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# Chandra Observations of the Interacting NGC 4410 Galaxy Group

## 1 Introduction

There has been increasing evidence in recent years that most elliptical galaxies are the result of the merging of disk galaxies (e.g., Barnes (1985); Barnes $`\&`$ Hernquist (1992)). The optical counterparts of luminous radio galaxies are generally elliptical or elliptical-like galaxies (Owen $`\&`$ White, 1991), which suggests that the creation of radio jets may somehow be linked to the merger process (Wilson et al., 1995; Moderski $`\&`$ Sikora, 1996). Once a radio jet is formed, its subsequent evolution may be affected by further galaxy interactions and mergers. For example, it may be distorted by motion through an intracluster medium (Miley et al., 1972), by an encounter with interstellar matter in either a host galaxy (De Young, 1981) or a companion galaxy (Stocke et al., 1985; Borne $`\&`$ Colina, 1993) or by a galaxy in the process of merging with the host galaxy (Van Breugel et al., 1986). In addition, impacts between jets and interstellar matter may trigger star formation in some cases (De Young, 1981; Van Breugel et al., 1985).

It is difficult to study these processes because most elliptical galaxies, and most radio galaxies, reside in rich clusters where the merger events took place very long ago. Some ellipticals, however, are found in poor groups in the current epoch (see, e.g., Mulchaey $`\&`$ Zabludoff (1998)), which are only now undergoing the merger events that took place long ago in rich clusters. Poor, compact groups of galaxies, therefore, are the locations best suited for investigating the merger process. Mulchaey $`\&`$ Zabludoff (1998) have found hot, X-ray halos around dominant ellipticals in poor galaxy groups, however, usually the elliptical already looks completely formed and the gaseous halo is relaxed. Evidently, the actual merger events themselves happen so quickly that there are very few nearby examples. If a few examples were found, however, they would offer a complex set of observational constraints since the merging participants could include gas and stars from a remnant disk galaxy, new star formation driven by the merger, inception of AGN activity in one or more nuclei, and jet driven formation by the newly created radio jet. We have discovered a nearby example of a likely merger in progress: NGC 4410.

The NGC 4410 group contains about a dozen members, with five major galaxies in its inner portions, at least four of which appear to be strongly interacting (see Figure 1). This group is quite nearby (97 Mpc, for H0 = 75 km s-1 Mpc-1), and is well-studied at radio and optical wavelengths (Hummel et al., 1986; Smith, 2000; Donahue et al., 2002). The four brightest galaxies in the inner group and the four brightest in the outer group are classified as spiral or S0 galaxies in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED111The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database at http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The most luminous member at optical wavelengths, NGC 4410A, classified as an Sab? peculiar galaxy by de Vaucouleurs et al. (1993), is a low luminosity radio galaxy with a very distorted double-lobed radio morphology (Hummel et al., 1986; Smith, 2000). The pecular radio structure strongly suggests that the radio jet has been affected by motion relative to interstellar or intracluster gas (Stocke $`\&`$ Burns, 1987; Smith, 2000). NGC 4410A has a peculiar ring-like optical morphology, with six extremely luminous H II regions (L = $`10^{40}`$$`10^{41}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{sec}^1`$) lying along this structure (Figure 2; (Donahue et al., 2002)). At present, it is not clear whether the star formation in NGC 4410A was triggered by pressure from the radio lobes on the ambient medium, or by a gravitational interaction or collision with NGC 4410B. The western portion of this ring has optical line ratios consistent with shock ionization (Donahue et al., 2002). NGC 4410A has been detected in both 21 cm H I and 2.6mm CO (MHI = 1.3 $`\times `$ 109 M and M$`_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ = 3.9 $`\times `$ 109 M, assuming the standard Galactic conversion factor) (Smith, 2000). A prominent H I tail has been discovered, aligned along a stellar tail extending 1.7 arcmin (50 kpc) to the southeast of the NGC 4410A/NGC 4410B pair (Smith, 2000). Both the radio galaxy NGC 4410A and its nearby companion NGC 4410B are classified as Low Ionization Nuclear Emission Region (LINER) galaxies (Mazzarella $`\&`$ Boroson, 1993; Donahue et al., 2002), and NGC 4410D and F also show optical emission lines (Stocke $`\&`$ Burns, 1987).

Clues to the history of the NGC 4410 system may come from X-ray data. The NGC 4410A group has previously been mapped in X-rays with both the High Resolution Imager (HRI) and the Position Sensitive Proportional Counter (PSPC) instruments on ROSAT (Tschöke et al., 1999; Smith, 2000). The global PSPC spectrum has been deconvolved into two components: a power-law spectrum, contributing 2/3 of the X-ray radiation, and a 1 keV thermal component, contributing the remaining light (Tschöke et al., 1999). The HRI map shows a point source associated with the nucleus of NGC 4410A and a diffuse halo extending 10′′ to the southeast, towards the most luminous H II region. The halo contributes approximately 1/3 of the total light in the HRI map, supporting its association with the thermal component in the PSPC spectral decomposition. The lower resolution PSPC map shows a faint tail-like feature extending eastwards from the NGC 4410A+B pair towards NGC 4410C, anti-coincident with the southeastern H I tail. From the ROSAT data, it was not clear whether this X-ray emission is due to shocked gas in the tidal bridge, as has been suggested for X-ray-emitting gas associated with a tidal tail in the radio galaxy Fornax A (Mackie $`\&`$ Fabbiano, 1998), intragroup gas that is coincidently superposed on the stellar bridge, or simply background or foreground sources.

## 2 Observations

To address these issues, we have made higher resolution X-ray observations of the NGC 4410 galaxy group in imaging mode with the backside-illuminated Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) S3 chip on the Chandra X-ray telescope (Weisskopf et al., 2002). The nucleus of NGC 4410A was placed near the nominal aimpoint of this chip, and the roll angle during the observations was 203 west of north. The ACIS chips have 1024 $`\times `$ 1024 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$492 pixels. To reduce pile-up, we only read out 640 chip rows, giving an observed field of view of 5$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$2 $`\times `$ 8$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$4. The other four galaxies in the inner group (NGC 4410B, C, D, and F) also fell on this chip. The CCD temperature was $``$120 C, the frame time was 2.1 seconds, and the events were telemetered in Faint mode. In addition to the S3 chip (the main focus of this paper), the S1, S2, S4, I3, and I4 chips of ACIS were also read out.

Initial data reductions were done using the CIAO v2.2.1 software222CIAO is the Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations data analysis system package (http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao). After removing time intervals with high X-ray background, the useable exposure time was 34.3 ksec. Only events with ASCA grades 0, 2, 3, 4, and 6 were included, and standard bad pixels and columns were removed. The energy range was restricted to 0.3 $``$ 8 keV, and then further divided into three ranges: 0.3 $``$ 1 keV, 1 $``$ 2.5 keV, and 2.5 $``$ 8 keV. The binned images were adaptively smoothed using the CIAO routine csmooth, using a minimal significance of S/N = 2.5 and a maximal significance of S/N = 5. The smoothed images were then divided by a similarly-smoothed exposure map to convert into physical units and to remove instrumental artifacts. We experimented with exposure maps created using different parameters, including both monochromatic maps at various energies and weighted maps. In all cases, the basic morphology of the extended emission in the group remained the same, although the absolute flux level varied. For our final 0.3 $``$ 8 keV map, we used an exposure map weighted by the spectrum of a 57$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5 $`\times `$ 40′′ region centered on the NGC 4410A+B complex. For the final 0.3 $``$ 1 keV, 1 $``$ 2.5 keV, and 2.5 $``$ 8 keV maps, we used monochromatic 0.8 keV, 1.5 keV, and 3 keV exposure maps, respectively.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Morphology

In Figure 3, we provide the final 0.3 $``$ 8 keV ACIS-S S3 Chandra map (greyscale), with optical contours from the Digitized Sky Survey333The Digitized Sky Survey was produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under U.S. Government grant NAG W-2166. These images are digitized versions of photographic plates from the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II) made by the California Institute of Technology with funds from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Sloan Foundation, the Samuel Oshin Foundation, and the Eastman Kodak Corporation (DSS) superposed. This figure shows that four galaxies in the inner part of the NGC 4410 group were detected by Chandra: NGC 4410A+B, NGC 4410C, and NGC 4410D. Several point sources are also visible in this map, including two sources in the NGC 4410A+B$``$C bridge. The more northeastern of these sources (at 12h 26m 33.5s, 9 1 45′′ (J2000)), is particularly bright, with a total of 175 0.3 $``$ 8 keV counts, and is slightly extended ($``$2′′ $`\times `$ 3′′).

This map also shows faint extended emission in the group, concentrated around NGC 4410A+B, and extending out past NGC 4410C. Over the mapped portion of the group, for the diffuse X-ray emission outside of the main optical galaxies, the average Chandra 0.3 - 8 keV counts are 9 $`\pm `$ 2 $`\times `$ 10-10 photons s-1 cm-2 pixel-1, with the uncertainty dominated by the uncertainty in the exposure map (the statistical noise is only $``$0.3 $`\times `$ 10-10 photons s-1 cm-2 pixel-1). Assuming a typical energy per photon of 0.8 keV, this corresponds to 5 $`\pm `$ 1 $`\times `$ 10-18 erg s-1 cm-2 arcsec-2, consistent with the upper limit from the ROSAT data (Smith, 2000).

Another concentration of extended emission is visible to the northeast of NGC 4410D, at $``$12h 26m 47s, 9, 4 15′′. This region of X-ray emission is also present in the ROSAT maps of Tschöke et al. (1999). In the higher resolution Chandra map, it is resolved into four point sources, surrounded by extended emission. One of these X-ray sources has a possible optical counterpart in the DSS image. These point sources may be background QSOs or radio galaxies in a distant cluster rich in hot X-ray-emitting intracluster gas.

In Figure 4, the low energy (0.3 $``$ 1 keV) map is presented, again superposed on the DSS image. The extended emission in this map has a morphology similar to that in the total 0.3 $``$ 8 keV map. Extended emission is visible around NGC 4410A+B extending up to NGC 4410C. The second concentration to the northeast of NGC 4410D is also visible. In this low energy map, a faint source is visible near NGC 4410F.

In the middle energy (1 $``$ 2.5 keV) map (Figure 5), the morphology of the central region is similar to that seen in the low energy map. In the northeast, however, the morphology is somewhat different. In particular, the point source northeast of NGC 4410D with the possible optical counterpart is no longer visible.

At even higher energies (2.5 $``$ 8 keV; Figure 6), the nucleus of NGC 4410A is quite bright, as is the more northeastern point source in the NGC 4410A+B-C bridge. NGC 4410C and D, however, are quite faint, and NGC 4410F is undetected. This map shows a different extended morphology in the central regions than the lower energy maps, although we note that the highest energies are the most likely to be contaminated by background. Faint diffuse emission is visible between NGC 4410A+B and C, and north of NGC 4410D. If this is real, it implies that the intracluster gas in this region is hotter than in the rest of the group.

The Chandra position of the nucleus of NGC 4410A agrees with the radio continuum peak position from Hummel et al. (1986) within 0.1′′. The 4.9 GHz radio continuum map of the NGC 4410 group from Hummel et al. (1986) is superposed on the 0.3 $``$ 8 keV Chandra map in Figure 7. Note the apparent anti-coincidence of the extended X-ray and radio emission in the southeast. The radio continuum lobe lies to the south, while the X-ray emission extends approximately east-west. The Chandra field of view does not extend beyond the radio lobe, so it is not known whether the radio lobe is surrounded by X-ray-emitting gas. The northern radio lobe, seen in the lower resolution map of Smith (2000), is too faint to be visible in this higher resolution Hummel et al. (1986) map.

An expanded view of the portion of the 0.3 $``$ 8 keV map around NGC 4410A+B is shown in Figure 8, and, in Figure 9, a red archival Hubble Space Telescope image is superposed as contours on the unsmoothed Chandra map. In Figure 10, the Donahue et al. (2002) H$`\alpha `$+$`[`$N II$`]`$ map is superposed on the Chandra map. The bright X-ray peak is associated with the NGC 4410A nucleus, while the secondary source to the east is coincident with the NGC 4410B nucleus. A ridge of X-ray emission extending $``$12′′ (6 kpc) to the northwest of NGC 4410A is also visible, coincident with the ionized gas in the northwestern portion of the optical loop (Figure 10). As noted earlier, this gas has optical line ratios indicative of shock ionization (Donahue et al., 2002). Note that the 3′′ extension to the southwest of the NGC 4410A nucleus seen in the optical line map is also present in X-rays. Note also that the optically-bright knots to the southeast and northeast of the nucleus of NGC 4410A are not visible as discrete sources in the X-ray map. These sources are known to be luminous H II regions (Donahue et al., 2002).

### 3.2 X-Ray Spectra

Spectra of NGC 4410A $``$ D, the brightest bridge source in the NGC 4410A+B$``$C bridge, and the diffuse intragroup gas were extracted from the data using CIAO, and spectral analysis was accomplished using the ISIS data reduction package (Houck & Denicola, 2000). Results of spectral fitting are given in Table 1 and Figures 11 and 12. Unless otherwise noted, the 0.5 $``$ 5 keV range was used for fitting the spectra, eliminating the low S/N high energy portion plus the lower energies where the calibration is somewhat uncertain. The quoted uncertainties are 90$`\%`$ confidence level. Before fitting the spectra, the data were rebinned into 20 counts bin-1 and the recent CIAO apply$`\mathrm{\_}`$acisabs correction for contamination of the ACIS chips was applied. To estimate background counts, the deep ACIS observations of blank fields provided by M. Markevitch were used (file acis7sD2000-12-01bkgrndN0002.fits).

In no case were we able to successfully constrain the absorption column, the normalization, and the power law index or temperature simultaneously. For NGC 4410A, we divided the source into three radial regimes: $`<`$ 1′′, 1′′ $``$ 5′′, and 5′′ $``$ 10′′. The nucleus of NGC 4410A is relatively bright (1256 counts in a 4.25 pixel radius), so we also included the effects of pile-up for the central region. When fixing the absorption to a nominal value of 5 $`\times `$ 1020 cm-2 (approximately equal to the sum of the 1.7 $`\times `$ 1020 cm-2 Galactic absorption from Dickey $`\&`$ Lockman (1990) and the intrinsic HI column densities from Smith (2000)), for the inner 1′′ we obtained an adequate fit to a power law with photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ $``$ 2 (see Table 1). Conversely, by fixing the photon index to this value, we obtained column densities consistent with the nominal value. Increasing the photon index increases the fitted column density, still providing good fits with reasonable column density up to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ $``$ 2.3. Models without pile-up give similar results.

For the 1′′ $``$ $`5^{\prime \prime }`$ and 5′′ $``$ 10′′ annuli around NGC 4410A, the spectra can be fit with Mekal functions, with temperatures kT = 0.62 $`\pm `$ $`{}_{0.07}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{0.08}`$ keV and 0.54 $`\pm `$ $`{}_{0.14}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{0.12}`$ keV and abundances of 0.06 $`\pm `$ $`{}_{0.03}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{0.06}`$ and 0.11 $`\pm `$ $`{}_{0.09}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{1.16}`$ solar, respectively. For fitting the inner and outer annuli, we only included photons with energies 0.6 $``$ 1.8 keV and 0.6 $``$ 1.2 keV; at higher energies, the counts are consistent with the background.

The nuclei of B, C, and D had very few counts, so it was not possible to do detailed fitting of their spectral shapes. For these objects, we fixed both the absorbing column and the spectral parameters, and checked for consistency. All three spectra are consistent with bremsstrahlung spectra, and are consistent with both the Galactic absorption alone or with the nominal internal absorption included. The NGC 4410B spectrum appears relatively soft, consistent with a kT = 0.2 keV temperature, while NGC 4410C and D are consistent with kT = 0.5 $``$ 1 keV.

For the bridge source (named ‘b1’ in Table 1), we found a good fit to the photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 2.2 $`\pm `$ $`{}_{0.2}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{0.3}`$ with the nominal extinction. If it is at the distance of NGC 4410, it has a luminosity of 4 $`\times `$ 1040 erg s-1. At that distance, the angular extent of the source corresponds to a size of $``$1 kpc $`\times `$ 1.5 kpc.

To obtain the spectrum and luminosity of the diffuse intragroup medium, we extracted counts in a 6$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$4 $`\times `$ 4$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$6 (180 $`\times `$ 130 kpc) diameter ellipse aligned east-west, centered at 12h 26m 32.7s, 9 1 45$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5 (J2000), excluding 51′′, 21′′, and 21′′ diameter circular regions around NGC 4410A+B, NGC 4410C, and NGC 4410D, respectively, as well as 5′′ radius regions around the bright bridge source and 11 point sources visible in the field (including the point sources discussed in Section 3.3). This ellipse does not cover the concentration of diffuse gas northeast of NGC 4410D, which may be background emission. The extracted spectrum is displayed in Figure 12a (solid line), along with the background counts from the Markevitch deep fields, reprojected and scaled to our observations (dotted line). This comparison shows that essentially all of the observed counts below 2 keV are due to the background, as are the two apparent ‘spectral features’ seen in the raw data at 1.8 and 2 keV (see also Figure 4 in Strickland et al. (2002)). This background spectrum is consistent with, but higher signal/noise than, spectra for selected regions at the edge of our field where little diffuse emission is seen.

The background-subtracted spectrum for the diffuse intragroup gas is shown in Figure 12b. Excluding energies above 1.8 keV and below 0.6 keV, where the background subtraction and calibration are more uncertain, fitting this spectrum with a Mekal function gives kT = 0.69 $`\pm `$ $`{}_{0.16}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{0.15}`$ keV and a metallicity of 0.025 $`\pm `$ $`{}_{0.024}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{0.023}`$ solar. The total 0.3 $``$ 8 keV luminosity of this diffuse gas is 1041 erg s-1.

### 3.3 Point Sources

Depending upon the exact spectral shape, our observations are sensitive to point sources at the distance of NGC 4410 with 0.5 $``$ 8 keV luminosities of $``$ 1039 erg s-1. To search for such sources, we used the CIAO wavedetect routine. In addition to the galactic nuclei and the bright bridge source, we detected 8 candidate sources in the vicinity of NGC 4410 (see Figure 13, where they are marked on the optical DSS image). These sources are listed in Table 2, along with counts in six different energy bands. None of these sources show evidence of variability, although the brightest only has 31 counts.

The first three energy bands listed in Table 2, E1 (0.5 $``$ 0.95 keV), E2 (0.95 $``$ 1.5 keV), and E3 (1.5 $``$ 8 keV), are expected to have equal counts for a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 2 power law and nominal absorption (NH $``$ 5 $`\times `$ 1020 cm-2). This table shows that source p8 has a hard spectrum, with no photons below 4 keV. Source p3 also has an over-abundance of hard photons relative to a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 2 power law and nominal absorption. It is roughly consistent with a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 1 power law.

Source p5 is coincident with a small angular size galaxy in the DSS image (see Figure 13), named ANON 3 in Smith (2000). No redshift is available for this object, so it is unclear at present whether it is a background galaxy or a dwarf galaxy in the NGC 4410 group. Of the remaining sources, source p2 appears to be associated with an optical concentration in the southeastern stellar tail (see Figure 13), p4 lies in the A/B$``$C bridge near the bright bridge source b1, p6 is north of the star forming ring, and p7 may be associated with the northwestern tail of NGC 4410A. Source p1 is closest to the galactic nuclei, at a projected distance of 27 kpc from the nucleus of NGC 4410A. Sources p1, p4, and p6, which are in the field of view of the H$`\alpha `$ map of Donahue et al. (2002), are not associated with H II regions. The southeastern and northwestern tails, including sources p2, p3, p7, and p8, were not in the field of view of the Donahue et al. (2002) H$`\alpha `$ image.

In Figure 7, the 4.9 GHz radio contours of Hummel et al. (1986) are superposed on the Chandra 0.3 $``$ 8 keV map. Notice that the radio contours distinctly bend around source p1, so we speculate that this object may be a radio source as well. This possibility should be tested with higher resolution radio data. In addition, a radio point source at the location of p3 was found by Hummel et al. (1986) (named ‘Knot G’ by Hummel et al. (1986)). Although the contours in Figure 7 are not exactly coincident, the coordinates obtained from high resolution observations for Knot G by Hummel et al. (1986) do exactly coincide with p3. At the time of the Hummel et al. (1986) radio observations, Knot G had a flat/inverted radio spectrum with $`\alpha `$ = $``$0.5 $`\pm `$ 0.3, consistent with some hard state galactic black hole candidates (Corbel et al., 2000). As noted above, this source has a hard spectrum in the Chandra data.

We did not detect an X-ray counterpart to the type I supernova SN 1965A, which has a quoted position of 17′′ east, 10′′ north of the NGC 4410B nucleus (Kowal $`\&`$ Sargent, 1971; Barbon, Capellaro, $`\&`$ Turatto, 1991). Our upper limit of $``$1039 erg s-1 for SN 1965A is consistent with the upper limit to the X-ray luminosity of the type Ia SN 1992A of 5 $`\times `$ 1038 erg s-1 (Schlegel $`\&`$ Petre, 1993), and the measured X-ray luminosity of the type Ic supernova SN 2002ap, $``$1038 erg s-1 (Sutaria et al., 2003). Historical type II supernova typically have X-ray luminosities of $``$1038 $``$ 5 $`\times `$ 1039 erg s-1 (i.e., Kaaret (2001), Schlegel et al. (1996)).

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 The Galaxies

The 0.3 $``$ 8 keV luminosities for NGC 4410B, C, and D are 5 $`\times `$ 1039 erg s-1, 8 $`\times `$ 1039 erg s-1, and 1040 erg s-1, respectively (Table 1). From the POSS generation I plates Cabanela (1999) found blue O magnitudes of 16.3 and 16.5 for NGC 4410C and D, respectively, while de Vaucouleurs et al. (1993) gives a blue magnitude of B = 14.9 for NGC 4410B. Using the relation between O and B magnitudes shown in Cabanela $`\&`$ Dickey (2002) and MB($`\mathrm{}`$) = 5.48 gives LB = 1.6 $`\times `$ 1010 L, 9.8 $`\times `$ 109 L, and 8.7 $`\times `$ 109 L for NGC 4410B, C, and D. These luminosities are consistent with the Fabbiano, Kim, $`\&`$ Trinchieri (1992) LX/LB relationship for normal spiral galaxies.

The galaxy ANON 3, which has a flattened appearance on the DSS images, has an O magnitude of 19.3 (Cabanela, 1999). Thus, if it is at the distance of NGC 4410, it has a blue magnitude of only 4.9 $`\times `$ 108 L. This implies an X-ray excess of a factor of 14 above the Fabbiano, Kim, $`\&`$ Trinchieri (1992) relation for normal spirals. This is unexpectedly large for such a low blue luminosity galaxy, suggesting that instead it may be a background galaxy, perhaps with an active nucleus.

### 4.2 The Intragroup Emission and the Group Evolutionary State

The luminosity of the intragroup medium, 1041 erg s-1, is at the lower end of the range for the elliptical-dominated groups studied by Mulchaey $`\&`$ Zabludoff (1998), which typically have Lx $``$ 1041 $``$ 5 $`\times `$ 1042 erg s-1. This supports the idea that the NGC 4410 group is in the process of evolving from a spiral-dominated group (which typically have no X-ray-emitting intragroup medium) to an elliptical-dominated group. The Chandra X-ray surface brightness gives an average density of this intragroup gas of 2 $`\times `$ 10-4 cm-3, assuming standard cooling functions (McKee $`\&`$ Cowie, 1977; McCray, 1987), a temperature of 0.75 keV, and a spherical distribution with a radius of 78 kpc. The total mass of this component is $``$1.1 $`\times `$ 1010 M.

The galaxies in the inner portion of the NGC 4410 group appear to be somewhat deficient in HI compared to their blue luminosities and morphological types (Smith 2000). This HI deficiency is likely due to gravitational interactions between the galaxies, rather than ram pressure stripping by an intracluster medium. The morphology of the HI in the group is consistent with tidal stripping (Smith 2000). Assuming the galaxies are moving at the luminosity-weighted velocity dispersion in the group of 225 km s-1 (Smith, 2000), an estimate of the intragroup medium density required to ram pressure strip the HI based on the Gunn $`\&`$ Gott (1972) criteria is about 100 times larger than the density inferred from the Chandra observations.

Verdes-Montenegro et al. (2001) conducted a large HI survey of compact groups, and found significant HI deficiency compared to the field. As we found for NGC 4410, for their groups Verdes-Montenegro et al. (2001) concluded the HI deficiency was likely due to interactions rather than stripping by ram pressure. They suggest an evolutionary scenario for groups, in which interactions create HI-rich tidal features, while depleting the inner galaxies of HI. The HI in the tails is then ionized, causing the group as a whole to become deficient in HI. The HI in the NGC 4410 group is mostly found in tidal features (Smith, 2000), putting NGC 4410 in a later stage in this evolutionary sequence.

The galaxies in the inner part of the NGC 4410 group are likely in the process of merging to form a central dominant elliptical. The peculiar Sab galaxy NGC 4410A is by far the most luminous galaxy in the group at optical wavelengths, contributing $``$25$`\%`$ of the blue luminosity, and having an absolute blue magnitude of $``$21.1, approaching that of M87 (Smith, 2000). At present, NGC 4410A contains 4 $`\times `$ 109 M of molecular gas and $``$109 M of atomic hydrogen (Smith, 2000). As the system evolves, it is likely that much of this neutral gas will be used up in star formation or ionized by star formation, shocks, or the active nucleus. If this gas is converted into X-ray-emitting intragroup gas, it will boost the X-ray luminosity to $``$1.5 $`\times `$ 1041 erg s-1. After the final merger, this system may resemble the isolated elliptical NGC 1132, which is surrounded by an X-ray halo (Mulchaey $`\&`$ Zabludoff, 1999). Since clusters of galaxies appear to form hierarchically, from the accretion of small groups (Binggeli, 1993; Zabludoff $`\&`$ Zaritsky, 1995), it is likely that the central dominant galaxies now seen in galaxy clusters originally formed in groups by a process similar to that now occuring in NGC 4410.

In some of its properties the NGC 4410 group resembles the groups HCG 16 and HCG 92 (Stephan’s Quintet). All three of these groups contain strongly interacting galaxies, with tidal tails and bridges, most of which are classified as spirals or S0s in NED. Like the NGC 4410 group, both HCG 16 and NCG 92 have X-ray-emitting intragroup gas, with similar X-ray luminosities, temperatures, and inferred abundances (Belsole et al., 2003; Trinchieri et al., 2003). There are some differences between these groups, however. HCG 16 has a higher HI mass than the inner part of the NGC 4410 group, with MHI $``$ 4 $`\times `$ 1010 M, and HI is present in both tidal features and in the inner parts of the galaxies (Verdes-Montenegro et al., 2001). This suggests that HCG 16 is in an earlier evolutionary stage than the NGC 4410 group. Stephan’s Quintet has more HI than the NGC 4410 inner group, with about 1010 M (Verdes-Montenegro et al., 2001), although, like NGC 4410 but unlike HCG 16, the HI in Stephan’s Quintet is mostly in the tidal features. Thus Stephan’s Quintet may be in an evolutionary stage between that of HCG 16 and the NGC 4410 group.

There are also differences in X-ray morphology. In Stephan’s Quintet, much of the diffuse X-ray-emitting gas lies in a narrow north-south ridge running through the group (Trinchieri et al., 2003). Trinchieri et al. (2003) suggests that this feature is a shock front caused by a high velocity intruder galaxy entering the group. The diffuse gas in the NGC 4410A group is somewhat elongated, but not to the extent seen in Stephan’s Quintet, while the gas in HCG 16 has a more relaxed appearance (Belsole et al., 2003).

Of these three groups, only NGC 4410 contains a radio galaxy with radio lobes that extend beyond the optical galaxy. However, the optically-brightest galaxies in HCG 16 and Stephan’s Quintet are both Seyfert galaxies (Ribeiro et al., 1996; Huchra et al., 1982). NGC 7319, the brightest galaxy in Stephan’s Quintet, has a small (2 kpc diameter) triple radio structure similar to those of FRII radio galaxies, with a flat-spectrum core and two asymmetric extended lobes (Xanthopoulos et al., 2002). This structure may be due to the interaction of radio jets with the interstellar medium in NGC 7319 (Xanthopoulos et al., 2002). Thus NGC 7319 may eventually evolve into a classical double-lobed radio galaxy.

The NGC 4410A radio lobes may have played a role in the evolution of the group as a whole. They may have been disturbed by the interstellar medium during the gravitational interaction, and may in turn have affected the gas around them. As discussed in Smith (2000), the density of intragroup medium in the NGC 4410 group is likely too small to account for the distortion of the radio lobes, implying that the distortion is probably due to the interstellar material. Radio jets may also contribute to heating the interstellar/intracluster medium (Begelman, 2001; Reynolds, Heinz, $`\&`$ Begelman, 2002).

The existence of large radio lobes in the merging galaxy NGC 4410A shows that such structures can occur fairly early in the formation of an elliptical, when it is not yet an elliptical. NGC 4410A thus stands in contrast to the three ‘compact symmetric object’ radio galaxies studied by Perlman et al. (2001), which have normal outer optical isophotes but significant ellipticity and position angle variations in the inner region. In these three galaxies, the optical morphology suggests that a major merger occurred $``$108 years ago, while the radio morphology indicates a recent (103 $``$ 104 years) turn-on of jet activity, implying a time delay between such a merger and jet activity. This may mean that minor mergers, which will not drastically alter the outer isophotes, may also trigger jet activity, or that jet activity is intermittent in elliptical galaxies, as suggested by Reynolds $`\&`$ Begelman (1997) and McNamara et al. (2001), or that jets can also be present in spirals but are generally smothered by dense interstellar clouds (Wang, Wiita, $`\&`$ Hooda, 2000), as suggested for NGC 7319 (Xanthopoulos et al., 2002). Once formed, jets may affect the evolution of the interstellar and intragroup gas, providing periodic heating to the interstellar and intracluster/intragroup gas.

### 4.3 The NGC 4410A Ring and the Diffuse X-Ray Emission in NGC 4410A

The peculiar ring-like structure visible in optical images of NGC 4410A (Figure 2, Donahue et al. (2002)) is reminiscent of those in classical ring galaxies (Lynds $`\&`$ Toomre, 1976; Theys $`\&`$ Spiegel, 1977). The existence of luminous H II regions along the ring is also consistent with a collisional ring scenario, as such H II regions are often found in classical ring galaxies (e.g., Higdon (1995)). However, the optical spectrum of the western edge of the NGC 4410 ring is indicative of shocks (Donahue et al., 2002), which is not typical of ring galaxies (Jeske, 1986; Bransford et al., 1998).

The detection of extended x-ray emission along the western half of the NGC 4410 ring provides another test of the collisional-ring hypothesis. NGC 4410 is not the only ring(-like) galaxy with X-rays detected along the optical ring. ROSAT images of the Cartwheel (Wolter, Trinchieri, $`\&`$ Iovino, 1999) show X-rays along the southwestern portion of the ring, with an X-ray luminosity of 2 $``$ 3 $`\times `$ 1041 erg s-1. Higher resolution Chandra observations of the Cartwheel show that this X-ray emission is largely due to point sources, with about 1040 erg s-1 being due to diffuse gas (Wolter $`\&`$ Trinchieri, 2003). This is similar to our measurement of LX = 6 $`\times `$ 1039 erg s-1 for the ridge of X-ray emission along the western part of the NGC 4410 ring. However, in contrast to NGC 4410, in the Cartwheel the part of the ring brightest in x-rays also has the most star formation (Higdon, 1995; Wolter, Trinchieri, $`\&`$ Iovino, 1999), while in NGC 4410, the western part of the ring is detected in X-rays, and the H II regions are located in the eastern part (Figure 2, Donahue et al. (2002)).

The extended X-ray emission in both the Cartwheel and NGC 4410 is unlikely to be due to shocks from an expanding density wave caused by a collision with another galaxy. Typical expansion velocities for collisional rings are 50 $``$ 100 km s-1 (Struck-Marcell $`\&`$ Higdon, 1993; Gerber, Lamb, $`\&`$ Balsara, 1996). As discussed by Wolter, Trinchieri, $`\&`$ Iovino (1999), such velocities imply very low gas temperatures of $``$50 eV. Such low temperatures would cause strong line emission in the extreme ultraviolet, rather than a dominant X-ray continuum (McCray, 1987).

Although shocks from an expanding density wave are not likely to have caused the diffuse X-rays directly, they may be indirectly responsible, arising as a consequence of star formation triggered by an expanding ring. Alternatively, star formation triggered by another process may be responsible for the diffuse X-rays in this system. The total X-ray luminosity in the diffuse component in NGC 4410A+B, compared to other star formation indicators, is consistent with that expected from star formation. The far-infrared luminosity of NGC 4410A+B is 3.9 $`\times `$ 109 L (Smith, 2000). Comparison with the total diffuse X-ray emission in NGC 4410A+B of 6 $`\times `$ 1040 erg s-1 gives a ratio consistent with the David, Jones, $`\&`$ Forman (1992) and Stevens $`\&`$ Strickland (1998) LX vs. LFIR relationships for star forming galaxies, thus NGC 4410 does not have a large excess of diffuse X-ray emitting gas compared to normal star forming galaxies. Another useful comparison is with the non-nuclear H$`\alpha `$ luminosity of NGC 4410A+B, 1.7 $`\times `$ 1041 erg s-1 (Donahue et al., 2002). The diffuse LX/L $``$ 0.35 is consistent with global values for starburst galaxies (Pérez-Olea $`\&`$ Colina, 1996). The total diffuse X-ray luminosity in NGC 4410A is similar to the soft X-ray luminosity found in the prototypical spiral-to-elliptical merger NGC 7252 (Awaki, Matsumoto, $`\&`$ Tomida, 2002).

The extended x-ray emission in NGC 4410A (and in other star-forming galaxies) is not likely to be due to supernova remnants alone. The typical X-ray luminosity of a supernova remnant is 1036 erg s-1, while its lifetime is about 2 $`\times `$ 104 years (Cowie et al., 1981). Comparison with the observed X-ray luminosity of the NGC 4410 ring implies a supernova rate of 0.3 per year, if all the X-ray emission in the ridge is due to supernovae. If the total diffuse X-ray emission in NGC 4410A+B, LX $``$ 6 $`\times `$ 1040 erg s-1, is assumed to be due to supernovae, the implied supernova rate is even higher, at 3 supernovae per year. These implied rates are high compared to the total rate of star formation in NGC 4410A, 1 $``$ 4 M year-1 (Donahue et al., 2002) (which in any case is mainly observed in the eastern portion of NGC 4410A, not along the western arc). Expected supernova rates, relative to star formation rates, are $``$0.03 supernova/(M year-1) (Taniguchi et al., 2001), thus, based on the non-nuclear H$`\alpha `$ luminosity, we expect only 0.03 $``$ 0.12 supernova per year in NGC 4410A. In general, supernova remnants are believed to contribute only a small amount to the X-ray emission from starburst galaxies (Peris $`\&`$ Rephaeli, 2002).

A related phenomenon more likely to be responsible for the diffuse X-ray emission is the combined effect of stellar winds from massive stars and supernovae, creating an expanding bubble of hot gas. Expansion of the bubble may shock the surrounding gas, contributing to the X-ray radiation. Such superbubbles in starburst galaxies may be capable of generating up to LX $``$ 1039-41 erg s-1 (Stevens $`\&`$ Strickland, 1998). Chandra observations of the starburst galaxy NGC 253 (Strickland et al., 2000) reveal a $``$0.5 kpc radius conical-shaped outflow from the nucleus, with an edge-brightened X-ray morphology similar to that seen in H$`\alpha `$. Strickland et al. (2000) conclude that the diffuse X-rays from NGC 253 originate from an interface region between the wind and the ambient interstellar medium. In the SBc galaxy NGC 3079, a 0.6 kpc radius superbubble is seen, with matching X-ray and optical line morphologies (Cecil, Bland-Hawthorn, $`\&`$ Veilleux, 2002). The X-ray luminosity associated with this bubble is 3 $`\times `$ 1042 erg s-1, 50 times higher than the total extended X-ray luminosity of NGC 4410A+B. In NGC 3079, unlike in NGC 253, the X-rays are not significantly edge-brightened, and the cause of the superbubble (AGN or starburst) is not clear.

The western arc/X-ray ridge in NGC 4410, however, is much larger than the superbubbles in these galaxies, extending $``$4 kpc from the nucleus. The expansion timescale of a superbubble can be estimated from $`t_7^{3/5}2.8L_{mech}^{1/5}n_H^{1/5}/r_{shell}`$, where $`t_7`$ is the timescale in units of 107 years, Lmech is the mechanical energy of the supernova in units of 1043 erg s-1, nH is the average hydrogen number density in units of 1 cm-3, and rshell is the radius of the bubble in kpc (Shull, 1995; Taniguchi et al., 2001). Using Lmech $``$ $`\eta `$ESNRSN, where $`\eta `$ $``$ 0.1 is the efficiency of the kinetic energy deposited into the gas (Dyson $`\&`$ Williams, 1980), ESN $``$ 1051 erg is the energy of a single supernova, RSN is the number of supernova per year, and the hydrogen number density nH $``$ 1 cm-3 gives Lmech $``$ 0.9 $``$ 3.9 $`\times `$ 1041 erg s-1, using the supernova rate implied by the H$`\alpha `$ luminosity. This implies a timescale of 5 $``$ 9 $`\times `$ 107 years for the bubble.

If the X-ray/optical emission-line arc in NGC 4410 was indeed caused by a superbubble, it might be caused by the active nucleus rather than by star formation. Theoretical models of a radio jet impacting the interstellar medium or intragroup medium predict an X-ray shell surrounding the radio lobes (Reynolds, Heinz, $`\&`$ Begelman, 2001). Such shells are observed in a number of radio galaxies (Carilli, Perley, $`\&`$ Harris, 1994; Böhringer et al., 1993; Huang $`\&`$ Sarazin, 1998). Unfortunately, at present no high spatial resolution, high sensitivity radio observations are available for NGC 4410A for comparison with the Chandra data. In the 1986 maps of Hummel et al. (1986), only the southern radio lobe is visible. In the higher sensitivity but low spatial resolution map of Smith (2000), a second lobe is visible, but its detailed morphology is uncertain. Thus at present it is unclear whether or not the X-ray ridge in NGC 4410A bounds a radio lobe.

### 4.4 The Point Sources

As discussed above, of the eight point sources found in the NGC 4410 field, one of them (p5) is associated with the faint optical galaxy ANON 3, and may be a background source. The second source with an optical counterpart, p2, may also be a background source. The optical counterpart is too faint to have been included in the Cabanela (1999) catalog of POSS I sources, however, it is clearly visible on the POSS II plates. Roughly calibrating these images by comparison with the Cabanela (1999) galaxy magnitudes, we estimate B $``$ 19.5 and V$``$ 19 for the optical counterpart to p2. At the distance of NGC 4410, this corresponds to a blue luminosity of 2.4 $`\times `$ 108 L (MB $``$ $``$15.4 and MV $``$ $``$15.9). This is much more luminous in the visible than almost all of the so-called ‘super star clusters’ found in star-forming galaxies (e.g., Holtzman et al. (1992, 1996)). This source has a log(FX/FV) ratio of $``$1.4 (calculated as in Maccacaro et al. (1988)), much smaller than that of the apparent optical counterparts to some Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) found in other galaxies. For example, the apparent optical counterparts to ULXs found in M82 and NGC 4565 have MB $``$ $``$5 and log(FX/FV) $``$ 2 (Stocke, Wurtz, $`\&`$ Kühr, 1991; Wu et al., 2002).

Thus p2 is clearly not in the same class as these ULXs, being much brighter in the optical (if the POSS optical source is indeed related to the X-ray source). It is more likely to be a background active galaxy. Although luminous in the optical compared to these other ULXs, it is faint in the optical relative to the X-ray compared to normal galaxies; it lies above the Fabbiano, Kim, $`\&`$ Trinchieri (1992) LX/LB relation for normal galaxies. If it is at the distance of NGC 4410, its optical luminosity is typical of a dwarf galaxy. As argued earlier for ANON 3, it is unlikely that such a low luminosity galaxy would harbor an active galaxy. Thus p2 may also be a background object.

The remaining six candidate ULXs without optical counterparts on the POSS images have lower limits to log(FX/FV) between $``$1.5 to $``$0.4, assuming an optical limit of V $``$ 20.5 from the POSS I plates. These limits are not sensitive enough to distinguish between ULXs and background active galaxies, via comparison with typical values for BL Lacs and other AGNs (i.e.,  Stocke et al. (1991)).

As discussed in Section 3.3, two of our candidate ULXs, p3 and p8, have hard X-ray spectra compared to a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ = 2 power law. Candidate ULXs in other galaxies typically have spectra consistent with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ $``$ 2 power laws (Roberts et al., 2001; Lira et al., 2002), though there is some evidence for harder spectra ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ $``$ 1.2) among the more luminous ULXs (Zezas et al., 2002). Thus p3 and p8 may also be background sources (Seyfert 2, for example). Alternatively, they may be ‘microquasars’, particularly p3, whose large radio flux may indicate that we are viewing nearly straight down the jet axis of a ‘microquasar’ such as GRS 1915+105. Intriguingly, p3 and p8 are spatially located together southeast of NGC 4410A near p2, which has an optical counterpart. If these are indeed all background objects, they may be part of a background cluster. Alternatively, they may be ULXs associated with the NGC 4410 tidal tail.

Thus, our four best candidate ULX sources are p1, p4, p6, and p7. Given the star formation rate estimate for NGC 4410A of 1 $``$ 4 M year-1 (Donahue et al., 2002), we expect to find 1 $``$ 4 ULXs associated with NGC 4410A, if ULXs follow a universal luminosity function dependent upon star formation rate, as suggested by Grimm, Gilfanov, $`\&`$ Sunyaev (2003). Our detection of four possible candidates in NGC 4410 is consistent with this expectation. As noted above, however, three of these sources (p1, p4, and p6) are not associated with known star formation regions.

The possible association of radio emission with one of these candidate ULXs, p1, is intriguing. To date, only one other ULX with a possible radio counterpart has been found (Kaaret et al., 2003). If these objects are indeed radio-bright ULXs, this suggests that they are not intermediate mass black holes, but instead beamed stellar mass objects (Kaaret et al., 2003). Alternatively, p1 may be a background radio-loud active galaxy.

## 5 Summary

The peculiar galaxy NGC 4410A contains a X-ray-bright active nucleus as well as diffuse extended emission, including a ridge of X-ray emission coincident with optical line emission. This ridge has an optical spectrum indicative of shocks, suggesting it may be the rim of an expanding superbubble caused by either the on-going star formation in NGC 4410A or its active nucleus. Outside of the optical galaxies in the group, a hot intragroup gas with LX $``$ 1041 erg s-1 is observed, at the lower edge of the range observed for elliptical-dominated groups. This suggests that the NGC 4410 group is in the process of evolving from a spiral-dominated group into an elliptical-dominated group. Four or five possible ULXs are seen in the Chandra maps of NGC 4410A, one of which has a possible radio counterpart. Such a radio counterpart argues against the intermediate mass black hole model for this source, and supports the hypothesis that this is simply a beamed stellar-mass binary.

We thank the Chandra team for making this research possible. This research has made use 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. We appreciate the helpful suggestions of the anonymous referee. We thank Anna Wolter for helpful comments on the manuscript, and for providing information on the Cartwheel Chandra observations in advance of publication. We also thank Kathy Manning and John Houck for advice with the data reduction software. We are pleased to acknowledge funding for this project from a NASA General Observer Chandra grant. M.A.N. was supported by NASA grant NAS8-01129.


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# Probing the rotation curve of the outer accretion disk in FU Orionis objects with long-wavelength spectroscopy

## 1 Introduction

Very young (Class 0 or Class I) protostellar sources are thought to be characterized by a fairly high mass accretion rate (Calvet et al., 2000), but they appear to be still deeply embedded in their protostellar envelopes, so that their disk remains hidden to direct observations. On the other hand, in the more evolved T Tauri stars the mass accretion rate is generally considered to be modest, so that their disks are heated by the combined contribution of viscous dissipation and irradiation from the central star, making it more difficult to extract detailed information about the accretion process. In this context, FU Orionis objects (Hartmann & Kenyon, 1996) are a rather small but remarkable class of pre-main sequence stars, because they are ideal “laboratories” to test the process of disk accretion during the early stages of star formation. In fact, the disk of FU Orionis objects, differently from that of Class I objects, can be studied directly from its optical emission, and, differently from that of T Tauri stars, is likely to be the site of “active” accretion.

The distinctive feature of FU Orionis objects is that they undergo a violent outburst phase. During the outburst, they can increase their luminosity by more than 4 magnitudes in a period of a few years, and then slowly return to a quiescent state on a much longer timescale. It is commonly believed that such outbursts are the result of a significant increase of the mass accretion rate in the disk which usually surrounds Young Stellar Objects. Many possible mechanisms to trigger the outburst phase have been discussed in the literature, among which are a tidal interaction with a companion star (Bonnell & Bastien, 1992), the onset of a thermal instability in a partially ionized disk, when the outer disk is already accreting at a sufficiently high rate (Bell et al., 1995), or the onset of thermal instability induced by the presence of a satellite within the disk (Clarke & Syer, 1996). The high accretion rate makes the emission of these systems dominated by the accretion luminosity, with only a minor contribution from the central star.

The modeling of the Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) of FU Orionis objects provides an estimate of the product $`M_{}\dot{M}`$ (as discussed below in Sect. 2.1) which turns out to be of the order of $`10^4M_{}^2`$/yr. For a stellar mass $`M_{}M_{}`$, this would correspond to an accretion rate as high as $`10^4M_{}/\text{yr}`$. “Standard” models based on the presence of a Keplerian accretion disk lead to a satisfactory fit of the available photometric data only for wavelengths shorter than $`10\mu \text{m}`$; the luminosity at longer wavelengths is usually much larger than expected. A flaring disk model, in which the outer disk is illuminated by the inner disk, could in principle explain the far-infrared excess, but the required amount of flaring turns out to be often too large (Kenyon & Hartmann, 1991); therefore, the long-wavelength part of the SED is generally attributed to an infalling envelope, which is heated by the accretion disk luminosity.

Recently we have shown the viability of the picture (Lodato & Bertin 2001; hereafter LB) in which the long wavelength SED of FU Orionis objects is considered to be the signature of the effects of the disk self-gravity. There are already many clues that point to the importance of the disk self-gravity in this context. Among these, we may recall that: (i) Submillimeter observations (Sandell & Weintraub, 2001) show that the disk masses in these systems are much higher than those of T Tauri stars (indicating that they are probably younger than their low-luminosity counterparts); (ii) The modeling of the outburst in terms of a thermal instability event (Bell & Lin, 1994) requires a very low value for the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$, which in turn leads to a high surface density; indeed, detailed vertical structure calculations (Bell et al., 1997) show that at low values of the viscosity the disk is marginally stable against axisymmetric gravitational disturbances already at a distance significantly smaller than 1 AU from the central star. In fact, it has been suggested that FU Orionis outbursts could be triggered by a mechanism that is based on the role of the disk self-gravity (Armitage et al., 2001).

In the model proposed by LB the far infrared excess is produced by two separate contributions: (i) The higher rotation curve of the disk, in the case where the disk is sufficiently massive, enhances the viscous dissipation rate; (ii) The extra heating required to keep the outer disk marginally stable with respect to gravitational instabilities makes the surface temperature higher at large radii.

The second contribution is probably related also to non-local energy transport processes that should become important when global gravitational instabilities are present. The importance of global effects in self-gravitating disks has been brought out by means of numerical simulations (Rice et al., 2003), but further work is desired to clarify the issue of non-local transport in massive disks (Lodato & Rice, in preparation). Thus, for such second contribution, much of the discussion focuses on theoretical aspects (Balbus & Papaloizou, 1999).

The importance of the first contribution can be checked by means of direct observations. In this paper we address the issue of detecting non-Keplerian rotation in protostellar disks. In passing, we note that the non-Keplerian rotation observed in some AGN accretion disks can be successfully explained by the model on which this paper is based (Lodato & Bertin, 2003). Here we propose a possible measurement of the rotation of the outer disk in FU Orionis objects based on the analysis of mid-infrared and sub-millimetric spectroscopy. While sub-millimetric emission from FU Orionis objects is generally considered to come from the disk (Weintraub et al., 1991), alternative scenarios are available for the interpretation of the far-infrared emission. In fact, as we have already mentioned, Kenyon & Hartmann (1991) attribute the far infrared emission to the envelope. Here, following LB, we will assume that the far infrared emission comes from the disk.

A useful diagnostics to probe the kinematical properties of FU Orionis disks is provided by the shape of the observed line profiles. One merit of this kind of diagnostics resides in the fact that the surface temperature of the disk decreases with radius, and that the wavelength characterizing the emission from a certain annulus of the disk changes accordingly. Therefore, the study of the profiles of different lines allows us to probe the disk kinematics at different radial distances from the central accreting protostar. In particular, the observed optical and near-infrared line profiles are usually double-peaked (Kenyon et al., 1988, hereafter KHH), as expected from a rotating disk; in addition, the peak separation decreases with increasing wavelength, as expected for a disk with a decreasing temperature profile (Popham et al., 1996, hereafter PKHN). We can thus anticipate that from the peak separation at very long wavelengths in the far infrared and in the sub-mm, probing the outer disk, we should be able to tell whether the rotation is significantly different from Keplerian, hence testing the predictions of a model in which the disk self-gravity affects the shape of the rotation curve.

This kind of observations will require high spectral resolution (in order to detect small velocity differences) and high spatial resolution (in order to disentangle different kinematical comnponents). In fact, many protostellar disks are known to possess strong molecular outflows. Therefore, a possible source of confusion in the shape of the line profiles may come from the kinematics of the outflows, that could result in asymmetries in the shape of the line profile. In this respect, the high spatial resolution that can be achieved with interferometric techniques (Guilloteau & Dutrey, 1998), and, in the near future, with ALMA will eventually lead to clear-cut tests on the role of disk self-gravity in the rotation curve of protostellar disks.

The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 we describe our method to test the rotation properties of the outer accretion disk; in Section 3 we describe the basic properties of the adopted accretion disk model based on parameters relevant for FU Ori; in Section 4 we describe our expectations for optical and NIR line profiles; in Section 5 we consider the case of mid-infrared pure rotational H2 line profiles; in Section 6 we describe the expected shape of sub-mm CO line emission; in Section 7 we draw our conclusions.

## 2 Measuring deviations from Keplerian rotation in spatially unresolved protostellar disks

The method presented in this Section is an extension of the method described by KHH. Our main assumption is that the SED of FU Orionis objects is produced by an optically thick accretion disk up to wavelengths of the order of $`100\mu \text{m}`$, consistent with studies of the millimetric continuum in these systems (Weintraub et al., 1991). The basic procedure can then be summarized as follows:

1. The surface temperature profile $`T_s(r)`$ is obtained from a parametric fit to the SED; note that in this paper we are not interested in explaining the physical origin of this profile, which we addressed in a previous article (LB). Given a value of the inclination angle $`i`$, this fit leads to a determination of the inner and outer radii of the disk, $`r_{in}`$ and $`r_{out}`$, and of the product $`\dot{M}M_{}`$, where $`\dot{M}`$ is the mass accretion rate and $`M_{}`$ is the mass of the central object.
2. The profiles of the optical-NIR lines (such as some CO absorption bands, seen in FU Orionis objects), which are produced mostly in the inner disk, are used to determine the rotational velocity in the inner Keplerian disk. For a given value of the inclination $`i`$, fitting the observed line shapes yields a measurement of $`M_{}/r_{in}`$. As a result of the first two steps, we obtain separate estimates of $`M_{}`$ and $`\dot{M}`$. So far, the procedure is very close to that of KHH.
3. In significantly massive disks, the line profiles at longer wavelengths should be broader than expected from a Keplerian extrapolation of the rotation curve measured in the previous step. Fitting the observed mid-infrared and sub-millimeter line profiles with the self-gravitating disk model described in Bertin & Lodato (1999, hereafter BL) will then provide a value for the lengthscale $`r_s`$ that marks the transition to the non-Keplerian rotation regime (see Subsection 2.2 below). This fit will test directly the importance of the disk self-gravity, independently of the arguments that can be made in order to explain the infrared excess in the SED. Furthermore, since $`r_s`$ depends on $`M_{}`$, $`\dot{M}`$, and on the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$ (see Eq. (6) below), this fit will also lead to a measurement of the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$.

### 2.1 Determining the radial temperature profile

We start by introducing the dimensionless radial coordinate $`x=r/r_{in}`$ and the temperature scale $`T_0`$ from the Keplerian model temperature profile:

$$\sigma _BT_s^4(r)=\frac{3}{8\pi }\frac{GM_{}\dot{M}}{r_{in}^3}\left(\frac{r_{in}}{r}\right)^3=\frac{\sigma _BT_0^4}{x^3},$$
(1)
where $`\sigma _B`$ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. This simple temperature profile is able to reproduce the correct spectral index of the SED at wavelengths smaller than 10$`\mu \text{m}`$ and thus is adequate at small radii.

In the following, we would like to test the self-gravitating disk hypothesis by studying directly the rotation properties of the disk, independently of a discussion of the detailed physical processes that justify the observed SED. Therefore we consider a parametric description of the temperature profile, in line with many other investigations of YSO disks (e.g., see Beckwith & Sargent 1993 and Osterloh & Beckwith 1995, who studied the sub-mm continuum of YSOs, or Thi et al. 2001, who studied emission lines). For the purpose, we thus consider a simple combination of two power laws, one describing the inner disk (and with temperature therefore proportional to $`r^{3/4}`$), and the other describing the outer disk, allowing for deviations from the $`r^{3/4}`$ dependence:

$$T_s^4(r)=T_0^4\theta ^4(x),$$
(2)
where

$$\theta ^4(x)=\frac{1}{x^3}\left[1+\left(\frac{x}{x_t}\right)^\beta \right],$$
(3)
$`x_t=r_t/r_{in}`$ being a dimensionless radius, beyond which the temperature profile departs from the “standard” profile, and $`\beta `$ an appropriate power-law index.

Under the assumption that the disk emission is optically thick, the SED can be constructed by integrating in radius the blackbody spectrum. By analogy with what described in LB, we then introduce a reference frequency $`\nu _0=kT_0/h`$ and rescale the frequency to $`\widehat{\nu }=\nu /\nu _0`$. For a given disk inclination $`i`$, the SED is thus given by:

$$4\pi D_0^2\nu F_\nu =L_0\widehat{\nu }^4_1^{x_{out}}\frac{x\text{d}x}{\text{e}^{\widehat{\nu }/\theta (x)}1},$$
(4)
where

$$L_0=\frac{120}{\pi ^3}r_{in}^2\sigma _BT_0^4\mathrm{cos}i,$$
(5)
$`D_0`$ is the distance to the YSO, and $`x_{out}=r_{out}/r_{in}`$.

A fit to the SED of observed objects will therefore determine the fit parameters $`x_{out}`$, $`T_0`$, $`L_0`$, $`\beta `$, and $`x_t`$. The combined knowledge of $`L_0`$ and $`T_0`$ (assuming the inclination angle of the disk to be known) allows us to obtain $`r_{in}`$ and the product $`M_{}\dot{M}`$ (see Eqs. (1) and (5)).

### 2.2 The rotation curve in the presence of a self-gravitating disk

We now consider the contribution of the disk self-gravity to the rotation curve. Based on the results of BL, we introduce a typical lengthscale $`r_s`$, the radius beyond which deviations from Keplerian rotation become significant, and a typical velocity scale $`V_0`$, defined as follows:

$$r_s=2GM_{}\left(\frac{\overline{Q}}{4}\right)^2\left(\frac{G\dot{M}}{2\alpha }\right)^{2/3},$$
(6)
$$V_0^2=\frac{8}{\overline{Q}^2}\left(\frac{G\dot{M}}{2\alpha }\right)^{2/3}.$$
(7)
Here $`\overline{Q}`$ is a parameter that, for simplicity, will be set to unity (see BL). The quantity $`\alpha `$ is the parameter that defines the Shakura & Sunyaev (1973) viscosity prescription. The rotation curve of self-regulated, self-gravitating accretion disks is given by:

$$V^2=\frac{GM_{}}{r}+V_0^2+V_0^2\widehat{\varphi }^2(r/r_s)=V_{}^2\left[\frac{1}{x}+\frac{1}{x_s}(1+\widehat{\varphi }^2(x/x_s))\right],$$
(8)
where $`V_{}^2=GM_{}/r_{in}`$, $`x_s=r_s/r_{in}`$ and $`\widehat{\varphi }^2`$ is defined in Eq. (4) of BL.

In the following, we will sometimes use the short, simplified expression “self-gravitating rotation curve” (as opposed to Keplerian rotation curve) when we will refer to the rotation curve derived from Eq. (8) for a model that includes the effects of the disk self-gravity.

### 2.3 The shape of the line profiles

In the present analysis we focus on the line shape. Therefore, we will consider only the relative contribution of the different annuli of the disk to the line intensity.

We will express the line profiles as a function of the velocity shift $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$, corresponding to the frequency shift $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ from the line center $`\nu _l`$, so that $`\mathrm{\Delta }v/c=\mathrm{\Delta }\nu /\nu _l`$. The Doppler line profile $`\varphi (\mathrm{\Delta }v,r)`$ at a given radius of a disk rotating with velocity $`V(r)`$ is given by:

$$\varphi (\mathrm{\Delta }v,r)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{c}{\sqrt{V_{los}^2(r)(\mathrm{\Delta }v)^2}}\hfill & \text{if }(\mathrm{\Delta }v)^2<V_{los}^2(r)\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`V_{los}(r)=V(r)\mathrm{sin}i`$ is the maximum line-of-sight rotational velocity. Obviously, this expression takes into account only the effects related to the disk ordered motions; intrinsic effects associated with the microscopic physics of line emission and with the thermal motions inside the disk are not included.

We convolve this line profile with a Gaussian profile $`\text{e}^{(\mathrm{\Delta }v/v_b)^2}`$, either to simulate the effects of a finite instrumental spectral resolution $`R`$, so that $`v_b/c=1/R`$, or to describe turbulent or thermal motions of the emitting species. The global line profile will be given by integrating the convolved line profile $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(\mathrm{\Delta }v,r)`$ over radius, weighted by an appropriate weight function $`l(r,\nu _l)`$ which expresses the relative contribution of the different annuli of the disk to the line emission:

$$F(\mathrm{\Delta }v)=_{r_{in}}^{r_{out}}l(r,\nu _l)\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(\mathrm{\Delta }v,r)2\pi r\text{d}r.$$
(9)
The function $`l(r,\nu _l)`$ is specified once the details of the emission or of the absorption are known. At wavelengths where the continuum emission is optically thin, we expect to find emission lines; on the other hand, where the continuum is optically thick, emission lines are produced only if a temperature inversion in the upper layers of the disk is present, due, for example, to the effect of irradiation from the central object (Calvet et al., 1991b). If we consider FU Orionis objects, since the accretion rate is high and irradiation is not expected to be efficient, we thus expect to have absorption lines at optical and infrared wavelengths (Calvet et al., 1991a). Near infrared CO absorption bands from the disk are indeed a typical feature in FU Orionis objects (KHH). However, irradiation from the inner disk may give rise to a hot atmosphere above the disk, where emission lines can be produced. Therefore, in some cases (for example, for the optically thin FIR H2 molecular lines, see Section 5) we have considered both cases of absorption and emission.

In this simplified analysis we will consider for emission lines the two limiting cases of optically thick (which can be appropriate for sub-millimetric CO rotational lines) and optically thin emission (best suited for FIR pure rotational H2 emission lines, see below), so as to keep the radiative transport as simple as possible.

1. Optically thick emission lines. In this case the brightness temperature of the emission line coincides with the physical temperature $`T_s(r)`$ (see Beckwith & Sargent 1993) so that we can assume that the different annuli of the disk emit proportionally to their contribution to blackbody emission at the wavelength of the line center:

$$l(r,\nu _l)\frac{1}{\text{e}^{h\nu _l/kT_s(r)}1}.$$
(10)
The expected line profile can thus be obtained directly, based on the results of modeling of the SED, as described in Sec. 2.1.
2. Optically thin emission lines. In this case the relative contribution of the different annuli requires one additional piece of information, about the surface density radial profile $`\sigma (r)`$. Apart from numerical factors that do not depend on the radial coordinate or on the temperature, we can express $`l(r,\nu _l)`$ as:

$$l(r,\nu _l)\sigma (r)\frac{\text{e}^{E_{up}/kT_s(r)}}{Q(T_s(r))},$$
(11)
where $`E_{up}`$ is the energy of the upper level of the transition, and $`Q(T_s(r))`$ is the partition function of the line emitting species (for example the H2 molecule; see also Thi et al. 2001). For simplicity, in this formula we have made the assumption that the line emitting species is at the same temperature as the matter responsible for the continuum emission (i.e. mostly the dust in the upper layers of the disk). However, it should be noted that this assumption would lead to very weak emission lines, difficult to observe. This has been partially confirmed by FIR observations of pure rotational H2 emission lines in quiescent YSOs (Richter et al., 2002), that indeed reveal that these emission lines, if present at all, have a very weak line strength.

A more detailed discussion of the radiative transfer would require a complete accretion disk model. In the present simplified investigation, in order to proceed further from Eq. (11), we may consider a surface density profile of the form $`\sigma r^\gamma `$. The power law index $`\gamma `$ can be derived from spatially resolved observations of disks at mm wavelengths, where the disk emission is optically thin (Guilloteau & Dutrey, 1998), and it turns out to be often close to unity (Testi et al., 2003; Piétu et al., 2003) (even for evolved objects, such as TW Hya; see Wilner et al. 2000). Therefore, the case $`\gamma =1`$ will be our reference case (see also the discussion is Section 5.4 below). \[Interestingly, the self-gravitating disk solution of BL indeed predicts $`\gamma =1`$, but, as we did when we introduced the properties of the SED, in this paper we do not wish to address the problem of interpreting the observed profile.\]
3. Absorption lines. In this case we follow PKHN and make the simplifying assumption that the equivalent width of the line does not change with $`T_s`$, so that $`l(r,\nu _l)`$ is proportional to the blackbody emission and will be therefore described by Eq. (10), as for optically thick emission lines. As PKHN note, this approach may not be valid above some threshold temperature (dependent on the absorption line), where the relevant molecules producing absorption disappear. We have therefore set the equivalent width to zero above this temperature (see also Sec. 4 and 5 below).

Other models of the absorption lines in FU Orionis include the use of stellar template photospheres with different temperatures, simulating the disk radial temperature profile (the disk is divided into rings, and with each ring a stellar template spectrum is associated, characterized by effective temperature equal to the disk surface temperature at that radius; KHH), or of the detailed solution of the radiative transfer in the disk atmosphere (Calvet et al., 1991a). However, such refined calculations show only minor differences with respect to estimates based on the simplest assumptions, at least for optical and near-infrared lines. More caution should be taken when applying the simple constant equivalent width assumption to longer wavelength lines (such as the H2 lines that we are going to consider in Sec 5). In this first analysis we have decided to follow the simplified approach, being aware that for the final comparison with observations more realistic assumptions about the radiative transfer in the disk should be considered.

### 2.4 Other factors expected to affect the shape of the line profiles

Before concluding this Section, a cautionary remark is in order. The main objective of the present paper is to show quantitatively what kind of spectroscopic observations could carry significant evidence for the presence of non-Keplerian motions in protostellar disks. In view of this goal, we have decided to consider a simplified description of the vertical structure and of the radiative transfer in the disk. Obviously, for the subsequent goal of interpreting the observations of some specific objects, many other effects concerning the dynamics, the physics and the chemistry of protostellar disks should be considered carefully. These include the possible interplay between rotation and infall in determining the shape of the line profile (Hogerheijde, 2001; Belloche et al., 2002), the effect of molecular depletion (see Markwick et al. 2002 and comment at the end of Section 6), and the effect of other sources of gravitational field in disturbing the rotation curve. This final issue can be particularly important in the case of FU Orionis objects, for which the tidal interaction with a close “companion” has been sometimes suggested (Bonnell & Bastien, 1992) as a possible way to trigger the outburst. However, event statistics (Hartmann & Kenyon, 1996) suggest that FU Orionis might be a repetitive phenomenon, with a recurrence period of $`10^410^5`$ yrs. The “companion” should therefore lie in a very eccentric orbit, so that it should cause only a minor disturbance to the shape of the line profiles after the outburst has been triggered.

## 3 Basic parameters for a model suggested by the SED of FU Ori

In this Section we apply the initial step of the procedure outlined above to the SED of FU Ori, the prototypical FU Orionis object. LB have already modeled the SED of this object in terms of a self-gravitating accretion disk, obtaining a satisfactory fit to the available data up to $`100\mu \text{m}`$. Therefore, this object is a good candidate for testing its rotation characteristics and possible deviations from Keplerian rotation. In Table 1 we report the basic physical parameters for FU Ori obtained from the modeling of its SED in previous analyses (i.e. KHH, PKHN, and LB) and from the parametric modeling described in Subsect. 2.1 and thus adopted in this work (see below).

The different models cannot be easily compared to each other, because of the different parameters assumed (distance, extinction and inclination angle) and of the different modeling considered for the emission in the disk boundary layer. In particular, the main characteristics of the models are:

* KHH assume that the net angular momentum flux in the disk is not vanishing and is given by the requirement of zero torque at the inner disk radius. The boundary layer is assumed to be at a constant temperature, corresponding to the maximum disk temperature.
* PKHN assume that the net angular momentum flux in the disk is vanishing and include the boundary layer emission, treating it as a low-radiative-efficiency flow.
* LB (and this work) assume that the net angular momentum flux in the disk is vanishing, but do not include the boundary layer emission.

The differences in the choice of the visual extinction $`A_V`$ (in magnitudes) and of the distance $`D_0`$ only induce slight changes in the estimate of the product $`M_{}\dot{M}`$, when similar values for the inclination are assumed. On the other hand, the different treatment of the inner disk emission leads to a different estimate of the inner disk radius in the three models, so that $`r_{in}^{\mathrm{KHH}}r_{in}^{\mathrm{PKHN}}<r_{in}^{\mathrm{LB}}`$. We interpret the relatively large value of the inner radius estimated by LB and in this work as a consequence of the fact that, with respect to PKHN, we did not include the contribution of the radiatively inefficient boundary layer, so that our inner disk radius is to be considered closer to the transition from the thin disk solution to the hot boundary layer, rather than to the actual stellar radius. Another important difference between KHH and PKHN concerns the central mass estimate: the boundary layer in the PKHN model rotates slower than Keplerian, due to the effect of the increased pressure gradient in the boundary layer. Thus, to obtain the same rotational velocity in the inner disk (to match the optical line profiles; see below) a larger central mass is required.

We will follow the work of PKHN as much as possible. Therefore, we start by assuming the extinction coefficient, distance and inclination angle provided in their analysis. In particular, the inclination angle assumed below is such that $`\mathrm{cos}i=0.5`$, slightly smaller than the value $`\mathrm{cos}i=0.65`$ derived by LB.

With the parametric model described in Section 2.1 we have fitted the available photometric data (from Kenyon & Hartmann 1991), corrected by means of a standard dereddening function (Cardelli et al., 1989). The derived values for the product $`M_{}\dot{M}`$ and $`r_{in}`$ are shown in Table 1. Figure 1 shows the observed SED of FU Ori together with our best fit (solid line) and the best fit obtained by LB with a self-gravitating disk model (dotted line). The best fit values for $`x_t`$ and $`\beta `$ (see Section 2.1) are: $`x_t261`$ (which corresponds to $`r_t13`$ AU) and $`\beta =3`$. In view of the goals of this paper, of the inhomogeneity of the SED data, and especially of the detailed discussion provided in KHH, PKHN, and LB, we will not comment here on the issue of setting uncertainties in the value of the derived parameters recorded in Table 1. We only note that the relative poor quality of the SED data might result is some ambiguities in the values of the estimated parameters, as already noted by Thamm et al. (1994).

Note that $`\beta =3`$ implies that the surface temperature profile is flat in the outer disk. In Fig. 2 the temperature profile of our best fit parametric model (solid line) is displayed together with the best fit model profile obtained by LB (dotted line).

## 4 Optical-NIR line profiles

The contribution of the disk mass to the rotation curve depends on the size of the transition radius $`r_s`$ (see Eq. (6)) in relation to the region of the disk actually probed by the available spectroscopy. In this Section we will show that, in the case of a model suggested by the study of the SED of FU Ori, $`r_s`$ is large enough so that the disk self-gravity has little or no influence on the optical-NIR line profiles, which are mostly produced in the inner disk. In practice, from the peak separation of the observed line profiles at these relatively short wavelengths, one can measure the ratio $`M_{}/r_{in}`$, thus preparing the ground for a firm expectation of effects related to deviations from Keplerian rotation in spectroscopic studies at larger wavelengths (see following Section). This Section thus addresses step 2 of the procedure outlined in Sec. 2.

Here we follow PKHN and assume their value for the central mass, $`M_{}=0.7M_{}`$ (PKHN found significantly larger values of $`M_{}`$, with respect to KHH who did not include a detailed model of the inner boundary layer). Assuming $`\alpha =0.034`$ (the best fit value obtained by LB), we would obtain $`r_s350r_{in}18`$ AU. Actually, as a result of the different estimates of $`M_{}`$ and $`\dot{M}`$ considered here with respect to LB, this value for $`r_s`$ is smaller than that obtained by LB, leading to a higher and possibly unrealistic total disk mass ($`2M_{}`$). We have thus also considered the case in which $`\alpha =0.1`$, leading to $`r_s700r_{in}36`$ AU, better in line with the best model of LB.

We refer to the same (absorption) lines as in PKHN and KHH, i.e. metal lines at 6170 Å(at a resolution $`R=24000`$) and CO lines at $`2.2\mu \text{m}`$ (at a resolution $`R=20000`$; the spectral resolutions are taken to be the same as in PKHN). The threshold temperatures above which the equivalent width of the line is taken to be vanishing are 8000K for the optical lines, and 5000K for the near-infrared lines. In Fig. 3 we plot, for $`r_s18`$ AU, both the profile resulting from strictly Keplerian rotation (solid line) and the one resulting from the self-gravitating model (dotted line). The two different profiles are clearly indistinguishable. Note that the quantity usually referred to is not the actual absorption line profile, but the peak of the cross-correlation function of many absorption lines in the same wavelength range. This quantity is preferred from an observational point of view because it gives a way to obtain higher signal-to-noise ratios; physically, it represents the average shape of the line profile in a small wavelength range.

A similar plot for the case in which $`r_s36`$ AU would again show, as expected, no significant differences in the shape of the line profiles between the strictly Keplerian model and the self-gravitating disk model.

## 5 Probing the outer disk rotation with H2 line profiles

In order to probe properties of the outer disk, so as to have a chance for detecting significant deviations from Keplerian rotation, one should consider line profiles at longer wavelengths (see Fig. 2).

Molecular hydrogen pure rotational emission lines have been observed with the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) in many protostellar systems (van Dishoeck et al., 1998; Thi et al., 2001). However, due to the low angular resolution of ISO, it is not clear whether the H2 emission can be actually associated with the disk. Indeed, these ISO observations were not confirmed at higher spatial resolution (Richter et al., 2002). The weakness of H2 emission lines could indicate that spatial and temperature separations between the gas and the dust in the disk are small. Molecular hydrogen is a homonuclear molecule, so that the rotational emission lines result from the electric quadrupole. Therefore, they have a very low Einstein $`A`$ coefficient, which makes them optically thin up to high column densities (of the order of $`10^{23}\text{cm}^2`$). We will therefore assume that these lines are optically thin, although we should be aware that, if the self-gravitating disk hypothesis is correct, then the surface density of the disk is going to be high as well, so that the optically thin assumption should eventually be re-examined. The basic line parameters of the H2 rotational lines are summarized in Table 2.

A complete analysis would require the discussion of the full disk model, with an assumed vertical temperature profile, and the solution of the radiative transfer equation in the vertical direction, taking into account both viscous dissipation and external irradiation as heating sources (Calvet et al., 1991a). Here, for simplicity, we will only consider the two extreme cases of absorption lines (appropriate for the case in which viscous dissipation dominates) and of emission lines (that may be produced as an effect of irradiation of the outer disk by the inner disk), under the hypothesis that the line emitting gas is at the same temperature as the continuum emitting dust, i.e. that the gas temperature is given by $`T_s`$ as derived from the modeling of the SED. The line profile will be obtained following the procedure described in Section 2.3.

### 5.1 Absorption lines

Figure 4 shows, for $`r_s18`$ AU, the predicted line profiles for the Keplerian and non-Keplerian rotation curves, for the S(0) and S(1) absorption lines (here plotted “upside-down” to allow an immediate comparison with the optical and NIR peaks), at different spectral resolutions. We have used the same input parameters as for the optical and near-infrared line profiles. The shape of the absorption line profiles is not strongly affected by the choice of the threshold temperature above which the equivalent width is taken to vanish. Lowering the threshold from 10000K to 1000K only leads to a slight effect on the wings of the lines. This is because the inner regions of the disk give only a small contribution to the line profile, due to the small area they cover.

In Fig. 5 we show the same line profiles, but for the larger value of $`r_s`$, i.e. $`r_s36`$ AU. From these two figures, it is clear that, in order to detect the small changes in the rotation curve associated with the effects of the disk self-gravity, we should reach very high spectral resolution (see Section 5.3 for a discussion of the feasibility of such observations). Another interesting point is that the S(0) and S(1) line profiles, at the resolution of 5 and 4 km/sec, can be single peaked in the strictly Keplerian case and double peaked in the self-gravitating case. This would clearly distinguish between the two different pictures, if an adequate signal-to-noise ratio could be achieved. As expected, when a larger value of $`r_s`$ is assumed, the effects of the disk self-gravity are less prominent.

### 5.2 Emission lines

Figure 6 shows the predicted emission line profiles for the Keplerian and self-gravitating rotation curves, for the S(0), S(1) and S(2) lines at different spectral resolutions for the conservative case in which $`r_s36`$ AU.

The general features of the shape of the lines are similar to the case of absorption: the lines are broader in the self-gravitating case than the corresponding lines in Keplerian disks, and they are often double-peaked, also in cases where the Keplerian lines are single-peaked. In the model where the transition radius $`r_s`$ is smaller (not shown here), the effects of self-gravity are more prominent, as expected.

The shape of the S(2) line profile is practically not influenced by the modification of the rotation curve (i.e. it is mostly produced in a region where Keplerian rotation dominates). Based on the analysis of this and of the previous Section, we conclude that the best lines to probe deviations from Keplerian rotation would be S(0) and S(1), because they would display some difference between the two competing models, with peak separation large enough to be detected with reasonable spectral resolution.

### 5.3 Feasibility

The above results obtained here show how deviations from Keplerian rotation can be detected with the analysis of the shape of the molecular hydrogen line profiles in the mid-infrared, provided that we can achieve high spectral resolution and a high signal-to-noise ratio. The Texas Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (TEXES) operates in the wavelength range from 5.5 to 28.5 $`\mu \text{m}`$ and can reach a resolution as high as 2-3 km/sec at the shortest wavelengths and of $`5`$ km/sec at $`17\mu \text{m}`$. It has been mounted on the NASA’s 3m Infrared Telescope Facility, to confirm the existence of molecular hydrogen rotational lines apparently observed with ISO in low-mass, non-outbursting objects, such as some T Tauri and Herbig Ae stars (Richter et al., 2002). In addition, EXES, the companion instrument of TEXES, is expected to be placed on SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy). Here we have demonstrated that, in principle, these two instruments have sufficient spectral resolution to measure this effect in FU Orionis disks.

If we consider instead the capabilities of ISO, the maximum spectral resolution achievable is 10 km/sec. The predicted S(0) line profiles in FU Ori with the lower resolution of 10 km/sec is no longer double-peaked. In the self-gravitating case there is only a slight broadening of the line profile with respect to the Keplerian case. We thus consider it unlikely that the signature of non-Keplerian rotation can be found in ISO observations.

Actually, the most serious problem with these mid-infrared line observations is to achieve a sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio. For the case of emission lines, if the line emitting gas and the continuum emitting matter are approximately at the same temperature, we expect only weak emission lines to be present (as confirmed by Richter et al. 2002). For the case of absorption, the small absorption coefficient of the pure rotational H2 transitions also leads to weak absorption lines.

### 5.4 Robustness of the H2 emission lines results

The optical thickness of the relevant lines depends on the surface density profile, which cannot be directly inferred from the modeling of the SED alone. Observations of protostellar disks, consistent with our self-gravitating disk model (BL), suggest a disk density profile of the form $`\sigma r^\gamma `$, with $`\gamma 1`$; in the previous Sections, we have indeed set the surface density power law index to be $`\gamma =1`$.

The H2 rotational emission line are optically thin up to relatively high densities, due to their low Einstein’s A-coefficient. FU Orionis objects are likely to be younger, and denser, than T Tauri and protoplanetary disks, so that for them we may even have to consider the possibility that the H2 emission is optically thick. In this Section we discuss the robustness of the results presented in the previous Section, with respect to the uncertainties on the optical thickness of the disk and on its surface density profile.

In Fig. 7, the local emissivity of every annulus of the disk, for the S(0) and S(1) lines, is plotted as a function of radius for three different cases, i.e.: (i) optically thin emission, $`\gamma =1`$, (ii) optically thin emission, $`\gamma =1.5`$, and (iii) optically thick emission. When the steepness of the surface density profile is increased, the peak of the emission for a certain line occurs at relatively smaller radii, as a result of the increased surface density. On the other hand, optically thick emission tends to contribute more than optically thin emission at larger radii, because in our models the temperature profile in the outer disk is approximately constant, while the optically thin emissivity rapidly decreases, being proportional to the surface density profile.

In Fig. 8 we show how the S(1) line profile changes when a different slope of the disk density is assumed. A steeper density profile (here we consider $`\gamma =1.5`$) results in a larger peak separation. This is due to the fact that a steeper surface density profile lets the inner parts of the disk, which rotate faster, contribute more prominently, with respect to the case of a less steep profile. This identifies a potential problem in the observational test that we are proposing here (for the case of optically thin line profiles). In fact, the increased contribution of the inner disk to the line emission when a steeper surface density profile is assumed may be such that the S(1) line is produced mostly at radii where the rotation curve is Keplerian. The resulting modifications to the line profiles due to the disk self-gravity would therefore become only barely visible in this case.

In practice, there is a sort of degeneracy in the appearance of optically thin line profiles with respect to the assumed model: a broader line profile can be traced either to the effects of the disk self-gravity, which enhances the rotation at large radii, or to the steepness of the disk density profile, which makes it possible for a certain emission line to originate from smaller radii, where the rotation velocity is larger.

## 6 Sub-mm CO line profiles

The discussion of the previous Section shows that some H2 emission lines can be a useful tool to probe the rotation of the outer disk, although confusion may arise in the interpretation of optically thin lines because, under certain circumstances, deviations from the typical $`\sigma 1/r`$ disk density profile can mimick those associated with deviations from Keplerian rotation.

To derive more convincing conclusions about the rotation of the outer disk, it would thus be important to consider long-wavelength lines that are optically thick, so that the additional assumptions concerning the surface density profile are not needed. In this respect, some sub-mm CO lines are very interesting, because they are expected to be optically thick (Beckwith & Sargent, 1993; Thi et al., 2001) and can be studied with very high spectral resolution. These global CO line profiles, observed in T Tauri and protoplanetary disks by a number of authors, usually show the typical double-peaked profile (Thi et al., 2001; Dutrey et al., 1997).

Interestingly, millimetric CO line emission has also been observed in V1331 Cyg (McMuldroch et al., 1993), an “FU Orionis object between outbursts”, which shares many features with FU Orionis objects, but has a smaller luminosity. The estimated disk mass in V1331 Cyg is $`0.5M_{}`$, a further clue to the fact that FU Orionis disk mass may be fairly high.

As an example, we consider the 12CO 1-0 at 110 GHz, which is commonly observed in protostellar disks. We assume that the main limiting factor for the spectral resolution is given by turbulent or thermal broadening and we take the factor $`v_b`$ in the Gaussian with which the line profile is convolved (see Section 2.3) to be 1 km/sec. The resulting line profiles, for the two different choices of $`r_s`$, are shown in Fig. 9. The effect of self-gravity is clear in both cases.

In any case, as noted in the Introduction, care should be taken (especially for younger objects, such as FU Ori) in order to properly identify the various kinematical components (such as winds and outflows) that might contribute to the shape of the line profile. Another source of uncertainty related to CO lines is that of molecular depletion, resulting from the freezing out of molecular species onto dust grains. Many studies (see, for example, Markwick et al. 2002) have shown that, in the outer and colder disk, the column density of many species can be reduced significantly. However, these studies refer mostly to parameters appropriate for T Tauri disks, while we expect that FU Orionis disks, which are characterized by a much higher temperature, will be less subject to depletion.

## 7 Conclusions

The study of the line profiles produced in Young Stellar Objects has traditionally played a very important role in determining the physical conditions of circumstellar matter. In particular, it has been used to confirm the accretion disk origin of the luminosity of FU Orionis objects (KHH) and to test the Keplerian rotation in many T Tauri stars (Guilloteau & Dutrey, 1994). In addition, spectroscopic observations may be able to probe the vertical structure of the disk (see, for example, Cheng et al. 1988 for the disks in dwarf novae).

Spatially resolved sub-mm interferometric observations of T Tauri stars have already provided interesting information about the outer disk kinematics (Guilloteau & Dutrey, 1998; Simon et al., 2001). Such radio observations can reach an angular resolution of $`1\mathrm{}`$. However, for objects such as FU Ori, which lies at a distance of $`500`$ pc, the angular size of the disk (which should extend out to 50-60 AU, judging from the modeling of the SED) is likely to be as small as $`0.1\mathrm{}`$.

In this paper we have exploited the wavelength dependence of the radial position of the peak of the line emissivity of the disk, to obtain additional information on the kinematical properties of the outer disk in FU Orionis objects, based on the shape of global line profiles. Our main purpose has been to define a clear cut test about the importance of the disk self-gravity in determining the rotation curve of the accretion disk in the early stages of star formation.

The method presented in this paper is based on the complementary information that can be obtained from the analysis of the optical and near-infrared line profiles (which probe the inner rotation curve, and hence set the value of the mass of the central object) and the analysis of high spectral resolution line profiles at long-wavelengths (which probe the rotation curve in the outer disk). This is a generalization of the method discussed by Kenyon et al. (1988) and Popham et al. (1996).

The high spectral resolution that can be obtained with the ground based and already operating TEXES instrument, and with its air-borne companion instrument EXES that will be on board of the SOFIA observatory (Richter et al., 2002), may indeed give us the way to distinguish between Keplerian and non-Keplerian rotation based on the analysis of pure rotational H2 lines. This in an important test about the viability of the self-gravitating disk model in FU Orionis objects, independent of the results of the SED modeling by Lodato & Bertin (2001). In addition, once we accept the self-gravitating disk model, this test will give us an alternative, independent way to measure the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$, thus providing insights into the physical mechanisms that operate in protostellar disks.

As far as the shape of optically thin line profiles is concerned, we have also considered the robustness of our conclusions with respect to changes in the surface density profile of the disk. We have found that changes in the surface density profile could in principle mimick the effects obtained by changing the rotation curve of the disk. In the present study we have adopted a very simplified model for the vertical structure of the disk. More realistic models of the radiative transfer in the vertical direction would be needed to address this issue further.

An additional difficulty with the use of the proposed diagnostics for mid-infrared lines is related to the fact that an emission line at wavelengths where the dust disk is optically thick (such as the lines in the infrared wavelength range) would be produced only if there is a spatial or temperature separation between the warm gas and the dust. In this respect, the recent non-detection of H2 rotational lines from a small sample (two Herbig Ae stars and one T Tauri star) of pre-main-sequence stars by Richter et al. (2002) suggests that gas and dust are not spatially separated, as would result in some flaring disk model (Chiang & Goldreich, 1997). This may indeed be the case for the highly accreting FU Orionis objects that we consider here.

Finally we have come to the conclusion that optically thick, sub-millimetric line profiles, such as those of some CO lines, often observed in protostellar disks, are basically free from the difficulties noted for the mid-infrared lines and thus represent the best tool to probe the physical conditions of the outer parts of the massive accretion disks in FU Orionis objects.

###### Acknowledgements.

GL wishes to acknowledge the support of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where most of this work has been carried out. This work has been partially supported by MIUR of Italy.