusion is supported by the above results on Fe K$`\alpha `$ production by electron impact444Analogous arguments can be made against conduction from the corona as an important heat source for the disk (e.g., Różańska, 1999; Różańska & Czerny, 2000b). In a magnetically dominated corona, the electrons are more likely to be Compton cooled before conduction can be effective.. The mechanism by which electrons are accelerated to large kinetic energies in accretion disk coronae is not known. Again, one can look to the solar corona for guidance, where there are three different processes that are considered to be viable candidates (see Miller et al. (1997) and Miller (1998) for recent reviews). The first is stochastic acceleration by MHD waves in the coronal plasma which are excited by the reconnection events. The second is shock acceleration by the plasma jets produced by reconnection (e.g., Blackman & Field, 1994). However, it is thought that the shocks are unlikely to be strong enough to account for most energetic particles (that is, shocks may only “pre-accelerate”), although they may provide the bulk of the heat that goes into the thermal electrons (Di Matteo, 1998). The third process is direct acceleration by large-scale electric fields, such as those found in reconnecting current sheets. The efficiency of all of these processes is, at this point, largely unknown, but numerical reconnection simulations are beginning to show that electric field acceleration may be $`10`$% efficient (Nodes et al., 2003).

Before leaving non-thermal electrons, we can use some of the basic analytical results of electric field acceleration as a consistency check of our conclusions. When thermal electrons are subjected to an external electric field they will begin to accelerate along the direction of the field, but, for most of the particles, this motion will be limited by Compton drag. However, the collisional drag force on electrons decreases with the velocity, so that particles with a large enough speed can “runaway” and be accelerated freely by the electric field. The value of the electric field where this critical runaway velocity is equal to the thermal velocity $`v_e`$ of a Maxwellian distribution is called the Dreicer field and is given by (Dreicer, 1959, 1960)

$$_\mathrm{D}=e\left(\frac{\omega _e}{v_e}\right)^2\mathrm{\Lambda },$$
(13)
where $`\omega _e`$ is the electron plasma frequency. In this situation, the bulk of the electrons in the thermal distribution will be accelerated.

In the context of solar flares, Holman (1985) examined the properties of accelerated electrons by sub-Dreicer electric fields555Super-Dreicer acceleration has been considered by, e.g., Litvinenko (1996) and Craig & Litvinenko (2002), where the acceleration of the electrons are limited by transverse magnetic fields.. Since the magnetic field induced by the electron beam must be less than the field in the acceleration region ($`B`$), Holman (1985) found that this limited the acceleration rate (per area) to a maximum of $`cB/2\pi eL`$, where $`L`$ is the length of the accelerating current sheet (see also Holman, Kundu & Kane 1989). If the radiation flux on the disk is $`10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 between 10 eV and 100 keV (Ross, Fabian & Young, 1999; Ballantyne, Ross & Fabian, 2001), then, for a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.9`$ spectrum, this translates to $`10^{20}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 between $`\chi `$ and 200 keV. For a significant Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux due to electron impact, the energy flux due to electrons must be $`10^{23}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 (Fig. 2). Converting this to a number flux using a $`\gamma =3`$ spectrum, and plugging into the acceleration limit above gives an estimate of the accelerating magnetic field in the accretion disk coronae, $`B(10^{11}L)`$ G. For comparison, the equipartition magnetic field in a disk is $`10^8`$ G (Merloni & Fabian, 2001). Thus, the assumptions of sub-Dreicer acceleration of non-thermal particles and significant Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission from electron impact implies an extremely strong coronal magnetic field.

### 4.2 Protons and Truncated Accretion Disks

Considerable work over the last few years has been done investigating the properties of disks which change from being cold and geometrically thin to hot and geometrically thick (see references in § 1). One of the greatest difficulties in describing such a model is the process by which the truncation of the cold disk occurs. A natural mechanism would be heating the disk until its local scale height becomes comparable to the radius, effectively evaporating the inner part of the disk.

Once the two-phase accretion flow is operating, Deufel et al. (2002) showed that protons in the hot phase striking the cold disk will be an effective mechanism for heating the disk surface. Comptonization of the soft disk photons by this heated layer produced a hard X-ray spectrum not too dissimilar from what is observed. In § 3.2 we found that virialized protons are a highly inefficient way of producing Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission. Thus, external hard X-ray radiation will need to be included in the models of truncated accretion flows to explain any Fe K emission. In the context of the proton illumination model, it may be possible to determine the relative importance of radiation heating to proton heating by examining the equivalent width of the Fe K$`\alpha `$ line.

### 4.3 Other Applications

The above sections have shown that it is difficult for particle impact to be an efficient producer of Fe K$`\alpha `$ lines, because most of incoming energy is used to heat the gas and not for ionizing iron. Thus, this process will only be important in environments where photons are not as efficiently produced as high energy particles. While detailed calculations are beyond the scope of this paper, non-thermal radio sources or jet-like flows, where the bulk of the energy may be transported by relativistic particles, may be areas where particle impact is the dominant source of ionization. The shock front in a gamma-ray burst is another possible area of application if there are enough high energy baryons in the relativistic outflow.

## 5 Summary

Just like a photon, high energy electrons and protons can eject a K-shell electron from iron and produce a K$`\alpha `$ line photon if their kinetic energy is $`>7.112`$ keV. In this paper we have considered the possible role of particle impact in the generation of Fe K$`\alpha `$ emission from accreting black holes. Calculations of Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux from various columns of gas were performed when it was bombarded by a non-thermal power-law of electrons, or a thermal distribution of electrons or protons. This flux was then compared with that produced by a power-law of radiation under the assumption that all process deposited roughly 1 erg cm-2 s-1 of energy into the material. It was found that in every circumstance the Fe K$`\alpha `$ flux produced by particle impact was $`<1`$% of that produced by photoionization. A more realistic calculation which relaxes the optically-thin assumption made here would find an even smaller ratio.

Increasing the electron flux on the accretion disk in order to produce more K$`\alpha `$ emission was inconsistent with the standard disk-corona model for accretion disk emission. In the case of a disk illuminated by virialized protons, as might be found in a truncated accretion disk model, we found a very low efficiency for Fe K$`\alpha `$ production. Therefore, these type of models must consider external X-ray illumination to explain any observed K$`\alpha `$ line.

To conclude, we find that, except for isolated regions around magnetic footpoints, it is unlikely that particle impact can significantly contribute to the observed X-ray line (or continuum) emission from accreting black holes. Depending on the efficiency of the unknown acceleration mechanisms, particles may, however, be a important heating source for accretion disks.

DRB was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. ACF thanks the Royal Society for support. We thank the anonymous referee for useful comments.

## Appendix A Unnormalized Line Fluxes from Particle Impact

In the interests of generality, we show in Figure 6 the unnormalized Fe K$`\alpha `$ line fluxes (in photons cm-2 s-1) obtained from equations 4 and 7 for the power-law and thermal spectral shapes used in § 3. The standard values of $`\omega =0.342`$ and $`\beta =0.822`$ from Bambynek et al. (1972) were used, and the solar Fe abundance of $`A_{\mathrm{Fe}}=2.82\times 10^5`$ from Holweger (2001) was assumed. As the Fe abundance is just a multiplicative factor, the results can be easily scaled to other metallicities. Finally, the particle spectra were normalized as in § 3; that is, the electron spectra has a energy flux between 7.112 keV and 200 keV of 1 keV cm-2 s-1, while the protons have a total energy flux of 1 keV cm-2 s-1. Again, the results in Fig. 6 can be easily scaled to other impacting fluxes.


text:
# Of Neutrinos and Magnetars

## Abstract

We discuss the nature of neutrino propagation in presence of the strong magnetic field of magnetars.

Standard Model Neutrinos do not have any mass, charge or anomalous magnetic moment. Even massive neutrinos, beyond standard model, have negligible or zero magnetic moment. Evidently, neutrinos do not couple to photons in vacuum. However, in the presence of a thermal medium and/or an external electro-magnetic field $`\nu \gamma `$ interaction can be mediated by $`W`$ and $`Z`$ bosons, leading to an effective four-Fermi vertex (Fig.1A). The charged particles, running in the loop, confer their electro-magnetic properties to the neutrinos making the $`\nu \gamma `$ processes sensitive to the presence of an external magnetic field. In particular, processes like neutrino Cerenkov radiation ($`\nu \nu \gamma `$) or plasmon decay ($`\gamma \nu \nu `$) would be greatly enhanced due to the presence of the strong magnetic field ($`10^{15}`$ G) of the Magnetars and can strongly influence the space velocity, the cooling history and even the generation of the magnetic field in such objects.

The amplitude of a $`\nu \gamma `$ process is proportional to the vertex function $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ which, to leading order in the coupling constant $`G_F`$ and in the limit of $`M_W,M_Z\mathrm{}`$, is given by

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_\nu =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}e}G_F\gamma ^\mu (1\gamma _5)(g_\mathrm{V}\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }g_\mathrm{A}\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }^5)$$
(1)
where, $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }^5`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }`$ are the axial-vector–vector coupling (Fig.1A), and the photon self-energy (Fig.1B). The dependence of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ on the magnetic field and the density of the medium enter through the electron propagators (internal lines) of the self-energy and $`\nu \gamma `$ coupling diagrams of Fig.1.

Recently, Bhattacharya, Ganguly & Konar (2002) have shown that, to the first order in the magnetic field strength, the effective charge of the neutrinos is

$$e_{eff}^\nu ()\left(\frac{}{_e}\right)f(m\beta )\mathrm{cos}\theta e_{eff}^\nu (=0),_c\text{ - critical field for electrons}$$
(2)
where $`\theta `$ is the angle between $``$ and $`k`$. Evidently, the $`\nu `$ interaction is direction dependent which gives rise to asymmetries in neutrino-driven supernova explosion and may result in large pulsar kick velocities (Bhattacharya & Pal, 2000).

The previous investigations have only been concerned with the $`\nu \gamma `$ interaction to the linear order in the magnetic field strength. Such results are pertinent for weak-field situations. However, in the context of Magnetars we need the results valid for all orders in the magnetic field strength. In the present work, we calculate the rate of these processes to all orders in the magnetic field strength. Our preliminary results show that the absorptive part of the $`\nu \gamma `$ processes, to the lowest order, is enhanced by a factor $`^2`$ (Konar & Das, 2002). Evidently, these effects are important only for strong fields and can be ignored otherwise.

It is understood that with the pre-existing poloidal magnetic field a strong toroidal field can be generated within the supernova due to the differential rotation near the core. The asymmetric neutrino emission would be able to provide the necessary torque required for this rotation and enhance the magnetic field to very large values (Gvozdev & Ognev, 1999). An estimate of such enhancement, based on our result, would be presented in a future communication (Konar, 2003).