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# Community analysis in social networks

## 1 Introduction

The topology of complex networks have been the subject of intensive study over the past few years. It has been recognised that such topologies play an extremely important role in many systems and processes, for example, flow of data in computer networks Menezer03 , energy flow in food webs Garlasch03 , diffusion of information in social networks newman\_rev , etc. This has led to advances in fields as diverse as computer science, biology and social science to name but a few.

It has recently been found that social networks exhibit a very clear community structure. For example, in an organisation, such community structure corresponds, to some extent, to the formal chart, and to some extend to ties between individuals arising due to personal, political and cultural reasons, giving rise to informal communities and to an informal community structure. The understanding of informal networks underlying the formal chart and of how they operate are key elements for successful management. In other scenarios, this community structure reflects in general the self-organisation of individuals to optimise some task performance, for example, optimal communication pathways or even maximisation of productivity in collaborations. Characterising and understanding this structure may be fundamental to the study of dynamical processes that occur on these nets. In this paper we present the empirical study of several social networks at the level of community structure. We show that all exhibit self-similar properties, with the community size distributions following power laws. The exponents of these power laws seem to fall into two distinct classes, one with exponent $`0.5`$ and the other with exponent $`1`$. The source of these two different scaling laws is still being investigated.

In the next section we describe the methodology used to characterise the social structure of the networks we study. In Section 3, we apply this methodology to various networks, and in Section 4 we characterise the community structure. Finally we present an interpretation of the results and propose some future work.

## 2 The method

### 2.1 Identification of real communities

The traditional method for identifying communities in networks is hierarchical clustering jain88 . Given a set of N nodes to be clustered, and an N$`\times `$N distance (or similarity) matrix, the basic process of hierarchical clustering is this: Start by assigning each node its own cluster, so that if you have N nodes, you now have N clusters, each containing just one node. Let the distances between the clusters equal the distances between the nodes they contain. Find the closest (or most similar) pair of clusters and merge them into a single cluster, so that now you have one less cluster. Compute distances between the new cluster and each of the old clusters. Repeat until all nodes are clustered into a single cluster of size N.

In this work we use a different community identification algorithm, proposed recently by Girvan and Newman (GN) girvan02 . This new algorithm gives successful results even for networks in which hierarchical clustering methods fail. The algorithm works as follows. The betweenness of an edge is defined as the number of minimum paths connecting pairs of nodes that go through that edge wasserman94 ; newman01 . The GN algorithm is based on the idea that the edges which connect highly clustered communities have a higher edge betweenness—for example edge $`BE`$ in Figure 1a—and therefore cutting these edges should separate communities. Thus, the algorithm proceeds by identifying and removing the link with the highest betweenness in the network. This process is repeated (should it be necessary) until the ‘parent network splits, producing two separate ‘offspring’ networks. The offspring can be split further in the same way until they contain only one node. In order to describe the entire splitting process, we generate a binary tree, in which bifurcations (white nodes in Figure 1b) depict communities and leaves (black nodes) represent individuals. All the information about the community structure of the original network can be deduced from the topology of the binary tree constructed in this fashion.

### 2.2 Graphical representation of the hierarchical community structure

Consider again the network in Figure 1a. At the beginning of the process, no links have been removed and the whole network is represented by node 1 in the binary tree of Figure 1b. When edge $`BE`$ is removed, the network splits in two groups: group 2, containing nodes $`A`$ to $`D`$, and group 3, containing nodes $`E`$ to $`I`$. After this first splitting, two completely separate communities are left, a very homogeneous one and a very centralised one. One can check that in both cases the algorithm will separate nodes one by one giving rise to two different branches in the binary tree. Actually, when communities with no further internal structure are found, they are disassembled in a very uneven way giving rise to branches. In other words, the almost impossible task of identifying communities from the original network is replaced by the easy task of identifying branches in the binary tree. When centralised network structures are treated, the central node(s) will appear at the end of the branch, thus also providing a method of identifying the “leaders” of each community.

## 3 Applications

In this section we apply the method described in the previous section to various networks. In Table 1 we present the characterising statistics of each of the networks.

### 3.1 E-mail network

We extract and build a network of interactions via e-mail using logs from mail servers over a period of 3 months. In order to be able to concentrate on the real social structure, we remove ’spam’ mails with more than 50 recipients, and only create links between people that have exchanged e-mails, that is, an e-mail that was sent from A to B was responded to within the 3 month period. More information can be found in guimera??b .

Figure 2a shows the binary tree that results from the application of our method to the e-mail network of URV. Each colour corresponds to an individual’s affiliation to a specific centre within the university. Centres are in most of the cases faculties or colleges—for example the School of Engineering—and are usually comprised of departments—for example, the Department of Computer Sciences and Mathematics or the Electrical Engineering Department. In turn, departments are divided into research teams—for instance, the group of Complex Systems or the group of Dynamical Systems in the Department of Computer sciences and Mathematics.

Instead of plotting the binary tree with the root at the top as in Figure 1b, it is plotted optimising the layout so that branches, that represent the real communities, are as clear as possible. Actually, the root is located at the position indicated with the arrow in the upper left region of the tree. The branches obtained by the GN procedure (Figure 2) are essentially of one colour, indicating that we have correctly identified the centres of the university. This is especially true if one focuses on the ends of the branches since, as discussed above, these ends correspond to the most central nodes in the community. In regions close to the origin of the branches, the coexistence of colours corresponds to the boundary of a community. It is important to note that the GN algorithm is able to resolve not only at the level of centres, but is also able to differentiate groups (sub-branches) inside the centres, i.e., departments and even research teams.

For comparison, we also show the tree generated by the GN algorithm from a random graph of the same size and degree distribution as the e-mail network (Figure 2c). The absence of community structure is apparent from the plot.

### 3.2 The Jazz network

In this section we construct and study the network of jazz musicians obtained from the Red Hot Jazz Archive of recordings between 1912 and 1940 (www.redhotjazz.com), at two different levels. First we build the network from a ’microscopic’ point of view. In this case each vertex corresponds to a musician, and two musicians are connected if the have recorded in the same band. Then we build the network from a ’coarse-grained’ point of view. In this case each vertex corresponds to a band, and a link between two bands is established if they have at least one musician in common. This is the simplest way in which one can establish a connection between bands, and the definition can be extended to incorporate directed and/or weighted links. However, we show that even by using this simple definition we are able to recover essential elements of the community structure. More information can be found in gleiser03 .

In Figure 3 we show the binary tree corresponding to the musicians network. The root of the tree is indicated with a blue circle. A clear separation into two distinct communities can be can be seen and can be interpreted as the manifestation of racial segregation present at that time. Although a small number of collaborations existed between races, most bands were exclusively comprised of one race or the other. As a consequence a division in two large communities separating black and white musicians should be present. In fact, an analysis of the names of the musicians shows that the musicians on the left community are black while the musicians on the right are white.

As in the e-mail network, the most central musicians are expected to appear at the end of the branches. However in Figure 3 we see that those musician with $`k>170`$ appear at the beginning of the branches. This appears to be an artefact of the manner in which the network is created, as these musicians must have played in more than one band. Therefore, their affiliation with the rest of the musicians in the branch they appear in is relatively lower. Also, since everyone plays with everyone in a band, there is no well defined central Figure.

A similar effect can be seen when analysing the bands network. The binary tree shown in Figure 4 reveals a very simple community structure. The tree is roughly divided into two large communities as expected. However, the largest branch also splits into two. To understand the origin of this division we have analysed the cities where the bands recorded. We indicate with colour red the bands that have recorded in New York. The bands that recorded in Chicago are indicated with blue.

In this case, central bands do play an important role. The analysis of names grove  shows that the bands at the tip of the branches were the some of the most influential in the epoch. In general they also contained the most connected musicians.

These results show that both the musicians and bands network capture essential ingredients of the collaboration network of jazz musicians.

### 3.3 FisEs

We construct a network of scientists that contributed to the Statistical Physics (Física Estadística) conferences in Spain over the last 16 years. In a similar approach to the one described below, we consider two scientists linked if they have co-authored a panel contribution to any of the conference. To be able to consider the historical structure of this network we “accumulate” the network over all the conferences, that is, once a link is created, it remains, even if the authors never collaborated again. The final network (accumulated over all the years) is comprised of 784 nodes with 655 (84%) of those belonging to the giant component.

In the figure below we show the binary tree as generated by our formalism. The colours in this case represent the universities or centres of investigation of the participants. Those nodes whose affiliation has not been identified and those that belong to institutions outside of Spain are not shown, since they are few, and do not play an important role in the structure of this network. The colours in the figure represent the centres of origin of the contributors have been identified, and the grey nodes represent all universities with just a few contributions.

### 3.4 arXiv

Finally, we study the community structure of the network of scientific collaborations as extracted from xxx.arxiv.org preprint repository newman01a . Scientists are considered linked if they have coauthored a paper in the repository. The articles defining the links are classified into different fields. Due to the size of the entire network (52909 nodes, 44337 of which are connected in a giant cluster) we create $`4`$ separate networks, each corresponding to one of the following fields: Mathematical Physics(math-ph), High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat), General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc), Quantum Physics (quant-ph). An extensive study of the geographic location and thematic affiliations of the authors has not yet been performed.

## 4 Emergent properties of the community structure

In this section we characterise the statistical properties of the community structure of the networks analysed in the previous section. We will show that there are self similar properties that emerge in the network community structure.

### 4.1 Community size distribution

The first quantity that will be considered is the community size distribution. Figure 7a represents a hypothetical tree generated by the community identification algorithm (for clarity, the tree is represented upside down). Black nodes represent the actual nodes of the original graph while white nodes are just graphical representations of groups that arise as a result of the splitting procedure. Indeed, nodes $`A`$ and $`B`$ belong to a community of size 2, and together with $`E`$ form a community of size 3. Similarly, $`C`$, $`D`$ and $`F`$ form another community of size 3. These two groups together form a higher lever community of size 6. Following up to higher and higher levels, the community structure can be regarded as the set of nested groups depicted in Figure 7b. A natural way of characterising the community structure is to study the community size distribution. In Figure 7a, for instance, there are three communities of size 2, three communities of size 3, one community of size 6, one community of size 7, and one community of size 10. Note that a single node belongs to different communities at different levels.

Figure 8 displays the heavily skewed cumulative distribution of community sizes, $`P(s)`$ for both the email network and the Jazz musicians network. A comparison of the shape of $`P(s)`$ shows a surprising similarity. In both cases, a slow, power law decay with exponent $`0.48`$ is observed for community sizes up to $`s200`$. This is followed by a faster decay and a cutoff at $`s1000`$ corresponding to the size of the systems (the e-mail network containing 1133 nodes and the jazz network 1265 nodes). For small values of $`s`$ the jazz network deviates from this behaviour, reflecting the fact that musicians are already grouped in bands of a certain size, an effect not present in the e-mail network.

The power law of the above distribution suggests that there is no characteristic community size in the network (up to size 200). To rule out the possibility that this behaviour is due to our procedure we also considered the community size distribution for a random graph with the same size and degree distribution as the e-mail network. In this case (dotted line in Figure 8), $`P(s)`$ shows a completely different behaviour, with no communities of sizes between 10 and 600, as indicated by the plateau in Figure 8. This corresponds to a situation in which all the branches (communities) are quite small (of size less than 10) with the backbone of the network formed by the union of all these small branches.

Surprisingly, other networks studied show a power law distribution of community sizes with a different exponent. In Figure 9 we see that the exponent is very close to $`1`$.

More surprising still is the distribution of community sizes in other arXiv networks. In Figure 10 we can see a clear crosover from one scaling relation to another. All three distributions roughly follow a power law with exponent $`1`$ for community sizes up to $`60`$ nodes, whereas between $`60`$ and $`1000`$ nodes the exponent is seen to be $`0.5`$.

### 4.2 Analogy with river networks

Figure 8 presents a striking similarity with the distribution of community sizes and the distribution of drainage areas in river networks rinaldo93 ; rodriguez96 ; maritan96 ; banavar99 . This similarity can be understood by considering how this distribution is obtained from the community identification binary tree. Let us assign, as shown in Figure 7a, a value of 1 to all the leaves in the binary tree or, in other words, to all the nodes that represent single nodes in the original network (black nodes of the binary tree). Then, the size of a community $`i`$, $`s_i`$, is simply the sum of the values $`s_{j_1}`$ and $`s_{j_2}`$ of the two communities (or individual nodes), $`j_1`$ and $`j_2`$, that are the offspring of $`i`$. Figure 7c shows how the drainage area of a given point in a river network is calculated. Consider that at any node of the river network there is a source of 1 unit of water (per unit time). Then, the amount of water that a given node drains is calculated exactly as the community size for the community binary tree, but adding the unit corresponding to the water generated at that point: $`s_i=s_{j_1}+s_{j_2}+1`$. This quantity represents the amount of water that is generated upstream of a certain node. In this scenario, the community size distribution would be equivalent to the drainage area distribution of a river where water is generated only at the leaves of the branched structure.

The similarity between the community size distribution of the e-mail and jazz networks and the area distribution of a river network is striking (see, for instance, the data reported in maritan96  for the river Fella, in Italy). The exponent of the power law region is very similar: according to rinaldo93 , $`\alpha _{river}=0.43\pm 0.03`$, while for the community size distribution we obtain $`\alpha =0.48`$. Moreover, the behaviour with first a sharp decay and then a final cutoff is also shared. River networks are known to evolve to a state where the total energy expenditure is minimised kramer92 ; rinaldo93 ; sinclair96 . The possibility that communities within networks might also spontaneously organise themselves into a form in which some quantity is optimised is very appealing and deserves further investigation.

### 4.3 Horton-Strahler index

The similarity between the community size distribution and the drainage area distribution of river networks prompts one question: is this similarity arising just by chance or are there other emergent properties shared by community trees and river networks? To answer this question we consider a standard measure for categorising binary trees: the Horton-Strahler (HS) index, originally introduced for the study of river networks by Horton horton45 , and later refined by Strahler strahler52 . Consider the binary tree depicted in the left side of Figure 11.

The leaves of the tree are assigned a Strahler index $`i=1`$. For any other branch that ramifies into two branches with Strahler indices $`i_1`$ and $`i_2`$, the index is calculated as follows:

$`i=\{\begin{array}{cc}i_1+1\hfill & \text{if}i_1=i_2,\hfill \\ \mathrm{max}(i_1,i_2)\hfill & \text{if}i_1i_2.\hfill \end{array}`$
Therefore the index of a branch changes when it meets a branch with higher index, or when it meets a branch with the same value and both of them join forming a branch with higher index (see 11b).

The number of branches $`N_i`$ with index $`i`$ can be determined once the HS index of each branch is known . The bifurcation ratios $`B_i`$ are then defined by $`B_i=N_i/N_{i+1}`$ (by definition $`B_i2`$). When $`B_iB`$ for all $`i`$, the structure is said to be topologically self-similar, because the overall tree can be viewed as being comprised of $`B`$ sub-trees, which in turn are comprised of $`B`$ smaller sub-trees with similar structures and so forth for all scales. River networks are found to be topologically self similar with $`3<B<5`$ halsey97 .

We find that the community trees seen in Section 3 are topologically self similar with $`3<B_i<5.76`$ (see Figure 12). The same analysis for the communities in a random graph shows that topological self similarity does not hold, since the values of $`B_i`$ are not constant; they fluctuate more wildly around $`3.46`$.

The HS index also turns out to be an excellent measure to assess the levels of complexity in networks. First, let us consider the interpretation of the index in terms of communities within an organisation as represented by the email network. The index of a branch remains constant until another segment of the same magnitude is found. In other words, the index of a community changes when it joins a community of the same index. Consider, for instance, the lowest levels: individuals ($`i=1`$) join to form a group (with $`i=2`$), which in turn will join other groups to form a second level group ($`i=3`$). Therefore, the index reflects the level of aggregation of communities. For example, in URV one could expect to find the following levels: individuals ($`i=1`$), research teams ($`i=2`$), departments ($`i=3`$), faculties and colleges ($`i=4`$), and the whole university ($`i=5`$). Strikingly, the maximum HS index of the community tree is indeed 5, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 2b shows the community tree of the e-mail network with different colours for different HS indices. This helps to distinguish the individual, team and department levels within a branch. Actually, the university level is the “backbone” of the network along which the separation of communities occurs (from the top to the bottom of the figure). From this backbone, colleges, departments and some research teams separate, although it is worth noting that colleges or, in general, centres which are small and have no internal structure will be classified with a HS index corresponding to a department or even a team. Therefore, the HS index does not represent administrative hierarchy but organisational complexity. For comparison Figure 2c shows in colour the HS index for the binary tree of a random graph.

The fact that the community structure is topologically self-similar means that the organisation is similar at different levels. In other words, it means that individuals form teams in a way that resembles very much the way in which teams join to form departments, to the way in which departments organise to form colleges, and to the way in which the different colleges join to form the whole university.

## 5 Conclusions

The study presented here reveals a characteristic scaling of the community size distribution of different social networks. The scaling found follows a power law with two different exponents observed for different networks. The presence of this particular type of scaling suggests that some optimising mechanism is responsible for the self-organisation of social networks. What this mechanism is, remains to be seen.

## Acknowledgements

This work was funded by DGES of the Spanish Government (Grant No. BFM2003-08258) and EC-Fet Open Project IST-2001-33555. L. D. ackgnowledges the financial support of the Generalitat de Catalunya (FI2002-00414) and P.M.G. that of Fundación Antorchas. The authors thank Mark Newman for providing the arXiv data.


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# The Stellar Content and Star Formation History of the late-type spiral galaxy NGC 300 from Hubble Space TelescopeBased on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. observations

## 1 Introduction

In recent years real observational evidence has emerged indicating that spiral galaxies assembled their components (disk, halo, bulge) at different times and on different timescales (for example, Andredakis, Peletier & Balcells 1995; Ibata et al. 2001, and references therein; and Gratton et al. 2003, based on ages of a small sample of three Milky Way globular clusters). Galaxy formation studies are usually performed using surveys; however, it is of obvious importance to take representative examples of Hubble types and to study them in detail. In order to learn about galaxy formation and evolution in detail, there are three basic diagnostic tools, namely morphology, kinematics and stellar populations. Of these, perhaps the most direct way of studying the evolution of a galaxy’s stellar component is with diffraction limited imaging using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

NGC 300 is typical of a late-type spiral of type SA(s)d (Tully 1988) and the brightest of five main spiral galaxies that comprise the Sculptor group. With a Cepheid-based distance estimate of (m-M) = 26.53 $`\pm `$ 0.07 mag (Freedman et al. 2001) and its near face-on orientation, NGC 300 is well suited to studies of its stellar content. In the past decade, many studies have been devoted to study the bright young stellar population in this galaxy. Consequently, there are now several signs pointing to recent massive star formation, namely the presence Wolf-Rayet stars (e.g. Schild et al. 2003) and individual supergiants (Urbaneja et al. 2003; Bresolin et al. 2002a/b; Schild & Testor 1992; Humphreys et al. 1986; Massey et al. 1984), young stellar associations (Pietrzyński et al. 2001), Cepheids (Pietrzyński et al. 2002), HII regions (e.g. Soffner et al. 1996, DeHarveng et al. 1988), supernova remnants (Pannuti et al. 2000), and X-ray emission (Read & Pietsch 2001). The older stellar populations have also been targeted (see Davidge 1998 and references therein) but high angular resolution imaging ($``$0.05′′) is needed to probe this fainter stellar population.

In this paper, we present the first study of the resolved old, intermediate-age and young stellar population of the spiral galaxy NGC 300 based on colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) from HST observations. The main motivation for optical imaging data is sensitivity to a relatively wide range of temperatures in non- or marginally extincted fields. This paper is composed as follows. Data and data reduction are described in Sec. 2. An overview of the stellar populations based on CMDs is given in Sec. 3. The distance measurement based on the tip magnitude of the red giant branch is described in Sec. 4, and the issue of internal extinction is discussed in Sec. 5. The population of young stars is discussed in Sec. 6 and the derivation of the chemical enrichment and star formation history is presented in Sec. 7. Finally, we discuss our findings in Sec. 8, and summarize them in Sec. 9.

## 2 Data and data reduction

For this study, we retrieved the calibrated science and data quality images of several NGC 300 fields from the Space Telescope Science Institute HST data archive. We have examined archive I814\- and V547/555/606-band frames from four HST/WFPC2 pointings. These are listed in Table 1, and their WFPC2 footprints are superimposed on an image from the ESO Wide Fielder Imager (hereafter referred to as ESO/WFI111See Pietrzynski et al. (2002) for observation details.) in Fig. 1. Data reduction details are given by Bagget et al. (2002) and Holtzman et al. (1995).

The photometry of the stars in NGC 300 was derived using the HSTPHOT (Dolphin 2000a) point spread function (PSF)-fitting photometry package which is designed for optimal reduction and analysis of WFPC2 data, and has been used recently in a number of stellar population studies (e.g. Méndez et al. 2002, and references therein). The code utilizes a library of PSFs to account for PSF position dependence, and is optimized for the undersampled PSFs present in WFPC2 data. This package was also used to mask bad pixels and columns using the data-quality image and reject cosmic rays in the images. For transformation of the WFPC2 photometry into the standard V-, I-band system, stellar magnitudes are calibrated by HSTphot using the charge transfer efficiency and zero point magnitude corrections derived by Dolphin (2000b). The package is reported to be accurate to 0.02 mag Dolphin (2000) with a coordinate transformation rms residuals of the order of 0.02′′ in both axes.

Artificial star tests have been performed using HSTphot for the V-band magnitude range 20 to 28 (mag) and V-I = -0.5 to 3 (mag) which are approximately the ranges interest in our CMDs. Each test consisted of choosing a star from the V-band magnitude and colour range, adding it to both the V, and I-band images and then the image was reanalyzed by HSTphot. In this way, the effect of creating additional crowding of stars has been minimized. This was repeated several thousand times for each WFPC2 frame. From all of the tests a database of measurements for different positions and input V-band magnitudes and colours is built. The ratio of the number of recovered stars to the number of added stars in a magnitude range indicates the statistical probability of recovering a star in that magnitude range. Additionally, the database allows the photometry errors (recovered - input magnitudes) to be determined for each bandpass.

Fig. 2 plots the completeness factor against magnitude for our four fields situated at different radial distances from the centre of NGC 300. A completeness plateau occurs for the brightest stars because their signal-to-noise is sufficiently high and crowding affects these stars equally. A completeness of 100% is not reached because of bad pixels. 222The number of pixels deemed to be bad in the unvignetted portion of each chip/frame is of the order of 1% (includes cosmic ray events; and includes columns and pixels flagged as bad in the STScI data quality file). For each band pass, the completeness is different at each pointing. The F4 field has the longest integration time, providing the faintest magnitude limit and the crowding factor is shifted accordingly to fainter magnitudes relative to the other integrations. There is a strong difference between the functions of the innermost and outermost fields. Indeed, detectability in the inner field is less efficient than in the outer fields largely due to severe crowding, as well as shorter integration times. The V-band functions have fainter limiting magnitudes than in I-band largely because of lower HST/WFPC-2 throughput in the I814-band.

For the final photometry list used in this study, we select those objects flagged as valid stars in both band-passes and have S/N $`>`$ 5; $`\chi ^2`$ $`<`$ 5; -0.5 $`<`$ sharpness $`<`$ 0.5; and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{V},\mathrm{I}}`$ $`<`$ 0.25 mag. After selection, there are 7614, 1421, 3467 and 235 stars in the F1, F2, F3 and F4 fields respectively. In the present paper we apply the selection criteria to stars at I $`<`$ 23 mag whenever star counts in colour magnitude diagrams are analyzed. At this magnitude limit and brighter, the artificial star tests find the data to be at least 90% complete, and stars intrinsically brighter than I = 23 mag will only be missed if they are physically obscured, e.g. by dust.

## 3 The stellar content of NGC 300 from the colour-magnitude diagram

Fig 3 shows the CMDs for the four WFPC2 fields described in Table 1. These fields occur at radial distances ranging from 0.44 to 12.8 or de-projected radial distances of 0.4 to 10.9 kpc at the distance of the NGC 300 for a distance of 2.02 Mpc$`\pm `$0.07 (Freedman et al. 2001).

The F1 and F3 fields overlap with parts of different spiral arms in NGC 300 (see Fig 1) and the CMD of each region provide a sketch of some of the stellar content there. The most prominent feature is the red giant branch (RGB) structure, which is very similar to those observed in nearby dwarf irregular galaxies (NGC 6822: Gallart et al. 1996; Sextans A: Dohm-Palmer et al. 2002). This structure is typical of a galaxy that is clearly composed of an ancient stellar population: it is the locus of old and intermediate-age RGB stars, low asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and blue-loop stars, some hundred million years old. A significant number of red bright stars are observed above the tips of the fiducial RGB ridgelines and they could be intermediate-age AGB stars covering a wide range of ages and metallicities. In addition, there is also an important population of young stars (age $`<`$ 1 Gyr): these include main sequence stars; core helium burning stars in the blue supergiant and/or in the blue loop region at V-I $``$ 0.9 (mag); and red super-giants at 0.9$``$ V-I (mag) $``$ 1.3.

The CMDs in these different regions also display some marked differences in morphology that cannot be not fully explained by differences in observational effects. Most notably, the CMD of the innermost region appears stretched to red colours, mainly due to severe stellar crowding as judged by the completeness tests of the previous section. Incidentally, this crowding issue highlights the need for near-diffraction limited imaging at extremely large ($`>`$ 20 m class) optical/IR telescopes. We see that there is an absence of stars at I$`<`$ 22 mag in field F2 that is not explained by incompleteness; the significance of this is discussed later in Sec. 5 and Sec. 6. Lastly, we see a dense string of stars at V-I $``$ 0 and I$`<`$ 23 mag in the F1 field that could well be the stellar main sequence; the finding is especially noteworthy because incompleteness would tend to suppress such features (see Fig. 4).

For a comparative analysis of the star counts in the fields at intermediate radii (F1 and F3), we determined the ratio of star counts in three age-sensitive CMD boxes to the star counts in an RGB/old AGB box. The boxes are indicated in Fig. 4 and the associated star counts and ratios are given in Table 2. The data indicates that the F1 field has on average 3 - 4 times more stars, or similarly, that it is brighter by 1 - 1.5 magnitudes than the F3 field. We also find that there is a young population gradient in the F1 field, probably because it covers a possible spiral arm star forming region (Fig. 5). Lastly, unlike the old populations ($`>`$ 1 Gyr), there is a marked difference in the relative number of young stars in the two fields. In the outermost field (F4) there is a stark absence of bright stars (I $``$ 24 mag) with respect to the F1 field. As the surface brightness difference with respect to the F1 field is significant ($``$ 2.7 magnitudes) as measured by Carignan (1985), our observation of a dim disk field would be expected.

The expected number of foreground stars contaminating our CMD was estimated based on the Kim et al. (2002) study, galactic models, and the Hubble Deep Field to be about 1$`\pm `$1 and about 5 per pointing, at I$`<`$17.5 mag and I$`<`$23 mag respectively. The number of contaminating galaxies was estimated for several fields of the Medium Deep Survey (Griffiths et al. 1994) – and our selection criteria (stars brighter than I=23 mag) is expected to be robust against background galaxy contamination at these bright magnitudes, estimated to be 1$`\pm `$1 per WFPC2 pointing and thus an unlikely source of contamination which was not assessed by the artificial star test. The expected number of (unobscured) globular clusters in the WFPC2 fields based on Kim et al. (2002; hereafter referred to as K02) is at most 1$`\pm `$ 1. Such objects would have V-I colours mostly in the range 0.9-2.0, and integrated I-band magnitudes of about 16-17 mag at the distance of NGC 300 based on the Milky Way globular cluster system (Harris 1996).333We have checked whether some of the candidate globular clusters from Kim et al. (2002) appear in the WFPC2 frames. One of them (their ID 8) occurs in the F1 field (chip 1) while the other (ID 6) appears in the centre field (chip 1). However, both objects are saturated in the WFPC2 frames, and there are neighbouring stars, further study of them has not been pursued.

## 4 TRGB distance to NGC 300

The most recent estimate of the distance to NGC 300 is by Freedman et al. (2001) using Cepheids. In the context of distance verification, it is important to verify this estimate using a different distance indicator. We have used the dereddened magnitude of the TRGB, I∘,TRGB, to derive the distance modulus of NGC 300 based on the widely used approach described by Lee, Freedman, & Madore (1993, hereafter LFM93), and typically has errors less than 10%. It has been assessed theoretically by Salaris & Cassisi (1998; hereafter SC98) who found that differences between TRGB and Cepheid distances are no correlated with metal content. Incidentally, it is the first such distance measurement for NGC 300. Distances to several other Sculptor Group galaxies have been measured previously using the same method (Karachentsev et al. 2003).

For the ITRGB determination we consider the F1 and F3 fields, and ignore the remaining two fields due to a low number of stars and blending in the innermost field. To reduce the contribution of young/intermediate age stars, we selected stars with (V-I) $`>`$ 1.5 (mag). To measure the I-band magnitude of the TRGB, we applied the edge detection method described by Sakai, Freedman & Madore (1996). Firstly, for a sequence of magnitude values, we created a smoothed luminosity function, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$(m), by replacing each magnitude value by a Gaussian distribution whose width (standard deviation) is the magnitude uncertainty (e.g. Fig. 6 (panel 3)). The edge-detection response is

$$\mathrm{ED}=\mathrm{\Phi }(\mathrm{m}\overline{\sigma _\mathrm{m}})\mathrm{\Phi }(\mathrm{m}+\overline{\sigma _\mathrm{m}})$$
(1)
where $`\overline{\sigma _\mathrm{m}}`$ is the average $`\sigma _\mathrm{m}`$ at m$`\pm `$0.05 mag. ED was calculated at I-band magnitude steps of 0.01 mag. Next, we took 85% of these stars in a random way, and as a first estimate of the ITRGB magnitude we recorded the magnitude at which the filter response is a maximum at I $`<`$ 22.7 mag. To determine the uncertainty in the tip magnitude, we performed a so-called bootstrap resampling of the data by repeating the procedure 500 times. We then fitted a Gaussian to a histogram of the tip magnitude estimates (binned at 0.01 mag). The peak magnitude from the Gaussian fit is taken as ITRGB and the error in the Gaussian is taken as the uncertainty (Fig. 6, top). These values are given in Table 4. For the F3 field, the tip magnitude estimate is not reliable due to the low number of star counts, as is seen by the poor convergence of tip estimates (Fig. 7, top).

To determine how much these values depend on the fraction of stars selected, we varied the fraction selected from 0.6 to 0.9, and got the same ITRGB value and only a slightly larger uncertainty. To test for a possible bias on the TRGB magnitude caused by incompleteness we multiplied the smoothed luminosity function by a monotonically decreasing function \[1.0:0.80\] in the magnitude range 22-24 mag and found no sensitivity to this. Another source of potential bias comes from smoothing the luminosity function. Cioni et al. (2000) reported the Sobel filter to be a biased estimator of the TRGB and that the bias depends on the amount of smoothing in the luminosity function at the location of the TRGB. To test our sensitivity to smoothing we varied the smoothing window in the range 0.04-0.06 mag and find negligible change in the mean tip magnitude and a slight change in errors.

The absolute I-band extinction, AI, toward NGC 300 can be derived assuming the reddening law RV =\[AV/E(B-V)\] = 3.1 and AI/AV = 0.48 (Cardelli, Clayton & Mathias 1989). From the COBE/DIRBE and IRAS dust maps analysed by Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998; hereafter referred to as SFD98) we have E(B-V) = 0.013 mag at its galactic coordinates (l = 299.21 deg, b= -79.42 deg from Simbad), which is similar to the 0.008 mag from the lower resolution dust maps of Burstein & Heiles (1982; hereafter referred to as BH82). Adopting the SFD98 value, we get AV = 0.039 mag, and AI = 0.019 mag. The values are included in the dereddened I-band magnitude of the TRGB in Table 4. The possible presence of significant amounts of dust in the observed fields is a concern that is explored in more detail in Sec. 5.

Next, we calculate MI,TRGB, using three methods for comparative reasons. In the first method we adopt the value MI,TRGB =-4.06$`\pm `$ 0.07 (random) $`\pm `$ 0.13 (systematic) mag from Ferrarese et al. (2000; hereafter referred to as F00). They treated the TRGB as a secondary distance indicator and calibrated a zero point from galaxies with Cepheid distances. The calculated distance modulus, (m-M) is, therefore, 26.56 $`\pm `$0.07 (random) $`\pm `$0.13 (systematic) mag. Importantly, it is in good agreement with the recent Cepheid-based estimate by Freedman et al. (2001). The caveat is that the present distance estimate is not strictly an independent empirical estimate.

The second method is the empirical, Cepheid-independent one suggested by Lee et al. (1993). Summarized by SC98 (their p 168), it is based on the relation between the (dereddened) I-band distance modulus and I∘,TRGB, i.e. (m - M)∘,I = I∘,TRGB \+ BCI \- Mbol,TRGB. The I-band bolometric correction, BCI, is determined using

$$\mathrm{BC}_\mathrm{I}=[0.8810.243(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_{,\mathrm{TRGB}}]\pm 0.057\mathrm{mag}$$
(2)
from Da Costa & Armandroff (1990) where $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_{,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ is the (dereddened) colour of the RGB locus at the tip magnitude. Mbol,TRGB is determined using

$$\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{bol},\mathrm{TRGB}}=0.19[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]3.81,$$
(3)
and \[Fe/H\] of the parent stellar population is related to the (dereddened) colour of the RGB locus at MI = -3.5 mag ((V-I)∘,-3.5) via

$$[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=12.64+12.6(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_{,3.5}3.3(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_{,3.5}^2$$
(4)
both from Lee et al. (1993). With $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_{,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ = 1.82$`\pm `$0.1 mag444Colour values were derived in a bootstrap way: 85% of the stars were randomly selected in an I-band interval of 0.1 mag (i.e. \[ITRGB : ITRGB \+ 0.1 mag\] in the case of the RGB tip); and we then repeated this 500 times in order to obtain the average estimate with the standard deviation of the fit to the peak of the resultant data (binned at 0.05 mag) taken as the uncertainty. and (V-I)∘,-3.5 = 1.58 dex (field F1) we find \[Fe/H\] = -1.05 dex and (m - M) = 26.62 mag $`\pm `$ 0.06 (random; from ITRGB). This is in good agreement with the Cepheid-based calibration.

In the third method, we calculated MI,TRGB using the theoretical calibration of SC98: the recipe makes use of their re-calibrated relation between the global metal-to-hyrodgen ratio \[M/H\] and (V-I)∘,-3.5:

$$[\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{H}]=39.270+64.687[(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_{,3.5}]36.351[(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_{,3.5}]^2+6.838[(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_{,3.5}]^3.$$
(5)
The SC98 recipe is based on updated stellar models, the empirical calibration of synthetic colours, and the adopted bolometric correction. They obtained the following relation for the absolute I-band magnitude of the TRGB:

$$\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{I},\mathrm{TRGB}}=3.953+0.437[\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{H}]+0.147[\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{H}]^2$$
(6)
which leads to \[M/H\]=-0.85 dex, and (m-M) = 26.73 $`\pm `$ 0.06 mag (random). The difference between this value and the value from the Cepheid calibration (i.e. 26.56 mag; Freedman et al. 2001) is 0.17 mag.

The good agreement of the first method (empirical TRGB calibration of the distance tied to the Cepheid scale; F00), with Cepheid distance itself is not surprising. The TRGB distance from the Lee et al. (1993) calibration is an independent measure of the distance to NGC 300 and is in good agreement with the F00 measurement. There is, however, a discrepancy with the theoretical calibration of SC98, which may be a zero-point problem.555 However, in support of the F00 calibration, we note that that a recent RR Lyrae star calibration of the LMC distance modulus by Clementini et al., (2003) gave 18.515 $`\pm `$ 0.085 mag which is in good aggreement with the value (18.50 mag) adopted by F00. In conclusion, we adopt the F00 value of MI,TRGB because it is precise and most especially because it is a statistically averaged solution whose zero-point derivation is based on a homogeneous and consistent calibration. The corresponding distance modulus estimate is given in Table 4.

## 5 Internal Extinction in NGC 300

For our study of the bright stellar populations of NGC 300, it is very important to consider the issue of internal reddening of the galaxy because it can broaden CMD features: internal extinction may vary locally depending on the spatial distribution of dust and stars (e.g. Jansen et al. 1994). It is probably low on average based on the dust maps of SFD98, which are in fact in good agreement with the values from the lower resolution dust maps of BH82 as mentioned in the previous section. Going one step further, we looked for a difference in extinction between the F1 and F3 fields. From the previous section, we know that the TRGB magnitudes in these fields appear not to differ by more than about 0.1 mag at most, which argues against significant differential extinction in these fields. This is especially meaningful because the I-band TRGB magnitude is fairly insensitive to variations in heavy element content (Salaris, Cassisi, & Weiss 2002), something that could partially mimic differential extinction.

Another issue is extinction in the nuclear region of NGC 300. Indeed, although NGC 300 is near face-on, as opposed to the edge-on case in which central extinction tends to be higher, there is the possibility of significant extinction in the central region (Peletier et al. 1995). In contrast to the outer fields, there are clear shells of dust in the central region based on visual inspection of the ESO/WFI (real-) three-colour image 666A high resolution colour image is included in the online electronic version (Fig. 1). These shells are distributed in a fragmented, ring-like structure of de-projected diameter $``$ 1.2 kpc ($``$ 1), with an annular thickness of 0.2-0.4 kpc ($``$ 10-20′′), based on visual inspection. The dust ring appears to be symmetric about the bright compact central object studied recently by Böker et al. (2002). Significantly, there is a stark absence of blue colours in the image which suggests that there may be significant extinction, possibly hiding evidence of recent star formation, and /or that there has been relatively little recent star formation in the nuclear and circum-nuclear region. For the central region, Davidge (1998) found evidence to support the idea of suppression of recent star formation, a plausible result because the study was based on essentially extinction-free near-IR imaging.

Lastly, we remark that almost no reddening has been reported for two early-type super-giants, one near the galaxy centre (at r $``$ 0.55′) and one in the outskirts (at r $``$ 9.16′) (Urbaneja et al. 2002). However, it is very difficult to make specific conclusions regarding field-to-field differences in extinction from such a sparse sample and a larger sample is needed in order to place wide-field spectroscopy-based reddening information on a firm statistical footing.

## 6 The Young Stellar Population

We checked whether there are any spatially distinct stellar groups or associations of stars younger than about 1 Gyr in the F1 and F3 fields at I$`<`$ 24 (mag) (i.e. an extension of box A in Fig. 4). For this, a histogram of the number density of stars in 100 pixel wide columns was then computed. In each histogram, a background and 4$`\sigma `$ detection threshold level was determined from the first 750 columns of the WFPC2 frame. In this way, any detection is neither affected by the WFPC2 L-shape, shown in Fig. 5, nor statistical fluctuations. While there is no real evidence for a stellar group in the F3 field, there is a significant group in the the other field (F1). For validation of the detection, we varied bin size from 50 to 150 pixels; and the significance remains. Based on a Gaussian fit to the histogram for field F1, we find the size (FWHM) to be about 140 pc, at a distance of 2.02$`\pm `$0.07 Mpc (e.g. Freedman et al. 2001). This is consistent with the average OB association size in NGC 300 (Pietrzyński et al. 2001). Based on the work of Kim et al. (2002) who age-dated 15% of the 117 OB associations cataloged by Pietrzyński et al. (2001), the age of the newly detected association would be of the order of 10 Myr or less, and is approximately of average size. Accordingly, bright main sequence and/or blue supergiant stars may be present. We note that none of the X-ray sources detected by the ROSAT HRI (Read et al. 2001) occur in the F1 field, or the other fields. The coordinates of the association are given in Table 3.

Another issue is star forming environments. The F1 field covers parts of a major and minor spiral arm (see Fig. 1 and Fig. 5 (bottom)). The blueness of these arms with respect to the interarm region argues for a rich supply of young stars at the southern end of the F1 field which is also indicated by Fig. 5 (top). Consequently, it is not suprising that there are parts of OB associations cataloged by Pietrzynski et al. (2001), namely AS 054 and AS 055, at the southern end of the WFPC2 FoV (Fig. 5). We note that of the Wolf-Rayet stars found by the Schild et al. (2003) survey of several fields and the associations of OB stars cataloged by Pietrzyński et al. (2001), a few such stars occur in our fields, but did not meet our selection criteria (see Sec. 2: i.e. rejected as saturated; stellar blends; and or large fitting/photometry errors) and have been ignored.

Pursuing the SF issue further, we refer to cataloged blue stars, OB associations, and the correlation made with HII maps by Pietrzyński et al. (2001). From their Fig. 4 we see that there is a significant drop-off in the number of OB associations at r $``$ 9-12 (projected). Consequently, if these were used as tracers of star formation, one would conclude that such activity is significantly lower at large radii with respect to that of the disk. We also note that there are some blue stars at r = 12-13.5 that might be tracing the galaxy out to even larger radii, or possibly associated with parts of tidal streams; but we cannot exclude the possibility that such stars are simply just the bright field star population that one expects (see Sec. 7).

The next issue is the amount of recent star formation. Based on the presence of blue helium burning stars in Fig. 8, a marked recent burst of star formation in the observed fields is likely. However, the small WFPC2 field of view certainly means that the brightest population of stars may not have been be sampled adequately. Nevertheless, we can say that star formation may well be continuing at the observed pointing, statistically speaking, based on the presence of a blue plume stretching up to V$``$18 mag (I$``$18 mag also) in the (V,B-V) CMD of Pietrzynski et al. (2001) which covers the whole galaxy. Such stars may be in OB associations, or less concentrated star forming regions. Guided by the isochrones in the same figure, we also see clues there may have been very recent star formation because of some bright, possibly zero-age main sequence stars at V-I$``$-0.4 mag that are present.

Lastly, there is evidence for a difference in the stellar content of the field F1 and F3. One can see that there is a relative dearth of intermediate mass stars in the range 5-12 M in the F3 field with respect to the F1 field: such stars in the F1 field are predominantly associated with the spiral arms (see Fig. 5). We recall from Sec. 3 that the ratio of old to young ($``$ 1 Gyr) stars for the two fields are not in good agreement (see Table 2), and so the observation cannot be attributed completely to the difference in surface brightness (or the mean star formation activity) between two disk fields (see Sec. 3). It can be attributed to the significant difference in the star formation rate at these locations in NGC 300 as shown in Sec. 8 and Fig. 10.

## 7 Star Formation History

In each of the two fields at intermediate radii (F1 and F3) one finds that only the brightest stars have been detected. Accordingly, the associated CMDs do not permit a detailed derivation of the star formation history (SFH) using synthetic CMDs. Despite this, we may broadly estimate how the heavy element abundances and star formation rate (SFR) has changed during the lifetime of NGC 300. We have followed the method and have adopted the hypotheses introduced by Aparicio et al. (1997) and Martínez-Delgado, Aparicio & Gallart (1999). We refer to these papers for a detailed description of the method. However, a brief summary here is appropriate.

In short, the SFH is considered to be composed of three functions: the SFR, $`\psi `$(t); the Initial Mass Function (IMF); and the chemical enrichment law, Z(t). With these functions as input, the synthetic CMDs were computed using scripts introduced by Aparicio et al. (1997). For the analysis, we have assumed a Salpeter IMF (Salpeter 1955) with low and high mass cut-offs at 0.7 M and 30 M  respectively, and have ignored the possible effects of binary stars because the old population in our CMD is mainly composed by RGB and AGB stars. Such stars are expected to be well-mixed in the disk by the present time: with a random velocity of 1 km s-1, the crossing time for a 1.5 kpc region or the WFPC2 field size would be about 1.5 Gyr. Consequently, Z(t) and the SFR have been determined for each WFPC2 field rather than for the individual chips in order to maximize signal-to-noise.

For determination of Z(t), we considered six age intervals with widths suited to the present use of V-, and I-band photometry, which is anyway relatively insensitive to variations in Z(t). These intervals are: 15 to 12 Gyr, 12 to 9 Gyr, 9 to 6 Gyr, 6 to 3 Gyr, 3 to 1 Gyr. For each age interval, we adopted a constant SFR, and synthesized a stellar population of 40,000 stars with absolute magnitudes brighter than MI = -3.0 mag. The chemical abundance (Z) of each star has been taken at random. Internal photometric errors from the artificial star tests described in Sec. 2 have been included.

In order to estimate the mean heavy element (Z) abundances of each age interval, we adopted the following recipe. Firstly, we selected stars from the synthesized population of stars with heavy element abundances in an arbitrary range (Z1 to Z2). Then we measured the position and full width of the synthetic RGB/AGB locus for stars at 22.55 $`<`$ I (mag) $`<`$ 26 and V-I $`>`$ 1.4 mag. This procedure was repeated a few hundred times for different Z ranges. From the resultant database, only those Z pairs giving synthetic colours and widths that closely matched the values from the real CMD data were chosen. In this way we could obtain an estimate of the maximum and minimum Z values in each age interval that are consistent with the real CMD data. The two Z indicators (width and position of the RGB/AGB locus), however, sometimes returned different Z pairs: the standard deviation of the differences is taken as an estimate of the uncertainty in Z(t) which is plotted in Fig. 9. For a test of the robustness of this Z(t) solution to the selected CMD area, defined above, we varied the I-band range and colour boundary by up to 0.1 mag. The variation in Z is of the order of 20% which is consistent with the largest error bar size.

For the past 1 Gyr, our only estimate of the mean Z abundance comes from spectroscopy of two blue super-giants outside the central region (r$``$ 2.3′) of NGC 300 (Bresolin et al. 2002b, Urbaneja et al. 2002)777The CMD may not be used mainly due to the lack of a relatively Z sensitive feature for stellar ages below about 1 Gyr – e.g. Fig. 8, right-hand panel. We take the average and rms of these, and included them in Fig. 9. It turns out that extrapolation of Z(t) to ages less than 1 Gyr leads to a fine agreement with the empirical estimates; but ongoing (e.g. Bresolin et al. 2002b) and future spectroscopic studies are needed for better global Z information on NGC 300.

Next, we computed a synthetic CMD for a stellar population with ages in a narrow interval using a library of stellar evolution tracks (Bertelli et al. 1994). We call this a partial CMD: taking a set of partial CMDs, each covering different age intervals (e.g. several times 108 yr to a few times 109 yr), the full galaxy age ($``$ 15 Gyr) is accounted for. A combination of partial CMDs that covers the full age of the galaxy is called a candidate global synthetic CMD.

For each real CMD, we computed a total of 50,000 candidate global synthetic CMDs in the following way. Each such CMD was made by simply extracting all stars from the synthetized stellar population (mentioned earlier) such that in each age interval888Shorter age intervals were adopted for the past 6 Gyr than for the Z(t) estimate (see Fig. 10) because time resolution is potentially much better for SFR calculations than that of Z over the past few $`\times `$109 yr, especially if dramatic SFR changes could have occurred (e.g. see Williams 2002). Interpolation was used to assign minimum and maximum Z values to the shorter age bins at ages greater than 1 Gyr. there are only stars of the right age and each star has a synthetised Z value between the estimated maximum and minimum value for that age interval. In the next step, we selected eleven relatively age-sensitive CMD boxes sampling the main features of the real CMD; and counted the stars in those boxes (see Fig. 4). To paraphrase Aparicio et al. (1997), let us label the number of stars in box j of the observed CMD with N$`{}_{\mathrm{j}}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{o}}`$, and the number of stars in box j of the partial CMD i with N$`{}_{\mathrm{ji}}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{m}}`$ (the partial CMD of the ith age interval). m is the total number of candidate synthetic CMDs generated. The star counts per box are related to each other by

$$\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{j}^\mathrm{m}=\mathrm{k}\underset{\mathrm{i}}{}\alpha _\mathrm{i}\mathrm{N}_{\mathrm{ji}}^\mathrm{m}$$
(7)
where $`\alpha _\mathrm{i}`$ is the linear combination coefficient in age interval i, and k is a constant scaling factor. $`\alpha _\mathrm{i}`$ and k are related to the SFR, $`\psi (\mathrm{t})`$, by:

$$\psi (\mathrm{t})=\mathrm{k}\underset{\mathrm{i}}{}\alpha _\mathrm{i}\psi _\mathrm{i}\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{i}(\mathrm{t})$$
(8)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{i}`$(t) = 1 if t is inside the current age interval of interest (corresponding to the partial model i; or similarly, the model associated with the age interval i), and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{i}`$(t) = 0 otherwise (Aparicio et al. 2001); and $`\psi _\mathrm{i}`$ corresponds to partial model i. The $`\psi `$(t) values having the highest probability of fitting the data in a chi-squared999$`\chi ^2`$ = $`_\mathrm{k}`$ ((N$`{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{o}}{}_{\mathrm{j}}{}^{}`$ \- N$`{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{fit}}{}_{\mathrm{j}}{}^{}`$) / N$`{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{o}}{}_{\mathrm{j}}{}^{}`$ where k is the number of candidate solutions. sense can be obtained by a least-squares fitting of N$`{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{m}}{}_{\mathrm{j}}{}^{}`$ (i.e. simulated star counts) to N$`{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{o}}{}_{\mathrm{j}}{}^{}`$ (i.e. observed or real star counts), where the $`\alpha _\mathrm{i}`$ coefficients are the free parameters and each is chosen randomly in the range 0 to 1. Coefficients that provide synthetic CMDs that best match the real CMD will have the smallest $`\chi ^2`$ values. Accordingly, after producing 50,000 sets of coefficients (i.e. 50,000 candidate SFR solutions101010The common SFR zero point is determined by knowing the total initial stellar mass of all stars generated while producing the synthesized stellar population.), one has a distribution of $`\chi ^2`$ values. The wide spread actually occurs because there are no unique age indicators for each age interval in our CMDs: indeed, none are expected because of the large degeneracy between age and chemical composition in our data111111Such degeneracy would be partially broken by a longer colour baseline than V-I, e.g. by including suitable near-infrared data. Importantly, however, star formation histories can be measured accurately when photometry reaches to MV=+2 mag (Dolphin 2002), or fainter still, to ancient main sequence turn-off stars.. Thus, we take the standard approach of taking the average of the best solutions with their standard deviation representing the uncertainty: here, we define the best solutions as those meeting a $`\chi ^2`$ cut-off criterion. This criterion is taken as $`\chi ^2`$ $`<`$ ($`\overline{\chi }`$2 \- 3$`\sigma `$), where $`\sigma `$ is the standard deviation in the $`\chi ^2`$ distribution. With this, a few hundred SFR solutions or less than 1% of all the candidate solutions were selected. For each set of coefficients that satisfied the criterion, an estimate of the SFR(t) was obtained; and the standard deviation of all the SFR estimates in a given time interval was taken as the uncertainty in that interval. The mean SFR is plotted on a logarithmic scale against time in Fig. 10 for each field together with the estimated SFR uncertainty.

In order to test the robustness of the derived SFR trend, we also used a different cut-off, namely the $`\overline{\chi }`$2 \- 2$`\sigma `$, giving about 1700 global solutions, and has the effect of increasing SFR error bars only slightly and has a negligible change on SFR(t). We note that the typical error bar size indicates an uncertainty of a factor of about two to three in SFR in general, consistent with the uncertainties presented in studies that considered the upper RGB data and several age intervals between 15 Gyr and now (e.g. Aparicio et al. (1997), their Fig. 8 – LGS 3; Dolplin (2002), his Fig. 7, panel e – simulated galaxy with a relatively complex SFH). It is evident that error size in Fig. 10 tends to grow towards younger ages: on one hand this is due to the decreasing number of recently formed stars in the observed fields – which forces the use of wide age intervals for signal-to-noise reasons, while on the other hand there might well have been episodic star formation during the past few $`\times `$109 yr to which our age binning is possibly fairly insensitive121212Dolphin (2002; his Figs. 5 and 7) demonstrates this latter point through estimations of the star formation histories of synthetic galaxies with episodic star formation histories..

Another point concerns the ability to estimate both Z(t) and SFH(t) from RGB and AGB star data alone, as opposed to also having data on horizontal branch and fainter structure. The concern stems from the difficulty of disentangling the contribution of age and chemical composition to stellar colour, the so-called degeneracy between the two parameters. Thus, in such a situation solving simultaneously for the true Z(t) and SFR(t) is difficult, even if possible, as the reasoning is flawed. The approach that we have applied is, however, one solution to this problem. We recall that the approach that we have adopted has been to first assume a constant SFH and then to solve for Z(t). Then this Z(t) has then been used as input in the effort to obtain the solution for the SFR(t). Given the uncertainties in the final Z(t) and SFH(t), the approach we have followed is deemed to be tolerable.

Even though a detailed chronology of star formation in the WFPC2 field over the past few $`\times `$109 yr is beyond the scope of the present paper, we can form broadly acceptable conclusions on SF activity. Discussion of this issue is given in Sec. 8.

In order to test the reliability of the derived star formation history, we present the synthetic CMDs derived for the fields (F1 and F3) for which an SFH analysis has been possible (Fig. 11), for comparison with the real CMDs (see Fig. 8); photometry uncertainties in the real data have been simulated and added. Overall, there is good agreement for each synthetic/observed CMD pair. The main difference is in the colour–magnitude spread: synthetic CMDs are inclined to have tighter features than their counterparts in the real astronomical data. This could be due to a range of extinction values for the stars (Williams 2002) that has not been estimated by the stellar population synthesis models. We note the difference in the star count density at red colours V-I$``$ 3 mag at/near the RGB peak magnitude in the F1 field, for which the effect is pronounced, is not unexpected because incompleteness becomes significant for such stars. Additionally, the required completeness correction increases significantly at faint magnitudes (I $`>`$ 23 mag) which causes significant scatter in the real data.

## 8 Discussion – Star Formation

In Sec. 7, we determined a low time resolution chemical enrichment law and SFR(t) for two disk fields in NGC 300. In this Section, we summarize briefly the key findings based on WFPC2 data that give insight on the SFH of NGC 300.

The metallicity has been measured in two disk fields to be more metal poor on average than 0.006 (or 0.33 Z) during the lifetime of NGC 300 and, based on the available evidence, Z(t) appears to have changed relatively little during that time. The present day value of Z may be of the order of 0.0035 to 0.0055 based on two empirical (spectroscopic) estimates from Urbaneja et al. (2003). Their best-fit oxygen abundance (12 + log O/H) estimates for two blue supergiants are 8.3 and 8.65 dex (their Table 1). We note that Pagel et al. (1979) measured oxygen abundances in six HII regions in NGC 300. They found oxygen abundances approximately in the range 8.6 to 9 dex. It is encouraging that the oxygen abundances from the two spectroscopy studies roughly agree; this fact strengthens confidence in the derived values of Z in the present paper for the past few $`\times `$109 yr.

For the star formation rate in disk fields F1 and F3, a simple estimate has been made (Fig. 10): the derived mean SF rates are 0.002 and 0.04 $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ yr-1 in the F3 and F1 fields respectively. We note that the apparent SFR increase at about 100-200 Myr may not be real because of the estimated uncertainty – the occurence of this feature could be reflecting a common systematic error for both field, possibly due to the small number statistics available for such young stars, that is not assessed by the $`\chi `$-squared tests. The mean SF densities, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}`$/A, are 3 $`\times `$10-4$`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ yr-1 kpc-2 and 6 $`\times `$10-3$`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ yr-1 kpc-2 in the F3 and F1 fields respectively. These SF density values are consistent with expectations for spiral disks: the SFR density in spiral disks can be up to about 0.1 M yr-1 kpc-2 in spiral disks and typical activity exhibits a steady state behaviour (Kennicutt 1998); SF in nearby spirals has, on average, a strong dependence on galaxy type, weak or no dependence on spiral structure or the presence of a bar, and moderate dependence on past interactions (Kennicutt 1998). It may well be that the average SF activity in the NGC 300 disk follows the typical trend in nearby spiral disks, but conclusive evidence will only be obtained from future observations covering more of the galaxy.

On the other hand, Davidge (1998) reported a suppression of recent star formation in the central region of NGC 300 based on near-IR observations. In our completeness-corrected I-band luminosity functions for stars younger than a few times 108 yr (at V-I $`<`$ 0.6 mag), and brighter than the 50% completeness limits, we also find a significant cut-off in the central function with respect to the F1 and F3 fields (Fig. 12). However, as mentioned in Sec. 5, the central extinction is unknown and may be significant: from the ESO/WFI image there is evidence for distinct dust shells in part of the F1 FoV that are superimposed on a much more widely spread dust cloud. Consequently, internal extinction could possibly explain the truncation of the central I-band luminosity function: about one to two magnitudes of I-band extinction would be needed in order to dim the brightest object observed in the outer fields (I$``$18 mag) to match the brightest stars in the central field (Fig. 3). Lastly, central ring-like gas (but also dust) structures are expected based on simuations of the detailed chemical and dynamical evolution of galaxies (e.g. Samland & Gerhard 2003).

Another issue is that there has been an increase in SFR over the last few Gyr in NGC 300. We know that the observed increase in SF activity in the F1 and F3 disk fields is not unprecedented in some spiral galaxy studies: some sites in M31 have SF rates indicating that sufficient gas may have been retained and/or acquired for continued or episodic star formation (Williams 2002; Williams 2003, based on the SFR measured in OB associations).

Finally, there is the issue of why there has been relatively little increase in Z over time in NGC 300 and why it appears not to have changed significantly over the lifetime of the galaxy. A possible solution is that metal-poor gas has been acquired by NGC 300. In the context of metal-poor gas acquisition through past encounters, we note that intergalactic gas and stars may be a partial signature of such encounters: a clustering of HI clouds around NGC 300 and NGC 55 was found by Haynes & Roberts (1979) based on sensitive 21 cm observations; but uncertainty over group membership of clouds remains (Haynes & Roberts 1979). We also note that colour gradients and morphological studies of spiral galaxies can reveal clues about past mergers: no evidence for a colour gradient in NGC 300 was found by C85, and a detailed study of the morphology of NGC 300 (e.g. examining distorted isophotes hinted at in Fig. 1) remains to be tackled.

## 9 Conclusions

We have presented the first WFPC2 V, I photometry for the Sculptor Group late-type spiral galaxy NGC 300 in four fields ranging from the centre to the outer-edge. In particular, we have the following conclusions.

1. We have derived the first estimate of the star formation history in two disk fields. Our analysis indicates that stars were born at similar epochs and star formation activity possibly increased on average over time, but at different mean rates.

2. The main stellar population is predominantly old, consisting of RGB and AGB stars, based on a synthetic CMD analysis. Z is found to have been more metal poor than 0.006 (or 0.33 Z) with no evidence for significant change in the mean Z value over time in both disk fields.

3. In the circum-nuclear region, we find a dearth of bright stars relative to two disk fields that cannot be explained by observational effects. Taken at face value, this finding would agree with the Davidge (1998) report of suppressed star formation there during the past 109 yr; but the possibility of significant central I-band extinction (up to about 1-2 mag) remains.

4. We have also reported a newly detected a young star association (probably up to $``$ 10 Myr old) of about average size ($``$140 pc) in one of the disk fields that probably coincides with a star-forming region.

5. Lastly, the distance modulus has been determined using Ferrarese et al. (2000) Cepheid-based calibration the tip magnitude of the RGB to be (m-M) = 26.56$`\pm `$0.07 ($`\pm `$0.13) mag. This is in good agreement with the Cepheid distance to NGC 300 from Freedman et al. (2001). Incidentally, both values are in good agreement between with the TRGB distance estimated using the Lee et al. (1993) empirical calibration, which is Cepheid independent. There is, however, a discrepancy with the theoretical calibration of the RGB tip magnitude from SC98, which may be a zero-point problem. Accordingly, this means that the same difference in magnitude between the Cepheid distance and the theoretical calibration of the distance for NGC 300 exists for galaxies in the HST key project on the extragalactic distance scale.

A. Dolphin is thanked for help using HSTphot, as is A. Aparicio for useful comments on the population synthesis code. It is a pleasure to thank the anonymous referee for several useful questions and comments. DB acknowledges the support of the European research and training network on Adaptive Optics for Extremely Large Telescopes under contract HPRN-CT-2000-00147.


text:
# The Skysoft Project

## 1. Introduction

Skysoft111http://www.skysoft.org is an astronomical software directory, but with a peculiar overall approach. Our choice is to design this site as a community supported directory. All people can contribute, with software news, user’s views, comments and bugs/refuses notifications. Developers should post a brief description of their product, with the classification which can ease the search and retrieval of software projects.

## 2. What is Skysoft site about?

Skysoft is designed as a community supported directory. The idea is that, like a chat session, content remains timely because of frequent user interaction. Users and developers are invited to contribute with software news, user’s views, comments and bugs notifications. This site is designed so that software developers acquire more visibility because of astronomical context. Developers can post a brief description of their product, with the classification which can ease the search and retrieval of software projects.

## 3. Why not a traditional site?

Traditional sites, such as ASDS222http://asds.stsci.edu and ASCL333http://ascl.net are valuable, and widely used. But we think they are most useful in the standard context of mainstream data analysis and reduction, where ten-twelve applications do 95% of the work, and remain there for many years. It is difficult for traditional sites to easily accommodate new ideas, new approaches for less-used telescopes+instruments. For instance, during data mining, we have found several interesting approaches to the same specialized problem (not addressed by mainstream tools), but which were rewritten over a decade by different groups, each without knowledge of others’ efforts.

We propose a faster and more flexible approach as a complement to traditional sites. Also we do not need to have all the expertise in all the fields Skysoft covers: it is enough that such expertise resides in the users’ community!

## 4. What is the Skysoft approach and what are its possible advantages?

Skysoft is intended to be built by the community which uses it! If you think that Skysoft lacks some information you deem useful, just add it! Many others can benefit by your (minimum) effort! Plus you gain publicity for your work!

Our aim is to build a site useful for astronomers and instrument developers, and to make this utility widely available, easy to use, and up-to-date with the latest developments. We cannot cope with the enormous amount of information and expertise needed. But the community as a whole has all the necessary competence! If we all share our 2 cents of informations, we will build a site more useful for everybody.

We started with a small amount of software we found in the net, just to boostrap the site. The selection was rather arbitrary, based on our own knowledge. Obviously, we have missed important informations: please add it and help us to improve the site! We are ready to add a newsletter, an event calendar, some discussion lists, and more.

## 5. So do I absolutely need Skysoft?

No. Everything which is available at Skysoft site can be found using other Astronomical software collections, or asking Google, or asking some colleagues and friends. But wait, my last Google interrogation returned 112000 documents! A more specialized site can help speed up things significantly!! We aim to be a first choice in search process!

## 6. Present structure

The Skysoft Software Database has been structured as a tree. This structure is wrong in our view: the software has a structure by far too complex to be represented in such a bidimensional way. Consideration of Database implementation and ease of consultation led us to strip down such a complexity.

Here there is the database structure at the time of last modification. By the dynamic nature of Skysoft approach, this can be outdated.

* Data reduction and Handling

Large general packages

add-on for large packages

Data Handling and Display

Data Conversion

Statistical packages

Utilities
* Data Archiving

Databases

Query Languages

Structure Organizer
* Astronomical Tools

Large Tools collections

Sky maps

Coordinate conversion

Celestial Ephemeris

Observations planning

Physical simulation and modelling
* Developer’s Tools

General Tools

Device Drivers

Human Interfaces

Data Handling libraries

Data Archiving libraries
* Management

Time allocation

Telescope pointing

Project management
* Didactic Tools

Digital Orreries

Learning tools

Amateur’s tools

### Acknowledgments.

Skysoft lives by the collaboration of really many people: thanks to all our guests, collaborator, maintainers and data miners. Thanks to G.Calculli and F.Giovannini for their advise. Founding and support has been provided by: INAF/IRA and Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory.

## References

Hanisch, R. J., Payne, H. E., and Hayes, J. J. E. 1994, in ASP Conf. Ser., Vol. 61, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems III, ed. D. R. Crabtree, R. J. Hanisch, & J. Barnes (San Francisco: ASP), p.41

Nemiroff, R. J.; Wallin, J. F., 1999, BAAS, Vol. 31, p.885


text:
# Higher-Order Results in the Electroweak Theory

## 1 Introduction

By comparing the experimental results for the electroweak precision observables, most prominently the W-boson mass, $`M_\mathrm{W}`$, and the effective weak mixing angle at the Z-boson resonance, $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$, with the predictions of the Standard Model (SM) and extensions of it, the electroweak theory can be tested at the quantum level. The current experimental errors in the determination of $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ are $`\delta M_\mathrm{W}^{\mathrm{exp}}=34`$ MeV and $`\delta \mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}^{\mathrm{exp}}=0.00016`$ datasummer2003 , corresponding to a relative accuracy of 0.04% and 0.07%, respectively.

The prediction for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ is obtained by using as input the Fermi constant measured in muon decay, $`G_\mu `$, the Z-boson mass, $`M_\mathrm{Z}`$, and the fine structure constant according to the relation

$$M_\mathrm{W}^2\left(1\frac{M_\mathrm{W}^2}{M_\mathrm{Z}^2}\right)=\frac{\pi \alpha }{\sqrt{2}G_\mu }\left(1+\mathrm{\Delta }r\right),$$
(1)
where the quantity $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ summarises the radiative corrections. This is done by an iterative procedure, since $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ itself depends on $`M_\mathrm{W}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r=\mathrm{\Delta }r(M_\mathrm{W},M_\mathrm{Z},M_\mathrm{H},m_\mathrm{t},\mathrm{})`$.

The effective weak mixing angle at the Z-boson resonance, $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$, is defined by the effective vector and axial vector couplings for an on-shell Z boson,

$$\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}=\frac{1}{4}\left(1\frac{\mathrm{Re}g_V}{\mathrm{Re}g_A}\right).$$
(2)
## 2 Higher-order results for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$

The one-loop result for $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ sirlin  can be written as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha )}=\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha \frac{c_\mathrm{W}^2}{s_\mathrm{W}^2}\mathrm{\Delta }\rho +\mathrm{\Delta }r_{\mathrm{rem}}(M_\mathrm{H}),$$
(3)
where $`c_\mathrm{W}^2=M_\mathrm{W}^2/M_\mathrm{Z}^2`$, $`s_\mathrm{W}^2=1c_\mathrm{W}^2`$. It involves large fermionic contributions from the shift in the fine structure constant due to light fermions, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha \mathrm{log}m_f`$, and from the leading contribution to the $`\rho `$ parameter, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho `$. The latter is quadratically dependent on the top-quark mass, $`m_\mathrm{t}`$, as a consequence of the large mass splitting in the isospin doublet velt . The remainder part, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r_{\mathrm{rem}}`$, contains in particular the dependence on the Higgs-boson mass, $`M_\mathrm{H}`$. Higher-order QCD corrections to $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ are known at $`𝒪(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s})`$ qcd2  and $`𝒪(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s}^2)`$ qcd3 ; qcd3light .

Recently the full electroweak two-loop result for $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ has been completed. It consists of the fermionic contribution 2lferm ; 2lfermb ; 2lfermc , which involves diagrams with one or two closed fermion loops, and the purely bosonic two-loop contribution 2lbos .

Beyond two-loop order the results for the pure fermion-loop corrections (i.e. contributions containing $`n`$ fermion loops at $`n`$-loop order) are known up to four-loop order floops . They contain in particular the leading contributions in $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho `$. Most recently results for the leading three-loop contributions of $`𝒪(G_\mu ^3m_\mathrm{t}^6)`$ and $`𝒪(G_\mu ^2\alpha _\mathrm{s}m_\mathrm{t}^4)`$ to the $`\rho `$ parameter,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\rho ^{(3)}=\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{Z}^{(3)}(0)}{M_\mathrm{Z}^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{W}^{(3)}(0)}{M_\mathrm{W}^2}$$
(4)
have been obtained for arbitrary values of $`M_\mathrm{H}`$ (by means of expansions around $`M_\mathrm{H}=m_\mathrm{t}`$ and for $`M_\mathrm{H}m_\mathrm{t}`$faisst , generalising a previous result which was obtained in the limit $`M_\mathrm{H}=0`$ faisstold . In eq. (4) $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{Z}^{(3)}(0)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{W}^{(3)}(0)`$ denote the $`𝒪(G_\mu ^3m_\mathrm{t}^6)`$ and $`𝒪(G_\mu ^2\alpha _\mathrm{s}m_\mathrm{t}^4)`$ contributions to the transverse parts of the Z and W self-energies at vanishing external momentum. The corresponding shifts in $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ are given by

$`\mathrm{\Delta }M_\mathrm{W}^{(3)}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{M_\mathrm{W}}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{c_\mathrm{W}^2}{c_\mathrm{W}^2s_\mathrm{W}^2}}\mathrm{\Delta }\rho ^{(3)},`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}^{(3)}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c_\mathrm{W}^2s_\mathrm{W}^2}{c_\mathrm{W}^2s_\mathrm{W}^2}}\mathrm{\Delta }\rho ^{(3)}.`$ (5)
Their numerical effect is shown in Fig. 1. The $`𝒪(G_\mu ^2\alpha _\mathrm{s}m_\mathrm{t}^4)`$ contributions lead to a shift in $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ of up to 5 MeV and in $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ of up to $`2.5\times 10^5`$ for $`M_\mathrm{H}\stackrel{<}{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}350}`$ GeV. The effect of the $`𝒪(G_\mu ^3m_\mathrm{t}^6)`$ contributions, on the other hand, is small. It does not exceed 1 MeV and $`1\times 10^5`$ for $`M_\mathrm{H}\stackrel{<}{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}`$ TeV.

While for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ the complete electroweak two-loop result is known, the prediction for $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is currently based at the two-loop level on an expansion for large $`m_\mathrm{t}`$ up to the next-to-leading term of $`𝒪(G_\mu ^2m_\mathrm{t}^2M_\mathrm{Z}^2)`$ dgs . An evaluation of the complete two-loop contributions to $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is in progress swefffull .

## 3 Simple parametrisation of the full result for the W-boson mass

The full result for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ containing all relevant corrections known so far is obtained from $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ given by

$`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha )}+\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s})}+\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s}^2)}+\mathrm{\Delta }r_{\mathrm{ferm}}^{(\alpha ^2)}+\mathrm{\Delta }r_{\mathrm{bos}}^{(\alpha ^2)}`$ (6)
$`+\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(G_\mu ^2\alpha _\mathrm{s}m_\mathrm{t}^4)}+\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(G_\mu ^3m_\mathrm{t}^6)},`$
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha )}`$ is the one-loop result, eq. (3), $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s})}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s}^2)}`$ are the two-loop qcd2  and three-loop qcd3 ; qcd3light  QCD corrections, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r_{\mathrm{ferm}}^{(\alpha ^2)}`$ 2lferm ; 2lfermb ; 2lfermc  and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r_{\mathrm{bos}}^{(\alpha ^2)}`$ 2lbos  are the fermionic and purely bosonic electroweak two-loop corrections, respectively. The contributions $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(G_\mu ^2\alpha _\mathrm{s}m_\mathrm{t}^4)}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(G_\mu ^3m_\mathrm{t}^6)}`$ are obtained from the leading three-loop corrections to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho `$ faisst  specified in eq. (4).

In eq. (6) the pure fermion-loop contributions at three-loop and four-loop order obtained in Ref. floops  are not included because their contribution turned out to be small as a consequence of accidental numerical cancellations, with a net effect of only about 1 MeV in $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ (using the real-pole definition of the gauge-boson masses). Since the result given in Ref. floops  contains the leading contributions involving powers of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho `$ beyond two-loop order, it is not necessary to make use of resummations of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho `$ as it was often done in the literature in the past (see e.g. Refs. resum ). Accordingly, the quantity $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ appears in eq. (1) in fully expanded form.

In Table 1 the numerical values of the different contributions to $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ are given for $`M_\mathrm{W}=80.426`$ GeV datasummer2003 . The other input parameters are datasummer2003

$`m_\mathrm{t}=174.3\mathrm{GeV},m_\mathrm{b}=4.7\mathrm{GeV},`$
$`M_\mathrm{Z}=91.1875\mathrm{GeV},\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{Z}=2.4952\mathrm{GeV},`$
$`\alpha ^1=137.03599976,\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha =0.05907,\alpha _\mathrm{s}(M_\mathrm{Z})=0.119,`$
$`G_\mu =1.16637\times 10^5\mathrm{GeV}^2,`$ (7)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _{\mathrm{lept}}+\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _{\mathrm{had}}^{(5)}`$. The total width of the Z boson, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{Z}`$, appears as an input parameter since the experimental value of $`M_\mathrm{Z}`$ in eq. (7), corresponding to a Breit–Wigner parametrisation with running width, needs to be transformed into the mass parameter defined according to the real part of the complex pole, which corresponds to a Breit–Wigner parametrisation with a constant decay width, see Ref. 2lfermb . It is understood that $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ in this paper always refers to the conventional definition according to a Breit–Wigner parametrisation with running width. The change of parametrisation is achieved with the one loop QCD corrected value of the W-boson width as described in Ref. 2lfermb .

Table 1 shows that the two-loop QCD correction,
$`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s})}`$, and the fermionic electroweak two-loop correction, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r_{\mathrm{ferm}}^{(\alpha ^2)}`$ are of similar size. They both amount to about 10% of the one-loop contribution, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha )}`$, entering with the same sign. The most important correction beyond these contributions is the three-loop QCD correction, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s}^2)}`$, which leads to a shift in $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ of about $`11`$ MeV. For large values of $`M_\mathrm{H}`$ also the contribution $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(G_\mu ^2\alpha _\mathrm{s}m_\mathrm{t}^4)}`$ becomes sizable (see also the discussion of Fig. 1). The purely bosonic two-loop contribution, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r_{\mathrm{bos}}^{(\alpha ^2)}`$, and the leading electroweak three-loop correction,
$`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(G_\mu ^3m_\mathrm{t}^6)}`$, give rise to shifts in $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ which are much smaller than even the experimental error envisaged for a future Linear Collider, $`\delta M_\mathrm{W}^{\mathrm{exp},\mathrm{LC}}=7`$ MeV mtmwlc .

Since $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ is evaluated in Table 1 for a fixed value of $`M_\mathrm{W}`$, the contributions $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s})}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s}^2)}`$ are $`M_\mathrm{H}`$-independent. In the iterative procedure for evaluating $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ from $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$, on the other hand, also these contributions become $`M_\mathrm{H}`$-dependent through the $`M_\mathrm{H}`$-dependence of the inserted $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ value.

The electroweak two-loop result for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ is very lengthy and involves numerical integrations of two-loop scalar integrals. It is therefore not possible to present the result for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ in a compact analytic form. Instead, the full result for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$, incorporating all corrections listed in eq. (6), can be approximated by the following simple parametrisation mw2loop ,

$`M_\mathrm{W}`$ $`=`$ $`M_\mathrm{W}^0c_1\mathrm{dH}c_2\mathrm{dH}^2+c_3\mathrm{dH}^4+c_4(\mathrm{dh}1)`$ (8)
$`c_5\mathrm{d}\alpha +c_6\mathrm{dt}c_7\mathrm{dt}^2c_8\mathrm{dH}\mathrm{dt}+c_9\mathrm{dh}\mathrm{dt}`$
$`c_{10}\mathrm{d}\alpha _\mathrm{s}+c_{11}\mathrm{dZ},`$
where

$`\mathrm{dH}=\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_\mathrm{H}}{100\mathrm{GeV}}}\right),\mathrm{dh}=\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_\mathrm{H}}{100\mathrm{GeV}}}\right)^2,`$
$`\mathrm{dt}=\left({\displaystyle \frac{m_\mathrm{t}}{174.3\mathrm{GeV}}}\right)^21,\mathrm{dZ}={\displaystyle \frac{M_\mathrm{Z}}{91.1875\mathrm{GeV}}}1,`$
$`\mathrm{d}\alpha ={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha }{0.05907}}1,\mathrm{d}\alpha _\mathrm{s}={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _\mathrm{s}(M_\mathrm{Z})}{0.119}}1,`$ (9)
and the coefficients $`M_\mathrm{W}^0,c_1,\mathrm{},c_{11}`$ take the following values (in GeV)

$`M_\mathrm{W}^0=80.3799,`$ $`c_1=0.05429,`$ $`c_2=0.008939,`$
$`c_3=0.0000890,`$ $`c_4=0.000161,`$ $`c_5=1.070,`$
$`c_6=0.5256,`$ $`c_7=0.0678,`$ $`c_8=0.00179,`$
$`c_9=0.0000659,`$ $`c_{10}=0.0737,`$ $`c_{11}=114.9.`$ (10)
The parametrisation given in eqs. (8)–(10) approximates the full result for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ to better than 0.5 MeV over the whole range of $`10\mathrm{GeV}M_\mathrm{H}1\mathrm{TeV}`$ if all other experimental input values vary within their combined $`2\sigma `$ region around their central values given in eq. (9). This should be sufficiently accurate for practical applications.

In view of the experimental exclusion bound on the Higgs-boson mass of $`M_\mathrm{H}>114.4`$ GeV mhlimit  it seems reasonable to restrict the Higgs-boson mass to the range $`100\mathrm{GeV}M_\mathrm{H}1\mathrm{TeV}`$. In this case a slight readjustment of the coefficients in eq. (10) yields a parametrisation which approximates the full result for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ even within 0.2 MeV, see Ref. mw2loop .

## 4 Remaining theoretical uncertainties

The theoretical predictions for the electroweak precision observables are affected by two kinds of uncertainties, namely the parametric uncertainty induced by the experimental errors of the input parameters, e.g. $`m_\mathrm{t}`$, and the uncertainty from unknown higher-order corrections.

The parametric uncertainties induced by varying the input values of $`m_\mathrm{t}`$, $`M_\mathrm{Z}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _{\mathrm{had}}^{(5)}`$ and $`\alpha _\mathrm{s}(M_\mathrm{Z})`$ by one standard deviation are shown for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ in Table 2. The dominant parametric uncertainty at present (besides the dependence on $`M_\mathrm{H}`$) is induced by the experimental error of the top-quark mass. It is about as large as the current experimental error for both $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$. The uncertainty caused by the experimental error of $`m_\mathrm{t}`$ will remain the dominant source of theoretical uncertainty in the prediction for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ even at the LHC, where the error on $`m_\mathrm{t}`$ will be reduced to $`\delta m_\mathrm{t}=1`$–2 GeV mtlhc . A further improvement of the parametric uncertainty of $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ will require the precise measurement of $`m_\mathrm{t}`$ at a future Linear Collider delmt , where an accuracy of about $`\delta m_\mathrm{t}=0.1`$ GeV will be achievable mtmwlc .

The second source of theoretical uncertainties in the prediction of the electroweak precision observables are the uncertainties from unknown higher-order corrections. Different approaches have been used in the literature for estimating the possible size of uncalculated higher-order corrections, see e.g. Refs. mwest ; 2lfermb . Since several of the corrections whose possible size had been estimated in the past have meanwhile been calculated, there exists some guidance concerning the reliability of the different methods. In Ref. mw2loop  a careful analysis of the remaining uncertainties from unknown higher-order corrections in the prediction for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ has been carried out. The three main sources of uncertainties in the prediction of $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ are from uncalculated corrections at $`𝒪(G_\mu ^2\alpha _\mathrm{s}m_\mathrm{t}^2M_\mathrm{Z}^2)`$, $`𝒪(G_\mu ^3m_\mathrm{t}^4M_\mathrm{Z}^2)`$ and $`𝒪(\alpha \alpha _\mathrm{s}^3)`$. The resulting theoretical uncertainty in the prediction for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ has been estimated in Ref. mw2loop  to be

$$\delta M_\mathrm{W}^{\mathrm{theo}}4\mathrm{MeV}.$$
(11)
This estimate holds for a relatively light Higgs boson, $`M_\mathrm{H}\stackrel{<}{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}300}`$ GeV. For a heavy Higgs boson, i.e. $`M_\mathrm{H}`$ close to the TeV scale, the remaining theoretical uncertainty is significantly larger.

While for the case of $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ unknown higher-order corrections are encountered only beyond the two-loop level, the prediction for $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is affected by further uncertainties arising from the non-leading fermionic two-loop contributions and the purely bosonic two-loop contributions, which have not yet been calculated. Using the same methods for estimating the theoretical uncertainties as in Ref. mw2loop , one finds for the remaining theoretical uncertainty in the prediction for $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ from unknown higher-order corrections

$$\delta \mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}^{\mathrm{theo}}6\times 10^5.$$
(12)
The theoretical uncertainty of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is the dominant contribution to the “Blue Band” indicating the effect of the theoretical uncertainties from unknown higher-order corrections in the global SM fit to all data datasummer2003 ; quast03 .

## 5 Comparison of the SM prediction for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ with the experimental result

The theoretical prediction for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ within the SM is shown as a function of the Higgs-boson mass in Fig. 2. The width of the band indicates the theoretical uncertainties, which contain the parametric uncertainties from varying the input parameters within one standard deviation (see Table 2) and the estimate of the uncertainties from unknown higher-order corrections given in eq. (11). As discussed above, the theoretical uncertainty is dominated by the effect of the experimental error of the top-quark mass.

The theoretical prediction is compared in Fig. 2 with the current experimental value datasummer2003 , taking into account the 95% exclusion bound from the direct search for the SM Higgs, $`M_\mathrm{H}>114.4`$ GeV mhlimit . The comparison clearly favours a light Higgs-boson mass within the SM. Above the LEP exclusion bound on $`M_\mathrm{H}`$ the $`1\sigma `$ bands of the theory prediction and the experimental result for $`M_\mathrm{W}`$ overlap only in a small region, corresponding to $`M_\mathrm{H}`$ values significantly below 200 GeV.

### Acknowledgements

The author thanks M. Awramik, M. Czakon and A. Freitas for collaboration on some of the results discussed in this paper.