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# OPTICAL SELECTION OF GALAXIES AT REDSHIFTS 1<𝑍<3Based in part on observations obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated jointly by the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA, and was made possible by a gift from the W.M. Keck Foundation.

## 1. INTRODUCTION

As the photons from the microwave background stream towards earth they are gradually joined by other photons, first by those produced in the occasional recombinations of the intergalactic medium, later by those cast off from cooling $`H_2`$ molecules, later still, after hundreds of millions of years, by increasing numbers from quasars and galaxies, by bremsstrahlung from the hot gas in galaxy groups and clusters, and finally, shortly before impact, by photons emitted by the Milky Way’s own gas and stars and dust. All reach the earth together. They provide a record of the history of the universe throughout its evolution, but it is a confused record. Two photons that simultaneously pierce the same pixel of a detector may have been emitted billions of years apart by regions of the universe that were in vastly different stages of evolution. One of the challenges in observational cosmology is to separate the layers of history that we on earth receive superposed.

This paper is concerned with a small part of the challenge: locating galaxies at redshifts $`1\stackrel{<}{}z\stackrel{<}{}3`$ among the countless objects that speckle the night sky. The redshift range is interesting for a number of reasons. During the $`4`$ billion years that elapsed between redshifts 3 and 1, the comoving density of star formation was near its peak, the Hubble sequence of galaxies may have been established, and a large fraction of the stars in the universe were born (Dickinson et al. 2003, Rudnick et al. 2003). Observing star-formation at these redshifts will likely play an important role in our attempts to understand galaxy formation.

Identifying galaxies at $`1<z<3`$ would be easy if observing time were infinite. One could simply obtain a spectrum of every object in a deep image and discard those at lower or higher redshift. In practice telescope time is limited and one would like to spend as much of it as possible studying objects of interest—not finding them. Our aim is to present simple strategies that allow observers to locate star-forming galaxies at $`1<z<3`$ with only a minimal loss of telescope time to deep imaging or spectroscopy of objects at the wrong redshifts.

We shall assume throughout that the goal is to identify star-forming galaxies that lie inside a narrow range of redshifts within the wider span $`1<z<3`$. Concentrating on a narrow range has obvious observational advantages; galaxies at similar redshifts have similar spectral features that lie at similar observed wavelengths, and consequently the spectrograph can be chosen and configured in a way that is optimized for every object on a multislit mask. It is also necessary for many scientific programs. One might want to discover where galaxies lie relative to the intergalactic gas that produces absorption lines in the spectra of a QSO at $`z2.5`$, for example, or to create a large and homogeneous sample of galaxies at a single epoch in the past that can then be compared to existing samples of galaxies in the local universe. Projects with wildly different goals may benefit less from the strategies we advocate. Standard magnitude-limited spectroscopy or photometric redshifts might be preferable if (for example) one wanted to create a sample that contained all galaxy types at all redshifts.

Our approach exploits the fact that the wavelength-dependent cross-sections of various common atoms and ions give distinctive colors to galaxies at different redshifts. It has been recognized for decades that measuring a galaxy’s brightness through a range of broad-band filters should therefore provide some indication of its redshift (e.g., Baum 1962; Koo 1985; Loh & Spillar 1986). Recent work suggests that a redshift accuracy of $`\sigma _z\stackrel{<}{}0.1`$ can be achieved for galaxies at $`0\stackrel{<}{}z\stackrel{<}{}6`$ given extravagantly precise photometry through 7 filters that span the wavelength range $`0.3\stackrel{<}{}\lambda \stackrel{<}{}2.2\mu `$m (e.g., Hogg et al. 1998; Budavári et al. 2000; Fernández-Soto et al. 2001; Rowan-Robinson 2003). An accuracy $`\sigma _z\stackrel{<}{}0.1`$ is clearly sufficient for finding galaxies at $`1<z<3`$, but obtaining the necessary deep images through numerous filters consumes enormous amounts of telescope time that could be more profitably devoted to galaxy spectroscopy. We were led to seek specialized color-selection techniques that could identify galaxies at $`1<z<3`$ even in comparatively noisy images taken through a small number of optical filters. 111As readers will notice, the samples created by our techniques will hardly differ from those that would be created if standard photometric-redshift techniques were applied to the same noisy two-color data; our goal is not to disparage photometric-redshift techniques but to adapt them to a new regime.

Such techniques can succeed only if they take advantage of strong and obvious features in galaxies’ spectra. No feature is stronger than the Lyman break at 912Å produced by the photo-electric opacity of hydrogen in its ground state. Meier (1976) argued that the strength of this break would allow high-redshift galaxies to be identified in images taken through just three filters, a claim that Steidel et al. (1996; 1999) have since confirmed. Although the Lyman break itself is not visible from the ground at $`z\stackrel{<}{}3`$, other weaker features are, and the success of two-color selection at $`z>3`$ inspired us try to develop similar two-color optical selection strategies for $`1<z<3`$. Figure 1 shows some of the spectral features that we had to work with. Most obvious, after the Lyman-break, is the Balmer-break at 3700Å. The strength of the Balmer-break can be estimated from the model galaxy spectra described in § 2 or from the galaxy observations described in § 3. § 4 explains how it can be used to find galaxies at $`1\stackrel{<}{}z\stackrel{<}{}1.5`$. Franx et al. (2003) and Davis et al. (2003) have also used this feature to find distant galaxies. At $`1.5\stackrel{<}{}z\stackrel{<}{}2.5`$ no strong breaks are present in the optical spectra of galaxies, but the lack of spectral breaks is itself a distinguishing characteristic of galaxies at these redshifts. §§ 56, and 7 explain. Our results are summarized and discussed in § 8. Together with the Lyman-break technique, the selection techniques presented here allow the efficient creation of large samples of star-forming galaxies throughout the redshift range $`1\stackrel{<}{}z\stackrel{<}{}5`$.

## 2. MODEL GALAXY SPECTRA

Our development of selection strategies began with theoretical models of galaxy spectra. At redshifts $`z\stackrel{<}{}3`$ a galaxy’s optical broad-band colors are determined by the mixture of stellar types it contains. This is in turn largely determined by a galaxy’s star-formation history. Galaxies that formed most of their stars recently have spectra dominated by bright and hot massive stars, while galaxies that formed most of their stars in the distant past will have spectra dominated by fainter, cooler, but longer-lived low-mass stars. We considered five model galaxy spectra that were intended to span the range of possible star-formation histories. Each model spectrum was calculated with the code of Bruzual & Charlot (1996, private communication) and assumed that the galaxy’s star-formation rate as a function of time, $`S(t)`$, was a decaying exponential: $`S(t)\mathrm{exp}(t/\tau )`$. The adopted values of $`\tau `$ and assumed time-lapse since the onset of star formation for our five models are listed in Table 1. Bruzual & Charlot (1993) show that star-formation histories with these parameters reproduce the observed spectra of different galaxy types in the local universe. Because a wide range of star-formation histories can result in nearly identical model spectra, we were not concerned that some of our adopted model parameters are physically impossible at high redshift due to the young age of the universe. Parameter combinations that are more plausible can produce similar spectra, and in any case our aim was only to have model spectra that roughly spanned the range of conceivability. Subsequent empirical refinements of our selection criteria would compensate for any shortcomings in our model spectra.

We estimated the colors of galaxies at different redshifts by scaling the wavelengths of our template spectra by $`1+z`$, applying the appropriate amount of absorption due to intergalactic hydrogen (Madau 1995), and finally multiplying the result by our filter transmissivities. In some cases, mentioned explicitly below, the template galaxies were first reddened by dust that followed a Calzetti (1997) attenuation law. For the reddening $`E(BV)=0.15`$ that appears typical for high-redshift galaxies (Adelberger & Steidel 2000) the resulting change in galaxy color is not large: 0.22 magnitudes from rest-frame 1500Å to 2000Å, 0.16 from 2000Å to 2500Å, 0.13 from 2500Å to 3000Å, 0.21 from 3000Å to 4000Å. The formulae that we used to calculate template galaxies’ colors can be found (e.g.) in § 4.2 of Papovich, Dickinson, & Ferguson 2001.

## 3. OBSERVATIONS

Although our initial ideas for color-selection strategies were motivated by model galaxy spectra (§ 2), our final selection criteria were determined by the observed broadband colors of galaxies at different redshifts.

The galaxies we used lay within fields observed during our survey of Lyman-break galaxies at $`z3`$ (Steidel et al. 2003) or within fields chosen with similar criteria. $`U_nG`$ images of each field were obtained as described in Steidel et al. (2003). In some cases these images were supplemented with $`i`$ band images to increase our wavelength coverage. In one field, the HDF-North, a publicly released $`z`$ image from the GOODS survey (Dickinson & Giavalisco 2002) gave us photometric coverage of the entire optical window. Transmission curves for these filters are shown in Figure 1. The typical set of $`U_nGi`$ images was taken in $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ seeing at the Palomar $`200`$-inch telescope with exposure times (median) of $`7.0`$, $`2.3`$, $`1.8`$, and $`2.0`$ hours respectively. All reported magnitudes are in the AB system. A complete description of our $`U_nGi`$ observations can be found in Steidel et al. (2003).

Galaxies were selected for spectroscopic follow-up on the basis of their colors. Initially our spectroscopy was exploratory, as we sought to establish whether a certain combination of colors reliably indicated that a galaxy lay within a targeted redshift range. During this phase galaxies were observed on multislit masks that were primarily devoted to the Lyman-break survey. The spectroscopic set-up for these observations ($`1{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }.4`$ slits, $`10`$Å resolution, $`4000\stackrel{<}{}\lambda \stackrel{<}{}7000`$Å wavelength coverage, $`1.5`$ hour integration time with LRIS on the Keck I or II telescopes) is described in Steidel et al. (2003). Later, after our initial color-selection criteria had been validated or refined, entire masks were filled with objects that satisfied them, and the spectroscopic set-up was optimized to the targeted redshift. For redshifts $`1.5<z<2.5`$, where our redshift measurements were based primarily on absorption lines in the rest-frame far-UV, the difference from the Lyman-break survey set-up was slight. Most of these spectra were obtained with the blue arm of LRIS using a 400 line mm-1 grism blazed at 3400Å and $`1{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }.2`$ slits. The resulting spectra had $`5`$Å resolution and stretched from $`3100`$ to $`8000`$Å. For roughly half of the spectra we concurrently obtained spectra with the red arm, usually with a 6800Å dichroic and 400 line mm-1 $`8500`$Å grating that provided spectra of $`5`$Å resolution from 6800Å to 9500Å. At $`z1`$ our redshift measurements were based primarily on the \[OII\]$`\lambda 3727`$ doublet. Here we benefited from redder, higher-resolution gratings and could tolerate shorter exposure times. $`0{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }.8`$ slits, $`3`$Å resolution, wavelength coverage from $`6300`$Å to $`8700`$Å, and 1 hour integration times were typical. All data were reduced with procedures similar to those described in Steidel et al. (2003).

Because our goal was to measure the maximum number of galaxy redshifts, we would begin observing a new slitmask after the previous slitmask’s allotted integration time had elapsed, even if (as was usually the case) our exposures had not been long enough to produce spectra that allowed us to measure a redshift for every object. In the best conditions we were able to measure redshifts for $`\stackrel{>}{}90`$% of the objects. In the worst conditions few of our spectra were usable. Averaging over all conditions, our net spectroscopic success rate was roughly $`75`$%. We have been unable to find any evidence that objects with identified and unidentified spectra lie at significantly different redshifts. In the numerous cases where we were able to measure a previously unidentified object’s redshift by observing it again on a new slitmask, its redshift was similar to those of the objects whose spectra were identifiable after the first attempt. Nevertheless readers should be aware that our sample suffers from some incompleteness. Figure 2 shows our spectroscopic failure rate as a function of $`U_nG`$ color for objects whose spectra were obtained with the blue spectroscopic configuration described above and in Steidel et al. (2003). There is little evidence that the failure rate depends strongly on objects’ intrinsic colors within the color selection windows described below.

## 4. COLOR SELECTION AT $`1.0\stackrel{<}{}Z\stackrel{<}{}1.5`$

### 4.1. Balmer-break selection at $`z1.0`$

Most galaxies have a break in their spectra at $`\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}4000`$Å that is produced by a combination of Hydrogen Balmer-continuum absorption in the spectra of B, A, and F stars and CaII H&K absorption in the spectra of F, G, and K stars. The relative strengths of the Balmer and 4000Å breaks depends upon the mixture of stellar types in a galaxy—younger galaxies have stronger Balmer breaks and older galaxies have stronger 4000Å breaks—but few galaxies have no break at all (Figure 3).

Figure 1 suggests that this break should give distinctive broadband colors to galaxies at $`z1`$. At no other redshift will a strong break between $``$ and $`i`$ be accompanied by a flatter spectrum at bluer wavelengths. Our first guess at photometric selection criteria targeting galaxies at $`z1`$ was inspired by figure 4, which shows the $`Gi`$ colors of model galaxies at various redshifts (§2) and of stars in our own galaxy. Spectroscopic follow-up of objects with colors that are characteristic of $`z1`$ galaxies and distinct from the colors of other objects should produce a redshift survey consisting primarily of galaxies at $`z1`$. These objects lie to the right of the diagonal line in figure 4, suggesting

$$i0.4(G)+0.2,G1.8[\mathrm{𝐅𝐍}]$$
(1)
as reasonable criteria for identifying the $`z1`$ galaxies in deep $`Gi`$ images. These criteria are called “FN” in our internal naming convention and may be referred to by that name in subsequent publications.

Even if galaxies at $`z1`$ had colors that matched the models perfectly, and even if we suffered no photometric errors, figure 4 makes it clear that some galaxies at $`z1`$ would not satisfy the selection criteria above. These are galaxies with extreme star-formation histories. At one extreme are galaxies whose present star-formation rates are much lower than their past average. A survey of star-forming galaxies at $`z1`$ (such as ours) will be only negligibly affected by their omission. Of more potential concern are galaxies at the opposite extreme, galaxies with present star-formation rates much higher than their past average. The spectra of these galaxies are dominated by light from massive O stars—by stars whose atmospheres are too hot to contain significant amounts of neutral Hydrogen—and consequently they do not have Balmer breaks. Since a Balmer break begins to be discernible when a star-formation episode has lasted longer than the typical $`10^7`$ yr lifetime of an O star, and since most star formation in the local universe (e.g., Heckman 1997) and at $`z3`$ (e.g., Papovich et al. 2001; Shapley et al. 2001) occurs in episodes that last substantially longer than $`10^7`$ yr, we suspected that our reliance on the Balmer-break in our selection criteria would not cause us to miss significant numbers of star-forming galaxies at $`z1`$.

In order to obtain empirical support for our proposed selection criteria (equation 1), we began in August 1995 to obtain $`Gi`$ images in fields with completed or ongoing magnitude-limited redshift surveys. Four fields were chosen: the 00h53 field of Cohen et al. (1999), the Hubble Deep Field (Williams et al. 1996; Cohen et al. 2000), the 14h18 field of Lilly et al. (1995), and the 22h18 field of Cowie et al. (1996) and Lilly et al. (1995). Spectroscopic redshifts have been published for 1312 objects in these fields combined. The published coordinates for these objects were sufficient for us to easily and unambiguously identify 1138 of them with objects in our images. 738 of the objects are in the HDF-N, where spectroscopic follow-up has been especially deep and complete; their colors and redshifts are shown in figure 5. One can see that the bulk of known galaxies at $`z1`$ have $`Gi`$ colors that satisfy our selection criteria.

The galaxies at $`0.85<z<1.15`$ that do not satisfy our $`Gi`$ selection criteria can be crudely grouped into three classes. Please refer to figure 5. First, there are the handful of galaxies with $`i0.9`$, $`G\stackrel{>}{}2.0`$. These galaxies have rest-frame colors nearly identical to those of local ellipticals (see figure 4). They are objects that formed the bulk of their stars in the past and are no longer forming stars at a significant rate. Their absence from a color-selected survey of star-forming galaxies is expected and harmless. Second, there are objects with colors identical to those of low redshift galaxies but with reported spectroscopic redshifts $`z1.0`$. Some of these objects may have unusual star-formation histories or large photometric errors or exceptionally strong emission lines, and some may have incorrectly measured spectroscopic redshifts. Third, there are objects with measured colors that lie just outside the Balmer-break color selection window. These galaxies may have been scattered out of our selection window by photometric errors, which are typically $`0.2`$ magnitudes in both $`G`$ and $`i`$. Their absence from a Balmer-break selected survey can be largely corrected with statistical techniques described in Adelberger (2002,2004).

Figure 6 presents the data of figure 5 in a way that may be easier to grasp. We produced one alternate realization of figure 5’s data by adding to each galaxy’s $`Gi`$ colors a Gaussian deviate with standard deviation $`\sigma =0.1`$ that is similar to the color’s measurement uncertainty. After repeating this procedure numerous times, we concatenated the alternate realizations into a large list of $`G`$, $`i`$, $`z`$ triplets, and then calculated, for each point in the $`Gi`$ plane, the fraction of galaxies with those colors in the large list that had redshift $`0.85<z<1.15`$. Figure 6 shows the result. As anticipated, the portion of the $`Gi`$ plane that is dominated by star-forming galaxies at $`z1`$ is approximately described by equation 1. One exception is the region near $`G2.8`$, $`i0.9`$, which is populated primarily by galaxies at $`z1`$ but lies outside our selection window. It would be easy to modify the window to include this region, but, as mentioned above, galaxies at $`z1`$ with these colors do not account for much of the star-formation density. We chose to ignore them. Readers interested in stellar mass rather than star-formation rate might choose differently.

Ideal color-selection criteria would be perfectly complete and perfectly efficient; they would be satisfied by every galaxy in the targeted redshift interval and only by galaxies in the targeted redshift interval. Figure 6 shows that in practice the goals of completeness and efficiency are incompatible. Photometric errors and intrinsic variations in the spectra of galaxies cause galaxies inside the redshift interval $`0.85<z<1.15`$ to have a wide range of $`Gi`$ colors. In some cases these colors are identical to those of galaxies at other redshifts. If we wanted our color-selected survey to be as complete as possible, we would want to make our selection box very large so that it would include even galaxies with large photometric errors or abnormal spectral shapes, but this improvement in completeness would come at the price of admitting more galaxies at the wrong redshifts and it would therefore decrease our efficiency. To quantify how closely our selection criteria satisfied the conflicting goals of completeness and efficiency, we used the magnitude-limited surveys discussed above to calculate two quantities. $`\alpha `$, the completeness coefficient, is equal to the fraction of galaxies at $`0.85<z<1.15`$ in the magnitude limited surveys whose colors satisfied equation 1. $`\beta `$, the efficiency coefficient, is equal to the fraction of magnitude-limited survey objects in the selection box of equation 1 whose measured redshift satisfied $`0.85<z<1.15`$.

Table 2 lists $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, with and without weighting by the galaxies’ apparent luminosities through various filters. Our completeness depends on wavelength. Samples selected through equation 1 are especially complete for the bluest galaxies: the $`U_n`$-weighted column shows that approximately $`85`$% of the $`U_n`$ (rest-frame $`1800`$Å) luminosity density detected at $`0.85<z<1.15`$ in magnitude-limited surveys is produced by galaxies that satisfy the selection criteria. The completeness falls towards redder wavelengths, where the total $`z1`$ luminosity density receives larger contributions from older galaxies whose spectra are less dominated by star formation, but even at rest-frame $`4500`$Å (observed $`z`$-band) approximately $`70`$% of the luminosity density at $`0.85<z<1.15`$ is produced by galaxies whose colors satisfy equation 1. Because our color-selected catalogs extend to magnitudes significantly fainter than those of the magnitude-limited surveys, the detected luminosity density at $`z1`$ in our survey is far higher than in the magnitude-limited surveys. The completeness fractions above apply only to the magnitude range $`\stackrel{<}{}24`$ where the surveys overlap.

In the fall of 1997 we began to add occasional $`z1`$ galaxy candidates to our Lyman-break galaxy slitmasks. By the spring of 1999 we had settled on our selection criteria (equation 1) and were devoting entire slitmasks to Balmer-break galaxies. Figure 7 shows the overall redshift distribution of the objects observed to date. Excluding the handful of galaxies with $`z<0.4`$, whose unexpected colors usually resulted from abnormally strong nebular emission lines, the mean redshift is $`z=1.02`$ and the r.m.s. is $`\sigma _z=0.15`$.

### 4.2. Balmer-break selection at higher redshifts

In principle it would be easy to use similar color-selection criteria to find galaxies at almost arbitrarily high redshifts. In practice there is little reason to pursue this selection strategy beyond the redshift $`z1.5`$ where the Balmer-break leaves the optical window; near this redshift bluer spectral features are beginning to enter the optical window and by exploiting these one can continue to take advantage of well-developed CCD detector technology.

Little thought is required to extend the Balmer-break selection to $`z1.5`$. Consider figure 8, for example, which shows the expected $`Gz`$ colors of galaxies at different redshifts. The color cuts

$$z0.8(G)+0.3G<1.8$$
(2)
isolate galaxies at $`1.0<z<1.5`$ from the foreground and background populations. Figure 9, calculated in an analogous manner to figure 6, confirms that objects in the HDF with these colors tend to lie at redshifts $`1.0<z<1.5`$. Table 2 lists the completeness parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ for these selection criteria. Approximately $`80`$% of the known luminosity density at redshifts $`1.0<z<1.5`$ and observed wavelengths $`3000\stackrel{<}{}\lambda \stackrel{<}{}9500`$Å in the HDF is produced by galaxies whose colors satisfy equation 2. These numbers should be treated with some caution, since the incompleteness of the HDF magnitude-limited spectroscopy strongly skews the observed redshift distribution towards the lower end of the range $`1.0<z<1.5`$. Nevertheless we hope to have demonstrated that Balmer-break selection allows one to create reasonably complete catalogs of star-forming galaxies throughout the redshift range $`1.0\stackrel{<}{}z\stackrel{<}{}1.5`$.

## 5. COLOR SELECTION AT $`1.9\stackrel{<}{}Z\stackrel{<}{}2.7`$

Figure 1 shows that the absence of a strong break in the optical window is a distinguishing characteristic of galaxies at $`z2`$. Ruling out the existence of a break requires photometry through at least the five filters shown in the figure, but we wanted to devise selection criteria that required imaging through only three. We chose to use the $`U_nG`$ filters for reasons of convenience; our ongoing Lyman-break galaxy survey was producing numerous deep $`U_nG`$ images that we wanted to use for other purposes.

Since the targeted redshift range $`1.9<z<2.7`$ is similar to the redshift range $`2.6<z<3.4`$ of the Lyman-break survey, we derived our initial estimates of the $`UG`$ colors of galaxies at $`1.9<z<2.7`$ from the observed colors of Lyman-break galaxies. For this we used a sample of 70 Lyman-break galaxies that had spectroscopic redshifts and measured photometry through the $`U_nGJK_s`$ bandpasses. 37 of the galaxies were taken from Shapley et al. (2001) and 33 from Papovich et al. (2001). Following the approach outlined in those papers, each galaxy’s photometry was fit with model spectral energy distributions (SEDs) that had a range of star-formation histories and dust reddenings. We found the best-fit SED for every galaxy in the sample, redshifted the best-fit SEDs to $`z=1.5`$, $`z=2.0`$, and $`z=2.5`$, and calculated their $`U_nG`$ colors as described in § 2. This produced an estimate of the $`U_nG`$ colors that each Lyman-break galaxy would have had if its redshift were $`z2`$ rather than $`z3`$ (figure 10). Star-forming galaxies at $`z2`$ should have $`U_nG`$ colors similar to these.

Useful color-selection criteria must not only find galaxies at the targeted redshifts but also avoid those at other redshifts. Galaxies at significantly higher redshifts will have extremely red $`U_nG`$ colors due to the strong Lyman break. They are unlikely to be confused with galaxies at $`z2`$. The tracks on figure 10 show the colors of model galaxies at lower redshifts. We considered the templates Im, Sb, Sc from § 2 and reddened each to $`E(BV)=0.15`$ with dust that followed a Calzetti (1997) extinction curve. At $`0.3\stackrel{<}{}z\stackrel{<}{}1.0`$ galaxies have red $`G`$ colors due to the redshifted Balmer/4000Å breaks and are easily distinguished from galaxies at $`z2`$. At lower and higher redshifts the potential for confusion is greater. Young galaxies (type Im) at $`z<0.3`$ and $`1.5<z<1.9`$ have $`U_nG`$ colors sufficiently similar to those of galaxies at $`1.9<z<2.7`$ that a clean separation is impossible given $`U_nG`$ images alone. Our selection criteria were designed in large part to mitigate this contamination.

To learn how to design a selection window that would exclude as many interloping galaxies as possible, we began in the fall of 1996 to obtain spectra of objects with colors similar to those we expected for galaxies at redshift $`z2`$. Figure 11 shows how galaxies’ $`U_nG`$ colors depend on their redshifts. In addition to the galaxies whose redshifts we measured for this purpose, the figure includes all galaxies from the Lyman-break survey of Steidel et al. (2003) and all galaxies from the magnitude-limited surveys and our Balmer-break survey described in § 4. Figures 12 and 13 present these data in a way that may be easier to understand. Both are constructed in a similar manner to figure 6. Figure 12 shows the typical $`U_nG`$ colors of galaxies at $`z<1`$. These were the galaxies that we hoped to exclude from our sample. Figure 13 shows as a function of $`U_nG`$ color the relative number density of sources (left panel), the fraction of objects that lie in the redshift range of interest $`1.9<z<2.7`$ (middle panel), and the implied relative number density of sources in the same redshift range (right panel). Because no existing magnitude-limited surveys contain significant numbers of galaxies at these redshifts, the right panel was calculated by multiplying the left and center panels together.

The following selection criteria were inspired by the shape of the contours on these plots, by our requirement that galaxies of all LBG-like spectral types have a finite probability of satisfying the criteria, and by our desire to leave no gap between these criteria and the Lyman-break selection criteria of Steidel et al. (2003):

$`G`$ $``$ $`0.2`$
$`U_nG`$ $``$ $`G+0.2\text{[BX]}`$
$`G`$ $``$ $`0.2(U_nG)+0.4`$
$`U_nG`$ $`<`$ $`G+1.0.`$ (3)
These criteria are called “BX” in our internal naming convention and may be referred to by that name in subsequent publications.

Figure 14 shows the redshift distribution of randomly selected objects whose colors satisfy these criteria. Excluding sources with $`z<1`$, the mean redshift is $`\overline{z}=2.22`$ and the standard deviation is $`\sigma _z=0.34`$.

As could be anticipated from figure 10, the Balmer break in low redshift galaxies can sometimes be confused with the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest absorption in the spectra of galaxies at $`z2`$. The resulting contamination of our sample is severe at magnitudes $`<23`$ but negligible by $`=25.5`$. Restricting the sample to $`>23.5`$ provides a crude but effective way of eliminating low-redshift interlopers.

One can roughly estimate the completeness coefficients $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ for the sample as follows. Let $`P(x,y)`$ be the probability that a randomly chosen galaxy with $`23.5<<25.5`$ and colors $`G=x`$ and $`U_nG=y`$ has a redshift that lies in the range $`1.9<z<2.7`$, let $`n(x,y)`$ be proportional to the observed number density of galaxies with $`23.5<<25.5`$ that have colors $`G=x`$ and $`U_nG=y`$, and let $`I(x,y)`$ be equal to 1 if the color $`G=x`$, $`U_nG=y`$ satisfies equation 3 and to 0 otherwise. Then the probability than an object with $`23.5<<25.5`$ at $`1.9<z<2.7`$ will satisfy our selection criteria is

$$\alpha =𝑑x𝑑yP(x,y)n(x,y)I(x,y)/𝑑x𝑑yP(x,y)n(x,y)$$
(4)
and the probability that an object with $`23.5<<25.5`$ that satisfies our selection criteria will lie at $`1.9<z<2.7`$ is

$$\beta =𝑑x𝑑yP(x,y)n(x,y)I(x,y)/𝑑x𝑑yn(x,y)I(x,y).$$
(5)
The functions $`P(x,y)`$ and $`n(x,y)`$ are shown in figure 13. Numerically integrating equations 4 and 5 yields the estimates $`\alpha =0.64`$, $`\beta =0.70`$. Roughly two-thirds of galaxies with $`1.9<z<2.7`$ satisfy our selection criteria, and roughly two-thirds of the galaxies that satisfy our selection criteria lie at $`1.9<z<2.7`$. The result could have been anticipated to a large extent from the redshift histogram shown in figure 14.

## 6. COLOR SELECTION AT $`1.4\stackrel{<}{}Z\stackrel{<}{}2.1`$

Our approach towards defining selection criteria at these redshifts differs little from our approach at higher redshift. As redshift decreases from $`z=2`$, galaxies become bluer in $`U_nG`$ because a smaller fraction of their observed-frame $`U_n`$ emission is absorbed by the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest. Otherwise their optical colors are largely unchanged. One would expect galaxies with $`1.4<z<2.1`$ to lie just below our $`1.9<z<2.7`$ selection window (equation 3) in the $`U_nG`$ plane. We began exploratory spectroscopy of galaxies in this part of the $`U_nG`$ plane in the fall of 1997. Observations continued sporadically until the spring of 2003. Figure 15 shows that these observations largely conformed to our expectations. The following selection criteria were inspired by the shape of the contours on this plot, by our requirement that galaxies of all LBG-like spectral types have a finite probability of satisfying the criteria (see figure 10), and by our desire to leave no gap between these criteria and the selection criteria of equation 3:

$`G`$ $``$ $`0.2`$
$`U_nG`$ $``$ $`G0.1\text{[BM]}`$
$`G`$ $``$ $`0.2(U_nG)+0.4`$
$`U_nG`$ $`<`$ $`G+0.2.`$ (6)
These criteria are called “BM” in our internal naming convention and may be referred to by that name in subsequent publications.

The completeness coefficients $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ for these selection criteria, estimated with the approach of equations 4 and 5, are listed in table 3. Roughly $`42`$% of galaxies with $`1.4<z<2.1`$ and $`<25.5`$ satisfy the selection criteria, and roughly $`46`$% of the objects with $`<25.5`$ that satisfy the criteria are galaxies with $`1.4<z<2.1`$. Figure 16 shows the observed redshift distribution of the sources whose colors satisfied equation 6. Excluding sources with $`z<1`$, the mean redshift is $`\overline{z}=1.70`$ and the standard deviation is $`\sigma _z=0.34`$. As figure 10 shows, galaxies’ $`U_nG`$ colors do not change by a large amount between $`z=1.0`$ and $`z=1.5`$, and as a result the redshift distribution has a significant tail extending to $`z1`$. This low-redshift tail can be eliminated to a large extent, if $`z`$ band photometry is available, by excluding from the sample any objects whose colors satisfy the $`1.0<z<1.5`$ selection criteria of equation 2. See figure 17. Subsequent papers may refer to this combination of color-selection criteria as “BMZ.”

## 7. $`U_nG`$ COLOR SELECTION AT ANY REDSHIFT $`1<z<3`$

The previous two sections presented color-selection criteria tuned to the two arbitrary redshift ranges $`1.4<z<2.1`$ and $`1.9<z<2.7`$. Some projects may require a sample of galaxies with a similar but slightly different range of redshifts, e.g., $`1.7<z<2.3`$. Minor adjustments to the selection criteria we have presented can tune them to this redshift range or others. To help readers estimate how to adjust our criteria to produce samples with a desired range of redshifts, we show in figure 18 the observed median redshift as a function of $`U_nG`$ color of galaxies with $`>23.5`$ in our spectroscopic sample. Roughly aligning the edges of a selection box with this plot’s contours will produce reasonably good selection criteria tuned to arbitrary redshifts within the interval $`1\stackrel{<}{}z\stackrel{<}{}3`$. Some spectroscopic follow-up will be required to verify the median redshift of the sources and to place limits on the sample’s contamination by stars and low-redshift galaxies.

## 8. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

It is often asserted that studying galaxies at redshifts $`1<z<3`$ will be tremendously difficult. The optical spectra of galaxies near the middle of this redshift range contain neither the strong spectral breaks that are sometimes thought to be necessary for effective photometric selection nor the strong emission lines Ly-$`\alpha `$ or \[OII\]$`\lambda 3727`$ that are sometimes thought to be crucial for spectroscopic identification. The supposed difficulty of galaxy observations causes many to refer to this redshift range as the spectroscopic desert or high place of sacrifice (Bullock et al. 2001).

We are sceptical. The optical colors of galaxies at redshifts $`1<z<3`$ are distinctive. We showed in sections 45, and 6 that these galaxies are easy to locate in deep images using simple color-selection criteria (equation 1 for $`0.9<z<1.1`$, equation 2 for $`1.0<z<1.5`$, equation 3 for $`1.9<z<2.7`$, and equation 6 for $`1.4<z<2.1`$). Once they have been found their redshifts are no harder to measure than those of comparably bright galaxies at slightly higher or lower redshift. This is due in large part to the strength of their interstellar absorption lines. With an appropriately chosen spectroscopic set-up, redshifts are as easy to measure from absorption lines as from the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ or \[OII\]$`\lambda `$3727 emission lines. The point is illustrated by figure 19; during our surveys we obtained as many redshifts per hour of observing time at $`1.5<z<2.5`$ as at the higher redshifts where Lyman-$`\alpha `$ is more easily observed. That was possible only because we knew the approximate redshifts of our sources in advance and could optimize our choice of spectrograph and its configuration accordingly. We could not have measured a redshift for many of the galaxies at $`1.5<z<2.5`$ with a spectrograph that lacked the good UV throughput of LRIS-B. See Steidel et al. (2004) for a more detailed discussion.

Two to three nights spent imaging a single field with a UV-sensitive $`40^{}\times 40^{}`$ camera on a 4m telescope is sufficient to detect $`2\times 10^4`$ galaxies that satisfy one set of the $`1<z<3`$ color-selection criteria that we have presented. A major benefit of color-selected spectroscopy is that it lets one draw statistically significant conclusions from this large number of high-redshift galaxies without having to measure a redshift for every one. For example, the $`1000`$ spectroscopic redshifts we have measured for objects whose colors satisfy equation 1 tell us, with high precision, what the redshift distribution must be for the large ensemble of objects in the $`40^{}\times 40^{}`$ image whose colors satisfy equation 1. One can use this knowledge to derive the luminosity function or spatial clustering strength of galaxies at $`z1`$ from the list of photometric candidates alone. Because the redshift distribution of photometric candidates does not depend strongly on magnitude for faint galaxies (figure 20), it should be possible to use purely photometric observations to learn about the properties of the numerous high-redshift galaxies that are too faint for spectroscopy. This may be best use of our $`z1`$ color-selection criteria, since the brightest galaxies at this redshift are routinely detected in the large and ongoing spectroscopic surveys of Davis et al. (2003) and Le Fevre et al. (2003).

The weakness of color-selected surveys is that not all galaxies at the targeted redshifts will satisfy the adopted selection criteria. A high level of completeness at the targeted redshifts can be obtained only at the price of admitting large numbers of galaxies at the wrong redshifts. With the simple selection criteria we presented, observers will find more than $``$ one-half of the galaxies brighter than the magnitude limit at the redshift of interest and will waste no more than $``$ one-half of their observing time observing objects at other redshifts. 50% completeness is not ideal, but the problem is less severe than one might imagine. First, a star-forming galaxy at $`1<z<3`$ that does not satisfy one of our color-selection criteria will likely satisfy another. Consider galaxies with redshift $`1.8<z<2.2`$ and magnitude $`<25.5`$, for example. Equation 4 implies that only 63% of them will satisfy the $`1.9<z<2.7`$ selection criteria of equation 3. But an additional 26% will satisfy the $`1.5<z<2.0`$ selection criteria of equation 6, and an additional 5% will satisfy the Lyman-break galaxy selection criteria of Steidel et al. (2003). A total of 94% of photometrically detected galaxies with $`23.5<<25.5`$ and $`1.8<z<2.2`$ will satisfy one of the $`U_nG`$ selection criteria we have presented. By conducting redshift surveys with each of these criteria, one can reduce the incompleteness to a reasonably low level. Second, even if a survey adopts only one of our selection criteria, much of the incompleteness can be corrected in a statistical sense. The incompleteness is largely due to the photometric errors in our color measurements, which are not small compared to the size of our color-selection window. Many galaxies whose true colors lie inside our selection window will have measured colors that lie outside the window; many galaxies whose measured colors lie inside will have true colors that lie outside. The result is a broad, bell-shaped redshift histogram rather than a boxcar extending from the minimum to the maximum targeted redshift. Because photometric uncertainties are easy to characterize with Monte-Carlo simulations, their contribution to our incompleteness is easy to understand and correct. Adelberger (2002,2004) explains in detail.

In any case, all observational strategies require some compromise between efficiency and completeness, and the compromises of color selection do not look bad compared to the alternatives. Suppose one were interested in studying galaxies at $`0.85<z<1.15`$. By obtaining a spectrum of every galaxy brighter than $`=24.0`$ in an image one would be certain to produce a statistically complete sample of galaxies at $`z1`$ to this magnitude limit, but over 80% of the observing time would have been spent on objects at the wrong redshifts (e.g., Cohen et al. 2000). If one were willing to tolerate 15% incompleteness in observed $`U_n`$ luminosity density, one could cull spectroscopic targets with the color criteria of equation 1 and reduce the required observing time by more than a factor of three (see table 2). As redshift increases the benefits of color-selection become more obvious. Only one object out of 50 in the magnitude limited survey of Cohen et al. (2000) had a redshift $`1.9<z<2.7`$. If one wished to study galaxies at these redshifts with a magnitude limited survey the required observing time would be 33 times longer than if one color-selected targets with equation 3 (see table 3). A project that could be completed in 1–2 years with color-selection would require a lifetime of observing with standard magnitude-limited techniques. The $`30`$% incompleteness of color-selected surveys does not seem a high price to pay.222A magnitude-limited survey conducted with a blue-optimized spectrograph would find a higher fraction of sources with $`1.9<z<2.7`$ than Cohen’s 1 in 50, so the comparison is somewhat unfair. In practice, however, few would chose to undertake a magnitude-limited survey with a blue spectrograph because it would make spectra more difficult to identify at the lower redshifts where most sources lie. The ability to take full advantage of optimized spectrographs is a non-negligible benefit of color selection.

Magnitude-limited optical surveys are not the only alternative to color-selected optical surveys. Many have advocated finding galaxies at $`1<z<3`$ with photometry outside of the optical window. We chose to develop criteria that relied solely on optical photometry because ground-based optical imagers offer an unrivaled combination of high sensitivity, high spatial resolution, and large fields-of-view. This is an advantage that is difficult to overcome. Surveys at other wavelengths have their strengths—near-IR observations should provide a more complete census of older stars (e.g., Franx et al. 2003, Rudnick et al. 2003) and far-IR/sub-mm observations should yield more reliable estimates of star-formation rates—but the fact remains that an investigator given two nights on an older 4m optical telescope can create a photometric sample of high-redshift galaxies larger than all existing samples at other wavelengths combined. It seems likely to us that much of what we will learn about galaxies at $`1<z<5`$ in the coming decade will come from large optical surveys selected with color criteria similar to ours.

Attentive readers may have recognized that the derivation of these criteria did not require much thought. That is exactly the point. The value of this paper, if any, lies not in our photometric selection criteria themselves but in the proof that large samples of galaxies at $`1<z<3`$ can be created with trivial techniques that rely solely on ground-based imaging and well-developed CCD technology. The spectroscopic desert is a myth.

KLA is deeply grateful for unconditional support from the Harvard Society of Fellows. It will be missed. CCS and AES were supported by grant AST0070773 from the U.S. National Science Foundation and by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. NAR is supported by the National Science Foundation. This research made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The authors wish to extend special thanks to those of Hawaiian ancestry for allowing telescopes and astronomers upon their sacred mountaintop. Their hospitality made our observations possible.


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# The evolution of the accretion disk around 4U 1820-30 during a superburst

## 1 Introduction

Superbursts (e.g. Cornelisse et al., 2000; Strohmayer & Brown, 2002; Kuulkers et al., 2002) are the more powerful and rarer relations of the Type I X-ray bursts, and are thought to be due to the nuclear burning of the ashes (principally carbon and rp-process nuclei) that remain after thermonuclear processing of the accreted light elements (Strohmayer & Brown, 2002; Cumming, 2003). One of the defining characteristics of a superburst is its long decay time of a number of hours, three orders of magnitude greater than a typical Type I burst (Kuulkers, 2003). This allows high signal-to-noise spectra to be accumulated at regular intervals throughout the course of the burst.

4U 1820-30 is a compact low-mass X-ray binary with a period of only 11.4 minutes (Stella, Priedhorsky & White, 1987), and lies within the globular cluster NGC 6624 at a distance of $`7`$ kpc (Vacca, Lewin & van Paradijs, 1986; Hesser & Shawl, 1985; Rich, Minniti & Liebert, 1993). Type I X-ray bursts have been observed from this system for nearly 30 years (Grindlay & Gursky, 1976). The accretion rate inferred from the persistent X-ray luminosity is $`1.5\times 10^{17}`$ g s-1 (Cumming, 2003). The first, and so far only, superburst seen from 4U 1820-30 was observed by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) on 1999 September 9 (UT) during a scheduled monitoring observation. The initial analysis and interpretation of the data was presented by Strohmayer & Brown (2002). Time-resolved spectroscopy presented by these authors showed that an iron K$`\alpha `$ line and absorption edge were present in the spectra, and that their properties changed over time. A likely origin for these features is reprocessing of the X-rays by the accretion disk (Day & Done, 1991). This process, called X-ray reflection, is commonly used to explain similar features in the spectra of Seyfert galaxies (e.g. Pounds et al., 1990; George & Fabian, 1991; Ballantyne, Vaughan & Fabian, 2003).

In this paper we present the results of fitting the time-resolved spectra of the superburst with detailed models of X-ray reflection. The next section describes the model calculations and details of the spectral fitting. The results are presented in Section 3 and discussed in Section 4.

## 2 Model Calculations

The X-ray reflection models were calculated with the code of Ross & Fabian (1993) (see also Ross, Fabian & Young 1999; Ballantyne, Iwasawa & Fabian 2001, 2001). A one-dimensional slab of uniform density gas is illuminated by a blackbody continuum (defined from 1 eV to 100 keV) of temperature $`kT`$, and allowed to come into thermal and ionization balance. The emergent spectrum is calculated with a Fokker-Planck/diffusion method that naturally accounts for the energy redistribution of photons by Compton scattering (Ross, Weaver & McCray, 1978). The following ions are included in the calculations: C V – VII, N VI – VIII, O V – IX, Mg IX – XIII, Si XI – XV and Fe XVI – XXVII. Fluorescence and recombination lines from these ions are computed and transferred simultaneously with the continuum, resulting in a self-consistent prediction of the emitted spectrum.

The compact orbit of this binary suggests that the donor is an evolved low-mass helium star (Rappaport et al., 1987), and thus the accretion disk material will be He-rich and H-poor (Cumming, 2003). Therefore, we assumed the reflecting medium has the He, C, N, and O abundances of cool extreme helium stars from the tabulation of Pandey et al. (2001). The Mg, Si and Fe abundances were left at their solar values (Grevesse, Noels & Sauval, 1996), but the effective metallicity is increased (by $`3`$) due to the negligible levels of hydrogen. The helium is assumed to be completely ionized everywhere in the reflecting region.

The computed reflection spectra are parameterized by the ionization parameter $`\xi =4\pi F_\mathrm{X}/n_{\mathrm{He}}`$ of the irradiated gas, where $`F_\mathrm{X}`$ is the flux of the incident X-rays and $`n_{\mathrm{He}}=10^{15}`$ cm-3 is the assumed number density of helium. Since the blackbody emission is also seen directly from the neutron star, the fitted spectrum is the sum of the blackbody and the reflected emission, weighted by a factor $`R`$, the reflection fraction. This parameter measures the relative importance of reflection in the spectrum, and can be related to the covering factor of the accretion disk.

Strohmayer & Brown (2002) describes the RXTE data and the process of accumulating the $`80`$ 64 s spectra during the burst. The preburst spectrum was used as the background, and was thus subtracted from the data during spectral fitting (Strohmayer & Brown, 2002). This persistent emission (amounting to a luminosity of $`1.8\times 10^{37}`$ erg s-1) is driven by the accretion onto the neutron star, so using this spectrum as a background implicitly assumes that the burst will not effect this underlying emission. As we see below, we cannot be sure that this does not happen; however, Strohmayer & Brown (2002) found little difference in their spectral fits between the preburst background and the detector background. Since the flux of the superburst varies from 20$`\times `$ to 3$`\times `$ greater than the preburst emission, then the shape of the background will not greatly effect the fit results.

The spectral fitting was performed with xspecv.11.2.0bp (Arnaud, 1996). The model consisted of a grid of reflection spectra (read in using the atable command) and attenuation from neutral gas along the line of sight (using the wabs model), parameterized by the column density $`N_\mathrm{H}`$. The Galactic absorption toward 4U 1820-30 is $`1.5\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 (Dickey & Lockman, 1990). The reflection spectra were blurred by the effects of relativistic motion within the Schwarzschild metric (Fabian et al., 1989). The inner radius of emission ($`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$) was allowed to vary, but the emissivity was fixed as $`r^3`$, where $`r`$ is distance along the accretion disk, and the outer radius was frozen at $`200`$ $`GM/c^2`$, where $`M`$ is the mass of the neutron star. The inclination angle of the disk to the line of sight was fixed at 30. The fitted energy range was 3–40 keV, but was changed to 3–15 keV 7000 s into the burst because of background dominating at higher energies. The errorbars on the best fit parameters were computed using the 2$`\sigma `$ uncertainties for one parameter of interest.

## 3 Spectral Fitting Results

The results of fitting the reflection models to the superburst data are shown in Figure 1. We find that an ionized reflector provides a good description to the spectra for most of the burst. During the first 1000 s the spectra are well fit with a large $`\xi `$, indicating significant ionization of the accretion disk. Over the next $`500`$ s $`\xi `$ decreases by more than an order of magnitude. For times between $`2500`$ and $`3000`$ s the spectra cannot be fit by the reflection model, except for the last three points, where only very loose constraints could be placed on $`\xi `$. Strohmayer & Brown (2002) showed the spectrum was hardening very rapidly during that period, which indicates that some rapid evolution of the system was ongoing, and is not well modeled by our equilibrium calculations. However, the recombination timescale for H-like Fe is $`t_{\mathrm{recomb}}1/n_e\alpha _{\mathrm{Fe}}(T)`$. The slowest timescale occurs at the highest temperature, which is $`10^7`$ K at the surface of the reflector, so that $`t_{\mathrm{recomb}}10^4`$ s, assuming the recombination coefficient of Verner & Ferland (1996). This is the same order of magnitude as the disk dynamical time at 10 $`GM/c^2`$. The recombination timescale of He II is $`0.1`$ s, much longer than the dynamical time, but faster than the 64 s spectra examined here. Therefore, the assumptions of ionization equilibrium or fully stripped helium cannot be the cause of the poor fits in this region of the lightcurve. A more fundamental change in the X-ray source or reflecting geometry may be required. Finally, after the last Earth occultation passage, the system was revealed to have settled into a final decaying state, with $`\xi 100`$ erg cm s-1, although one other non-equilibrium event took place at $`6000`$ s.

While the disk inclination angle was fixed at 30 for the spectral fits, there is a previous constraint of 35–50 found by Anderson et al. (1997) from modulations in the ultraviolet flux (due to X-ray heating of the secondary). Relativistic disk features are also dependent on the accretion disk inclination angle (Fabian et al., 1989), so can provide a consistency check on the reflection hypothesis. In Figure 2 we plot the 68%, 90% and 99% confidence contours for $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and the disk inclination angle 5500 s into the superburst. This segment was chosen as it has a low reduced $`\chi ^2`$ and strong reflection features. While the disk fit seems to prefer a lower inclination angle, it is consistent with the results of Anderson et al. (1997) at the 2$`\sigma `$ level.

The observed evolution of $`\xi `$ from highly to weakly ionized is to be expected since the observed flux decays over the course of the burst (Strohmayer & Brown, 2002). More fundamental insights from this analysis arise from the variations of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$, $`R`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ over the first 2000 s of the superburst. The changes of both $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$, which measures the inner radius of the disk (as judged from the width of the iron line and edge), and $`R`$, the reflection fraction, strongly indicates that the accretion disk is significantly affected by the superburst out to a radius of $`100`$ $`GM/c^2`$. In addition, the line-of-sight absorbing column also went through a similar variation, either as a result of the burst itself or the changes to the inner accretion disk. All three of these parameters follow a similar pattern where they increase ($`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`N_\mathrm{H}`$) or decrease ($`R`$) before returning to close to their initial value. This behavior seems to be closely linked to the blackbody temperature $`kT`$, rather than the flux, which decreases monotonically during the burst.

## 4 Discussion

A likely scenario to explain the observed behavior is that the accretion flow in the inner disk is altered by the superburst so that it loses the ability to produce reflection features. This could be accomplished if the scale-height of the disk, $`H`$, increased due to heating of the gas by the radiation field. This would decrease the surface density of the disk, allowing it to be more easily and completely ionized by the burst radiation, removing any spectral features in the observable band, and effectively becoming a mirror for the blackbody spectrum. As there would be no evidence for reprocessing from this innermost region, the estimate of the inner radius would be from further out in the disk where iron can still produce an emission line. The additional blackbody emission reflected from the ionized mirror, would dilute the reflection features, resulting in the low value of $`R`$. Alternatively, the lower surface density could reduce the optical depth of the gas to the point where the inner disk becomes a very inefficient reflector, while only the outer disk would be optically thick enough for efficient reprocessing.

The main evidence for this thermal effect is seen in the correlations between $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$, $`R`$ and $`kT`$. The Compton temperature of the gas is $`kT_\mathrm{C}kT`$, and reached $`3`$ keV, about twice the maximum disk temperature (Shakura & Sunyaev, 1973). Since $`Hc_\mathrm{s}r^{3/2}T^{1/2}r^{3/2}`$, where $`c_\mathrm{s}`$ is the local sound speed, then $`H`$ will increase by $`40`$% from its non-illuminated value. Changes to the disk surface density can take place over a viscous time which is $`1000`$ s at 100 $`GM/c^2`$ if $`\alpha 0.2`$, where $`\alpha `$ is the Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity parameter (Shakura & Sunyaev, 1973). This timescale compares favorably with the observed changes in $`R`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$. An increase in $`H`$ may also explain the evolution of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ as the thicker disk may bring clumps of disk material into the line-of-sight. Data which extend below the 3 keV limit of RXTE would be needed to test if the absorption was caused by ionized or neutral material. Under this hot disk scenario, once the peak in $`kT`$ is passed the disk material cooled to lower and lower temperatures, and thus contracted to its original size. Simultaneously, the amount of material available to reflect increased, so $`R`$ grew larger, but $`\xi `$ dropped due to a combination of the increasing surface density and the decaying burst flux.

The connection between the ionization parameter and the disk surface density $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ can be formulated as $`\xi L_\mathrm{X}m_{\mathrm{He}}H/r^2\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, where $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ is the luminosity of the burst, and $`m_{\mathrm{He}}`$ is the mass of a helium nucleus. Using the equations for a gas pressure dominated Shakura-Sunyaev disk with electron scattering opacity (Shakura & Sunyaev, 1973), a peak burst luminosity of $`3.4\times 10^{38}`$ erg s-1 (Strohmayer & Brown, 2002), and $`\alpha =0.2`$, we find $`\xi 100`$ erg cm s-1 for $`r=15`$ $`GM/c^2`$, which is consistent with the values of $`\xi `$ found near the end of the burst (Fig. 1). From the observed decay in flux (Strohmayer & Brown, 2002), the surface density of the disk must be $`100`$ times less than the Shakura-Sunyaev value at the start of the superburst, but only $`6`$ times less near the end in order to obtain the necessary level of ionization. This indicates the surface density of the inner accretion disk was significantly lower at the peak of the burst but increased as the burst decayed, supporting the interpretation that the disk material was severely affected by the explosion.

Another process that could lower the surface density at the inner edge of an accretion disk is the interaction between the radiation field and material flowing in the disk. Radiation can remove angular momentum from the disk material, causing the disk to empty inward, thus lowering the surface density. There exists only a few calculations of the interaction between an accretion disk and the radiation field from a luminous central source (Walker & Mészáros, 1989; Walker, 1992; Miller & Lamb, 1993, 1996). These models predict that the radiation will exert a significant torque on the accretion flow, which increases the accretion rate close to the central object. This effect may be enhanced in the case of 4U 1820-30 due to the power of the superburst (as compared to the typical Type I burst considered in these models), as well as an interaction between the disk and the expanding shell that was ejected from the neutron star just prior to the superburst (Strohmayer & Brown, 2002) – the radius-expansion phase (Lewin, Vacca & Basinska, 1984). It is difficult to rigorously compare this idea to the observations because detailed modeling of the disk-radiation interaction for a superburst or a radius-expansion burst has not been performed.

By the end of the observation, the accretion disk has recovered from its disruption by the burst, and is reflective down to a radius of 10–20 $`GM/c^2`$, which is curiously larger than the innermost stable circular orbit of 6 $`GM/c^2`$. Since this is not an X-ray pulsar, the disk would not be truncated by the star’s magnetosphere. Rather, this may be evidence for the disk-radiation interaction described above, and the material within 10–20 $`GM/c^2`$ is no longer dense enough to provide a reflection signature. At these late times, the fits also require strong reflection, with $`R>1`$, indicating that the disk covers a large solid angle from the X-ray source, and thus is thin relative to the radius of the neutron star or has a non-negligible flare at large radii. The latter possibility is supported by the reflection from $`r>100`$ $`GM/c^2`$ observed early in the burst. If the inner disk expanded from the X-ray heating, then a significant disk flare might be necessary in order to allow the distant material to be irradiated by the blackbody emission.

Dipping behavior is seen in the X-ray lightcurve of 4U 1820-30 between 6000–7500 s into the burst (see Fig. 7 in Strohmayer & Brown 2002). This kind of variability in low-mass X-ray binaries is often explained as variable absorption from a two-component ionized medium close to the neutron star (Frank, King & Lasota, 1987). The dipping observed from 4U 1820-30 could then be due to the reformation of the accretion disk, however, the timescale is incorrect, with the dipping seen $`2000`$ s after the probable recollapse of the disk. However, there is an interesting correspondence between the times when dipping is observed and an increase in $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ derived from spectral fitting (Fig. 1). This may indicate that the dipping is caused by partially ionized material that is slowly recombining, but farther away from the accretion disk. An obvious source for such material is the gas that was cast off from the neutron star during the radius expansion phase. This material could be at a large distance from the system ($`10^{14}`$ cm if ejected at the escape velocity).

We thank E. Agol, L. Bildsten, E. Quataert, N. Murray & C. Matzner for helpful discussions, and A. Fabian for providing the relativistic blurring functions. DRB is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.


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# Magneto-transport in high g-factor, low-density two-dimensional electron systems confined in In0.75Ga0.25As/In0.75Al0.25As quantum wells

## I Introduction

A number of spintronic applications would be experimentally accessible thanks to the availability of high-mobility two-dimensional electron systems (2DESs) confined in InxGa1-xAs layers with $`x0.75`$. This stems from three different factors. First, metallic contacts on InxGa1-xAs with such high Indium concentration are characterized by the absence of a Schottky barrier at the interface. This naturally provides a highly transmissive junction paving the way to the observation of Andreev reflection phenomena in superconductor/2DES hybrid systems and their study in the regime of the quantum Hall effect Jakob et al. (2000); Uhlisch et al. (2000). Second, the bare g-factor is expected to be very large. For instance the bare g-factor measured by electron spin resonance was found at around -5 in In0.53Ga0.47As Dobers et al. (1989) while effective g-factors $`g^{}`$ (renormalized by electron-electron interactions) with absolute values between $`14`$ and $`28`$ were recently suggested from magneto-transport data Kita et al. (2001); Gui et al. (2000). The large resulting Zeeman spin splitting under the application of weak magnetic fields makes this semiconductor system a promising candidate for spin-valve mesoscopic devices working at relatively high temperatures Gilbert and Bird (2000). Third, the large Rashba coupling constant that characterizes asymmetric InxGa1-xAs layers Nitta et al. (1997) can be used for the control of spin-dependent transport and for the creation of spin-Hall currents Nitta et al. (1997); Sinova et al. (2003). For all of these investigations, the combination of high-mobility and relatively low electron density is a crucial requirement as well as the gate-voltage control of the various parameters mentioned above.

In addition, these systems can be of much interest for the study of magnetic phenomena associated to the crossing of Landau levels with opposite spin polarizations. These crossings can be induced in a tilted-field configuration since the ratio between the Zeeman energy ($`E_Z`$) and the cyclotron energy ($`E_C`$) increases at larger values of the tilt angle. For a large enough tilt angle this ratio reaches unity and a crossing between Landau levels of neighboring orbital indices and opposite spins is expected. It was shown, however, that this magnetic transition occurs before the coincidence between the single-particle energy levels and is induced by exchange-correlation effects Giuliani and Quinn (1985); Koch et al. (1993). These transitions are triggered by the behavior of the long wave-vector limit of the spin gap (that includes many-body contributions) and therefore can be also used to determine the exchange-enhanced electronic g-factor ($`g^{}`$) Nicholas et al. (1988). In the past, the experimental investigation of this class of many-body-driven magnetic transitions was mainly carried out on high-mobility 2DESs confined in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. The exploitation of heterostructures based on InxGa1-xAs would allow to investigate the influence of both effective mass and g-factor. In addition, the presence of a large Rashba coupling could yield new coherent Landau level configurations close to coincidence as predicted in Refs.Fal’ko (1992, 1993). Recent tilted-field experiments performed on 2DESs confined in InAs/InSb, however, showed no evidence of electron-electron interaction effects presumably due to a combination of large electron density (above $`6\times 10^{11}`$ cm$`2`$) and relatively low mobility Brosig et al. (2000).

Here we report the realization of 2DESs with mobilities well above $`10^5`$ cm2/Vs confined in In0.75Ga0.25As/In0.75Al0.25As single quantum wells. These electron systems display clear quantum Hall states in a large range of temperatures and with electron densities down to $`n_s=1\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2, the latter controlled by a gate voltage. In this paper we also report the magneto-transport analysis in a tilted magnetic-field configuration under magnetic fields up to $`23`$ T and at millikelvin temperatures. This analysis shows crossing of spin-split Landau levels at several even-integer filling factors. These results are used to determine the exchange-enhanced ”effective” electronic g-factor. Values of $`g^{}`$ are carefully deduced from the coincidence method with electron mass determined by cyclotron resonance and they are found to be $`\nu `$-dependent. Measurements performed on a gated sample confirm this behavior for different densities. The enhanced g-factor decreases and saturates at high filling factors in agreement with the reduction of the exchange energy. From these data the change in the exchange-correlation energy at the magnetic transition between Landau states with opposite spins is also measured and is found to vary linearly as a function of the perpendicular component of the magnetic field. These results demonstrate the impact of electron-electron interactions on magnetic transitions in In0.75Ga0.25As/In0.75Al0.25As quantum wells.

## II Gate-voltage control of electron density

Samples analyzed in this work consist of an unintentionally doped $`30`$ nm-wide In0.75Ga0.25As/In0.75Al0.25As quantum well metamorphically grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a (001) GaAs substrate. An InxAl1-xAs step graded buffer with $`x`$ ranging from 0.15 to 0.85 was inserted between the substrate and the 2DES to achieve almost complete strain relaxation at the quantum-well region. In these nominally undoped structures, a relatively low carrier concentration close to $`3\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 can be achieved and this confirms that there exists an intrinsic source of free carriers Schäpers et al. (1998). The origin of the doping is, however, still unclear. Preliminary results indicate the role of deep-level donor states lying in the conduction band discontinuity Capotondi et al. (2003). The inset of Fig.1 shows the conduction band diagram and the charge distribution obtained from a Poisson-Schrödinger simulation Sni  assuming a uniform distribution of deep levels with activation energy of 0.12 eV. The latter was measured by photo-induced current transient spectroscopy as reported elsewhere Capotondi et al. (2003). The main panel of Fig.1 displays the longitudinal resistance $`R_{xx}`$ (solid curve, vertical left axis) as a function of perpendicular magnetic field at $`T=4.2`$ K. The zero-resistance regions which are well defined at even filling factors indicate the absence of parallel conduction and are associated to a quantized Hall resistance. From this data we extract a density of $`n_s=3.1\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 with a mobility above $`\mu =2\times 10^5`$ cm2/Vs (electron mean free path of the order of 1.8 $`\mu `$m). Cyclotron resonance is shown on Fig.1 (dotted curve, right vertical axis) and manifests as a peak in the longitudinal resistance change $`dR_{xx}`$ after far-infrared radiation at $`2.542`$ THz as a function of magnetic field. The absorption peak is observed at $`B=3.57`$ T which yields the effective mass of the conduction electrons equal to $`m^{}=0.039\pm 0.002m_0`$, where $`m_0`$ is the free electron mass.

The impact of the large g-factor and low electron mass that distinguishes this system from 2DESs confined in GaAs quantum wells is further shown in the temperature-dependent magneto-transport data displayed in Fig.2(a). The data demonstrates, in particular, that the odd-integer quantum Hall minima at $`\nu =3`$ and $`5`$ associated to the Landau level spin gap are observable at $`T=4.2`$ K (up to $`T11`$ K for the $`\nu =3`$ state) indicating the presence of robust spin-polarization at relatively low magnetic fields. An important aspect for spintronic applications in this material system stems from the possibility to reach low electron density and to control the asymmetry of the confining potential (i.e. Rashba coupling as shown in Ref.Schäpers et al. (1998)) still maintaining large values of the electron mobility. In this case several recently predicted spin-related phenomena can be studied. These include the generation of an intrinsic spin-Hall current and the control of its value for densities typically below $`n_s=11.5\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 Sinova et al. (2003). Such low densities and their gate voltage control have never been observed in high-mobility 2DESs confined in InGaAs quantum wells with very large In concentration. Figures 2(b) and (c) demonstrate the successful achievement of these desired properties. The gate voltage control of the electron density is obtained by the application of a voltage difference between a top Ti/Au gate deposited onto a cross-linked PMMA thin layer (thickness of the order of 50 nm) and the substrate. Figure 2(b), in particular, reports the longitudinal resistivities without any parallel conduction at $`T=4.2`$ K as a function of the gate voltage while Fig.2(c) displays the density $`n_s`$ (left axis) and mobility $`\mu `$ (right axis) as a function of gate voltage for two different devices. A good control on the value of $`n_s`$ down to a value of 1$`\times `$ 1011 cm-2 can be obtained despite the uniform distribution of doping states and without altering significantly the electron mobility.

It must be noted, in addition, that the generated electric field introduces an asymmetry in the confining potential thus enhancing the value of the Rashba coupling Nitta et al. (1997). In this relatively low-density In0.75Ga0.25As quantum well only a limited number of Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations are detected at relatively low magnetic fields which inhibits the conventional determination of the Rashba coupling constant of the heterostructure. Previous studies, in fact, were conducted on samples having densities approaching $`1\times 10^{12}`$ cm-2 or above Nitta et al. (1997); Schäpers et al. (1998); Koga et al. (2002). It can be noted in Fig.2(b), however, that an anomalous behavior characterizes the longitudinal resistance close to filling factor $`\nu =4`$. The $`\nu =4`$ minimum, in fact, tends to disappear at positive non-zero values of the gate voltage and this might be interpreted as precursor of the beating pattern associated to the enhancement of the Rashba coupling for a large quantum well asymmetry generated by the gate voltage Schäpers et al. (1998); Koga et al. (2002). The analysis of the transverse resistance (data not shown) also strongly suggests a significant Rashba coupling consistent with the theoretical prediction of Ref.Wang and Vasilopoulos (2003).

## III Enhanced g-factor and magnetic transitions in tilted fields

Having demonstrated good magneto-transport properties and their gate-voltage control we now turn to the study of the evolution of the magneto-transport in a tilted-field configuration at ultra-low temperatures. As shown below these data allow to determine the effective (exchange-enhanced) g-factor and to identify the impact of many-body effects on the magnetic transitions induced by the tilted field. For these measurements the sample was mounted on a rotation probe and placed in the mixing chamber of a dilution fridge. The maximum available magnetic field is $`23`$ T and the bath temperature is $`30`$ mK. The longitudinal and Hall resistances are measured on a Hall bar via a lock-in setup with a low ac current ($`I=20`$ nA, $`f=17`$ Hz). Figure 3(a) shows a waterfall graph of the longitudinal resistance $`R_{xx}`$ as a function of the perpendicular magnetic field for different tilt angles $`\theta `$ (see inset of Fig.3(a)) at $`T=30`$ mK. At such low temperatures and at $`\theta =0^{}`$ several dissipationless QH regions at both even and odd filling factors are clearly seen from $`\nu =1`$ (not shown) up to the filling factor $`\nu =12`$. As the tilt angle increases, the width of these zero-resistance regions decreases for even-integer filling factors ($`\nu =4,6,8,10,12`$) and increases for odd-integer filling factors ($`\nu =3,5,7`$). This behavior is in agreement with the evolution of the respective energy gaps in the density of states as a function of $`\theta `$ linked to the increase of the ratio $`E_Z/E_C`$. For angles larger than $`81^{}`$, however, the inverse dependence takes place, i.e. the even filling factor gaps become larger and those at odd fillings are reduced. For intermediate tilt angles, the zero-resistance region corresponding to odd-integer filling factors ($`\nu =5,7`$) saturates to its maximum width while the $`R_{xx}`$ minima of the even-integer filling factors disappear and are replaced by maxima. This behavior signals the transition between QH phases with different spin polarizations and can be used to determine $`g^{}`$.

Figure 3(b) displays the perpendicular magnetic field position of the $`R_{xx}`$ peaks of the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations as a function of the inverse cosine of the tilt angle $`\theta `$. These peak positions were estimated from the derivative curves $`dR_{xx}/dB`$. Coincidences between spin-split Landau levels, indicated by arrows, occur at different values of $`1/\mathrm{cos}\theta _c`$ (5.58, 6.32 and 6.62) for different even-integer filling factors ($`\nu =4,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}6}`$ and 8 respectively). Using these coincidence angles and the measured effective mass, we can determine the exchange-enhanced g-factor $`|g^{}|=2m_0\mathrm{cos}(\theta _c)/m^{}`$ Nicholas et al. (1988). We obtain $`|g^{}|=9.2,8.1,7.7`$ for $`\nu =4,6,8`$, respectively. The reduction of $`|g^{}|`$ for larger filling factors was already reported in other material systems and is interpreted as due to the reduction of electron-electron interaction effects Ando and Uemura (1974).

A similar tilted-field experiment was performed on a second In0.75Ga0.25As/In0.75Al0.25As quantum well with a density of $`n_s=3.7\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 and a mobility of $`\mu =7.5`$ m2/Vs measured at $`T=1.4`$ K. A gate on top of this second sample allows to vary the electron density. Figure 4 shows the perpendicular magnetic field position of the $`R_{xx}`$ peaks as a function of the inverse cosine of the tilt angle for three different gate voltages. The densities (mobilities) are 2.55 (5.2) and 4.9 (10) at $`V_g=0.5`$ V and $`V_g=+0.5`$ V respectively, in units of $`10^{11}`$ cm-2 and m2/Vs. In all these configurations the magnetic transitions between Landau levels with opposite spins occur at different tilt angles for different even filling factors thus confirming the impact of the many-body corrections in the material system here of interest.

The observed coincidence angles yield values for the enhanced g-factors plotted on Fig.5 as a function of the perpendicular component of the magnetic field $`B_{}`$. The enhanced g-factor decreases for lower perpendicular magnetic field (or higher filling factors) and lower mobilities. Having in mind that the long wavevector limit of the spin gap (relevant in magneto-transport) is the sum of the bare Zeeman energy $`g_0\mu _BB`$ and the exchange energy proportional to $`e^2/4\pi \epsilon \mathrm{}_B`$, it is tempting to describe the behavior of $`g^{}(B_{})`$ by a $`\sqrt{B_{}}`$ dependence. However, effects associated to mixing of Landau levels, disorder, finite-layer thickness and Coulomb correlation among electrons could play a role especially in the limit of low density. The behavior shown in Fig.5 in fact, shows a linear rather than a square root dependence on $`B_{}`$. Additionally, the data enlighten the fact that the many-body contribution is enhanced when the mobility increases and becomes negligible at high filling factors when the enhanced g-factor saturates to the bare g-factor $`g_0`$, which is estimated of the order of $`5.5`$ (in absolute value). We note that the estimated value of $`g_0`$ is small compared to the theoretical one of bulk In0.75Ga0.25As equal to $`|g_0|=8.9`$. However, several recent papers also reported g-factor values strongly reduced compared to the theoretical ones. For instance, bare g-factors of -13, -8.7 or -6 have been reported in InAs quantum wells Brosig et al. (2000); Hu et al. (2003); Möller et al. (2003) which are far from the bulk value of around -15. It must be stressed that in the present experiments the orbital effect of the in-plane field becomes important at large tilt angles and may contribute to the reduction of $`g^{}`$. It is well known, in fact, that the measurement of the electronic enhanced g-factor, and consequently of the bare g-factor, from magneto-transport measurements is not straightforward as it depends on the polarization of the system, in other words on the position of the Fermi energy in the density of states Nicholas et al. (1983).

Now, with the value of the bare g-factor of $`|g_0|=5.5`$, it is possible to compute the energy difference, $`\mathrm{}eB_{}/m^{}g_0\mu _BB_{}/\mathrm{cos}(\theta _c)`$, for all the tilt angles $`\theta _c`$ at which the transition is observed. This is performed for all filling factors and all gate voltages. In the single-electron picture, this difference should be equal to zero, as the first transition between neighboring Landau levels occurs when the cyclotron and Zeeman energies are equal. Due to electron-electron interactions this energy difference is finite as shown in the inset of Fig.5 as a function of the perpendicular magnetic field. These values represent the gain in the exchange-correlation energy as the system jumps from spin unpolarized to a partially spin-polarized configuration. The values obtained are significantly large and comparable or even larger to values obtained in GaAs- and AlAs-based systems Daneshvar et al. (1997); Poortere et al. (2000). We see that the data points, including those obtained at different gate voltages (different densities), suggest a linear dependence vs $`B_{}`$ similar to what was reported in Poortere et al. (2000) and discussed in Leadley et al. (1998). From these data we conclude that, even for InGaAs-based systems with large In concentration, the electron-electron interaction terms play a dominant role in determining the magnetic transitions at low filling factors, unlike previous studies on InAs systems characterized by larger electron densities Brosig et al. (2000).

Finally we want to further comment on the impact of the exchange-correlation energy gap on the magnetic transition in tilted field. The behavior shown in Fig.3 and Fig.4 demonstrates that while a clear crossing characterizes the spin transitions at high even-integer filling factors, an anomaly in the $`R_{xx}`$ peak positions close to the transition region is observed at the lower filling factors $`\nu =4`$ and $`\nu =6`$. We believe that this evolution signals a partial suppression of the quantum Hall gap at the transition. This is consistent with the expected first-order phase transition associated to a non-vanishing gap controlled by the exchange interaction Giuliani and Quinn (1985). It is also worth considering the impact of the Rashba coupling which can also lead to a repulsion of the Landau levels at crossing through the mixing of the two spin states Fal’ko (1992, 1993). Finally it must be stressed that at the coincidence angle the magneto-resistance $`R_{xx}`$ exhibits no spikes and no hysteresis at any filling factor. These effects which were reported in a number of material systems are associated to the formation of magnetic domains Piazza et al. (2003); Poortere et al. (2000); Jaroszyński et al. (2002). As proposed in Ref.Jungwirth and MacDonald (2001), the absence of resistance spikes as well as detectable hysteresis can be explained by the presence of small and dilute magnetic domains at the transition, which in our case could be associated to fluctuations at short-length scale of the In content in the quantum well.

## IV Conclusion

In conclusion, we have reported the magneto-transport analysis of a 2DES confined in a In0.75Ga0.25As/In0.75Al0.25As quantum well. Several quantum Hall states were observed and the effective g-factor was measured in a tilted-field configuration. The bare g-factor was estimated of the order of $`|g_0|=5`$, while the impact of electron-electron interactions was shown to play a major role at low filling factors. We have demonstrated that electron densities down to $`10^{11}`$ cm-2 can be achieved in nominally undoped structures by applying a gate voltage. The large measured electron mobilities at these relatively low densities make this electron system a promising candidate for those spintronics applications that would require high g-factors and gate-voltage control of the electron density. In addition, this system might be of potentially high interest for the investigation of the spin-orbit coupling and its impact on the magnetic transition of quantum Hall ferromagnetic states.

The authors are grateful to T. Jungwirth for helpful discussions and for Hartree-Fock calculations. This work was supported in part by the Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) under the FIRB ”Nanotechnologies and nanodevices for the information society” and COFIN programs and by the European Research and Training Network COLLECT (Project HPRN-CT-2002-00291).