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# Taking the Initiative with Extempore: Exploring Out-of-Turn Interactions with Websites

##### Categories and Subject Descriptors:

H.5.2 \[User Interfaces\]: Interaction Styles; H.5.4 \[Hypertext/Hypermedia\]: Navigation.

##### Keywords:

out-of-turn interaction, web interactions, user study, user interfaces, browsing, interactive information retrieval.

## 1 Introduction

It is now well accepted that flexible and contextual web browsing is imperative for customizing information access. Many solutions have been proposed—faceted browsing , personalized search , integrating searching and browsing , and contextual presentation of results —all of which aim to support the user in achieving his or her information seeking goals. The scope of such research entails the development of new interaction techniques , designing interfaces to support these techniques , and studying /modeling  information-seeking strategies employed by users. Many of these projects have had qualified success, and one would be tempted to surmise that all dimensions of research have been thoroughly explored. In this paper, we identify an additional dimension of information access that suggests a novel technique for interacting with websites.

### 1.1 Setting

Consider a US Congressional website organized in a hierarchical manner, where the site requires the user to progressively make choices of politician attributes—state at the first level, branch at the second level, followed by levels for party, and district/seat—by browsing. Imagine how a user would pursue the following tasks:

1. Find the webpage of the Democratic Representative from District 17 of Florida.
2. Find the webpage of each Democratic Senator.

The first task can be satisfied by typical drill-down browsing because it involves supplying in-turn, or responsive, information at each level (see Fig. 1). By in-turn, we mean that the user need only click on presented hyperlinks (click ‘Florida’ first, ‘House’ next, and so on). Each click communicates partial information about the desired politician. Achieving the second task by communicating only in-turn information would require a painful series of drill-downs and roll-ups, in order to identify the states that have at least one Democratic Senator, and to aggregate the results. While the user has partial information about the desired politicians, s/he is unable to communicate it by in-turn means.

The key observation here is that flexibility of information access will be enriched by increasing the means for supplying partial information. Ideally, the user, having seen that s/he does not have the partial information requested at the top level (i.e., state), would have liked to supply the information that s/he does have, namely that of party and branch of Congress.

### 1.2 Solution Approach

Out-of-turn interaction is our solution to support flexible communication of partial information not currently requested by the system. Hence such information is unsolicited but presumably relevant to the information-seeking task. Out-of-turn interaction is thus unintrusive, optional, and can be introduced at multiple points in a browsing session, at the user’s discretion. One possible means to support it is to allow the speaking of utterances into the browser.

Figure 2 describes using out-of-turn interaction to achieve Task 2 above. At the top level of the site, the user is unable to make a choice of state, because s/he is looking for states that have Democratic Senators. S/he thus speaks ‘Democrat’ out-of-turn, causing some states to be pruned out (e.g., Alaska). At the second step, the site again solicits state information because this aspect has not yet been communicated by the user. The user speaks ‘Senate’ out-of-turn, causing further pruning (e.g., of American Samoa), and retaining only regions that have Democratic Senators. At this point, the goal has been achieved (the user notices 31 states satisfying the criteria), and s/he proceeds to browse through the remaining hyperlinks. Notice that these are contextually relevant to the partial information supplied thus far, so that when ‘Georgia’ is clicked, there is only one choice of seat (Senior) implying that the other Senatorial seat is not occupied by a Democrat.

## 2 Out-of-turn Interaction

What does it mean to interact out-of-turn? One interpretation is that, when the user speaks ‘Democrat’, s/he is desiring to experience an interaction sequence through the site containing ‘Democrat.’ The implicit assumption in the current implementation is that what is spoken is a link label (or variation thereof) nested deeper in the site, and hence an in-vocabulary utterance111In other implementations, we might conduct a more elaborate modeling of the vocabulary.. Therefore, out-of-turn interaction is merely a mechanism to address alternate aspects of the given activity, while postponing the specification of currently solicited aspects.

Why would users interact out-of-turn? There are several reasons. First, what the site is requesting from the user may actually be what the user is seeking in the first place! For example, in Figure 2, the site is soliciting state but the user is looking for states with a certain property. Second, being able to speak out-of-turn in an otherwise hardwired site permits the realization of interaction sequences not describable by browsing. This means that we can support all permutations of specifying politician attributes, without explicitly enumerating in-turn choices. The above example would require 4!=24 faceted browsing classifications to support all tasks (i.e., browse by party-state-branch-district, by state-party-branch-district, and so on). Third, the incorporation of out-of-turn information does not curb the interaction (i.e., the levelwise organization is preserved), but rather situates future interactions in the context of past ones. More fundamentally, out-of-turn interaction is a novel way to flexibly bridge any mental mismatch between the user and the website, without anticipating when the mismatch might happen.

### 2.1 Related Research

To better understand the merits of out-of-turn interaction, we showcase related research in a three-dimensional space (see Figure 3) involving: (i) the nature of information exploited, (ii) the level of context supported, and (iii) the interaction technique.

The first axis distinguishes between the specification of partial vs. complete information. Supporting only the specification of complete information means that interaction is viewed as a one-shot activity; supporting specification of partial information implies that information-seeking is to be conducted over multiple steps. Since the complete information approach is more restrictive than the partial information approach, it is situated toward the origin. The second axis makes a distinction of whether input or results (or both) are contextually qualified in some manner. Our contribution to this space is the third dimension of whether interaction occurs by in-turn or out-of-turn means.

Search engines (e.g., Google) are characterized by specification of complete information (in this case, the query), because the interaction is terminated by returning a flat list of results. Such a low-context, complete information approach is denoted by the origin in Fig. 3. Browsing, on the other hand, involves the incremental specification of partial information (right of origin in Fig. 3).

When we take context into account, two further clusters of projects emerge in the in-turn plane spanning the (information $`\times `$ context) axes. When only complete information is supported, results presentation provide the major opportunity for exhibiting context (front left corner of Figure 3). This is seen in site-specific search tools (e.g., at Amazon.com), in the contextual search of Dumais et al. , and the personalized search strategies of Pitkow et al. . The more dense cluster (front right of Figure 3) forms in the partial information region. These are projects that support contextual information access by providing either greater input flexibility or adaptable display of results over the course of an interaction, or both. Faceted (flat or hierarchical) organizations , Dynamic Taxonomies , Strategy Hubs , adaptive hypermedia , and ScentTrails  are examples. We discuss these further.

Sites and systems exposing faceted browsing (e.g., epicurious.com) support multiple classifications by providing enumerated in-turn choices. This often leads to cumbersome site designs and a mushrooming of possible choices at each step. The Dynamic Taxonomies project provides in-turn operators for pruning information hierarchies, while Strategy Hubs enumerates templates for prolonged and detailed information-seeking tasks, again in-turn. The adaptive hypermedia projects employ user models (e.g., of past browsing behavior) to tailor the presentation of hyperlinks. ScentTrails argues that browsing may not be focused enough and that searching loses context, and aims to combine them in a single framework. However, its use of searching always precedes browsing and therefore limits the richness of supportable interactions. Out-of-turn interaction aims to provide precisely this combination of focused input and exploratory browsing in a single, flexible, framework.

Our work can be viewed as complementary to these efforts in that it lifts the nature of interaction from in-turn to out-of-turn means (top of Figure 3). For instance, the example session shown in Figure 2 can be viewed as a lifted version of traditional browsing, yielding a (high context, out-of-turn) technique that exploits partial information. While out-of-turn interaction can be studied in many settings, this paper only discusses its use in conjunction with browsing of levelwise, hierarchically organized sites.

Out-of-turn interaction, especially of the unsolicited reporting nature, has been recognized as a simple form of mixed-initiative interaction . Interleaving out-of-turn responses with in-turn clicks can be viewed as conversational shifts of initiative between the user and the website.

### 2.2 Extempore

We have built a user interface, called Extempore, that accepts out-of-turn input either via voice or text. The voice version was implemented using SALT 1.1 (; a standard that augments HTML with tags for speech input/output) and SRGS (Speech Recognition Grammar Specification), for use with Internet Explorer 6.0. The text version is a toolbar embedded into the Mozilla/Netscape web browser (v1.4) and was implemented using XUL (see Figure 4)222Currently there is no SALT plugin for Mozilla (and likewise with XUL and IE). Due to these technological constraints, we do not support both interfaces of Extempore in the same implementation.. It is important to note that Extempore is embedded in the web browser, and not the site’s webpages. It is also not a site-specific search tool that returns a flat list of results (akin to the Google toolbar). Further, while search engines index webpages, Extempore rather relies on an internal representation of the website and, when out-of-turn input is supplied, uses transformation techniques to stage the interaction, pruning the website accordingly. The details of the underlying software transformations are beyond the scope of this work; see, for example, Ricca and Tonella , and Perugini and Ramakrishnan  for ideas on transformation techniques. Extempore can be used for out-of-turn interaction in many web sites, given a representation of the site’s structure, e.g., in XML.

## 3 Exploratory Study

Extempore is fundamentally different from existing approaches to customize browsing experiences; therefore we conducted a study that exposes users to out-of-turn interaction, to determine if they utilize it in information-finding tasks, and their rationale for doing so. The main component of the study entailed asking participants to perform eight specific information-finding tasks in the Project Vote Smart (PVS) website (http://www.vote-smart.org)333At the time this study was conducted, PVS employed a hardwired organization akin to Figure 1; the site has been recently restructured into a flat faceted classification.. Rationale was gathered through think-aloud and retrospective protocols.

### 3.1 Goals

The goal of the experiment was to study usage patterns for out-of-turn interaction, not to evaluate the interfaces used to realize it, or to compare out-of-turn interaction with other interaction techniques.

### 3.2 Participants

We collected data from 24 participants in the analysis; all were students with an average age of 21, and a majority were undergraduates in computer science. Some of the participants were recruited from a HCI course, and were compensated with extra-credit from the instructor. Since a component of this experiment involved voice recognition software, we primarily recruited native speakers of English. Average participant computer and web familiarity and use was 4.75 or greater on a 5-point Likert scale. Average participant familiarity with voice recognition software was 1.46, and mean familiarity with the structure of the US Congress was 2.83; no user had visited the PVS website prior to the experiment.

### 3.3 Tasks

The eight tasks were carefully formulated to generate a diverse set of interaction choices:

Find the webpage of the Junior Senator from New York.

Find the webpage of the Democratic Representative from District 17 of Florida.

Find the webpage of the Republican Junior Senator from Oregon.

Find the webpage of the Democratic member of the House in Rhode Island serving district 2.

Find the states which have at least one Democratic Senator.

Find the states which have twenty or more congressional districts.

Find the states which have at least one Republican member of the House.

Find the political party of the Senior Senator representing the only state which has congresspeople from the Independent party.

We refer to tasks A, B, C, and D as non-oriented tasks, in that they can be performed as easily by employing solely in-turn interaction (i.e., in this case, hyperlinks), solely out-of-turn interaction (Extempore), or using a mixture of both. Out-of-turn interaction does not appear to be worthwhile with respect to these tasks because the effort required to perform them with out-of-turn interaction is commensurate with that of in-turn interaction. Tasks E, F, G, and H are out-of-turn-oriented, because they are difficult to perform with only in-turn interaction. Formally, we say an information-seeking task is out-of-turn-oriented if the minimum number of browsing interactions required to successfully complete it exceeds the maximum depth of the targeted website; otherwise it is non-oriented.

The maximum depth of the PVS site is four and Figure 5 illustrates the minimum number of interactions required per task. In calculating this minimum number, we assumed that the user can supply at most one aspect at each step (in-turn or out-of-turn), and discounted back button clicks (happens when employing only in-turn interaction for an out-of-turn-oriented task). Notice also that some tasks, namely the non-oriented ones, cannot be performed by purely a sequence of out-of-turn interactions; a terminal in-turn input is often necessary and these are discounted as well. For instance, try solving task A using purely out-of-turn inputs.

### 3.4 Design

The study was designed as a within-subject experiment. Task was the independent variable and the interaction observed (in-turn vs. out-of-turn) was the dependent variable. Participants were given both the toolbar and voice interface of Extempore; and performed four tasks with each (two non-oriented and two out-of-turn-oriented). We designed the experiment with the provision for interfaces in two different modalities, to more naturally assess the use of out-of-turn interaction independent of a particular interface for it. Each participant performed the eight tasks in an order pre-determined by a latin square to control for unmeasured factors. In addition, the specific interface to be used (toolbar or voice) for a (task, participant) pair was determined a priori by complete counterbalancing within each task category. Thus, for each task, half of the twenty-four participants were given the toolbar interface and half the voice interface. The participants were free to utilize any strategy to complete the information-finding tasks, given Extempore and the available hyperlinks; they were given unlimited time to complete each task.

### 3.5 Configuring Extempore

A vocabulary for the PVS site was created by collecting all link labels, synonyms (e.g., ‘Representatives’ for ‘House’), and alternate forms of common utterances (e.g., ‘Senate’, ‘Senator’, ‘Senators’). Both the toolbar and voice version of Extempore supported this vocabulary, with the toolbar supporting abbreviations (e.g., CA for California), in addition. To keep users abreast of partial information supplied thus far (either by browsing or via Extempore), we continually updated an ‘Input so far:’ label in the browser status bar (see Figure 2). We also included a provision for the user to inquire about what partial information is left unspecified at any step. Access to this feature is provided through a ‘What May I Say?’ button (labeled with a ‘?’ in Figure 4) or utterance.

The semantics of out-of-turn interaction in information hierarchies required some practical implementation decisions. For instance, when the user speaks ‘Junior seat,’ the specification of ‘Senate’ can be automatically inferred by functional dependency. Another form of such ‘utterance expansion’ occurs in response to single-valued options. For instance, in Figure 2, one can argue that the choice of seat at the last step is really unnecessary, as there is only one option left (Senior). When only one path remains among the available options, we vertically collapse them and directly present the leaf page. This feature was not illustrated in Figure 2 for ease of presentation, but we implemented it in our study. Notice, however, that no information is lost during such collapsing, since terminal pages in PVS identify all pertinent attributes of politicians.

### 3.6 Equipment, Training, and Procedures

#### 3.6.1 Equipment

Participants performed the tasks on an Extempore-enabled Pentium III workstation, connected to a 17” monitor set at 2560$`\times `$1024 resolution in 34-bit true color, running Windows 2000. We recorded a video of each participant performing the information-finding tasks using the Camtasia screen and audio capture software. The resulting capture was used to aid participant recollection during the retrospective verbal protocol as well as in subsequent analysis (e.g., think-aloud). The Audacity audio recording application was used during the retrospective portion of the experiment to capture participant explanations. Data from the pre-questionnaire (demographics, computer familiarity) and post-questionnaires (rationale) was recorded on paper. Finally at the end of the entire experiment we transcribed and collated the data gathered from all sources to construct a complete record of each participant session, including interaction sequences followed per task. Each participant session lasted approximately 90 minutes.

#### 3.6.2 Training

Prior to revealing the information-seeking tasks, we gave users specific training on (i) the PVS website, including levels of classification, and interacting with it via hyperlinks; (ii) interacting with PVS using Extempore (both toolbar and voice interfaces); and (iii) interleaving hyperlink clicks with commissions via Extempore. Users were provided a card summarizing the vocabulary that Extempore can understand, as well as explanations of political terms and their functional dependencies. This card was available for their use during the entire session, not just training. We did not use terms such as ‘in-turn’ or ‘out-of-turn’ during training or elsewhere in the study. This is to prevent biasing of participants toward any intended benefits of Extempore, and also to help them conceptualize its functionality on their own. In other words, we simply trained users on how to employ the available interfaces (hyperlink and Extempore) for information seeking. After some self-directed exploration, users were given a short test consisting of four practice tasks (two with toolbar and two with voice).

#### 3.6.3 Procedures

After the users completed the training tasks, we administered the actual test involving tasks A–H above, and employed both concurrent (think-aloud) and retrospective protocols to elucidate rationale. A structured interview, including a post-questionnaire, was conducted to gather additional feedback. The entire experiment generated (24$`\times `$8 =) 192 (participant, task) interaction sequences.

These sequences were then analyzed for frequencies of usage of in-turn vs. out-of-turn interaction. For purposes of this study, we defined an in-turn interaction as a hyperlink click or the communication of in-turn partial information to the website via Extempore. Notice that just saying ’Connecticut’ will not qualify as an out-of-turn interaction, if the same choice was currently available as a hyperlink. Similarly, we defined an out-of-turn interaction to be the submission of one aspect of unsolicited partial information to the site. Supplying more than one aspect of partial information to the site out-of-turn (e.g., saying ‘Democratic Senators’) corresponds to multiple out-of-turn interactions.

Notice that a user may supply in-turn and out-of-turn information to the website simultaneously via Extempore. For instance, in the top-level page in Figure 2, the user might say ‘House, Florida, District 17, Democrat,’ all at the outset. Observe that a permutation of this utterance exists—‘Florida, House, Democrat, District 17’—that, if conducted incrementally, could imply a purely in-turn interaction. Such an interaction is thus viewed as having four in-turn inputs. On the other hand, consider a user who says ‘New York, Democrat’ at the outset. There is no permutation with respect to the PVS site that permits viewing this utterance as comprising of purely in-turn input, and hence, it is classified as one in-turn input (‘New York’), followed by an out-of-turn input (‘Democrat’). This policy of counting does not favor (and actually deprecates) out-of-turn interaction.

Some users, after completing a given task via out-of-turn interaction, verified part of their results via in-turn interactions. This was confirmed through their retrospective feedback, and such in-turn interactions were discounted in the analysis.

## 4 Results

Of the 192 recorded interaction sequences, 177 of them involved the successful completion of the task by the participant. We analyze these 177 sequences first, followed by the remaining 15 sequences (which were all generated in response to out-of-turn-oriented tasks).

### 4.1 General Usage Patterns

Results indicate a high frequency of usage for out-of-turn interaction. 94.4% of the 177 sequences contained at least one out-of-turn interaction. In addition, every participant used out-of-turn interaction for at least 70% of the tasks, with 16 people using it in all tasks. Conversely, every task was performed with out-of-turn interaction by at least 80% of the participants, with 4 tasks enjoying out-of-turn interaction by all participants. These results are encouraging because Extempore usage is optional and not prompted by any indicator on a webpage. Participants successfully completed the given tasks irrespective of the presented interface (voice or toolbar).

### 4.2 Classifying Interaction Sequences

The 177 interaction sequences were classified into five categories denoted by: (i) I, (ii) O, (iii) IO, (iv) OI, and (v) M. The I and O categories denote sequences comprised of purely in-turn, or out-of-turn inputs, respectively. In IO sequences all in-turn inputs precede out-of-turn inputs (analogously, for OI). M sequences (‘mixed’) are those which do not fall in the above categories. For instance, the interaction shown in Fig. 1 would be classified under I, and that in Fig. 2 is in OI. We posit that this classification provides insight into users’ information-seeking strategies, and can be related to the nature of the information-finding task.

Figure 6 shows the distribution of the 177 sequences into the five classes, and Table 1 depicts a breakdown by both task orientation and classes. Notice that O, OI, IO, and mixed classes have been grouped in Table 1 to distinguish them from pure browsing interactions (I).

As Figure 6 shows, 10 of the 177 sequences fall in the I class, i.e., these are browsing sequences. As Table 1 (lower left) shows, all of the 10 browsing sequences were generated in response to non-oriented tasks, revealing that a 100% (81/81) of the sequences for out-of-turn-oriented tasks involved out-of-turn interaction. Therefore,

* users never attempted to achieve an out-of-turn oriented task via browsing; or in other words,
* users always employed out-of-turn interaction when presented with an out-of-turn-oriented task.

This is notable because it confirms that users are adept at discerning when out-of-turn interaction is necessary.

### 4.3 Detailed Analysis of Interaction Classes

Let us now study the interactions in classes O, OI, IO, and M. The 69 pure out-of-turn sequences (O) were observed only in out-of-turn-oriented tasks E, F, and G, and was used by all the 24 participants. This clustering of the O sequences around three tasks shows that, whenever participants completed these tasks, they did so in the shortest manner possible. Refer again to Figure 5 for the sharp contrast in the length of the minimum out-of-turn sequence from the minimum in-turn sequence, for these tasks.

Classes IO, OI, and M contain the sequences exhibiting rich interaction strategies. Classes IO and OI were observed in near-equal numbers, and primarily in the non-oriented tasks (A, B, C, and D) with the exception of OI, which was also seen in task H. No particular clustering was observed with respect to participants. The 17 class M interactions exhibited only two types of patterns—14 with an OIO form, and 3 with an IOI form. Furthermore, like OI, these 17 mixed interactions also involved only the non-oriented tasks (A, B, C, D) and task H. It is interesting that we are observing OIO and IOI sequences, even in a site with only four levels. Once again, no specific clustering was observed around participants.

To see if these classes correspond to specific information-seeking strategies, we plotted curves depicting the progressive narrowing down to a desired congressional official, as a function of interaction steps. All curves begin at the (0, 540) point because the PVS site indexes all 540 congressional officials. With each interaction, this number is gradually reduced until the user arrives at the desired set of officials. However, we were unable to observe major correlations between curve slopes and strategies; this is because in the PVS site, the slope is primarily dependent on the nature of the task, not the strategy. For instance if a task involved a state like ‘Rhode Island,’ even an in-turn input of this state information will cause greater pruning than most out-of-turn inputs. To qualify interaction classes better, we must study out-of-turn interaction in more sites.

### 4.4 Cascading Information across Subtasks

Recall that 15 interaction sequences led to incorrect answers; interestingly 12 of these 15 were generated in response to Task H. Notice that Task H is challenging, because it involves two subtasks and cascading information found in one into the other. The user is expected to first find the only state having Independent congressional officials (Vermont), and then find the political party of the Senior Senator from that state (Democrat). In other words, this task requires procedural, not just declarative, knowledge (a distinction motivated in the Strategy Hubs project ).

Most people were adept at finding that Vermont was the desired state (e.g., by saying ‘Independent’ at the outset), but did not realize that the task cannot be completed by continuing that interaction. As Figure 7 shows, clicking on the only available state link (‘Vermont’) now presents a choice of House vs. Senate. Clicking on Senate takes the user to the webpage of Jim Jeffords, who is the Junior Senator from Vermont, not the Senior Senator!

Some users immediately realized the problem, as identified in their retrospective interviews, e.g.:

> “This question was tricky. Cause it was, I was like wait, if he’s Independent then his party is Independent …at first \[I thought\] it was the Senior Senator who was Independent …and I got this guy’s webpage, and then I saw that he was the Junior …So then I eventually went back to Vermont and got the \[Senior\] guy.”

Only 12 (50%) of the participants successfully completed this task. This result demonstrates that cascading information across subtasks is challenging. It was clear that all users wanted to continue the interaction, but some failed to realize that out-of-turn interaction as presented here is merely a pruning operator, and not constructive. Investigating the incorporation of constructive operators such as rollup/expansion is thus a worthwhile direction of future research.

### 4.5 Rationale and Qualitative Observations

Studying users’ rationale revealed their reasons for interacting out-of-turn:

> “I can jump through all the levels ….”
>
> “Initially I thought I would prefer the hyperlinks …after reading the questions, it became apparent that the toolbar and voice interface would simplify the task.”
>
> “…when you wanted to know all the states for the Republicans, then you would have to click on every single link. It would just get annoying after a while. You’d just give up I think. There’d be no way.”
>
> “I guess I would have had to …wow, check every state.”

demonstrated understanding of how Extempore works (e.g., input expansion):

> “Its the easiest way cause there is only one Representative from District 17 in Florida and it takes you straight to the page.”
>
> “If you click on the state then you get choices of House and whatever, but if you type in district 2 and it just goes right there.”

presented advantages and judgments:

> “…allowed multiple pieces of information to be input at one time.”
>
> “As much surfing as I do, it sort of makes me wish I had those options sometimes ya know instead of going to search engines and fooling around …having to come up with different search criteria ….”

and also brought out frustrations:

> “The voice interface feels a little awkward since I am not used to talking to myself ….”
>
> “I don’t always trust the results, \[so I went back\] confirming that they are all republican.”

Many users learned that out-of-turn interaction is best suited when they have a specific goal in mind, and not meant for exploratory information-seeking (as is browsing). For instance,

> “if I wanted to go the whole way down to a specific person, I would use \[Extempore\], but if I was just looking around, I would use the links.”
>
> “\[Extempore\] is good when you know the site and know you have to go several layers deep. Links \[are good\] when you don’t know the layout or don’t know exactly what you want.”

## 5 Discussion

Extempore enables a novel approach to interact with websites. Users with out-of-turn partial input can employ Extempore to enhance their browsing experiences. Thus, out-of-turn interaction is intended to complement browsing, and not replace it. For designers, Extempore augments their sites with capabilities for personalized interaction, without hardwiring in-turn mechanisms (as is commonly done). In addition, since usage of Extempore is optional, it preserves any existing modes of information-seeking.

There are significant lessons brought out by our study, which we only briefly mention here. This work validates our view of web interaction as a flexible dialog and shows that users actively interleaved out-of-turn interaction with browsing. Importantly, users were proficient at determining when out-of-turn interaction is called for. Studying the rationale and usage patterns has generated a body of knowledge that can be used, among other purposes, for introducing out-of-turn interaction in new settings and to new participants. Furthermore, we have seen that it is easy to target out-of-turn interaction in domains where tasks involve combinations of focused and exploratory behavior. Recall also that dialogs with purely declarative specifications are readily supported; others such as Task H will require further study.

Out-of-turn interaction is most effective when users have a basic understanding of the application domain and know what aspects are addressable. When users do not know what to say , our facility to enquire about legal utterances may induce information overload in large sites. While we have not encountered this problem in our PVS study, we suspect that applying out-of-turn interaction in large web directories (e.g., ODP) will involve new research directions.

### 5.1 Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support of NSF SGER Grant IIS-0136182 for funding this research. We also extend our appreciation to the Virginia Tech students who participated in our experiments. We also thank Atul Shenoy (Microsoft, Inc.) for assisting us with SALT and Chris Williams (Virginia Tech CS) for making the Extempore toolbar web installable for the study and helping with screen captures. Finally, we express our thanks to Srinidhi Varadarajan (Virginia Tech CS) for recommending that we name our interface Extempore.


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# Elliptic flow of resonances at RHIC: probing final state interactions and the structure of resonances

## Abstract

We propose the measurement of the elliptic flow of hadron resonances at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider as a tool to probe the amount of hadronic final state interactions for resonances at intermediate and large transverse momenta. This can be achieved by looking at systematic deviations of the measured flow coefficient $`v_2`$ from the scaling law given by the quark recombination formalism. Our method can be generalized to explore the structure of exotic particles, such as the recently found pentaquark $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+(1540)`$.

preprint: Duke-Kyoto-RBRC,NUC-MINN-03/5-T

Recently, progress has been made in our understanding of the hadronization of a quark gluon plasma created in high energy heavy ion collisions. Both the yields and the anisotropic flow $`v_2`$ of hadrons at transverse momenta above 2 GeV, observed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), are described well by a combination of two mechanisms: (i) the statistical recombination of thermal constituent quarks from a quark gluon plasma phase during the phase transition, (ii) fragmentation of jets which experienced energy loss due to the surrounding medium Duke:02 ; Duke:03 ; Duke:04 ; Texas:02 ; HwYa .

The elliptic flow $`v_2`$ is defined as the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal hadron spectrum v2\_original

$$\frac{d^2N}{P_TdP_Td\mathrm{\Phi }}=\frac{dN}{2\pi P_TdP_T}[1+2v_2(P_T)\mathrm{cos}2\mathrm{\Phi }+\mathrm{}].$$
(1)
It measures the elliptic anisotropy in the spectrum since

$$v_2(P_T)=\mathrm{cos}2\mathrm{\Phi }=\frac{𝑑\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{cos}2\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{d^2N}{P_TdP_Td\mathrm{\Phi }}}{𝑑\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{d^2N}{P_TdP_Td\mathrm{\Phi }}}.$$
(2)
Such an asymmetry naturally arises in heavy ion collisions with non-vanishing impact parameter $`b>0`$.

It has been shown that in the region where recombination of partons dominates the hadronization process — i.e., for $`P_T<4`$ $`(6)`$ GeV for mesons (baryons) — and mass effects are suppressed — i.e., $`P_T>2`$ GeV — $`v_2`$ obeys the simple scaling law,

$$v_2(P_T)=nv_2^q(P_T/n),$$
(3)
where $`n`$ is the number of valence quarks of the hadron Duke:03 ; Vo ; Ohio:03 . We will assume throughout the paper that strange quarks and light quarks have the same elliptic flow $`v_2^q`$. Measurements of strange hadrons support this assumption Duke:03 . At higher transverse momentum, $`P_T>6`$ GeV, where fragmentation of partons dominates, we expect the $`v_2`$ of all hadrons to lie on a universal curve since the effect of fragmentation functions largely cancels in Eq. (2). We refer the reader to Refs. Duke:03 ; Duke:04  for a more detailed discussion.

The scaling law (3) has been impressively confirmed by measurements at RHIC. Pions and kaons ($`n=2`$), protons, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ ($`n=3`$) all fall on one universal curve, if $`v_2`$ and $`P_T`$ are divided by the number $`n`$ of valence quarks rhic\_exp\_v2\_strange ; rhic\_exp\_v2 . Slight deviations can be observed and are largest for pions. This can be due to its nature as a Goldstone boson — its mass is much smaller than the sum of its constituent quark masses — or because a large fraction of all pions are not created at hadronization but by the subsequent decay of hadron resonances Texas:res . This poses the interesting question how the existence of a hadronic phase generally affects hadron production at intermediate and large momenta. We suggest that the amount of hadronic rescattering can be determined by measuring $`v_2`$ for several hadronic resonances.

Hadrons can experience rescattering after hadronization, until kinetic freeze-out takes place. Experimentally, it has been found that the kinetic freeze-out temperature at RHIC STAR:kinetic  is much lower than the expected QCD phase transition temperature MILC:02 . Resonances produced from a hadronizing quark gluon plasma decay in the hadronic medium. If their decay products rescatter, the signal is lost in the experimental measurement, since the original resonance cannot be reconstructed from a correlation analysis of its daughter hadrons. Likewise, hadrons from the medium may scatter into a resonance state and thus contribute to the final measured yield. The total measured resonance yield will therefore have two contributions:

1. primordial resonances: resonances produced from a hadronizing quark gluon plasma whose decay products have not rescattered (QGP mechanism).
2. secondary resonances: resonances produced in the hadronic final state via hadron-hadron rescattering (HG mechanism).

In this paper, we will show that $`v_2`$ differs between the two cases. Key to our analysis is the observation that the elliptic flow $`v_2`$ will be additive for any type of composite particle with respect to the $`v_2`$ of its constituents. Note that this feature is mimicked in a hydrodynamic model when mass effects are neglected. Then the elliptic flow of all particles follows the same line through the origin, $`v_2(P_T)P_T`$. The scaling law simply maps this line into itself. Only the deviation from the ideal hydro behavior with increasing $`P_T`$, manifest in the saturation of $`v_2`$ at intermediate $`P_T`$, makes the scaling law non-trivial. The $`v_2`$ of a $`K_0^{}`$ meson in the recombination domain will therefore be the sum of the $`v_2`$ contributions of the $`d`$ and $`\overline{s}`$ quarks if it has been formed from a hadronizing QGP, or the sum of the contributions of the $`K^+`$ and $`\pi ^{}`$ if it has been formed through the coalescence of a kaon and a pion in the hadron phase. Our discussion of deriving the formalism for the coalescence of partons can be extended to the coalescence of hadrons in a straightforward way Duke:02 ; Duke:03 ; Duke:04 . Therefore we can here assume the same additive feature for hadron-hadron coalescence as well. Naively, if the kaon and pion themselves are formed by quark recombination, we expect a scaling of the $`K_0^{}`$ with $`n=4`$ in the HG case, while it scales with $`n=2`$, like the stable mesons, if it is created at the phase transition. The scaling will be altered by the possibility that one or both of the coalescing hadrons could come from fragmentation, which breaks the scaling law. The final result will be a mixture of both scenarios.

We assume that the $`v_2`$ of stable hadrons (stable with regard to strong interactions) is not affected by hadronic interactions for $`P_T`$ above 2 GeV. This is a sound assumption in light of the experimental facts, as discussed above. Let $`r(P_T)`$ be the fraction of resonances that have escaped from hadronization without rescattering of the decay products vs. the total measured yield. Given the knowledge of $`v_2`$ in the two limiting cases, the QGP mechanism and the HG mechanism, the fraction $`r(P_T)`$ can be determined by measuring $`v_2`$ at intermediate $`P_T`$, between 2 and 6 GeV via

$$v_2^{\mathrm{measured}}=r(P_T)v_2^{\mathrm{QGP}}+(1r(P_T))v_2^{\mathrm{HG}}.$$
(4)
One may be able to deduce the widths and cross sections of resonances in the hadronic medium by measuring $`r(P_T)`$ for several resonances. Our scheme can be generalized to explore the structure of exotic particles, e.g. a large molecular state, as discussed in the case of the recently discovered pentaquark $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+(1540)`$. We will discuss this in more detail below.

Figure 1 shows the elliptic flow $`v_2`$ as a function of transverse momentum $`P_T`$ for the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}(1385)`$ (top) and the $`K_0^{}`$ (bottom) resonances. The dashed lines refer to primordial resonance production from a hadronizing QGP via parton recombination at low and intermediate $`P_T`$ and fragmentation at large $`P_T`$. The dotted lines refer to these resonances being produced via hadronic final state interaction through hadron–hadron recombination: $`\mathrm{\Lambda }+\pi \mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`K^++\pi ^{}K_0^{}`$. These two scenarios establish lower and upper limits for $`v_2`$. The solid line represents a calculation with contributions from both, the QGP and the HG mechanisms. For demonstration purposes we have here chosen $`r(P_T)`$ to be constant, with a value of 70%. $`r(P_T)`$ is the quantity that can ultimately be extracted from data.

For quark recombination we used the scaling law (3) together with the parton $`v_2^q`$ extracted and discussed in Duke:03 ; Duke:04 . Since the fragmentation functions for the resonances are unknown, we utilize the universal curve for the $`v_2`$ contribution from fragmentation as obtained in Duke:03 ; Duke:04 .

Due to the transition from the recombination to the fragmentation regime, the maxima of the HG and QGP curves do not scale like 5/3 and 4/2 for the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`K_0^{}`$ respectively. Instead, the HG curve is brought down by contributions from pions, kaons or $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$s from fragmentation, violating the scaling law. Still, the difference between the two limiting cases can be as large as 30% between 2 and 6 GeV.

The fraction of the total resonance yield being produced by re-generation in the hadronic phase cannot be inferred through the final measured resonance yield since the amount of signal loss in resonance reconstruction due to rescattering of the resonance decay products cannot be experimentally determined. The scheme outlined above to determine $`r(P_T)`$ therefore provides complimentary information to the resonance yield measurements via invariant mass reconstruction. The determination of $`r(P_T)`$ allows for an estimate of the gain term of resonance production in the hadronic phase - together with the yield information this allows for a far better estimate of the actual QGP production of resonances and for an improved estimate of the signal loss due to rescattering of the decay products. These estimates are of high relevance for the interpretation of statistical model fits with respect to resonances yields.

We can now utilize the scaling law for the elliptic flow – and its transition to a universal value for $`v_2`$ in the fragmentation domain – to probe the structure of exotic particles, such as the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+(1540)`$ pentaquark state. The discovery of this novel hadronic state with five valence quarks ($`uudd\overline{s}`$) has recently been reported in Nakano:03 . Its existence was predicted in 1997 by Diakonov et al. in the chiral quark soliton model (CQSM) Diakonov:1997mm . Several other groups have by now confirmed this important discovery Barmin:03 ; Stephanya:03 ; Barth:03 . The $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ is the first unambiguous five quark state, since other candidates for five quark states, such as the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(1405)`$, have quark compositions that can mix with three quark states like $`udd\overline{d}suds`$. Recently, NA49 reported the observation of two more states that could be the two missing pentaquarks in the antidecuplet NA49:03 . The yield of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ in heavy ion collisions has been estimated in Randrup:03 ; Texas:03 .

While the discovery of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ has undoubtedly established the existence of pentaquarks, its structure, and even its spin and parity, have not yet been experimentally verified. It is still an open question whether pentaquarks like the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ have a compact structure with all five valence quarks being closely confined, just as the three quarks in the nucleon, or whether they are molecular bound states of a baryon and a meson. A bound state of two diquarks and an antiquark was recently suggested as well JaffeWilczek:03 .

Loosely bound states with large geometric cross section whose binding energies are much less than the temperature, like the deuteron, are dissociated in the hadron phase even if they were produced at hadronization. Such a medium induced breakup reaction does not allow for the reconstruction of the state via two-particle mass spectra, since the initial momentum of the scattering partner is unknown. These bound states are unobservable. Thus, the loosely bound states and molecular states observed in heavy ion collisions are produced close to the kinetic freeze-out hypersurface Texas:03 , in the case of the pentaquark by $`K^++n\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ and $`K^0+p\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ (summarily denoted as $`KN`$). The hadronic phase can be viewed as a filter that tends to let the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ from hadronization only survive if it is a compact five quark state.

With respect to the azimuthal anisotropy of pentaquarks produced in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC, we expect it to fulfill the scaling law (3) with $`n=5`$. This would be an impressive manifestation of its exotic five quark character. On the other hand, we expect modifications to hold, as we discussed them for conventional resonances. However, we want to point out, that in the case of conventional baryon resonances the scaling law holds for $`n=3`$ in the QGP scenario, while it is roughly $`n=5`$ in the HG case. For a pentaquark it would be $`n=5`$ in both cases. The difference would merely come from the possibility that for the reaction $`N+K\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ one or both of the initial hadrons could come from fragmentation. The same is true for a deuteron, that scales approximately with $`n=6`$ in both cases.

If the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ is a molecular state, the momentum fraction $`x_K`$ of the kaon in a lightcone frame is expected to be approximately given by $`r_K=M_K/(M_K+M_N)0.35`$, where $`M_K`$ and $`M_N`$ are the masses of the kaon and nucleon, respectively. We therefore use the wave functions Duke:03 ,

$`|\varphi _\mathrm{\Theta }(x_K,x_N)|^2`$ $`=`$ $`\delta \left(x_K0.35\right),`$ (5)
$`|\varphi _d(x_p,x_n)|^2`$ $`=`$ $`\delta \left(x_p0.5\right).`$ (6)
In Fig. 2 we show $`v_2`$ for the different scenarios discussed above. Note that the scenario with all pentaquarks from hadronization (QGP) is now providing the *upper* limit, while it was the lower limit in the case of conventional resonances. We include the deuteron in the study to give an example of a well known molecular state. Above $`P_T=3`$ GeV we find a considerable difference, up to 20%, between the scenario where the pentaquark is created at the phase transition — and is therefore a compact five quark state — and the scenario where it originates from $`KN`$ coalescence. If a $`KN`$ coalescence takes place to form a $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ between 4 and 8 GeV, it is likely that either the kaon or neutron (or both) stems from fragmentation which lowers the resulting $`v_2`$. At very high $`P_T`$, both the kaon and the nucleon have to come from fragmentation. This results in a power law spectrum that falls off like $`P_T^{2b}`$, approximately twice as rapidly as a directly fragmenting particle with $`P_T^b`$. Therefore, direct fragmentation will dominate at very large $`P_T`$ and will eventually lead $`v_2`$ down to the universal curve.

For the deuteron as a shallow molecular bound state we expect $`pn`$ recombination at the kinetic freeze-out to dominate. The deuteron is therefore ideal as a benchmark measurement. First results for the $`v_2`$ of the deuteron have been announced by the PHENIX collaborations Sakai:03 . As expected, this particle seems to follow the scaling law with $`n=6`$ within the large error bars. With the upcoming high statistics Au+Au run, error bars and $`P_T`$ coverage should be greatly improved, allowing for a gauging of the formalism.

Let us comment on the third possible scenario for the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$, that was advocated by Jaffe and Wilczek JaffeWilczek:03 . If it is a collection of two tightly bound $`(ud)`$ diquarks and an $`\overline{s}`$ quark, recombination would predict the $`P_T`$ dependence of $`v_2`$ to be very similar to that of a “democratic” 5 quark state. This, however, is only true if the diquarks are also formed at hadronization and the individual quarks have not been correlated early on with enough time to have thermalized diquark states. In that case one would expect a scaling with $`n=3`$.

In summary, we propose the measurement of the elliptic flow of hadronic resonances at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. After recombination scaling has been confirmed for the $`v_2`$ of stable particles, deviations from this scaling for resonances can directly measure the fraction of resonances that escape from hadronization without rescattering in the hadronic phase at intermediate and large transverse momentum. This allows conclusions to be drawn about the importance of the hadronic phase in this region of phase space.

In turn, this method can be applied to explore the structure of exotic particles, such as the recently found $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+(1540)`$. The amount of rescattering in the hadronic phase is sensitive to the size of the system, eventually distinguishing between a compact hadron and a molecular state. The deuteron, with a known molecular structure, can serve as a precise benchmark for these measurements. The same method is also applicable to determine the structure of other exotic candidates with a possible molecular structure such as $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(1405)`$, $`a_0(980)`$, $`f_0(980)`$, and so on Jaffe:77 ; AlfordJaffe:00 ; Close:02 .

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank J. Kapusta, V. Greco and C.M. Ko for stimulating discussions. This work was in part supported in part by RIKEN, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Grant-in-Aid by the Japanese Ministry of Education No. 14540255, and DOE grants DE-FG02-96ER40945 and DE-AC02-98CH10886. S.A.B. acknowledges support from an Outstanding Junior Investigator Award (DOE grant DE-FG02-03ER41239) and R.J.F. has been supported by DOE grant DE-FG02-87ER40328.


text:
# A young and complex binary star - HD 144432

## 1 Introduction

The star HD 144432 (SAO 184124, He 3-1141, IRAS 16038$``$2735) is one the latest in spectral type among the Herbig Ae/Be (HAeBe) stars and candidates listed by Thé et al. (1994). These late-type Herbig star have recently spurred some interest, since there appears to be a pronounced absence of emission-line stars with late A or early F spectral types within the group of HAeBe stars. Since Herbig (1960), in the descriptive paper of the class, restricted his analysis to Be- and Ae-type stars, this was thought to be primarily due to historic reasons. However, it has proven to be difficult to find additional young objects among the F-type stars. Suchkov et al. (2002) from a sample of about 900 metal rich reddened F stars, found that about 70 stars presented abnormal near-infrared color excesses, suggesting the presence of circumstellar material. However, they listed only 21 selected stars from the original large sample; HD 144432 was included among the several “re-discovered” objects.

HD 144432 was described as an IRAS point source by Oudmaijer et al. (1992), with the note that this object could be either a post AGB or an Ae Herbig star. Based on the IRAS colors, Oudmaijer et al. (1992) were able to derive a color or dust temperature of 240 K, by means of a black body fit to the excess fluxes.

Likewise, Carballo, Wesselius & Whittet (1992), using IRAS fluxes, described HD 144432 as part of the Scorpio-Centaurus-Lupus region. However, they classified it as an evolved galactic object of spectral type F0IIIe, with a dust shell signature due to mass loss. Furthermore, these authors commented that this object was suggested to be a binary by Wackerling (1970) and that Walker & Wolstencroft (1988) erroneously classified it as a Vega-type star. However, in their catalogue of HaeBe stars, Thé et al. (1994) considered HD 144432 to be a probable member of this stellar group; a classification followed by most subsequent authors.

Motivated by the list of Vega-type stars by Walker & Wolstencroft (1988), Walker & Butner (1995) observed HD 144432, among several other objects, with 10 $`\mu `$m spectroscopy and sub-mm observations, finding that the stars in their sample show strong emission features due to silicate dust. Similarly, Sylvester, Barlow & Skinner (1995) reported a broad emission feature at 9.7 $`\mu `$m and possibly at 18 $`\mu `$m, indicating the presence of silicate dust. These authors also pointed out that the excess emissions seen at long wavelengths, in HD 144432 and other objects, have spectral slopes shallower than those predicted for Rayleigh-Jeans emission, suggesting the presence of large grains (radius $``$ 0.1 mm) and large amounts of cool material.

By studying a sample of stars surrounded by dust, which included HD 144432, Zuckerman, Forveille & Kastner (1995) concluded that for stars with ages 106–107 years, the gas and dust are well mixed and that this gas dissipates rapidly implying that if gas-giant planets (e.g., Jupiter, Saturn) are common in planetary systems, they must form more quickly than present models indicate.

Recently, Maheswar et al. (2002) listed HD 144432 among the objects studied in search of an inconclusive geometrical relationship between binary position angle, polarization position angle and outflow position angle. Further infrared observations including HD 144432 as one the sources studied at 10 $`\mu `$m by van Boekel et al. (2003), found a correlation between the strength of the silicate emission, its shape and the local continuum, which is interpreted as the evidence for removal of small grains (0.1 $`\mu `$m), whereas large grains (1–2 $`\mu `$m) remain on the disk surface.

In this paper, we present unpublished observations of the emission line object HD 144432, and we analyze some possible scenarios of its current status and evolution.

## 2 Observations

### 2.1 Optical and near-IR Imaging

Deep CCD images of HD 144432 through $`BessellR`$, $`Gunni`$, and narrowband H$`\alpha `$, \[O iii\] and \[Si ii\] filters were obtained, under good seeing conditions, with the Dutch 92 cm telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO)- La Silla, Chile on July 29, 1994. The total field of view in these images was 4’$`\times `$4’. Since the main purpose of these images was to look for extended, faint nebulosity in the area surrounding HD 144432, the few arcseconds in the immediate vicinity of HD 144432 were saturated in all images. No traces of extended nebulous structure or a dark region could be seen in any of the images, nor were there any anomalies in the relative strength in the various filters of the different sources in the field of view. From these images we conclude that HD 144432 is apparently an isolated star, not directly associated with a clearly identifiable star-forming region, or a group of fainter emission-line stars.

Recent $`K`$ (2.2 $`\mu `$m) band imaging secured at the 3.0-m NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), reveals a faint second source (about 2.4 fainter in $`K`$ than the primary), located 1.4″ north (position angle $``$7). In the remainder of this paper, when distinguishing individual components is possible, we refer to the southernmost, IR-brightest component as HD 144432 A and the fainter, northernmost of the two, as HD 144432 B. In Section 3 we argue that this secondary is physically associated with HD 144432 A, and we will discuss its properties. A blow-up of the IRTF $`K`$-band image is shown in Fig. 1. No other strong $`K`$-band sources were found in the immediate vicinity of HD 144432, confirming the earlier conclusion that the system appears to be rather isolated.

### 2.2 Optical Spectroscopy and Li i Detection

A low-resolution (2.83 Å pixel-1) CCD spectrum of HD 144432, covering the wavelength range of 3380 to 9180 Å, was obtained on June 27, 1996, using the Boller & Chivens spectrograph mounted on the ESO 1.5-m telescope at La Silla, Chile. A slit with a width of 2″ was used to remove the light of other parts of the sky. The spectrum was reduced in a standard fashion using MIDAS. Sky subtraction was achieved by subtracting a third degree polynomial fitted to 100 pixels (corresponding to roughly 25″) in the spatial direction on both sides of the stellar spectrum. The reduced spectrum is shown in Fig. 2.

Medium resolution ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =0.2`$ Å) spectroscopic observations were carried out at the KPNO and at Ritter Observatory, University of Toledo, at three spectral settings centered at 6430, 6750 and 8600 Å, respectively. In the first spectral region presented in Fig. 3, metal lines in the spectrum of HD 144432 and $`\sigma `$ Boo (F2V) are compared. Based on the broadening of the observed lines $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ is derived to be 72 $`\pm `$ 5 km s-1. We note that a subtle indication of asymmetry in the photospheric lines appears to be present but could not be confirmed at the resolutions presented here.

In the second spectral region it is possible to unequivocally detect, for the first time, the absorption at Li i 6707.8 Å in the spectrum of HD 144432. In Fig. 4, we present the spectral comparison of the narrow lines $`\sigma `$ Boo and HD 144432. We also note that Ca i 6717 Å appears in absorption. Both absorption lines could suggest the presence of a cooler companion (Corporon & Lagrange, 1999), but this suggestion is problematic as it is discussed in the conclusions section. The equivalent width of the Li i line is 93 mÅ, while the nearby Fe I line 6677 Å is also 93 mÅ, both lines are visible in Fig. 4. This equivalent width of the Li i line is typical of the solar-type stars in the Pleiades which are much older objects ($``$ 107 years) with significantly lower effective temperatures (e.g., Soderblom et al. 1993).

Optical observations were also made of the H$`\alpha `$ emission. Fig. 5 presents the P Cygni profiles of HD 144432 taken in two different seasons, showing a variable blue emission component with a variable terminal velocity of $``$ 300-400 km/s. This strong blueshifted emission, present at both epochs, strengthens the PMS origin of this star by ruling out the possible post-AGB phase since fast winds of this kind are not observed in these stars.

In the region centered at 8600 Å, one can detect the presence of the Ca ii infrared triplet (IRT) in emission. There are also weak Paschen absorption lines present. In Fig. 6 we have plotted the spectrum of the B8V star $`\beta `$ Lib to show where the Paschen wavelengths are; we do not suggest that the spectrum of HD 144432 resembles a B8V. The Ca ii IRT in emission is a known signature of a shell (e.g., Jaschek et al. 1991), often present in Be stars, but beyond A0 no Ca ii emission is seen, except for the alleged peculiar and young stars HD 31648 and 17 Lep (Jaschek et al. 1988), but this is a well-known characteristic of HAeBe stars, even for objects later than A0 (e.g., Catala et al. 1986, Hamann & Persson 1992). Therefore, the presence of the Ca ii IRT in emission in a A9/F0 star is peculiar but not unusual in PMS objects.

### 2.3 Ultraviolet Spectroscopy

HD 144432 was observed with the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite on several occasions in 1990 and 1995. Since for the first IUE observations, few photometric and spectroscopic observations were available for this object, no precise estimation of the extinction and consequently of the exposure times could be made in advance. Optimum exposure times were obtained empirically after trial observations in both IUE cameras. All the data were obtained in the low dispersion mode ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ 6 Å) in the long-wavelength (LWP) and short-wavelength (SWP) cameras through the large aperture (10″ $`\times `$ 20″). We note that due to the size of the IUE entrance aperture, for all observations regardless of the aperture orientation, both stars (A and B) are expected to fall within this aperture, but due to brightness differences of the binary pair and the somewhat short exposures taken, is possibly the largest contributor to the observed fluxes, although we cannot completely exclude the potential contribution of HD 144432 B, especially shortward of 1700 Å. Observations secured in 1995, have also been retrieved from the archives. The LWP image 30393 is the only high-dispersion image taken on this object. A journal of the observations is provided in Table 1.

### 2.4 Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Near-infrared (1.9–4.1 $`\mu `$m) spectroscopy of the HD 144432 system was obtained on June 28, 2002, at Mauna Kea Observatory with the SpeX spectrograph (Rayner et al. 2003) attached to the IRTF. Since two sources were visible on the acquisition image, separate spectra were taken, of the southernmost, IR-brightest, component, HD 144432 A, and the fainter, northernmost, of the two, HD 144432 B. During both observations, the slit, with a width of 0.8$`\mathrm{}`$, was aligned East-West in order to minimize contamination of the individual spectra by the companion.

The near-infrared spectrum of HD 144432 A is dominated by strong emission lines of H i. Br$`\alpha `$ (4.05 $`\mu `$m), Pf$`\gamma `$ (3.74 $`\mu `$m), Br$`\gamma `$ (2.17 $`\mu `$m), and Br$`\delta `$ (1.94 $`\mu `$m) are clearly detected in Fig. 7. Br$`\beta `$ (2.63 $`\mu `$m) is in the observed wavelength-range, but it is obscured by terrestrial atmospheric bands. The only clearly detected absorption lines in HD 144432 A are the $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$ = 2 band-heads of 12CO at 2.32, 2.37 and 2.44 $`\mu `$m. The solid-state band at 3.3 $`\mu `$m due to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHS), often detected in HAeBe stars, is not present in the spectrum of HD 144432 A. We derive an upper limit of 4.0 $`\times `$ 10-15 W m-2 for the flux of this feature in HD 144432 A. We conclude that the near-infrared spectrum of HD 144432 A is clearly non-stellar in origin. We are probably detecting here the onset of the strong infrared excess due to circumstellar dust, prominently visible in the spectral energy distribution (SED) displayed in Fig. 8, with some emission and weaker absorption features superimposed due to a gaseous inner accretion disk.

In contrast to HD 144432 A, the near-infrared spectrum of HD 144432 B is dominated by absorption lines that are probably photospheric in origin (Fig. 7). The Na i doublet at 2.21 $`\mu `$m, as well as the Ca i absorption lines at 1.978 and 1.987 $`\mu `$m, are clearly detected. The 12CO R-branch transition of CO is weakly present in absorption. The only detected emission line is Br$`\gamma `$ at 2.17 $`\mu `$m. The seeing at the time of observation, as well as the employed background-subtraction scheme is such that we can exclude that this is due to contamination of the point-source HD 144432 A seen in the $`K`$-band image.

## 3 Data Analysis

### 3.1 Variability

The comparison of the SWP images 38425 and 39496 taken 5 months apart revealed virtually no variability in the continuum fluxes beyond the repeatability errors, therefore, for the rest of the analysis these images were coadded. The same is true for the LWP images 17585 and 17586, which were coadded and weighted according to their exposures times; the overexposed part of LWP 17585 was properly flagged and not considered in the final spectra. We warn that if the star is variable, the fact that no variability is detected in these images could be only a fortunate coincidence.

### 3.2 FES Magnitudes

By using the IUE Fine Error Sensor (FES) counts recorded on the IUE observing scripts and the calibration by Pérez & Loomis (1991), we were able to estimate $`V`$ magnitudes for the times at which the 1990 IUE exposures were taken at the NASA-GSFC Observatory. Since the 1995 exposures taken at the ESA-VILSPA Observatory, FES counts were affected by the abnormal increase in scattered light seen by the telescope optics (known as the FES anomaly detected on January 22, 1991) consequently no $`V`$ magnitudes were derived for these exposures. The $`V`$(FES) magnitudes are listed in Table 1. The differences in $`V`$(FES) values are within the errors of this calibration ($`\pm `$ 0.03 mag) and no significance is attributed to the small discrepancies in the $`V`$ magnitudes. We note that the non-variability of HD 144432 is in agreement with earlier photometric monitoring of HD 144432 by Meeus et al. (1998) and van den Ancker et al. (1998), but confirms this behaviour on a longer time-scale than reported in those papers.

### 3.3 Spectral Type

When analyzing our visual spectrum of HD 144432 (see Fig. 2), it can be recognized as that of a star of late A or early F-type with emission lines. The spectrum is dominated by the Balmer lines. H$`\alpha `$ shows strong emission, whereas all other Balmer lines, visible up to H12 are in absorption. The Ca ii K line is moderately strong in absorption (the other line of this doublet, Ca ii H, is blended with H$`\epsilon `$), suggesting a spectral type of late A. However, the G band at 4300 Å is also definitely present, although not very strong, suggesting a slightly later spectral type of F0–2. The Na i doublet at 5885 Å has strong emission components, suggesting that these lines may be similar in nature to those of HAeBe stars like UX Ori (e.g. Grinin et al. 1994; Grady et al. 1996). In addition to this, the area between 4150 and 6500 Å shows many metallic absorption lines of Fe i, Fe ii, Mg i and Mg ii. O i may be present in absorption at 6161, 7777 and 8440 Å, but these could possibly also be attributed to other ions. At the red end of the spectrum the Paschen lines can be seen in absorption up to P20. Superimposed on P15 and P16 we can see two lines of the Ca triplet at 8500 and 8542 Å in emission. The third line of this triplet, at 8665 Å, may be present in emission, but because it is blended with several lines of the Paschen series this is harder to distinguish.

The photometric catalog by Hauck & Mermilliod (1990) gives a value of H$`\beta `$ = 2.730 for HD 144432, which corresponds to a star of spectral type F0–2 III–V according to the Strömgren calibration by Lester, Gray & Kurucz (1986). However, by using the Kurucz (1991) models scaled at V=8.30, we show in Fig. 8 that the best fit for the unredenned optical data is for the model with $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ = 7,500 K, $`\mathrm{log}g`$ = 4.0 and \[Fe/H\] = 0.0 (thick line), by assuming a normal extinction law (i.e., RV=3.1). According to the Schmidt-Kaler (1982) calibration of effective temperatures, this corresponds to a spectral type of A8 III–V. The main difference between the observed data and the Kurucz model is the absence of Mg ii absorption in HD 144432, which is discussed later. The predicted continuum flux as derived from the Kurucz model shortward of 1700 Å, is virtually zero, whereas the stellar flux is significantly higher showing a moderate UV flux continuum and line excesses. In comparing with UV standard stars from Heck et al. (1984), the spectral types A8–9 are conspicuously absent, however, compared with HD 87696 (sp type: A7V), HD 144432 is probably a half or a full spectral type later.

A respectable previous estimate of the spectral type as A9/F0V is presented by Houk (1982) in the Michigan catalog of Two Dimensional Spectral Types for the HD Stars, Vol. 3. We note that no emissions or peculiarities are seen in the wavelength window of 3920–4900 Å used for this classification. More recent spectral classifications of HD 144432 as A9/F0Ve (Dunkin et al. 1997), and A9IVe (Merín & Montesinos 2000) confirm this spectral classification suggesting that the spectral type of HD 144432 appears constant with time.

### 3.4 The Emission Spectra

A detailed analysis of the line spectra of the coadded data for the SWP and LWP revealed the presence of interesting emissions.

#### 3.4.1 Short Wavelengths \[1200–2000 Å\]

In Fig. 9 we identified the emission lines present such as; N v (1240 Å), O i (1302 Å), C ii (1335 Å), O i (1356 Å), Si iv (1394, 1403 Å), C iv (1550 Å), O iii (1666 Å). Certainly emissions at these wavelengths are not seen in main sequence stars, however, they are detectable in stars with active chromospheres and/or pre-main sequence objects. The star under consideration could have an incipient chromosphere, however, this kind of activity tends to peak at later spectral types. On the other hand, pre-main sequence stars such as HR 5999 (spectral type A5–7 III-IV), presents the same emission lines suggesting the presence of super-ionization regions capable of reaching temperatures of $`8\times 10^5`$ K. The origins of these emissions in the past have been interpreted in terms of chromospheric activity, even for the earlier types (early A- and B-type), however, recent evidences are accumulating which favor clumpy accretion, boundary layers and bipolar flows as the main mechanisms responsible for most of the excesses and emission lines in the optical and UV (Graham 1992, Welty et al. 1992, Pérez et al. 1993, Grady et al. 1993).

#### 3.4.2 Long Wavelengths \[2000–3200 Å\]

In this wavelength range we can distinguish several Fe ii UV multiplets (mostly in absorption), which are typical in young and pre-main sequence objects. The circumstellar emission surrounding the central source is normally optically thick at UV wavelengths presenting itself as continuum flux heavily absorbed by strong Fe opacities. In HD 144432, the Fe ii UV multiplets 1, 62, 63 and 64 appear in absorption, however, in a few HAeBes some Fe ii lines also appear in emission. In addition, we can distinguish the emission at Mg ii (UV1) and the absorption at Mg i (UV1). In a study of the behavior of the Mg ii lines in HAeBes, Pérez et al. (1992) determined that the youngest and most extreme objects in the sample always presented Mg ii lines (h and k) in emission, usually displaying direct P Cygni profiles, which often can only be resolved in high-dispersion ($`R10^4`$) images. The excess flux detection in HD 144432 of the Mg ii (2798 Å) line from LWP images has also been reported by Valenti, Fallon & Johns-Krull (2003).

We also note that the resonance Mg ii lines in emission are not unique to HAeBes and that a few stars such as B\[e\] stars, binaries, symbiotic stars and chromospherically active late-type stars also present this emission. The weak emission at Mg ii as detected in low-dispersion, is a further corroboration that this object is likely to be young (note that classical Be and main sequence B stars generally present only Mg ii \- h and k- in absorption). Finally, the LWP high dispersion image, seen in Fig. 10, allows us to verify that the Mg ii lines are indeed in emission with a well-defined P Cygni profile.

### 3.5 Distance

The distance towards HD 144432 is somewhat problematic. The distances quoted in the literature range from 108 pc to 2.4 kpc. The near distance determination is based on a so-called “spectroscopic parallax”, i.e. simply by assuming that the star is on the main-sequence, which is probably incorrect. From similar arguments, but assuming that HD 144432 is a post-AGB star, Pottasch & Parthasarathy (1988) conclude that the distance towards HD 144432 is 2.4 kpc.

HD 144432 is located in the region of the sky occupied by Sco OB2-2 ($`d`$ = 145 pc), which would strongly indicate that it belongs to this group, suggesting a distance of about 145 pc. Two B2V stars, 13 Sco and $`\rho `$ Sco are a few degrees away from HD 144432 and both are members of the Sco OB2-2 association. The proper motions of all three stars agree suggesting that they all belong to Sco OB2-2.

HD 144432 was also measured by the Hipparcos satellite, but the parallax measurement only resulted in a 2.5 $`\sigma `$ detection. However, its distance was derived to be 250 pc (with a large error bar); inconsistent with the determination by Pottasch & Parthasarathy (1988). Additional evidence for a near rather than a far distance are the weak interstellar Na i D-line (5890 Å) shown by Meeus et al. (1998) and also observed by one of us (BWB). We conclude that the observed Na i D-line strength constrains the distance towards HD 144432 to be between 100 and 500 pc, ruling out the 2.4 kpc distance derived by Pottasch & Parthasarathy (1988).

Perhaps the best estimate for the true distance may come from an astrophysical argument. From the spectral energy distribution, one can compute a luminosity density, $`L_{}/d^2`$, of 4.9 $`\times `$ 10-4 L pc-2 for HD 144432. The luminosity for a A9 V star is 7.6 L, which would translate to a distance of 124 pc. If we assume HD 144432 to be an A9 III giant, its luminosity should be around 23 L, which would place it around 216 pc. So, if we assume that the spectroscopic classification of HD 144432 as A9 IV is correct, this would lead us to a distance smaller than 200 pc, which now contradicts the Hipparcos data. We note that the renewed realization that HD 144432 is a binary system also casts some doubt on the Hipparcos result, since an unrecognized binary motion in the system could affect the outcome of the solution for the parallax by the automated Hipparcos algorithm.

We conclude that HD 144432 is most likely a member of Sco OB2-2, with a distance of 145 pc. However, we warn about the discrepancy with Hipparcos parallax measurements, which for many other young objects have proven to be a powerful tool to ascertain their distances (van den Ancker et al. 1997, 1998).

### 3.6 The Companion

A faint companion to HD 144432 was detected in the $`K`$-band (2.2 $`\mu `$m) image of HD 144432, obtained at the IRTF (Fig. 1). As was already noted in Section 2.4, the infrared spectrum of the companion, HD 144432 B, is dominated by absorption lines that are probably photospheric in origin. The ratio of the strength of the 2.21 $`\mu `$m Na i doublet to that of the 2.30 $`\mu `$m CO feature has been shown to be a good indicator of spectral type in pre-main sequence stars (e.g. Doppmann & Jaffe 2003). The fact that they appear to have nearly equal strength in HD 144432 B, suggests a spectral type of early-mid K for this star.

Our IRTF image shows that in June 2002, HD 144432 B was located 1.4$`\mathrm{}`$ from the primary at a position angle of $``$7. A search of the SIMBAD database revealed that HD 144432 had been classified before as a close visual binary, Rossiter 1877 (Rossiter 1955). The 1934 measurement of this gave a separation of 1.2” with position angle of 354 degrees, and photographic magnitudes of 8.4 and 12.9 for the two components. This is essentially identical to the position of the companion seen at the IRTF. With the early-K spectral type derived from the IRTF spectrum, the photographic magnitude of 12.9 is also compatible with the brightness of HD 144432 B in the IRTF $`K`$-band image. Therefore, we conclude we are seeing the same companion, at nearly the same relative position, as was seen in 1934 in the optical.

We note that the proper motion of HD 144432 as measured by Hipparcos (30 milliarcseconds per year), means that in the course of the 68 years between the two measurements, the separation between the two should have changed by about 2.0″ if the two components had different proper motions. This has apparently not happened. Consequently, we conclude that HD 144432 B shares a common proper motion with HD 144432 A, strongly suggesting a common distance and origin.

From the detailed SED of HD 144432 A (Fig. 8), we derive $`L_{}/d^2`$ of 7.1 $`\times `$ 10-4 L pc-2 for HD 144432 A. The IRTF $`K`$ band magnitude of 8.3 for HD 144432 B translates to $`L_{}/d^2`$ = 4.4 $`\times `$ 10-5 L pc-2 if we adopt a K2 spectral type and assume the (small) colour excess $`E(BV)`$ for HD 144432 A and B to be the same. If we plot these values in a HR diagram for the two possible distances of 145 and 250 pc (Fig. 11), we note that for both distances, HD 144432 A and B would be located above the main sequence, in an area typically occupied by pre-main sequence stars. Although we cannot exclude the 250 pc distance completely, we note that for the 145 pc distance both HD 144432 A and B are located between the isochrones for 1 and 3 million years, whereas for the 250 pc, a small discrepancy in age between the two systems would exist.

## 4 Conclusions

Our observations have demonstrated that HD 144432 is indeed a complex and intriguing object. We confirm its pre-main sequence nature, and have verified the existence of a faint late-type companion to HD 144432. The common proper motion and age of HD 144432 A and B strongly suggest that they have formed together. Further research is needed to investigate whether this companion, as HD 144432 A itself, is still surrounded by significant amounts of circumstellar material, or whether it has already shed most of its natal cloud.

The detection of Li i (6708 Å) absorption in the integrated spectrum of HD 144432 is intriguing. The simple-minded explanation that this could form in the atmosphere of the late-type star HD 144432 B is problematic, since the Li i line presents the same rotational broadening (see Fig. 4) as the metal lines. Unless the low-mass binary companion has a similar rotational broadening as the primary, which we consider unlikely, this strongly suggests that Li i is produced in the same stellar photosphere, i.e., intrinsic to HD 144432 A. Early F-type stars can present the Li i absorption, but at this photospheric temperature Li is mostly in the form of Li ii, so our measured EW(Li i) of 93 mÅ would imply an usual high Li abundance in HD 144432.

The UV observations of HD 144432 also confirmed the youth of this star, as a probable pre-main sequence object. The UV spectral type of this star appears to be earlier than the optical type. The trend of earlier spectral types with decreasing wavelength is a clear indication of the inconsistency of the single-temperature stellar model, which has been found to be the hallmark of young objects such as FU Orionis (Hartmann & Kenyon 1985) and other HAeBe stars (Pérez et al. 1993, and references therein). This effect has been interpreted as evidence for the presence of emission from an optically thick accretion disk and boundary layer, rather than from a stellar photosphere. The presence of several emission lines shortward of 1700 Å, species commonly associated with chromospheres in late-type stars, suggests that these emissions probably have a more energetic origin such as the one predicted by the accretion disk + boundary layer model for HAeBe stars (Hillenbrand et al. 1992; Blondel et al. 1993). Corroborating evidences for the youth of this object are its physical location in the upper Scorpius region and the large infrared excess indicating the existence of large amount of circumstellar material capable of thermally re-emitting at longer wavelengths.

###### Acknowledgements.

This research made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. We are grateful to Dr. Fancis Fekel for obtaining spectra at 6430 Å (Fig. 3) at our request. We are especially thankful to the referee of this manuscript, Dr. Claude Catala, for the several suggestions that resulted in many clarifications and improvements to this paper. We also acknowledge the financial assistance of the Los Alamos Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) used to complete work included in this paper (LA-UR-03-6569).