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# A Study of QSO Evolution in the X-ray Band with the Aid of Gravitational Lensing

## 1 Introduction

It is important to extend the study of quasars to high redshifts in order to understand the evolution of quasars and their environments. One of the main results of recent studies of quasar evolution is that the quasar luminosity function evolves strongly with redshift. (e.g. Boyle et al. 1987). Many studies of quasar evolution are aimed at explaining this luminosity evolution. The X-ray band probes the innermost regions of the central engine of the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). The study of AGN in X-rays may possibly answer the question of whether there is an evolution in their central engines and how this is related to the evolution of the quasar luminosity function. The observed X-ray continuum emission of AGN is generally modeled by a power law of the form $`N(E)=N_0(E/E_0)^\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ where $`N(E)`$ is the number of photons per unit energy interval. Extensive studies of AGN during the past decade indicate that this power-law component is produced by Compton scattering of soft photons by hot electrons in a corona (e.g., Haardt & Maraschi, 1993; Haardt, Maraschi, & Ghisellini, 1994). The study of this power-law component, its correlations with other AGN parameters, and its evolution reveals important information on the accretion process of the central object. The X-ray photon indices of low-redshift radio-quiet quasars are measured to have mean values of $``$2.6–2.7 in the *ROSAT* soft X-ray band (Laor et al., 1997; Yuan et al., 1998) and $``$1.9–2.0 for the *ASCA* hard X-ray band (George et al., 2000; Reeves & Turner, 2000), and are correlated with the $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ FWHM (Reeves & Turner, 2000). There is no strong evidence that the X-ray power-law index evolves with redshift or correlates with X-ray luminosity to date (George et al., 2000; Reeves & Turner, 2000). Another important parameter that describes the broad band spectral shape of quasars is the optical-to-X-ray spectral index, quantified as $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}=\mathrm{log}(f_{2\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}}/f_{2500\AA })/\mathrm{log}(\nu _{2\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}}/\nu _{2500\AA })`$, where $`f_{2\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}}`$ and $`f_{2500\AA }`$ are the flux densities at 2 keV and 2500 Å in the quasar rest-frame, respectively. Recently, several studies have provided estimates of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ for very high redshift ($`z>4`$) quasars (Vignali, Brandt, & Schneider, 2003; Vignali et al., 2003a, b; Bechtold et al., 2003). Vignali, Brandt, & Schneider (2003); Vignali et al. (2003a, b) found that $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ is mainly dependent on the ultra-violet luminosity while Bechtold et al. (2003) found that $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ primarily evolves with redshift. In addition to spectral studies, variability studies of Seyfert galaxies show that the variability amplitude (excess variance) is anti-correlated with X-ray luminosity (Nandra et al., 1997; Leighly, 1999). Variability studies have been extended to quasars by several groups (George et al., 2000; Almaini et al., 2000; Manners, Almaini, & Lawrence, 2002). Low redshift quasars ($`z<2`$) are found to have an excess variance consistent with the luminosity relation found in Seyfert 1s and there is a possible upturn of X-ray variability for high redshift quasars with $`z>2`$ (Almaini et al., 2000; Manners, Almaini, & Lawrence, 2002).

It is also important to compare the properties of quasars near the peak of their comoving number density, thought to have occurred at $`z2`$, with low redshift quasars. This comparison may provide clues as to what caused the dramatic decay of the quasar number density as the Universe expanded.

Most of the observational and analysis techniques employed to date to study the evolution and emission mechanism of faint, high-redshift quasars are based on either summing the individual spectra of many faint X-ray sources taken from a large and complete sample or obtaining deep X-ray observations of a few quasars. Although these techniques may yield important constraints on the average properties of high redshift quasars they each have significant limitations.

Gravitational lensing provides an additional method for studying high-redshift quasars. The extra flux magnification, from a few to $``$100, provided by the lensing effect enables us to obtain high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) spectra and light-curves of distant quasars with less observing time and allows us to search for changes in quasar spectroscopic properties and X-ray flux variability over three orders of magnitude in intrinsic X-ray luminosity. With the aid of lensing, we can probe lower flux levels than other flux limited samples with similar instruments and exposures. This could be an important factor because the X-ray properties of high-redshift, low-luminosity quasars could be different from those of other quasars and by studying them we could possibly obtain information about the evolution of quasars.

Similar lensing studies have also been performed in the sub-millimeter and CO bands (Barvainis & Ivison, 2002; Barvainis, Alloin, & Bremer, 2002), which suggested that gravitational lensing could be an efficient method for studying various properties of high-redshift quasars. Here we present the results of an X-ray mini-survey of relatively high redshift gravitationally lensed radio-quiet quasars. We chose only the radio-quiet quasars in our sample because the powerful relativistic jets in the radio-loud quasars will introduce additional complication when modeling the continuum X-ray emission from the accretion disc.

We use a $`H_0`$ = 50 km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`q_0=0.5`$ cosmology throughout the paper.

## 2 Observations and Data Reduction

Our mini-survey contains eleven gravitationally-lensed, radio-quiet quasars with redshifts ranging between 1.695 and 3.911. Five of them contain Broad Absorption Lines (BALs) or mini-BALs in their rest-frame ultraviolet spectra. Most of the lensed quasars of our sample were observed with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS; Garmire et al. 2003) onboard *Chandra* as part of a Guaranteed Time Observing program (Principal Investigator: G. Garmire). The data for two of the them were obtained through the public *Chandra* archive. Several of them were observed twice. Three of the lensed quasars were also observed with *XMM-Newton*. Table 1 presents a log of observations, including redshifts, Galactic column densities, and exposure times. Each observation was performed continuously with no interruptions.

All of the sources observed with *Chandra* were placed near the aim point of the ACIS-S array, which is on the back-illuminated S3 chip. All of the data were taken in FAINT or VERY FAINT mode. The *Chandra* data were reduced with the CIAO 2.3 software tools provided by the *Chandra* X-Ray Center (CXC) following the standard threads on the CXC website. Only photons with standard *ASCA* grades of 0, 2, 3, 4, 6 were used in the analysis. We used events in the 0.4–8 keV energy range in the spectral analysis and events in the 0.2–10 keV range for the variability studies. The source events were extracted from circles with radii ranging from 3′′ to 5′′ depending on the separations of the lensed images of each quasar. The circles included all of the lensed images. Background events were extracted from annuli with inner and outer radii of 10′′ and 30′′, respectively, centered on the sources. We adjusted the inner and outer radii of the background subtraction annuli in some cases to avoid other sources in the field. The background contributes an insignificant amount to the count rate in a source region, even during a background flare. The average exposure time for the *Chandra* observations was about 25 ks. The detected source count rates ranged between 0.003–0.08 $`\mathrm{s}^1`$.

Three targets were observed with the European Photon Imaging Camera PN and MOS detectors (Strüder et al., 2001; Turner et al., 2001) onboard *XMM-Newton*. The *XMM-Newton* data were analyzed with the standard analysis software, SAS 5.3. The tasks `epchain` and `emchain` from SAS were used to reduce the PN and MOS data and photons of patterns $`4`$ and $`12`$ were selected from the PN and MOS data, respectively. The *XMM-Newton* data are affected more than the *Chandra* data by background flares because the Point Spread Function of *XMM-Newton* is significantly larger than that of *Chandra*-ACIS. Several strong background flares occurred during the *XMM-Newton* observations. These flares are filtered out in the spetral analysis.

## 3 Spectral Analysis

### 3.1 Power-law Continuum

We performed spectral fitting in order to obtain the power-law indices of the X-ray continuum emission components of the quasars in our sample. The photon indices that we measured were in the observed 0.4–8 keV energy range. We used the *Chandra* data for all of the lensed quasars in the spectral analysis except PG 1115+080, where we used the *XMM-Newton* data. RX J0911.4+0551 and APM 08279+5255 were also observed with *XMM-Newton*. We did not use these data, however, because there were large amplitude and long duration background flares in the *XMM-Newton* observations. The background flare in the *XMM-Newton* observation of RX J0911.4+0551 almost spans the entire observation. The background flare in the *XMM-Newton* observation of APM 08279+5255 occurs during the last $`20`$ ks of the observation. We filtered the background flare time from this observation and performed a spectral analysis to compare with our *Chandra* results. For our later correlation analysis, we used the *Chandra* data of APM 08279+5255 to avoid the possible complication from the cross calibration between *Chandra* and *XMM-Newton* instruments. For those sources observed twice with *Chandra*, we performed simultaneous fits to the spectra extracted from the two observations except in the case of APM 08279+5255, where we used only the second observation because it was much longer than the first one.

We extracted spectra for each quasar using the CIAO tool `psextract`. We extracted events from all of the lensed images for each source except for the case of H 1413+117. A possible microlensing event in H 1413+117 appears to amplify and distort the spectrum of image A only and thus affects the spectral slope greatly (Chartas et al., 2003). In this case, we extracted the spectrum of the microlensed image A and the spectrum of the other three images separately. A microlensing event is also detected in Q 2237+0305. However, the spectral shape of the microlensed image A of Q 2237+0305 is not significantly affected by the microlensing event (Dai et al., 2003).

Spectral fitting was performed with `XSPEC V11.2` (Arnaud, 1996). There are typically several hundreds (180–6000) detected source events in the spectra of the target quasars, except for the spectrum of HE 2149$``$2745 which has only 23 detected events. The moderate S/N of our spectra allows us to fit each of them individually using relatively complex models. Thus we can constrain the underlying power-law slopes more accurately than in previous studies of unlensed quasars of similar redshift. The models we used are listed in Column 3 of Table 2. All spectral models included an underlying power-law model modified by Galactic absorption. The Galactic absorbing columns were obtained from Dickey & Lockman (1990).

To account for the recently observed quantum efficiency decay of ACIS, possibly caused by molecular contamination of the ACIS filters, we have applied a time-dependent correction to the ACIS quantum efficiency implemented in the `XSPEC` model `ACISABS1.1`.111ACISABS is an XSPEC model contributed to the *Chandra* users software exchange web-site http://asc.harvard.edu/cgi-gen/cont-soft/soft-list.cgi. If the source was a BALQSO with a medium S/N spectrum, we added a neutral absorption component at the redshift of the source. For high S/N BALQSO spectra such as PG 1115+080 and APM 08279+5255 we used the `absori` model in `XSPEC` to model the intrinsic absorption component as an ionized absorber (Chartas et al., 2002; Chartas, Brandt, & Gallagher, 2003). We added a neutral absorption component at the redshift of the lens for Q 2237+0305 (Dai et al., 2003). For some of the spectra containing emission or absorption line features, we added Gaussian line components to model them accordingly. The spectra of the quasars are displayed in Figures 1. The spectral fitting results are given in Table 2. In Table 2, we also list the observed 0.4–8 keV fluxes and rest-frame 0.2–2 keV and 2-10 keV luminosities for the lensed quasars in the sample not corrected for the lensing magnification. The unlensed luminosities are calculated in $`\mathrm{\S }`$4. We have corrected for the various absorption components when calculating X-ray luminosities. These absorption components include Galactic absorption, absorption in the lensing galaxy, intrinsic absorption, and the ACIS contamination.

The mean photon index of the radio-quiet quasars in our sample is $`1.78\pm 0.06`$ with a dispersion of $`0.27\pm 0.08`$ and the median photon index of the radio-quiet quasars in our sample is 1.86.

### 3.2 $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$

We calculated the optical-to-X-ray power-law slope, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$, for the quasars in our sample. The differential magnification between the optical and X-ray band is insignificant because both of the source regions are estimated to be much smaller than the Einstein radius. The rest-frame 2 keV flux densities were calculated from the best-fit models to the spectra of the quasars. The redshifts of our sample range from 1.7 to 4, thus the rest-frame 2 keV energy falls in the 0.4–0.74 keV observed-frame energy range. We removed all of the absorption components including the intrinsic ones for the BALQSOs when calculating the rest-frame 2 keV flux densities in order to study the properties of the intrinsic continuum. The rest-frame 2500 Å fluxes were obtained from the published optical data in the literature and from current ongoing programs such as the CfA-Arizona Space Telescope LEns Survey (CASTLES) 222The CASTLES website is located at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/glensdata/. and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE). 333The OGLE website is located at http://bulge.princeton.edu/~ogle. We first converted the optical magnitudes to flux densities at the effective wavelengths of the filters, then extrapolated them to the rest-frame 2500 Å flux densities. We used the standard relations between magnitudes and flux densities for the V and R bands. For the F814W magnitudes obtained with the *HST* WFPC2, we used the relation from Holtzman et al. (1995) to convert between magnitudes and flux densities. We used $`f_\nu \nu ^{0.7}`$ in the extrapolation. Typical quasar optical spectral indices are in the -0.5 to -0.9 range (Schneider et al., 2001). We chose the optical magnitudes from the bands closest to the redshifted 2500 Å wavelength to reduce the error in the extrapolation. We corrected the Galactic extinction based on Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998). The extinction induced by the dust from the lensing galaxies is not significant except for Q 2237+0305, which is lensed by the central bulge of the galaxy. We corrected it according to the appendix of Agol, Jones, & Blaes (2000). The $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ values are listed in Table 3. The listed error-bars of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ are at the $`1\sigma `$ level and account for the uncertainties in the X-ray spectral slope and normalization, the conversion from optical magnitude to flux density and the extrapolation of the optical/UV spectrum. We note that a source may have varied between the optical and X-ray observations thus leading to systematic errors in our estimates of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$. For the range of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ in our sample, a change of optical flux by a factor of two will lead to a change of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$$`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$$`0.1`$. The rest-frame 2 keV and 2500Å flux densities and rest-frame 2500Å luminosity densities are also listed in Table 3. These values are corrected for lensing magnification as we discuss further in $`\mathrm{\S }`$4. In conclusion we find that the mean $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ value for all the quasars in our sample is $`1.70\pm 0.02`$ ($`1.66\pm 0.02`$ without HE 2149$``$2745 which has only 23 X-ray events) with a dispersion of $`0.20\pm 0.03`$.

## 4 Magnification and Intrinsic X-ray Luminosities

We estimated the magnification for each of the lensed systems in order to obtain the unlensed X-ray luminosities of the quasars. We first searched in the literature for magnifications of well-modeled systems. However, not all of the systems in our sample have been previously modeled in detail and for some cases the magnification values are not included in the published analysis. We modeled these systems with the `gravlens` 1.04 software tool developed by C. Keeton (Keeton, 2001a, b). We used a singular isothermal elliptical (SIE) mass profile with external shear in most cases, and took into account optical image positions and flux ratios obtained from the CASTLES survey. We assumed a 20% error-bar for the flux ratios to account for uncertainties from microlensing or differences between optical and X-ray flux ratios. Our modeling results are listed in Table 4. We compared the magnification values that we obtained with those published in Barvainis & Ivison (2002) and found them to be in good agreement. We note that the magnification values obtained may have large systematic errors because the SIE model adopted in this analysis may not be suitable for all the systems. For example, in PG 1115+080, a set of different mass potentials are used in the modeling of the magnification in Impey et al. (1998). A magnification range of 20–46 was obtained for this system. Based on this example, we adopt a factor of two as a typical systematic uncertainty in the magnification. In $`\mathrm{\S }`$6.1 we investigate how this systematic uncertainty could affect for our conclusions via Monte Carlo simulations.

## 5 Variability Analysis

The light-curves for the *Chandra* observations of the lensed quasars of our sample are displayed in Figure 2 binned with a bin size of 1000 s (observed-frame). We show the light-curves of the longer *Chandra* exposure if two *Chandra* observations of the same target are available. We excluded HE 2149$``$2745 in our timing analysis because of its low S/N (only 23 events).

To estimate the relative variability of the light-curves, we used the normalized excess variance (Nandra et al., 1997; Turner et al., 1999; Edelson et al., 2002) defined as

$$\sigma _{\mathrm{rms}}^2=\frac{1}{N\mu ^2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}[(X_i\mu )^2\sigma _i^2]$$
(1)
where $`N`$ is the number of bins in the light-curve, $`X_i`$ are the count rates per bin with error $`\sigma _i`$, and $`\mu `$ is the mean count rate. The error on $`\sigma _{\mathrm{rms}}^2`$ is given by $`S_D/[\mu ^2(N)^{1/2}]`$, where

$$S_D^2=\frac{1}{N1}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\{[(X_i\mu )^2\sigma _i^2]\sigma _{\mathrm{rms}}^2\mu ^2\}^2$$
(2)
This method normalizes the variability amplitude to the flux, thus is less biased towards the low flux light-curves. It is better to apply this method to a sample of light-curves of similar lengths to avoid possible bias. For example, it would be easier to detect long time-scale variability from a light-curve with a long duration. In addition, the bin sizes should be similar in order to compare variability on similar time-scales. High S/N light-curves are needed for this analysis as the variability could be easily dominated by noise in the low S/N light-curves. This excess variance method also has some limitations. One of them is that it is not very sensitive to short flares of moderate amplitude. The excess variance values for *Chandra* light-curves with three different bin sizes are listed in Table 5. We also calculated the excess variance for the three sources observed with *XMM-Newton* and the results are listed in Table 6. The background was subtracted in the calculation. Overall, the error-bars on the excess variance are quite large and in some cases, the values are negative. Therefore, for most quasars we can really only obtain an upper limit on the value of the excess variance.

## 6 Results and Discussion

### 6.1 Luminosity and Spectral Index

The unlensed 0.2–2 keV and 2–10 keV X-ray luminosities of the lensed quasars in our mini-survey range from $`10^{43}`$ to $`10^{46}`$ erg s-1. The mean spectral index of our sample, 1.78, is consistent with the value of 1.84 from the recent study of very high redshift quasars (Vignali et al., 2003b) and the value of 1.89 from the radio-quiet *ASCA* sample (Reeves & Turner, 2000), especially when one considers the large dispersion of spectral indices in these studies and our small sample size.

We plot the rest-frame 0.2–2 keV and 2–10 keV X-ray luminosity against redshift in Figure 3(a), and the photon indices vs. redshift, 0.2–2 keV luminosity, and 2–10 keV luminosity in Figures 3(b), (c), and (d), respectively. Figures 3(c) and (d) show a correlation between the spectral indices of our sample of lensed quasars and their X-ray luminosities. We tested the significance of this correlation using the Spearman’s rank correlation method. We obtained a rank correlation coefficient of 0.94 significant at the greater than 99.997% confidence level for the correlation between photon index and 0.2–2 keV luminosity and a coefficient of 0.71 significant at the 98.6% confidence level for the correlation between photon index and 2–10 keV luminosity. We note that the measured rest-frame 0.2–2 keV luminosity for high redshift quasars obtained from *Chandra* and *XMM-Newton* data is less accurate than the rest-frame 2–10 keV luminosity because it depends on extrapolation and suffers from the uncertainty in the absorbing columns towards the quasars. We adopt a significance at the 98.6% confidence level for this correlation, evaluated with the 2-10 keV luminosities. We also tested for a possible correlation between X-ray luminosity and redshift and between photon index and redshift and found none.

The correlation between the photon index and X-ray luminosity was a surprising result. Therefore, we tested if this correlation is driven by certain data points. Excluding one of our data points at a time and performing the Spearman’s rank correlation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the 0.2–2 keV luminosity to the rest of the data set, we find a strong correlation with a significance level greater than 99.98% each time. We performed a similar analysis with the 2–10 keV luminosity, and the correlation is significant at the greater than 95% confidence level each time. This indicates that the correlation is not driven by any particular data point. We further performed correlation tests by excluding data points with errors in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ larger than 0.20. Two data points are excluded and the rest of the data points still show a correlation significant at the greater than 99.98% confidence level. The significance is at the 92% confidence level when 2–10 keV luminosities are used. We also tested if there is a bias from different flux levels in our sample such that quasars with low fluxes have a systematically flatter slope because of measurement errors. In principle, this should not be a problem for the sample in this paper because some low luminosity quasars have high S/N spectra as a result of the gravitational lensing effect. To test this, we simulated spectra with the same photon index ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2`$) but with a wide range of S/N and then fitted them with the same models within `XSPEC`. We found that for low S/N spectra, when the total number of photons is less than $``$200, the measured $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ could possibly be flatter by $`0.1`$. This would affect three of our data points: HE 2149$``$2745, LBQS 1009$``$0252, and Q 1208+101 with (one low-luminosity and two high-luminosity quasars). We tested this effect by increasing the photon index by 0.1 for these three quasars and performed the correlation test again and found the correlations between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and 0.2–2 keV (2–10 keV) luminosities are significant at the 99.99% (98.7%) confidence levels, respectively.

A $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ correlation has been previously searched for in other samples of radio-quiet quasars. Reeves et al. (1997) reported first a possible correlation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and luminosity with nine radio-quiet quasars observed with *ASCA*. However, this correlation was later not found in the study of a larger sample of 27 radio-quiet quasars observed with *ASCA* (including the original nine) by Reeves & Turner (2000). George et al. (2000) also searched for a correlation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and luminosity in another sample of radio-quiet quasars observed with *ASCA* and did not find one. However, the quasars in our sample all have relatively high redshifts $`1.7<z<4`$ compared to the redshifts of quasars incorporated in previous studies of the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ correlation. There is only one out of 26 quasars with $`z>1.5`$ in the sample of George et al. (2000), and there are six out of 27 quasars with $`z>1.5`$ in the sample of Reeves & Turner (2000) and most of them have large errors on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. In addition, the high redshift quasars in the sample of George et al. (2000) and Reeves & Turner (2000) have high luminosities and span a small luminosity range of $`10^{45}`$$`10^{46}\text{erg s}\text{-1}`$. The sample of lensed quasars in this paper have lower luminosities and span a larger luminosity range of $`10^{43}`$$`10^{45}\text{erg s}\text{-1}`$. Recently, Page et al. (2003) presented another sample of quasars observed with *XMM-Newton* which contains several high redshift, low-$`L_X`$ quasars. We plotted the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ diagram for quasars of $`z>1.5`$ from the sample of Page et al. (2003), Reeves & Turner (2000), George et al. (2000), and Vignali et al. (1999) in Figure 4. We excluded one data point from Page et al. (2003) with a large measurement error on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. We also excluded PHL 5200 from Reeves & Turner (2000) in our analysis because new *XMM-Newton* observations of the object showed that most of the X-rays originate from a nearby radio source (Brinkmann, Ferrero, & Gliozzi, 2002). We corrected the X-ray luminosity of HE 1104$``$1805 reported in Reeves & Turner (2000) to account for the gravitational lensing magnification of about 12 based on our analysis presented in $`\mathrm{\S }`$4. We used rest-frame 2-10 keV luminosities in order to be consistent with the previous analysis. Most of the data from Page et al. (2003) are consistent with the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ correlation found in our sample of lensed quasars, especially in the low $`L_X`$ range between $`10^{43.5}`$$`10^{45.5}\text{erg s}\text{-1}`$. On the high luminosity end ($`L_X>3\times 10^{45}\text{erg s}\text{-1}`$) of high redshift quasars ($`z>1.5`$), the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ dependence on $`L_X`$ seems to flatten out or even has an anti-correlation pattern. We performed the Spearman’s rank correlation test to all of the ($`z>1.5`$) quasars and did not find a correlation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and 2–10 keV luminosity. We separated the quasars in two groups with luminosities below and above $`3\times 10^{45}\text{erg s}\text{-1}`$ and performed the rank correlation again to each group. The low luminosity quasars show a strong correlation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and 2–10 keV luminosity at the 99.97% confidence level and the high luminosity quasars show an anti-correlation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and 2–10 keV luminosity at the 98.9% confidence level.

We performed a Monte-Carlo simulation to test how much the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ correlation is affected by the uncertainty of the magnification factors of our lensed quasars. We used the combined data sets from the lensed sample and from the quasars of Page et al. (2003) with $`z>1.5`$, which show a strong $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ correlation. We assumed a systematic uncertainty on the magnification of a factor of two (see discussion in $`\mathrm{\S }`$4) and simulated 10,000 data sets with $`L_X`$ perturbed from its measured value randomly, within the range of this error-bar. We fixed the data points from Page et al. (2003) at their original values. We performed the Spearman’s correlation test between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and 2–10 keV luminosity on the simulated data sets and found that the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ correlation in each simulated data set is at least significant at the 98.6% confidence level for 10,000 simulations and 9,888 of them have $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ correlations significant at the greater than 99.5% confidence level. Therefore, it is unlikely that this correlation is driven by the uncertainties in the magnification factors.

Possible errors in magnification factors, the small number of quasars in the present sample combined with the medium S/N of several of the observations may have led to an unaccounted systematic effect. Additional observations of $`z2`$ lensed quasars with better S/N and a more detailed modeling of all the lenses in our sample will help confirm this result. Although the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ correlation found in this paper could be a result of selection effect, we discuss possible interpretations of this correlation below.

Previous studies did not find any correlation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`L_X`$ in low-redshift quasars and Seyfert 1s. Recently, several X-ray monitoring programs of Seyfert galaxies have indicated a correlation between X-ray spectral index and 2–10 keV X-ray flux (Chiang et al., 2000; Petrucci et al., 2000; Vaughan & Edelson, 2001). The spectra of these Seyfert galaxies steepen as the X-ray flux increases. Vaughan & Edelson (2001) suggested that variations of several properties of the X-ray emitting corona (e.g., electron temperature, optical depth, size) with the X-ray flux may explain this $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ vs. X-ray-flux relation. Similarly, a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ vs. X-ray-flux relation also exists in some Seyfert 2 and radio-loud objects (Georgantopoulos & Papadakis, 2001; Zdziarski & Grandi, 2001; Gliozzi, Sambruna, & Eracleous, 2003). These observations indicate that although the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ relation does not apply to a sample of low-redshift quasars and Seyferts, this relation applies to individual objects. In contrast to the low-redshift quasars, the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`L_X`$ dependence found at high redshift, especially in high-redshift and low-$`L_X`$ quasars indicates that these quasars may represent a distinct sub-population of quasars. It is possible that the properties of the X-ray emitting coronae of the high-redshift quasars are more homogeneous than those in the low-redshift quasars.

### 6.2 Possible Interpretations of the Correlation Between the X-Ray Luminosity and Spectral Index

We explore two possible interpretations of the correlation between the spectral index and the X-ray luminosity in the context of the model of Haardt & Maraschi (1993) and Haardt, Maraschi, & Ghisellini (1994). Our first hypothesis is that there is a narrow range (of order a few) of accreting black hole masses at high redshift while the observed range of observed X-ray luminosities (spanning aproximately two orders of magnitude) is caused by a large range in the accretion rate, i.e., a wide range of Eddington ratios (the ratio of the accretion rate to the Eddington rate). Our second hypothesis is that the opposite is true, namely that the range of accreting black hole masses at high redshift is large (spanning approximately two orders of magnitude), while the Eddington rate is fairly constant and close to unity (i.e., the accretion rate is always fairly close to the Eddington limit, regardless of the mass).

In the model of Haardt & Maraschi (1993) and Haardt, Maraschi, & Ghisellini (1994) the inner accretion disk is sandwiched by a hot, tenuous, possibly patchy corona which emits the hard X-ray photons. The corona cools by inverse Compton scattering of soft photons ($`E\stackrel{<}{}100`$ eV) from the underlying disk, which results in the hard X-ray photons that we observe. Haardt, Maraschi, & Ghisellini (1997) explored how the model predictions change for a wide range of the system parameters, namely the optical depth and temperature of the corona and the temperature of the (assumed) black-body spectrum of seed photons. In particular, Haardt, Maraschi, & Ghisellini (1997) found that the 2–10 keV spectral index is nearly proportional to the optical depth in the hot corona and also decreases as the temperature of seed soft-photon spectrum increases. Moreover, in the case of a “compact” corona, i.e., one in which pair production is high enough that the Compton scattering optical depth is dominated by electron-positron pairs, the 2–10 keV spectral index is nearly proportional to the log of the 2–10 keV luminosity, just as we have found observationally.

In our first hypothesis the observed range of luminosities is set by the range of accretion rates, with the black hole mass being nearly constant. In this context the observed correlation might be explained if the optical depth in the hot corona is somehow related to the accretion rate; for example, the density of the corona could increase with accretion rate and so would the optical depth. There is a competing effect, however: as the accretion rate decreases so does the temperature of the underlying thin disk, which provides the seed photons, with the result that the spectral index of the emerging X-ray spectrum increases.

In our second hypothesis, the accretion rate for all objects is very close to the Eddington limit, while the observed range in luminosity is set by a range in black hole masses. In the context of this hypothesis, and under the assumption that the optical depth of the corona is dominated by electron-positron pairs, Haardt, Maraschi, & Ghisellini (1997) predict a correlation between the 2–10 keV spectral index and luminosity just like the one we observe. The optical depth in this case depends only on the “compactness” of the corona, which can be expressed as $`\mathrm{}_c10^4(h/r^2)(L_X/L_{Edd})`$ (Haardt & Maraschi, 1993), where $`L_X/L_{Edd}`$ is the ratio of the X-ray luminosity to the Eddington luminosity (roughly proportional to the Eddington ratio) and $`h`$ and $`r`$ are the vertical and radial extent of the corona in units of the Schwartzschild radius. Thus, in this scenario, the spectral index could increase if the compactness of the corona increases with black hole mass (See equation 16 of Haardt & Maraschi (1993)), with the consequence that the emerging 2-10 keV luminosity increases as well. Moreover, as the optical depth reaches unity, the spectral index reaches its maximum value and begins to decline for larger optical depths. This feature may explain the turnover that we observe in the spectral index $`vs`$ luminosity plot of Figure 4. We therefore favor this interpretation over the previous one. This interpretation is also appealing because it is consistent with the predictions of semi-analytic models of Kauffmann & Haehnelt (2000) for the cosmological evolution of supermassive black holes and their fueling rates. In particular, these authors predict that at redshifts between 1.5 and 3, the fueling rate of supermassive black holes in quasars are within a factor of a few of the Eddington limit, while their masses span the range between $`10^7`$ and $`10^9`$ M.

### 6.3 The Optical-to-X-Ray Index, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$

Vignali, Brandt, & Schneider (2003); Vignali et al. (2003a, b) found that the optical-to-X-ray index, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$, of radio-quiet quasars is mainly dependent on the rest-frame ultra-violet luminosity such that quasars with higher ultra-violet luminosities have steeper $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ values (see Figure 5). They also do not detect a significant redshift dependence of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ in their analysis, however, Bechtold et al. (2003) found that $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ depends primarily on redshift ($`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ steepens with increasing redshift) and weakly on luminosity. We compare the average $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$, -1.70 (-1.66 without HE 2149$``$2745), of our sample with the average $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$, -1.71, of Vignali et al. (2003b), and the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ values are consistent within the observed r.m.s. dispersion. The redshift range of our quasars is $`1.7<z<4`$, lower than the sample of $`z>4`$ quasars studied in Vignali et al. (2003b). However, the consistency between the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ values from the lensed sample in this paper and the sample of $`z>4`$ quasars studied in Vignali et al. (2003b) does not rule out a possible small evolution of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ with redshift due to our small sample size. We plotted the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ values from our lensed sample against their redshift and rest-frame 2500Å luminosity density in Figure 5(a) and (b), respectively. We performed the Spearman’s rank correlation test between $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ and $`z`$ and between $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ and $`L_{2500\AA }`$, but found no significant correlation in either case. Considering the large dispersion of the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ values from the best fit $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$$`L_{2500\AA }`$ relation of Vignali, Brandt, & Schneider (2003), it is not surprising that no significant correlation is found in our data set because of the small sample size. We over-plotted our $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ data on the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$$`L_{2500\AA }`$ relation of Vignali, Brandt, & Schneider (2003) with a dispersion of 0.25 as indicated by the shaded region in Figure 5(b), and found that most of our data are consistent with the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$$`L_{2500\AA }`$ relation except one BAL QSO data point.

We also searched for possible correlations between the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ values and other properties of the quasars such as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`L_X`$. The correlation results were strongly biased by the -2.1 $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ value of HE 2149$``$2745. When we removed this data point, no significant correlation was detected.

### 6.4 Short Time Scale Variability

We used the upper limits of the excess variance obtained from light-curves of bin size 1000 seconds when comparing with results for local Seyferts and other high redshift quasars. This bin size corresponds to rest-frame time scales ranging from 200 to 370 s for the quasars in our sample and is similar to the time scales used in other short time scale variability studies in Seyfert galaxies and quasars (e.g. Turner et al. 1999). We plotted the excess variances of the high redshift lensed quasar sample together with the variances for Seyfert 1s (Nandra et al., 1997), NLS1s (Leighly, 1999), LLAGN (Ptak et al., 1998), and high redshift ($`z>2`$) quasars (Manners, Almaini, & Lawrence, 2002) in Figure 6. We fitted the Seyfert 1 points with a power law and fixed the power-law index to the same value reported in Nandra et al. (1997), allowing only the normalization parameter to be free. The power-law relation is shown as a solid line in Figure 6. All of the upper limits of the excess variances for the high redshift lensed quasars of this paper are consistent with the Seyfert 1 $`\sigma _{rms}^2`$$`L_X`$ correlation. When we compare the upper limits with the NLS1s data, three of the upper limits of our sample are located below the $`\sigma _{rms}^2`$$`L_X`$ relation for NLS1s, which have about an order of magnitude larger excess variance than the Seyfert 1s. The consistency between the excess variance upper limits of our lensed sample and the Seyfert 1s $`\sigma _{rms}^2`$$`L_X`$ relation does not contradict the possible upturn in the value of the variability of $`z>2`$ quasars for quasars with luminosities of about $`10^{46}\text{erg s}\text{-1}`$ as presented by Manners, Almaini, & Lawrence (2002). Most of the quasars in our sample have redshifts greater than 2, but the luminosity range of our sample is below the luminosity range of Manners, Almaini, & Lawrence (2002).

The excess variance analysis that we discuss in this paper probes the shortest time-scale variability of radio-quiet quasars. There are two main interpretations that have been presented in previous studies to explain the excess variance and luminosity relation. (e.g., Nandra et al. 1997; Manners, Almaini, & Lawrence 2002). First, the more luminous sources may be physically large and lack the short time-scale variability. Second, the more luminous sources may contain more independently flaring regions and these flares contribute less to the total flux for the more luminous sources compared with the low luminous sources. There are several rapid flares observed in our light-curve sample, in particular, such flares were detected in RX J0911.4+0551, Q 2237+0305, and PG 1115+080 (Chartas et al., 2001; Dai et al., 2003, 2004). We performed the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to the light-curves of the individual images of the systems, RX J0911.4+0551, Q 2237+0305, and PG 1115+080, and found the light-curves are variable at the 99.8%, 97%, and 99.6% confidence levels, respectively. These observations support the second explanation where there are also flares in the high luminosity quasars, however, due to the quasar’s high luminosity, flares contribute less to the total luminosity and thus luminous quasars have smaller excess variances.

## 7 Conclusions

We presented results from a mini-survey of relatively high redshift ($`1.7<z<4`$) gravitationally lensed radio-quiet quasars observed with the *Chandra X-ray Observatory* and *XMM-Newton*. We demonstrated how gravitational lensing can be used to study high-redshift quasars. Our main conclusions are as follows:

1. We find a possible correlation between the spectral slope and X-ray luminosity of the gravitationally lensed quasar sample. The X-ray spectral slope steepens as the X-ray luminosity increases. The limited number of quasars in the present sample combined with the medium S/N of several of the observations and the systematic uncertainties from the lensing magnification modeling may have led to an unaccounted systematic effect. Additional observations of $`z2`$ lensed quasars with better S/N and more detailed modeling of all the lenses in our sample will allow us to confirm this result.

Such a correlation is not observed in nearby $`z<0.1`$ quasars suggesting that quasars at redshifts near the peak of their number density may have different accretion properties than low redshift quasars. When we combined the data from other samples of radio-quiet quasars selecting quasars with redshift ($`z>1.5`$) together with the present lensed sample, the correlation is still significant, especially in the low X-ray luminosity range between $`10^{4345.5}\text{erg s}\text{-1}`$. If this correlation is confirmed by future studies, it could provide significant information on the emission mechanism and evolution of quasars.

We suggest that this correlation can be understood if we hypothesize that the quasars in our sample are fueled at rates near their Eddington limit (consistent with recent models for quasar evolution) and that the optical depth of their X-ray emitting coronae increases with black hole mass.
2. We did not find a strong correlation between the optical-to-X-ray spectral index, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$, on either redshift or on UV luminosity in our small sample. However, most of our data points are consistent with the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$$`L_{2500\AA }`$ correlation of Vignali, Brandt, & Schneider (2003).
3. Our estimated upper limits of X-ray variability of the relatively high redshift lensed quasars sample is consistent with the known correlation observed in Seyfert 1s.

We thank Steinn Sigurdsson and the anonymous referee for very helpful comments and discussions. We acknowledge the financial support by NASA grant NAS 8-01128.


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# “Clusterization” and intermittency of temperature fluctuations in turbulent convection

## I Introduction

We consider turbulent convection in a confined container of circular crosssection and 50 cm diameter. The aspect ratio (diameter/height) is unity. The sidewalls are insulated and the bottom wall is maintained at a constant temperature, which is higher by a small amount $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ than that of the top wall. The working fluid is cryogenic helium gas. By controlling the temperature difference between the bottom and top walls, as well as the thermodynamic operating point on the phase plane of the gas, the Rayleigh number (Ra) of the flow could be varied between $`10^7`$ and $`10^{15}`$. We measure temperature fluctuations at various Rayleigh numbers towards the upper end of this range, in which the convective motion is turbulent. Time traces of fluctuations are obtained at a distance of 4.4 cm from the sidewall on the center plane of the apparatus. This position is outside of the boundary layer region for the Rayleigh numbers considered here. More details of the experimental conditions and measurement procedure can be found in Ref. NS1 .

A significant part of convection, even at the high Rayleigh numbers that concern us here, is due to plumes LK . We use the term here merely to denote an organized activity of convection without implying much about their three-dimensional shapes and sizes, or the parameters on which they scale, though a few comments will be made momentarily. The primary goal of the paper is to learn about the tendency of the plumes to cluster together (“clusterization”).

The upper part of Fig. 1 shows a short segment of temperature fluctuations at $`Ra=1.5\times 10^{11}`$. There are four large-scale events within this segment (marked by the letters A-D), and we imagine them to be the manifestation of large-scale plumes. Each event consists of several subevents, and there also exist a number of small events marked a-i. While it may well be that the subevents deserve to be considered separately, we regard them collectively here. Under these circumstances, it is clear that a typical life-time of the large events is of the order of 8 seconds. Noting from Ref. NS2  that the mean speed of the large-scale circulation (“mean wind”) for these conditions is about 6 cm/s, a typical length scale of these events is of the order of 50 cm, which is the characteristic dimension of the apparatus. That is, if these large-scale plumes originate from the boundary layer, it is as if the entire boundary layer on the bottom wall participates once in a while in this activity that we have called the large-scale plume. The maximum temperature in these large-scale plumes is a fraction of the excess temperature of the bottom plate (namely $`\mathrm{\Delta }T/2`$), so, presumably, the fluid that is participating in the formation of a typical large-scale plume comes from the top parts of the boundary layer; or, if a plume does indeed come from the very bottom parts of the boundary layer, it is already partially mixed by the time it reaches the probe midway between the top and bottom walls. They are certainly not small-scale events that scale on the thickness of the boundary layer. This description does not apply to small-scale plumes a-i, though, presumably, they too belong to the same family. In Fig. 1, we show the case of hot plumes, that is, the case when the wind at the measurement point arrives from the hotter bottom plate. One can imagine that the wind direction could be just the opposite, leading to the arrival at the probe of cold plumes coming from the colder top plate. We have analyzed such instances as well. Further, beyond a certain Rayleigh number, as described in Ref. NS2 , the mean wind reverses itself randomly, so that a probe permanently held at one position sees hot plumes for some period of time and cold plumes for some other period of time. We have analyzed the two parts separately by stringing together only hot parts or the cold parts of a measured temperature trace. The data for the two cases have been examined separately. In each case, the telegraph approximation is related to specific properties of the underlying physical processes associated with hot or cold plumes, as they encounter the probe during their motion.

## II Random telegraph approximation

A more detailed discussion of the plumes will be presented elsewhere but we limit ourselves here to a discussion of their tendency to cluster together occasionally. This is not obvious from the piece of the temperature trace shown in Fig. 1, and a longer trace crowds the plumes too much. It may be surmised that the clusterization is indeed responsible for the mean wind in the apparatus. In the usual methods of analysis of turbulent signals my , it is difficult to separate the clusterization effect from the usual intermittency effects arising from amplitude variability. To separate the two effects, we ignore the variation of the amplitude from one plume to another and replace the temperature trace of the type shown in the upper part of Fig. 1 by its random telegraph approximation, shown in the lower part. This approximation is generated from the measured temperature by setting the fluctuation magnitudes to 1 or 0 depending on whether the actual magnitude exceeds the mean value (marked as zero and shown by the dashed line in the upper part of Fig. 1). Formally, for the temperature fluctuation $`\mathrm{\Theta }(t)`$ (with zero mean), the telegraph approximation $`T(t)`$ is constructed as

$$T(t)=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }(t)}{|\mathrm{\Theta }(t)|}+1\right).$$
$`(1)`$
By definition, $`T`$ can assume either 1 and 0. The telegraph approximation can be generated by setting different “thresholds” than the mean. It turns out that most properties examined here are reasonably independent of the threshold; this comment will be made also at other specific places in the paper.

It may be useful to know how the conventional statistics for the random telegraph approximation compare with those of the temperature signal. Figure 2 compares the spectral densities, $`E(f)`$, of the telegraph approximations with those of the full signal. The comparisons are made separately for hot and cold cases. It is clear that the spectra of the telegraph approximation are close to those of the original signal in a significantly large interval of scales. The main difference is that the telegraph approximation is richer in spectral content above a certain frequency. This is not difficult to understand from a visual inspection of Fig. 1.

Of particular interest is the power-law behavior of the spectral densities of the telegraph approximation. For both hot and cold cases, they follow a power-law of the form

$$E(f)f^\beta .$$
$`(2)`$
Though this power-law behavior is clear from Fig. 2, we reproduce in Fig. 3 the spectra of the telegraph signal, computed from several records to attain better statistical convergence, in order to emphasize the power-law scaling. The exponent $`\beta =1.38\pm 0.02`$. A reasonable shift of the threshold does not change the spectral exponent $`\beta `$.

From the closeness of the spectra of the temperature trace with its telegraph approximation, it is inferred easily that the former has a spectral exponent of 1.38 as well, albeit over a smaller range of scales. Observation of the temperature trace spectra with such power law was first made in lib , and was explored theoretically in y , and is now a well-known result.

The probability density function of the duration between events, $`\tau `$, for the telegraph approximation is shown in Fig. 4. Data for the hot and cold cases are given separately. The log-log scale has been chosen to emphasize the power-law structure

$$p(\tau )\tau ^\alpha .$$
$`(3)`$
For both hot and cold cases, we observe $`\alpha =1.37\pm 0.03`$. A reasonable variation of the threshold in the vicinity of the average value does not change the exponent $`\alpha `$.

It is known that, for non-intermittent cases (Ref. jen  and Sec. 4), the relation between the exponents $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ is given by

$$\beta =3\alpha .$$
$`(4)`$
If we substitute in (4) the value of $`\alpha 1.37`$ (as observed in Fig. 4) we obtain $`\beta 1.63`$. This is considerably larger than that actual value measured in Fig. 3, namely 1.38. This discrepancy is the object of interest to us here; as already remarked, since there are no amplitudes involved, it must be related to clusterization entirely (see also jen ).

It is of interest to note here that, for the telegraph approximation of the temperature fluctuation in the turbulent atmospheric boundary layer, we have about the same values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ as the present, while the spectral density of the temperature trace has a roll-off rate of about 1.66 (consistent with the Kolmogorov-Obukhov-Onsager-Corrsin theory my ). It is clear that the spectra of the temperature signal and its telegraph approximation are closer in confined convection than in atmospheric turbulence.

## III Quantifying clusterization

The difference between the observed telegraph spectral exponent ($`\beta 1.38`$) and its value given by Eq. (4) ($`1.63`$) is a quantitative measure of clusterization jen  of plume-like objects observed in temperature traces. This is a part of intermittency.

Intermittency of the so-called temperature dissipation rate my ,sa  is characterized in turbulence by

$$\chi =|\frac{dT^2}{dt}|.$$
$`(5)`$
Following Obukhov my , the local average

$$\chi _\tau =\frac{1}{\tau }_t^{t+\tau }\chi (t)𝑑t$$

can be used to describe the intermittency of $`\chi `$. The scaling of the moments,

$$\frac{\chi _\tau ^q}{\chi _\tau ^q}\tau ^{\mu _q},$$
$`(6)`$
assuming that scaling exists, is a common tool for the description of the intermittency my ,sa . Intermittent signals possess a non-zero value of the exponent $`\mu _q`$. Of particular interest is the exponent $`\mu _2`$ for the second-order moment.

The telegraph approximation is a composite of Heaviside step functions, so the dissipation rate (5) is a composite of pulses (i.e. delta-functions) located at the edges of the boxes of the telegraph signal. For the uniform random distribution of the pulses along the time axis, $`\mu _q=0`$. Non-zero values of $`\mu _q`$ mean that there is a clusterization of pulses. Figure 5 shows dependence of the normalized dissipation rate $`\chi _\tau ^2`$ on $`\tau `$ for the telegraph approximation of hot and cold signals. The straight lines (the best fits) are drawn to indicate the scaling law (6), for $`q=2`$. It should be noted that scaling interval for the dissipation rate is the same as for the PDF and for the spectrum (cf. Figs. 3 and 4). Values of the intermittency exponent $`\mu _2`$, calculated as slopes of the straight lines in Fig. 5 is $`\mu _20.47\pm 0.03`$. The relatively large value of the exponent $`\mu _2`$ suggests that the clusterization of the pulses is quite strong.

The temperature dissipation can be also characterized by the “gradient” measure my ,sa

$$\chi _r=\frac{_{v_r}(T)^2𝑑v}{v_r},$$

where $`v_r`$ is a subvolume with space-scale $`r`$ (for detailed justification of this measure, see Ref. my , p. 381 and later). The scaling law of the moments of this measure are important characteristics of the dissipation field sa . By Taylor’s hypothesis my , we can replace $`dT/dx`$ by $`dT/udt`$ (where $`u`$ is the mean wind and $`x`$ is the coordinate along the direction of the wind), and can define the dissipation rate as

$$\chi _\tau \frac{_0^\tau (\frac{dT}{dt})^2𝑑t}{\tau },$$

where $`\tau r/u`$. This, too, should follow the scaling relation (6).

This definition has a problem in the telegraph approximation because $`dT/dt`$ is composed of delta functions. Fortunately, one is interested in the scaling of the discrete representation of the dissipation field, given by

$$\chi _\tau \underset{n=1}{\overset{\tau }{}}(\mathrm{\Theta }_{n+1}\mathrm{\Theta }_n)^2/\tau ,$$

where $`n`$ specifies an interval of space. This discrete definition of $`\chi _\tau `$ avoids the problem with delta functions. Obviously, for the telegraph signal, scaling exponents calculated for the pulse-defined dissipation, Eqs. (5)-(6), and for the discrete spike-like process are identical; this observation is not true for the original temperature $`\mathrm{\Theta }(t)`$.

## IV Clusterization and the spectrum

The spectrum of the telegraph approximation can be related to the probability distribution $`p(\tau )`$ through

$$E(f)=W(t)G(ft)p(t)𝑑t,$$
$`(7)`$
where $`G(ft)`$ is a transform function and the weight function $`W(t)`$ is supposed to have a scaling form

$$W(t)t^\delta .$$
$`(8)`$
Since the quantities $`G(ft)`$ and $`p(t)dt`$ are dimensionless, one can use dimensional considerations to find the exponent $`\delta `$ (cf. Ref. my ) through

$$W(t)\chi t^2,$$
$`(9)`$
and the use of (2),(3) and (7); this yields relation (4).

To estimate the clusterization correction on the relation between scaling spectrum and $`p(t)`$, we should take into account two-point correlations in the telegraph signal. This can be characterized by the two-point correlation function $`\xi (t)`$. In a situation where the two-point correlation function exhibits the scaling behavior

$$\xi (t)t^\gamma ,$$
$`(10)`$
the correlation exponent $`\gamma `$ is the same as the exponent $`\mu _2`$. This is easily seen by the well-known result that the correlation dimension proc  $`D_2`$ is related to $`\gamma `$ through

$$D_2=1\gamma ,$$
$`(11)`$
and to $`\mu _2`$ Ref. sa  via

$$D_2=1\mu _2,$$
$`(12)`$
thus yielding $`\gamma =\mu _2.`$ To estimate the weight function $`W(t)`$ with the same dimensional considerations as above, and to take into account the two-point correlation (which characterizes clusterization), we replace $`\chi `$ by

$$\chi _t^2^{1/2}t^{\mu _2/2}.$$
$`(13)`$
Replacing (9) by

$$W(t)\chi _t^2^{1/2}t^2,$$
$`(14)`$
we have

$$W(t)t^{2\mu _2/2}.$$
$`(15)`$
The corresponding correction of Eq. (4) is

$$\beta =(3\mu _2/2)\alpha .$$
$`(16)`$
Using the value of $`\mu _20.47`$ from Fig. 5 and the value $`\alpha 1.37`$ from Fig. 4, we obtain

$$E(f)f^{1.40},$$
$`(17)`$
which compares well with the behavior found in Fig. 3 (see also lib ,y ).

## V Summary and discussion

The results discussed so far are for a fixed Rayleigh number. The same situation seems to occur at other Rayleigh numbers. For those Rayleigh numbers where there is a reversal of the wind, the concatenated data corresponding to one given direction of the wind follow the same statistics as well. Thus, the characteristics discussed in the paper are generally valid for turbulent temperature fluctuations at all Rayleigh numbers covered in the measurements. The main conclusion is that the telegraph approximation captures the main statistical features of the temperature time trace obtained in convection. This approximation, which gives a clear separation between clusterization and magnitude intermittency, has been useful in demonstrating that there is a significant tendency for the plumes to cluster together. The telegraph approximation turns out to be useful here because of the specific process of heat transport, which is determined in large measure by the random motion of temperature plumes. However, one can expect that this approximation (or its modifications) may be also useful in the description of other turbulent signals. The exponent $`\mu _2`$ for the telegraph approximation, completely determined by clusterization, is about 0.47. This should be compared with the intermittency exponent computed for the $`\chi `$-$`\chi `$ correlation of the full temperature signal, which is about 0.36—consistent with similar estimates available for passive scalars (see, e.g., Ref. pms ). The clusterization exponent is thus larger than the classical intermittency exponent. From this, one can infer that the magnitude intermittency plays a smoothing role on the clusterization effects within the scaling interval.

We thank L.J. Biven, J. Davoudi and V. Yakhot for useful discussions.


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# Optical, UV, and EUV Oscillations of SS Cygni in Outburst11footnote 1Dedicated to my colleague and friend Janet Akyuz Mattei, who this year celebrates her 30th year as director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. ,22footnote 2Based in part on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NA5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

Rapid periodic oscillations have been studied in cataclysmic variables (CVs; war95 ) since the early 1970s in the optical and the early 1980s in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-rays rob76 ; pat81 ; war04 . (Nominally) nonmagnetic, disk-accreting, high mass-accretion rate (“high-$`\dot{M}`$;” novalike variables and dwarf novae in outburst) CVs manifest “dwarf nova oscillations” (DNOs) with periods $`P3`$–30 s and high coherence ($`Q10^4`$$`10^6`$), as well as “quasi-periodic oscillations” (QPOs) with longer periods (by a factor of $`13`$, see §3) and far lower coherence ($`Q1`$$`10`$). In contrast, the oscillations of intermediate polars/DQ Her stars pat94 , the white dwarf analogues of accretion-powered X-ray pulsars, have longer periods ($`P=33`$–7190 s) and far higher coherence ($`Q10^{10}`$$`10^{12}`$). While the pulsation periods of intermediate polars vary gradually ($`|\dot{P}|<10^{10}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{s}^1`$), those of dwarf novae vary significantly during dwarf nova outbursts, decreasing on the rising branch and increasing on the declining branch of the outburst.

Although QPO research in compact binaries largely shifted to LMXBs in the mid-1980s, the study of rapid oscillations in CVs continues to be of value because of the many similarities between CVs and LMXBs, because CVs are in many ways better laboratories in which to study accretion processes (the mass-accretion rate varies systematically by three orders of magnitude during dwarf nova outbursts, the peak luminosities are well below the Eddington value, radiation pressure is unimportant, and relativistic effects are insignificant), because CV oscillations can be studied from the ground in the optical with modest-size telescopes, and because CVs offer unique diagnostics of the oscillations in the optical, UV, and EUV. Since the date of this meeting, Warner war04  has supplied an excellent review of the oscillations of CVs, particularly those in the optical. This contribution concentrates on observations of oscillations in the optical, UV, and EUV flux of the best-studied CV, the dwarf nova SS Cyg. During outburst, oscillations have been detected in its optical pat78 ; hor80 ; hil81 ; pat81 , UV (HST) \[§4\], and EUV/soft X-ray (HEAO 1, EXOSAT, ROSAT, and EUVE) cor80 ; cor84 ; jon92 ; mau96 ; tes97 ; mau01 ; mau02  flux with periods ranging from 3 s to 11 s.

## 2 Simultaneous Optical, UV, and EUV Observations

Mauche & Robinson mau01  and Wheatley, Mauche, & Mattei whe03  have described simultaneous optical (AAVSO visual magnitudes and McDonald Observatory 2.7 m telescope high-speed $`UBVR`$ photometry), EUV (EUVE DS and SW: $`\lambda 70`$–120 Å), and X-ray (RXTE PCA: $`E2`$–15 keV) observations of a narrow asymmetric outburst of SS Cyg in 1996 October. The resulting optical, EUV, and X-ray light curves are shown in the upper panel of Figure 1. They can be understood in the context of the thermal-viscous instability model of dwarf nova outbursts las01 ; sch03 . When the disk surface density reaches some critical value first in the outer disk, the disk plasma is heated locally and a heating wave is launched though the disk, heating the disk plasma and increasing its viscosity. As this material sinks toward the white dwarf, it converts its gravitational potential energy into rotational kinetic energy and radiation. This radiation comes out first in the optical and then in the UV as hotter parts of the disk are activated (in steady state, $`T_{\mathrm{disk}}r^{3/4}`$). When this material reaches the boundary layer between the disk and the surface of the white dwarf, it converts its prodigious rotational kinetic energy into radiation. This radiation comes out first in X-rays because the boundary layer is initially optically thin and hence quite hot (of order the virial temperature $`kT_{\mathrm{vir}}=GM_{\mathrm{wd}}m_\mathrm{p}/3R_{\mathrm{wd}}10`$ keV), and then in the EUV when the boundary layer becomes optically thick to its own radiation and becomes relatively cool (of order the blackbody temperature $`kT_{\mathrm{bb}}=k[GM_{\mathrm{wd}}\dot{M}/8\pi \sigma R_{\mathrm{wd}}^3]^{1/4}10`$ eV). The delay between the rise of the optical and EUV/X-ray emission is a direct measure of the time it takes for the heating wave to sweep through the disk. The delays of approximately $`1\frac{1}{2}`$, $`1\frac{1}{4}`$, and $`\frac{3}{4}`$ days between the rise of the optical and the EUV flux of outbursts of SS Cyg, U Gem, and VW Hyi, respectively, are consistent with a heating wave velocity $`r_{\mathrm{disk}}/t_{\mathrm{delay}}3\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ mau01c .

As shown in the lower panel of Figure 1, oscillations were detected in the EUVE DS count rate light curves during an interval of approximately one week during this outburst. The oscillation was first convincingly detected on the rising branch of the outburst at a period of 7.81 s, it fell to 6.59 s over an interval of 4.92 hr ($`Q=1.5\times 10^4`$), jumped to 2.91 s, and then fell to 2.85 s over an interval of 4.92 hr ($`Q=3.0\times 10^5`$) before observations with the DS were terminated. When DS observations resumed 3.4 days later during the declining branch of the outburst, the period of the oscillation was observed to rise from 6.73 s to 8.23 s over an interval of 2.10 days ($`Q=1.2\times 10^5`$). When the EUV oscillation period was approximately 2.9 s and its amplitude was 25–30%, a conservative upper limit for the X-ray oscillation amplitude was 7% whe03 .

It is clear from Figure 1 that the period of the EUV oscillation of SS Cyg anticorrelates with the DS count rate, being long when the count rate is low and short when the count rate is high. To quantify this trend, Figure 2 shows the log of the period of the oscillation as a function of the log of the DS count rate. As in the previous figure, the data fall into two groups: one during the early rise (distinguished with crosses) and decline of the outburst, the other during the interval after the frequency of the oscillation had doubled. The trends during the early rise and decline of the outburst are the same and can be fit by a function of the form $`P=P_0I^\alpha `$ (where $`I`$ is the DS count rate) with $`P_0=7.26`$ s and $`\alpha =0.097`$, consistent with the trends observed during outbursts of SS Cyg in 1993 August and 1994 June/July mau96 .

Despite any direct evidence that the white dwarf in SS Cyg is magnetic, it is useful to consider the requirements of a magnetospheric model to explain the period-intensity (by inference, period-$`\dot{M}`$) relationship observed in SS Cyg. For a star with a dipole magnetic field $`B(r)=\mu /r^3`$ (where $`\mu =B(R_{})R_{}^3`$ is the dipole moment), the disk is truncated at a radius $`r_0\mu ^{4/7}\dot{M}^{2/7}`$, hence the Keplerian frequency $`\nu _\mathrm{K}(r_0)=\frac{1}{2\pi }(GM_{}/r_0^3)^{1/2}\dot{M}^{3/7}`$. With $`\alpha =3/7=0.286`$, this is far “softer” than the relationship observed in SS Cyg. For a multipole magnetic field $`B(r)=m_l/r^{l+2}`$ (where $`m_l=B(R_{})R_{}^{l+2}`$ is the multipole moment), $`r_0m_l^{4/(4l+3)}\dot{M}^{2/(4l+3)}`$, hence $`\nu _\mathrm{K}(r_0)\dot{M}^{3/(4l+3)}`$. Under these assumptions, SS Cyg requires a surface magnetic field strength $`B(R_{})0.1`$–1 MG (which is sufficiently low to be hard-to-impossible to detect directly), and a high-order multipole field ($`l=7_2^{+4}`$) mau96 .

As restrictive as this is, the situation is worse during the peak of the outburst: after the oscillation frequency doubled, the period-intensity relationship can be fit with $`P=2.99`$ s and $`\alpha =0.021`$: not only did the oscillation frequency double, it’s dependence on the DS count rate became “stiffer” by a factor of approximately 5. This evolution is consistent with SS Cyg pulsating at a fundamental period $`P\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\text{ }>\text{ }}{\text{ }\text{ }}6.5`$ s, then switching to a first harmonic and stiffening its period-intensity (by inference, period-$`\dot{M}`$) relationship so as to avoid oscillating faster than $`2P_{\mathrm{min}}5.6`$ s. This minimum period is consistent with the Keplerian period at the inner edge of the accretion disk if the mass of the white dwarf $`M_{\mathrm{wd}}1.1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (and the Nauenberg nau72  white dwarf mass-radius relation applies). A secure value of the white dwarf mass is needed to confirm this interpretation.

As shown in the upper panel of Figure 1, the McDonald Observatory $`UBVR`$ photometry was obtained on three consecutive nights during the early decline of the outburst. Oscillations in the optical flux were detected on the second and third nights with periods of 6.58 s and 6.94 s, respectively, consistent with the corresponding EUV oscillation periods. During these intervals, the amplitude of the EUV oscillation was 34%, while in $`UBVR`$ the amplitudes were 0.11%, 0.07%, 0.05%, and 0.07%, respectively. On the third night, during two intervals of strictly simultaneous optical and EUV data, the periods and phases of the oscillations were determined to be the same within the errors. The phase difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _0=0.014\pm 0.038`$ implies $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0.10\pm 0.26`$ s for $`P=6.94`$ s. The $`3\sigma `$ upper limit $`\mathrm{\Delta }t0.88`$ s corresponds to a distance $`r=c\mathrm{\Delta }t2.6\times 10^{10}`$ cm. Assuming that the EUV oscillation originates near the white dwarf and that the optical oscillation is formed by reprocessing of EUV flux in the surface of the accretion disk, the delay $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=r(1\mathrm{sin}i\mathrm{cos}\phi )/c`$, where the binary inclination $`i40^{}`$ and $`0\phi \pi `$ is the azimuthal angle from the line of sight. Then, the distance to the reprocessing site $`r=c\mathrm{\Delta }t/(1\mathrm{sin}i\mathrm{cos}\phi )1.6\times 10^{10}`$ cm, which is about 30 white dwarf radii or one-third the size of the disk.

## 3 Chandra LETG Observations

Mauche mau02c ; mau02  presented photometric and spectroscopic results from a Chandra Low Energy Transmission Grating (LETG) observation of SS Cyg obtained on 2001 January 16 during the plateau phase of a wide asymmetric outburst. The resulting spectrum, shown in Figure 3, contains emission lines of H- and He-like C, N, O, Ne, Mg, and Si and Fe L-shell ions in the X-ray band, and a quasi-continuum extending from 40 Å to 130 Å in the EUV band. The EUV spectrum can be modeled as an absorbed blackbody with flux scattered out of the line of sight by scores of ground-state transitions of a broad range of ions in the system’s outflowing wind. The model fit shown in the figure has the following parameters: blackbody temperature $`kT=21.5`$ eV, neutral hydrogen column density $`N_\mathrm{H}=5.0\times 10^{19}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, fractional emitting area $`f=4.5\times 10^3`$ (hence luminosity $`L=4\pi fR_{\mathrm{wd}}^2\sigma T^4=2\times 10^{33}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$), and wind velocity $`V=2500\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ and mass-loss rate $`\dot{M}=3\times 10^{11}\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$. The strongest lines in the model are labeled in the figure and include O VVI, Ne VVIII, Mg VX, Si VIIX, S VIIVIII, and intermediate change states of L-shell Fe.

Power spectra were calculated from background-subtracted count rate light curves constructed from the $`\pm `$ first-order LETG event data. The X-ray and EUV components of the spectrum were isolated by applying $`\lambda =1`$–42 Å and $`\lambda =42`$–120 Å wavelength filters, respectively. Consistent with the 1996 October EUVE and RXTE results, the optically thick EUV component of the LETG spectrum oscillates, while the optically thin X-ray component does not. The power spectrum of the EUV light curve, shown in the upper panel of Figure 4, manifests excess power at frequencies $`\nu _00.0090`$ Hz and $`\nu _10.11`$ Hz, indicating the presence of oscillations at periods $`P_0110`$ s and $`P_19.1`$ s. To investigate these oscillations more closely, the soft X-ray light curve was divided into 47 consecutive 1 ks intervals. Although the power spectra of these light curves are rather noisy, the $`\nu _10.11`$ Hz oscillation typically appears as a single $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =0.001`$ Hz peak with a frequency in the range $`\nu _1=0.109`$–0.112 Hz. The mean of these 47 power spectra is shown in the middle panel of Figure 4. In addition to the peaks at $`\nu _00.0090`$ Hz and $`\nu _10.11`$ Hz, there appears to be a shoulder on the higher frequency peak extending to $`\nu _2\nu _0+\nu _10.12`$ Hz. This feature is revealed as a distinct peak in the power spectrum of the harder ($`\lambda =42`$–70 Å) half of the EUV component of the LETG spectrum. In EUVE DS data obtained during the 1994 June/July outburst of SS Cyg, oscillations were detected at $`\nu _00.012`$ Hz and $`\nu _10.13`$ Hz (and its first harmonic $`2\nu _1`$), indicating the presence of oscillations at periods $`P_083`$ s and $`P_17.7`$ s mau97c . The ratio $`P_1/P_0`$ for the Chandra LETG and EUVE DS power spectra is 0.088 and 0.096, respectively.

SS Cyg is not the only compact binary in which multiple periodicities have been detected. Woudt & Warner wou02  discuss a number of instances when multiple periodicities were detected in the optical flux of VW Hyi in outburst. During the decline of the 2000 February outburst, DNOs with periods $`P_{\mathrm{DNO}}=27`$–37 s and QPOs with periods $`P_{\mathrm{QPO}}=400`$–580 s were detected simultaneously. The ratio $`P_{\mathrm{DNO}}/P_{\mathrm{QPO}}=0.064`$–0.071 is similar to the period ratios observed in SS Cyg. In addition, Psaltis, Belloni, & van der Klis psa99  showed that in five Z sources a tight correlation exists between the “horizontal branch oscillation” (HBO) frequency $`\nu _{\mathrm{HBO}}`$ and the frequency $`\nu _l`$ of the lower frequency member of the pair of “kilohertz” (kHz) QPOs, with $`\nu _{\mathrm{HBO}}/\nu _l0.12`$. Furthermore, by identifying with $`\nu _{\mathrm{HBO}}`$ and $`\nu _l`$ the frequencies of various types of peaked noise components in atoll sources, other neutron star binaries, and black hole binaries, they (and subsequently Belloni, Psaltis, & van der Klis bel02 ) extended this correlation over nearly three orders of magnitude in frequency. Figure 5 shows this correlation and shows that the EUV data of SS Cyg and the optical data of VW Hyi extend this correlation nearly two orders of magnitude lower in frequency. This connection between the oscillations of CVs and LMXBs has since been strengthened by Warner, Woudt, & Pretorius war03 , who used published, archival, and new data to add a number of other CVs to the correlation, extending it another order of magnitude lower in frequency (to the magnetic disk-accreting dwarf nova GK Per, for which $`\nu _{\mathrm{low}}`$ is the QPO frequency and $`\nu _{\mathrm{high}}`$ is the white dwarf spin frequency).

This connection between the oscillations of CVs and LMXBs identifies the DNOs of CVs with the kHz QPOs of LMXBs, and the QPOs of CVs with the HBOs (or the broad noise component identified as such) of LMXBs. Note that the frequencies of the DNOs of CVs and the kHz QPOs of neutron star binaries are similar in that they are comparable to the Keplerian frequency at the inner edge of the accretion disk of, respectively, a white dwarf and neutron star: $`\nu _\mathrm{K}0.14`$ Hz for a $`M_{}=1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ white dwarf with $`rR_{}=5.5\times 10^8`$ cm, while $`\nu _\mathrm{K}\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\text{ }<\text{ }}{\text{ }\text{ }}1570`$ Hz for a $`M_{}=1.4\mathrm{M}_{}`$ neutron star with $`r\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\text{ }>\text{ }}{\text{ }\text{ }}3R_\mathrm{S}=6GM_{}/c^2=12.4`$ km, as required by general relativity. In addition to their frequencies, the DNOs of CVs and the kHz QPOs of neutron star binaries are similar in that they have relatively high coherence and high amplitudes, their frequency scales with the inferred mass-accretion rate, and they sometimes occur in pairs. Assuming that the same mechanisms produce the oscillations in white dwarf, neutron star, and black hole binaries, the data exclude the relativistic precession model and the magnetospheric and sonic-point beat-frequency models (as well as any model requiring the presence or absence of a stellar surface or magnetic field) mau02 .

## 4 HST STIS Observations

The final campaign to be discussed is one in which EUVE and HST Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) observations were obtained during an outburst of SS Cyg in 1999 June. The resulting optical and EUV lights curves are shown in the upper panel of Figure 6. Unfortunately, the outburst proved to be both short, so only two of the HST visits coincided with the peak of the outburst, and weak, so the peak DS count rate was relatively low. EUV oscillations were detected in the DS count rate light curves during an interval of approximately $`2\frac{1}{2}`$ days near the peak of the outburst. The lower panel of Figure 6 shows the evolution of the period of the EUV oscillation, which gradually fell from $`10`$ s to $`8.75`$ s, and then rose back to $`10`$ s. Four orbits of HST observations were obtained during each of four visits on 1999 June 8, 10, 14, and 18. During each visit, STIS was used in TIME-TAG mode with (1) the NUV-MAMA with the G230L grating ($`\lambda 1600`$–2800 Å, one orbit), (2) the FUV-MAMA with the G140L grating ($`\lambda 1150`$–1600 Å, one orbit), and (3) the FUV-MAMA with the E140H echelle grating centered at $`\lambda =1598`$ Å ($`\lambda 1495`$–1690 Å, two orbits). Unfortunately, it was necessary for reasons of detector safety to use the F25NDQ aperture/neutral density filter with the first two configurations. UV oscillations were detected during two consecutive orbits on the early decline from outburst in light curves produced from the echelle grating event data ($`2\times 10^7`$ photons per orbit!) with periods of 9.06 s and 9.28 s, consistent with the corresponding EUV oscillation periods.

More interesting is the spectrum of the UV oscillations. The upper panel of Figure 7 shows the spectrum derived from the echelle grating observation obtained on 1996 June 10.86 UT. It consists of a bright continuum on which are superposed the C IV $`\lambda 1549`$ P Cygni profile, the He II $`\lambda 1640`$ emission line, and various interstellar absorption lines (the discontinuities in the spectrum every $`6`$ Å are due to small errors in the assumed effective areas of the 32 echelle orders). Power spectra were calculated for light curves of each echelle order, and excess power was detected in the neighborhood of the C IV and He II lines, but not in the continuum. To determine the wavelength dependence of the oscillation while maximizing the signal, power spectra were calculated for light curves produced from events from echelle orders 1–6 ($`\lambda 1495`$–1528 Å), 8–11 ($`\lambda 1533`$–1557 Å: C IV), 13–23 ($`\lambda 1562`$–1629 Å), and 25–26 ($`\lambda 1634`$–1648 Å: He II). The lower panels of Figure 7 show the relative light curves for each of these channels folded on the 9.28 s oscillation period. By fitting a sinusoidal function $`A+B\mathrm{sin}2\pi (\varphi \varphi _0)`$ to the folded light curves, the relative oscillation amplitudes $`B/A`$ were found to be $`0.13\%\pm 0.06\%`$, $`0.60\%\pm 0.08\%`$, $`0.04\%\pm 0.06\%`$, and $`0.53\%\pm 0.15\%`$, respectively: the oscillation was convincingly detected in the C IV and He II channels, only weakly (at $`2.2\sigma `$) detected in the $`\lambda 1495`$–1528 Å continuum channel, and not detected in the $`\lambda 1562`$–1629 Å continuum channel. This result is in contrast to the eclipsing dwarf nova OY Car in superoutburst, which showed oscillations in the UV continuum, but not in the C IV emission line mar98 . The result for SS Cyg does not exclude the possibility that the oscillation amplitude of the UV continuum was as high as is observed in the optical (0.05%–0.1%, §2). The possibility remains that the optical oscillation, like the UV oscillation, is dominated by the lines. In support of this, note that in the dwarf nova V2051 Oph in outburst, the mean oscillation amplitude of the Balmer emission lines is approximately twice that of the optical continuum ste01 .

How are we to understand these results? Numerous lines of evidence identify the white dwarf/boundary layer as the primary source of the oscillations observed in nonmagnetic, disk-accreting, high-$`\dot{M}`$ CVs. The pulsations of intermediate polars and the $`360^{}`$ phase shifts of eclipsing intermediate polars war72 , novalike variables nat74 ; kni98 , and dwarf novae in outburst pat81  are interpreted in terms of a model in which rotating beams of EUV/X-ray photons are reprocessed in the surface of the accretion disk pat79 ; pet80 . Warner & Woudt war02  argue that DNOs are caused by an equatorial belt on the surface of the white dwarf that is first spun up and then spun down during dwarf nova outbursts, and that QPOs are caused by vertical thickenings of the inner disk, which alternately obscure and reflect radiation from the central source.

The He II $`\lambda 1640`$ Balmer $`\alpha `$ line arises from the surface of the accretion disk and is a probe of EUV flux, as it arises from the cascade following photoionization of He II by EUV ($`\lambda <228`$ Å) photons. The C IV feature, on the other hand, is formed by scattering of $`\lambda =1548`$, 1550 Å photons in SS Cyg’s outflowing wind. It is something of a surprise that this line pulsates at all, given the large volume in which it is formed. Even more surprising is the apparent lack of a phase shift across the C IV profile: the blue and red sides of the profile rise and fall in phase. To investigate the implications of this result, we constructed a simple model in which photons from a central source were scattered into the line of sight by a spherically symmetric constant-velocity wind, taking into account the light travel delays for the scattered photons. Different pulse-phase resolved profiles were obtained for a source with a rotating one-armed beam, a rotating two-armed beam, and an isotropic source whose flux is sinusoidally modulated. The synthetic profiles showed the greatest phase shift between the blue and red sides of the profile for the rotating one-armed beam source and the least phase shift for the modulated isotropic source, but a more detailed investigation is required to determine if the rotating two-armed beam source can be excluded by the data.

## 5 Conclusion

As I hope this contribution has demonstrated, the future of the study of the rapid periodic oscillations of CVs is bright. Additional observations of additional systems can help establish the proposed equivalence of CV and LMXB QPOs, and will provide unique and quantitative tests of QPO models. Data can be obtained from the ground in the optical and from space in the UV and EUV, the system parameters (binary inclination, white dwarf mass, radius, and rotation velocity) can be measured, eclipse mapping in edge-on systems allows the sites of flux modulations to be located and dissected, dwarf nova outbursts provide a dramatic and systematic variation in the mass-accretion rate, and diagnostic emission lines are available for study in the optical, UV, and EUV. The growth area in this field of research in the near future will likely be high-speed spectroscopic observations of CVs with large optical telescopes, such as Keck and the VLT.

I thank my collaborators J. Mattei, E. Robinson, J. Raymond, and P. Wheatley for their contributions to this research, the AAVSO for target-of-opportunity alerts and optical data, P. Wheatley for supplying the RXTE data shown in Fig. 1, and T. Belloni for supplying the neutron star and black hole binary data shown in Fig. 5. Support for this work was provided in part by NASA through (1) Chandra Award Number GO1-2023A issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by SAO for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-39073 and (2) grant number GO-06545.01-95A from STScI, which is operated by the AURA, under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.