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# Spiral and irregular galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field North

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Cosmogonic models, in particular those based on the hierarchical clustering of cold dark matter halos, now including detailed physical descriptions of gas cooling, star-formation and feed-back processes in the baryonic component, make specific predictions about the evolutionary history of galaxy populations as a function of their morphology.

Basically, in the hierarchical scheme, forming galaxies acquire angular momentum from tidal interactions with the surrounding structure and then dissipate and collapse preferentially along the rotation vector and tend to form flattened rotational-supported structures (disk galaxies). There are indeed indications of a substantial population of large structures of this kind up to the highest redshifts from absorption-line studies in the distant quasar spectra (e.g. Wolfe A.M. wolfe (1999)). The pressure-supported stellar bulges dominating E/S0 galaxies, in this scheme, would originate from the violent relaxation and dynamical evolution following strong interactions and mergers of primordial disk galaxies. At the zero-th order, these models predict that spheroidal galaxies are assembled somewhat later than spirals, although their stellar populations might not differ much if the merger occurs among gas-poor systems. One such extreme case has been discussed by Kauffmann & Charlot (kauffmannb (1998)) based on the $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ standard CDM cosmology, predicting a substantial dearth of spheroidal galaxies already by z=1, most of them being formed at lower z.

More recently it has been pointed out that, within this scheme, the morphological appearence of a galaxy may repeatedly change with cosmic time not only from a late- to an early-type following a merging event, but also from a spheroidal to a disk configuration following the acquisition of new infalling gas from the environment (e.g. Ellis R.S. ellis (1997)). This may reflect in long-wavelength (V to K) colour distributions un-distinguishable between early- and late-types, while shorter-wavelength (U to V) colours would be dominated by the on-going SF in disks.

An opposite pattern is contemplated by the ”traditional” models of galaxy formation, assuming that massive galaxies, in particular elliptical and S0’s, originated first at high redshifts as single entities from rapid homologous collapse of primordial gas. Gas-rich systems, in this view, form instead more quiescently from progressive inflow of gas into the dark matter halos during most of the Hubble time. This formation scenario then predicts a marked differentiation in colours and ages for the stellar populations of the two classes of galaxies, late-type galaxies containing much younger stellar populations on average than the early-types. Also a substantial population of massive spheroids would be expected to be visible at $`z2`$ in this case.

The ultra-deep integrations at various wavelengths performed by the Hubble Space Telescope in the Hubble Deep Field (Williams et al. williams (1996); we consider here only the survey in the North area) offer an extremely valuable dataset to study morphological properties of high-redshift galaxies. Furthermore, the very accurate photometry achievable in such deep images allows accurate estimates of the photometric redshifts for vast numbers of faint galaxies in the field.

We have recently exploited these data to study the colours, masses, age distributions, and the star-formation history of a sample of elliptical-S0 galaxies (Franceschini et al. franceschini (1998), FA98 hereafter). The basic result was to find colours indicative of wide ranges of ages for the stellar populations and a remarkable absence of objects at $`z>1.3`$, both facts telling against the predictions of the ”traditional” monolithic formation scenario.

As a natural complement, we present in this paper an analysis of late-type and irregular galaxies in the HDF. Similarly to what we did there, our primary selection is in the K-band, obtained from a deep KPNO image, to minimize the biases in the sample due to the effects of K- and evolutionary corrections. The completion of our previous analysis of E/S0 to account for the complementary set of late-type systems is also needed for a global evaluation of the star-formation history as a function of redshift. The advantage of our approach over previous attempts (Lilly et al. lillyb (1996), Cowie et al. cowie (1999)) is in our careful treatment of dust extinction from a detailed fitting of the UV-optical-NIR spectral energy distributions (SED). In addition, the detailed knlowledge of the near-IR (NIR) spectrum for sources at the relevant redshifts is informative on the baryonic mass function in stars, which provides an essential constraint on the cumulative star-formation rate as a function of time.

In Section 2 we discuss the selection scheme and photometric corrections used to construct a complete K-band flux limited sample of late–type galaxies. In Section 3 we describe the population synthesis code that we used to model the optical-NIR SEDs of our sample objects, taking into full account the effects of a dusty interstellar medium in the galaxy spectra. Our main results are then reported in Section 4, where we perform detailed analyses of the space distributions, colours and ages of the stellar populations of field spiral and irregular galaxies, compared with ellipticals and S0. We discuss the difficulties inherent in the spectral modelling of gas-rich systems affected by dust extinction. We finally attempt to construct the global star formation histories of field galaxies (E/S0+spiral/irregulars). In Section 5 we summarize our main conclusions.

We anticipate that the results of the present analysis, based on a survey over a very small sky field, are to be considered as only tentative, untill larger areas will be surveyed to similarly deep limits.

We adopt $`H_0=50Kms^1Mpc^1`$ throughout the paper. For consistency with FA98 the analysis is made assuming $`q_0=0.5`$, and zero cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

## 2 SAMPLE SELECTION AND PHOTOMETRY

The Hubble Deep Field North has been observed in 4 broad bands (F300W, F450W, F606W, F814W) for a total of 150 HST orbits by Williams et al. (1996), and constitutes the deepest ever exposure on a small sky area. Accurate photometric data in the four bands have been published for thousands of faint galaxies by the authors.

Dickinson et al. (dickinson (1997)) observed the HDF–North in the near-IR with the IRIM camera on the KPNO 4 m telescope. The camera employs a 256 $`\times `$ 256 NICMOS-3 array with 0”.16 pixel-1, but the released images were geometrically transformed and rebinned into a 1024 $`\times `$ 1024 format. IRIM exposures have been secured in the $`J`$, $`H`$ and $`K`$ filters, for a total of 12, 11.5 and 23 hours, respectively. Formal 5 $`\sigma `$ limiting magnitudes for the HDF/IRIM images, computed from the measured sky noise within a 2” diameter circular aperture, are 23.45 mag at $`J`$, 22.29 mag at $`H`$, and 21.92 mag at $`K`$, whereas the image quality is $``$ 1”.0 FWHM.

Our sample of galaxies has been extracted from the HDF/IRIM $`K`$-band image through a preliminary selection based on the automatic photometry provided by SExtractor (Bertin $`\&`$ Arnouts bertin (1996)). It is flux limited in the $`K`$ band and it excludes early–type galaxies, i.e. objects whose surface brightness distribution is dominated by a de Vaucouleurs profile.

To determine the limit of completeness in the $`K`$ band (hereafter $`K_L`$) for inclusion in our sample, we followed the same empirical procedure described in FA98. Briefly, a large number of toy galaxies with exponential profiles (produced with the IRAF-MKOBJECTS tool) have been used to check the performances of Sextractor in estimating the K-band magnitudes ($`K_{SEx}`$) of late-type galaxies. This allowed us to determine the magnitude $`K_{lim}`$ below which the scatter $`\sigma _{K_{SEx}}`$ of the measured magnitudes turns out to be lower than some given value $`\sigma _{max}`$ (the vertical line in Figure 1a corresponds to $`K_{lim}=21`$ and $`\sigma _{max}=0.18`$). Moreover, using only galaxies with $`<K_{SEx}>K_{lim}`$, we have derived the following empirical relation between the bias $`\mathrm{\Delta }K=<K_{SEx}>K_{true}`$ and the effective surface brightness $`<\mu _e^K(SEx)>`$ (see Figure 1b):

$`\mathrm{log}\mathrm{\Delta }K=1.059+0.188<\mu _{}^K>+0.061<\mu _{}^K>^2`$
$`+0.006<\mu _{}^K>^3,`$ (1)
where $`<\mu _{}^K>=<\mu _e^K(SEx)>21`$. This relation provides the true total $`K`$ magnitudes from the SExtractor measured flux. Then simulations have shown that the K-band image has a surface brightness limit of $`<\mu _e^K(SEx)>=23.`$

By analogy with FA98, we have first produced a catalog of morphologically selected late-type objects with $`K_{SEx}K_{lim}=21.0`$; then we have used effective radius estimates from high resolution (HST) optical imaging to derive the effective surface brightness of galaxies ($`<\mu _e^K>`$); finally, we have applied to the $`K_{SEx}`$ magnitudes the statistical corrections given by equation  and we have included in the final sample only galaxies with corrected magnitudes less than or equal to $`K_L=K_{lim}\mathrm{\Delta }K_{max}\sigma _{max}=20.47`$ mag (we assume $`\mathrm{\Delta }K_{max}0.35`$ from Figure 1b).

A total of 176 objects with $`K_{SEx}21`$ mag were detected by SExtractor in the IRIM $`K`$-band image. After carefull inspection of the high resolution HST images, we rejected all elliptical and S0 galaxies (including the 35 early-type objects identified in FA98) and the stars. A few objects were also rejected from the sample due to their position in the frame (at the edges of the image the noise is higher and the magnitude estimate is likely to be uncertain). We then produced a first preliminary, incomplete sample of late–type galaxies.

The effective radii $`r_e`$ were estimated running SExtractor on the WFPC2 $`V_{606}`$ frame with the parameter $`FLUX\mathrm{\_}RADIUS`$, providing the radius containing half of the total emitted flux. The surface brightness $`<\mu _e^K(SEx)>`$ was evaluated for each galaxy and the statistical corrections $`\mathrm{\Delta }K`$ were computed using the eq (1).

The final complete sample of late-type galaxies with $`K_{corr}<20.47`$ consists of 52 objects over the HDF area of 5.7 square arcmin. For 36 objects we have the spectroscopic redshift (Cohen et al. cohen (1996), Cowie et al. cowie (1999), Fernandez-Soto et al. soto (1998)), while for the remaining 16 we measured it from our photometric analysis as described below.

A procedure analogous to that outlined for the K band was used to derive, for each object of the selected sample, the corrected magnitudes in the J and H bands.

The optical magnitudes in the F300W, F450W, F606W and F814W bands (U, B, V and I in Table 1, respectively) have been computed again with SExtractor on the high resolution WFPC2 images (no corrections being applied in this case). Magnitudes are in the AB system, defined by the relation (Oke $`\&`$ Gunn oke (1983)):

$$AB=2.5\mathrm{log}F_\nu 48.60$$
(2)
where $`F_\nu `$ is the flux in $`ergcm^2Hz^1`$, the constant beeing choosen so that $`AB=V`$ for an object with flat spectrum.

Some data on the sample are listed in Table 1. Column 1: our identification; column 2-4: coordinates $`\alpha `$ and $`\delta `$ (at J2000). To these must be added 12 hours 36 minutes (RA) and 62 degrees (Dec); column 5: $`r_e`$ is the effective radius, in arcsec, derived from HST images; column 6-9: optical U, B, V, I magnitudes in the AB system (see above); column 10-12: near-infrared J, H, K corrected magnitudes in the standard system; column 13: redshift of each object. Values in brackets are photometric redshifts, while the other are all spectroscopic.

## 3 MODELLING GALAXY SEDs IN THE PRESENCE OF A DUSTY ISM

The optical-NIR SEDs of our sample objects have been modelled using the population synthesis code GRASIL (Silva et al. silva (1998)), taking into full account the effects (optical extinction and thermal reprocessing) of a dusty interstellar medium in galaxy spectra. We defer the reader to that paper for a through description of this model and for precise definitions of the parameter, while for convenience we summarize the main features below.

### 3.1 The GRASIL code

The code provides a self-consistent description of the formation and evolution of a galactic system in its various stellar and ISM components, including its secular evolution during the Hubble time and episods of enhanced star-formation possibly following interactions and mergers.

As a preliminary step the code allows to solve the equations ruling the chemical evolution, providing the star formation and metallicity histories SFR(t) and Z(t) as a function of time. The computations presented here were performed adopting one–zone (no spatial dependence) open models including the infall of primordial gas, according to the standard equations of galactic chemical evolution. As usual, the star formation rate is determined by the amount of gas in the system according to a Schmidt-type law 111The code can be downloaded from http://grana.pd.astro.it

$$SFR(t)=\nu M_g(t)^k.$$

We have generated 3 different $`SFR(t)`$, in order to provide a wide range of spectral evolution patterns. The peak occurs at about 1, 2 and 3 Gyr (hereafter model (a), (b) and (c) respectively), getting broader from (a) to (c). As a result, half of the final stellar mass $`M`$ (i.e. at 13 Gyr) has been assembled at galactic times of 2, 3.7 and 4.7 Gyr in the three cases respectively. A standard Salpeter IMF between 0.1 and 100 $`M_{}`$ is assumed.

As described by Silva et al. (1998), GRASIL calculates self-consistently the absorption of starlight by dust, the heating and thermal emission of dust grains, for an assumed geometrical distribution of the stars and dust, and a specific grain model.

In the GRASIL model several parameters affect the overall modifications imprinted by dust on the SED. However, if we confine ourselves to the attenuation of stellar radiation in the optical/UV/NIR bands, we can obtain most of the possible spectral behaviours by adjusting only two quantities: the $`escapetimescalet_o`$ (see Eq  in Silva et al. 1998 for a precise definition) of newly formed stars from parent molecular clouds (MCs) and the total mass of dust. Indeed $`t_o`$ controls the fraction of light from very young stellar generations hidden inside MCs and converted to IR photons, since the MCs optical thickness is very high below $`1\mu `$m (cfr. Silva et al. 1998). On the other hand, the effects of the diffuse (cirrus) dust depend on several quantities: the radial and vertical scale lengths for stars and dust distributions $`R_d`$ and $`z_d`$, the residual gas in the galaxy $`M_g`$, the dust to gas ratio $`\delta `$ and the fraction of gas which is in the MCs component $`f_{mc}`$. However we found that most, if not all, the possible attenuation laws of the diffuse dust, arising from different choices of these quantities, can be closely mimicked by simply adjusting the amount of gas, while fixing the other quantities to the ‘typical’ values: $`R_d=3.5(M/10^{11}M_{})^{1/3}`$ Kpc, $`z_d=0.1R_d`$, $`\delta =0.01`$ and $`f_{mc}=0.5`$. Obviously, while different choices of $`M_g`$, $`R_d`$, $`z_d`$, $`\delta `$ and $`f_{mc}`$ can yield similar attenuation laws on the optical spectrum, the spectral shapes of the corresponding IR continuum re-radiation can be rather different.

Strictly speaking the residual gas $`M_g`$ is not a parameter, being instead the outcome of the chemical evolution code, through the Schmidt law. However we use the trick of forcing $`M_g`$ to different values, in order to describe with a monoparametric sequence the effects of a global attenuation on the SED. Besides this, a larger ‘freedom’ on $`M_g`$ takes into account that the Schmidt law should not be taken too literally, as a strict relationship between the total gas content and the $`SFR`$ in the system. The law may only provide an order of magnitude description, in particular for the secular evolution of the SFR, the so-called ”inactive phase” of galaxy evolution bringing essentially to the formation of spiral disks. Several other physical parameters influence the rate of star-formation with respect to the simple available amount of residual gas, in particular the gas pressure and temperature, which may drastically change as a consequence of a violent dynamical event, like an interaction or a merger, followed by gas compression and efficient cooling. Overall, we use the criterion of considering acceptable values from 0.2 to 5 times the ‘true’ $`M_g`$ given by the chemical evolution code.

### 3.2 An extensive grid of model template spectra

The code allowed us to build a very large set of model spectra describing all possible age and mass distributions for the stellar populations, for the dusty ISM, and relative assemblies.

For each of the 3 histories SFR(t) we have generated two grids of models: one with $`t_o=5`$ Myr and another with $`t_o=30`$ Myr. Silva et al. (1998) found that the former value is typical for normal spirals while the latter is more suited for starbursting systems. Each of these grids consists of 1400 models computed with ages $`t_G`$ ranging from 0.2 to 10 Gyr in steps of 0.2 Gyr and $`M_g`$ from 0 to 1 (in units of the final mass of stars) in 28 logarithmic steps.

In total we have therefore $`1400\times 2\times 3=8400`$ model spectra with different age, gas content, MCs escape timescale, and $`SFR(t)`$ which we compared with the observed sample SED, allowing for the obvious scaling in luminosity.

In addition we considered one further grid of spectra to see how our observed SEDs compare with those expected for spheroidal systems: for these we used the $`SFR(t)`$ (c) model, but truncated at 3 Gyr to simulate the onset of a galactic wind. The adopted geometry in this case was a modified King profile (Eq.  in Silva et al. 1998) with $`r_c=0.15(M/10^{11}M_{})^{1/3}`$ Kpc.

An example of the resulting fits to the observed broadband spectra of sixsteen galaxies in our sample is reported in Figure 2. The analysis of the 52 fitted SEDs reveals the presence of two dominant different kinds of spectral behaviours: (a) objects which are red and show a strong convergence in the UV region, and (b) blue spectra that are flatter at all wavelengths, dominated by young stellar populations.

## 4 RESULTS

### 4.1 The space-time distribution of K-band selected late-type galaxies

The grid of model spectra has been used to estimate redshifts from spectral fits to the 7-band photometric data for the 16 galaxies lacking a spectroscopic measurement. As typical in cases in which such a wide spectral coverage (0.3 to 2.2 $`\mu m`$) and accurate photometry are available, the relative errors in $`z`$ turn out to be quite small, of the order of $`10\%`$. These broad-band spectral fits allow quite robust estimates of redshifts also for dusty objects, mostly exploiting a well-characterized feature of the optical spectra, the Balmer discontinuity, which is weakly affected by dust extinction (cfr discussion in section 3.2.1 in FA98).

To check the consistency of our method, we compare in Figure 3 our photometric redshift predictions with the corresponding spectroscopic measures. The vertical error bars refer to different solutions at better than 90$`\%`$ confidence, derived from a $`\chi ^2`$ fitting procedure using models (a) and (c). Fig. 3 shows overall good agreement within our modellistic uncertainties of the fits. Added to the 36 spectroscopic redshifts, this procedure enabled us to get quite a reliable redshift distribution for our sample objects.

The distribution in redshift of a source population from a complete flux-limited catalogue provides a powerful constraint on its evolutionary history and formation epoch. This obviously assumes that we control with reasonable confidence all possible selection effects, in particular those due to the surface brightness limit, the cosmological dimming and K-corrections to the fluxes. If some morphological criteria are at play, one needs also to understand how morphological appearence may evolve with redshift. In our case the control of the selection effects is made easier by our primary selection in the K-band, which implies minimal K- and evolutionary corrections as a function of redshift.

The availability of accurate measurements of the effective radii $`r_e`$ allows to control the effects of the limiting surface brightness observable in the field in K, which we evaluated from the simulations described in Sect. 2 to be $`<\mu _K>23magnitudes/arcsec^2`$.

Figure 4 shows the evolution of the observed surface brightness for two objects in our sample (including the galaxy with the faintest surface brightness) as a function of redshift, taking into account the cosmic dimming and using a variety of spectral evolution patterns corresponding to the models described in Sect. 3. It is clear from the figure that the cutoff in surface brightness in the IRIM K band image has no impact in our selection process above our adopted limit in total magnitude of $`K<20.47`$, and the whole redshift space up to at least $`z=2.5`$ is clearly accessible in principle.

Figure 5 reports the histogram of the observed redshifts for our complete $`K<20.47`$ sample (including the 16 photometric estimates). The distribution shows pronounced peaks at $`z0.5`$ and $`z1`$, clearly indicative of strong inhomogeneities in the source distribution due to spatial clustering in the relatively small volume sampled by the HDFN. The uncertainty due to clustering in the limited volume has to be kept in mind when drawing any conclusions from our analysis, which require confirmation from surveys on more extended areas.

A second relevant feature is apparent in Fig. 5: a cutoff at $`z1.4`$, with only 2 objects out of 52 found above this limit.

We compared this distribution with a model prediction based on the local luminosity function of galaxies in the K-band (Gardner et al. gardner (1997)) complemented with information on the contributions of various morphological classes from optical data (see Franceschini et al. 1998 for more details). The luminosity function is then evolved according to spectral model (c), which provides a conservative estimate of the number of $`z>1`$ galaxies (it has the minimal evolution rates among the three models considered). The other assumption we made is that the luminosity function changes as an effect of the evolution of the $`M/L`$ ratio ($`M`$ changes because more mass is turned into stars with time, $`L`$ follows the evolution of the stellar populations). The onset of star-formation is assumed to happen at $`z=4`$.

As shown in the figure, these assumptions would imply an expected number of late-type galaxies at $`z>1.5`$ significantly in excess of the observations (9 expected versus only 1 observed). This result parallels a similar finding by FA98 and Rodighiero, Franceschini and Fasano (2000) for the early-type population, showing a demise of objects at redshifts larger than $`z1.3`$. One of the possible interpretations of this effect given by FA98, i.e. that the morphological selection could miss galaxies with shapes deviating from the De Vaucouleurs profile in case of merging activity at these redshifts, is no longer acceptable: essentially there are no bright ($`K<20.5`$) galaxies altogether at $`z>1.4`$ in the HDFN area.

### 4.2 Evaluating galactic ages and extinction properties

As anticipated, if the photometric measurement of redshift from broad-band spectral fits is weakly affected by dust extinction, the estimates of most other physical parameters of gas-rich systems suffer quite more by the uncertain amount of dust and from the degeneracy between ages of stellar populations and extinction. To check this we have used our large grid of model spectra to study the degeneracy of the spectral-fitting solutions of our sample galaxies.

Figures 6 plots $`\chi ^2`$ contours for the amount of dust-rich gas versus the age for two representative galaxies, as well as the best-fit spectra for two different histories of SF (model \[a\] and \[c\]).

It is immediately apparent that, even within sets of models based on the same evolutionary SFR(t), a fairly substantial degeneracy exists between the age and amount of dust. Furthermore, rather different star formation histories can lead to equally good fits, as detailed in Fig. 6.

Figure 7 summarizes some results of our best-fitting procedures for three representative objects in our sample. For each object, it reports various solutions for the rate of on-going SF and the average V-band extinction $`A_V`$, including the corresponding values of the $`\chi ^2`$. This figure illustrates the fact that the observed SEDs can be fitted with models differing in the current rate of star-formation by factors up to 5–10: a large amount of SF activity can be easily hidden at wavelengths below a few $`\mu `$m.

Figure 8 details the results of two different fits to the observed broadband spectrum for object 30, clearly illustrating the degeneracy existing between SF and extinction. The two SEDs correspond to two solutions reported in Fig. 7, with values of the SFR differing by a factor $`2.5`$. The top panel refers to the solution 1 with $`\chi ^2=6.77`$ and SFR$`200M_{}/yr`$. The lower panel refers to solution 2 with $`\chi ^2=7.44`$, SFR$`400M_{}/yr`$. It is clear that if the analysis is confined to optical/NIR wavelenghts, it cannot clearly discriminate between the two solutions, whose differences are apparent only including the far infrared spectrum, where dust re-emission would be detectable. Only observations of the IR spectral energy distribution, say between a few tenths up to a few hundreds $`\mu `$m, where actively star forming galaxies emit most of the energy, would allow to break the present degeneracy in the solutions.

### 4.3 Colours, sizes and average surface brightness of late-type galaxies at high redshifts

As a first assessment of the age and extinction distributions, we report in Figure 9 the rest frame (V-K) and (B-J) colours as a function of redshift. As in FA98, the rest frame (B-J) colours are computed by interpolating the observed galaxy spectra using the best-fit models listed in Table 1 (see Sect. 4.4), while the (V-K) colours require a slight extrapolation to longer wavelenghts. The left two panels refer to the observed spectra, which include the effects of reddening, while the colour distributions reported in the central panels correspond to ”de-reddened” spectra (i.e. taking out the effect of extinction and showing the underlying colour distribution). As we see, extinction plays a significant role: the estimated absorption-subtracted colours appear on average bluer by one magnitude. De-reddened colours are compared with the predictions of single stellar populations with solar metal abundances (dashed horizontal lines). The vertical error bars in the central panels are the mean uncertainties related to our de-reddening procedure based on our grid of models and our adopted 90% confidence level.

A comparison with the early–type galaxy sample studied by FA98 indicates that our late–type field galaxies present redder colours on average, because of extinction. This evidence is stronger in the (V-K) distribution, where a remarkable excess of red late–types is apparent at $`z>0.5`$ and $`VK>3`$. This illustrates that selecting by colours is far more sensitive to extinction effects than to intrinsic differences among the stellar populations contributing to the flux.

Once de-reddened, the rest-frame (B-J) colours reveal young stellar populations with ages from 0 to 2 Gyrs, significantly bluer than those of early-type galaxies, indicative of on-going SF. The (V-K) de-reddened colours show a dependence on redshift: while at $`z<0.6`$ they appear blue, those for galaxies at $`z>0.7`$ are constant and quite red on average ($`2<VK<3`$), and as red as those of the early-type population investigated by FA98.

We warn that translation to age-distributions is subject to the uncertainties in the evaluation of the effective extinction (see also next Section). However, the similarity in the intrinsic V-K colours of galaxies independent of morphology does indeed support a common age distribution for the spheroidal stellar components in Elliptical/S0s and in spiral bulges, something predicted by the hierarchical formation scenario mentioned in Section 1.

Finally, we report in Figure 10 our measured average surface brightness in the B band ($`<\mu _B>`$) versus effective radius $`R_e`$ for the bona-fide spirals in our high-z sample, compared with data from a local sample based on the RC3. $`<\mu _B>`$ was computed for our distant sources applying only the K-correction and the cosmological scaling factors. A further correction has been applied taking into account the effects of internal absorption. While the largest values of $`R_e`$ shown by local galaxies are missed by our high-z sample because we are not sampling the rare population of large size galaxies in the HDF limited space volume, there is no evidence of a significant offset in $`<\mu _B>`$ between the local and distant spirals within the large observed spreads in the data. In particular, the lowest surface brightness galaxies ($`<\mu _B>2223`$) in our sample are highly inclined, probably extinguished, objects. Note that the same relation fitting the Kormendy relation for E/S0 galaxies also fits data for spirals.

### 4.4 A tentative physical characterization of late-type galaxies in the HDF-N

Though aware of the uncertainties inherent in the spectral modelling of gas-rich systems due to the uncertain extinction, neverthless we attempt here to estimate some basic physical parameters of these sources, or at least to provide some boundary values as found by application of our vast model grid.

We report in Table 1 the formal best-fit solutions obtained from fitting the observed SEDs of our sample galaxies: $`A_V`$: V band effective extinction; $`M_{tot}`$: total baryonic mass divided by $`10^{11}`$ solar masses; $`SFR`$: observed SFR in solar masses per year.

Figure 11\[a\] plots the rate of ongoing star-formation SFR based on best-fit solutions versus redshift for our sample galaxies. The values derived in our analysis have a median around $`SFR=10M_{}/yr`$. Only one peculiar object (source number 2 in Table 1) shows an extreme value of SF (above $`500M_{}/yr`$). It is an apparently normal giant spiral viewed face-on, for which our spectral fit predicts a large extinction $`A_V=2.2`$. A more standard extinction value ($`A_V=1.3`$), still providing an acceptable fit, would still correspond to a large value of SFR$`200M_{}/yr`$.

The apparent scaling of SFR with z in Fig.11\[a\] may be explained as mostly a selection effect concerning the luminousity of our objects. On the other hand, Figure 11\[b\] indicates that the star formation rate is on average proportional to the intrinsic baryonic mass, such that galaxies with higher SFR are typically those more massive. By looking at higher redshifts means to observe only the more luminous sources, those with larger masses. Our K-band selection then operates largely on the stellar mass.

Any dependence on redshift disappears when we normalize SFR to the baryonic mass, as it is done in Figure 11\[c\]. The ratio $`M_{tot}/SFR`$ appearing in Fig.11\[c\] gives the timescale for the formation of stars in our late–type galaxy sample. The latter does not reveal characteristics of violent starburst, if we consider our observed timescales required to convert all gas in stars: these range from 1 up to 20 Gyrs, and indicate a moderate star formation activity for the present K-selected field galaxies.

### 4.5 Constraints on the global star formation history: contributions of late-type and early-type field galaxies

A most popular way to represent the evolutionary properties of a population of cosmic sources is through the plot of the total luminosity density (or the stellar formation and metal production rates) in the comoving volume (Madau et al. madau (1996); Lilly et al. lillyb (1996)). When referred to the average galaxy population in the field, this function was shown to drastically increase from the present time back to redshift $`z1`$, and to flatten off above.

The separate contribution of galaxies with early-type morphologies to the global star-formation rate per comoving volume $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$ \[$`M_{}yr^1Mpc^3`$\] has been estimated by FA98 using the complementary sample in the HDFN and population synthesis results. The outcome was that early-types contribute significantly to the total $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$ mostly at $`z>1`$, their fractional contribution decreasing very fast at lower $`z`$.

A first reason to perform a similar computation on the complementary sample of spirals and irregulars is to compare the two histories of SF. A further reason of interest to have the full complete sample processed comes from recent reports claiming evidence for a more gradual decline of the galaxy ultraviolet luminosity density at $`z<1`$ (Cowie et al. cowie (1999); Treyer et al. treyer (1998)), taken as an indication of a modest evolution of the rate of SF during the last $`10`$ Gyrs of the galaxy cosmic history.

An independent assessment, accounting for dust extinction and exploiting the observed baryonic mass function in stars through a full spectro-photometric fit to the SED’s, would then be clearly welcome. We remember that, whereas this computation is relatively straightforward for the classified ellipticals/S0 due to the lack of an ISM complicating the stellar population-synthesis fit, modelling gas rich late-types presents more severe problems due to the presence of dust. We will see later, however, that the corresponding uncertainties tend to average out in the integrated form of the $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$ function, providing a relatively robust result.

We defer to the paper by Franceschini et al. (1998) for all details of the computation. To remind here only the basic steps, for all 52 objects in our complete sample we computed, within our grids of synthetic spectra, the younger and more extinguished solution. In the same way we determined the older solution less affected by absorption. We computed the available comoving volumes $`V_{max}`$ within which the object would still be visible above the sample flux limit (Lilly et al. lilly (1995), lillyb (1996)). The contribution of each galaxy to the global SFR has been estimated by dividing the time dependent SF rate (derived from the two fits) by $`V_{max}`$. A correction to the comoving SF rate is then applied for the portion of the luminosity function not sampled by the present survey. Such correction is based on the $`K`$-band luminosity function discussed by Connolly et al. (connolly (1997)). The global SFR density $`\mathrm{\Psi }(t)`$, is the summed contribution by all galaxies in our sample.

The result appears in Figure 12 in the form of the comoving rate of star formation $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$ versus redshift for the sample considered here (dot-dash line), compared with the evolutionary path for early-type galaxies (dotted lines). The results in panel (a) and (b) correspond to the two extreme acceptable (at 90% of confidence) spectral solutions for each object, the one most extinguished and younger for panel (a), and the older less extinguished for panel (b).

The disk–dominated and the irregular galaxies in the present sample display an evolutionary behaviour different from that of bulge–dominated objects. The former appear to form actively stars well below $`z=1`$, whereas the rate of SF for the latter is high at $`z>1`$ but converges very fast at lower $`z`$. Our result for the disk and irregular galaxies is quite consistent with those by Brinchmann et al. (brinchmann (1998), their fig. 15), in showing a comoving SFR modestly increasing between $`z=0.3`$ and 1. On the contrary, our results differ significantly from Brinchmann et al. as far as the early-type systems are considered (in their case E/S0 have a flat $`\mathrm{\Psi }(t)`$ in the same z-interval): we explain this as due to the very different procedures adopted to measure the function $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$, in our case it was a global fit to the UV-optical-NIR SED, in their case the use of the OII EW as a tracer of SF. Indeed, the latter should more likely trace a negligible residual of SF due to low-level merging activity or stellar recycling, than the global history of SF in these galaxies.

Note that, despite the large uncertainties on the single object, the overall result is fairly well constrained between the two extreme solutions depicted by the shaded region in Figure 13. This is due to a sort of compensation intervening in the adopted solutions: the younger-more extinguished one tends to have a more intense ongoing SF activity but less protracted in time, while the contrary happens for the older less-extinguished solutions. In other words, the baryonic mass already converted into stars and sampled by the near-IR (JHK) flux measurements as a function of redshift, provides a more robust evaluation of the evolutionary SFR than the instantaneous SFR mapped by the short-wavelength flux. In a sense, the errorbar appearing in Fig. 11 does not translates into a similarly large uncertainty in the prediction of Fig. 13, because the ongoing rate of SF (SFR in panel \[a\] of Fig. 11) and the timescale of SF ($`M_{tot}/SFR`$ in panel \[c\]) scale inversely to the galaxy mass function observed at various redshifts.

This prompted us to compare our results with those published by Cowie et al. (cowie (1999)). This is done in Figure 13 where our results appear as the shaded region, which is bracketed by the two solutions based on the younger-high extinction (upper histogram) and the older less extinguished (lower histogram) models. The continuous line is a polynomial function \[$`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)(1+z)^{1.4}`$\] quoted by Cowie et al. (cowie (1999)) as best-fitting their and Treyer’s et al. (treyer (1998)) data on the time-dependent UV luminosity density. Within the uncertainties, our results are in quite better consistency with the Cowie et al. (1999) evolutionary law than with the dataset compiled by Madau et al. (madau (1996)), based on the CFRS (Lilly et al. lillyb (1996)) and the low-z Hα survey by Gallego et al. (gallego (1995)).

While some discussions can be found in Cowie et al. (cowie (1999)) about possible origins for this discrepancy and on the consequences on this new evaluation of the evolutionary SFR, we only take note here of the nice agreement between our results and those of Cowie et al. (cowie (1999)), based on quite indipendent grounds.

It is remarkable that UV and near IR selected galaxy samples show such similar evolution of the comoving SFR density $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$.

## 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

With the main goal to investigate systematic differences between early-type and late-type galaxies – as for colours, redshift distributions, and ages of the dominant stellar populations – we have analyzed a morphologically-selected complete sample of 52 spiral and irregular galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field North with total K-magnitudes brighter than K=20.47 and typical redshifts from $`z0.5`$ to 1.5. The sample makes use of total photometry in the UBVI bands from HST and the JHK bands from ground, all carefully tested with an extensive set of Monte Carlo simulations.

The present sample exploits in particular the ultimate imaging quality achieved by HST in this field, allowing us to disentangle among galaxy morphologies, based on accurate profiles of the surface brightness distributions.

Our analysis makes also use of an exhaustive set of modellistic spectra accounting for a variety of physical and geometrical situations for the stellar populations, the dusty ISM, and relative assemblies. The high photometric quality and wide spectral coverage allowed us to estimate accurate photometric redshifts for 16 objects lacking a spectroscopic measurement.

We have also carefully evaluated all plausible systematic effects of the selection, in particular the redshift cutoff implied by the limiting surface-brightness achievable in the reference K band image.

A warning is in order, in any case, about the general conclusions derived from our sample of K-selected galaxies: they should be treated with caution, due to the very small field of view and modest spatial sampling of the present survey. Ferguson et al. (2000) and Eisenhardt et al. (2000) estimate that the number of $`L^{}`$ galaxies in the total HDF co-moving volume between z=1 and z=2 is only a few dozens. Considering also the strong clustering inferred for Lyman break galaxies (Adelberger et al. 1998), statistical fluctuations imply large uncertainties on any conclusions based on samples like the HDF, untill more substantial surveys to similar depths will be made available.

Three the main results of our study.

* The sample galaxies are distributed in redshift up to $`z=1.4`$, but appear to be significantly missing above, compared with evolutionary models assuming standard recipes for the luminosity evolution and a substantial redshift of formation. We reported a similar finding in our previous study of early-type galaxies in the same area (Franceschini et al. 1998). Our conclusion is that, either the area has some peculiarities, or the underlying mass function for galaxies of all morphological kinds has a global decline at these high redshifts. Confirmation of this result will require more substantial sky areas to be surveyed to similar depths by large telescopes.
* Differences between early- and late-types are apparent in the rest-frame colour distributions and the evolutionary star-formation rates per unit volume. In particular, the short-wavelength rest-frame colours B-J, once dust reddening is taken into account, appear quite significantly bluer for late- than for early- galaxy types. On the contrary, the longer-wavelength colors V-K appear to be very similar for the two morphological classes. We interprete this as an indication that, while the stellar mix in spirals/irregulars includes young newly formed populations, less apparent in E/S0, the underlying older age component traced by the V-K colors has quite a similar origin and age distribution for the two galaxy categories.

We warn, however, that the complication in spectro-photometric modelling introduced by dust-extinction in the gas-rich systems prevents to reach conclusive results on the source by source basis. Only future long-wavelength IR observations, from space (SIRTF, FIRST, NGST) and from ground (10 m class telescopes in the mid-IR and interferometers in the sub-mm), will allow to break down the age/extinction degeneracy.
* We found that an integrated quantity like the comoving-volume star-formation rate density as a function of redshift $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$ is much less affected by the uncertainties related to the dust distribution. The reason for this is mostly in the fact that our analysis is strongly constrained by the evolutionary baryonic mass function in stars traced by the near-IR galaxy luminosities, the estimate of the baryon mass at any redshifts being much more robust than that of the instantaneous rate of star formation (see Sect. 4.5).

By combining this with the early-type galaxy sample previously studied by FA98, we find a shallower dependence of $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$ on $`z`$ between $`z=0.2`$ and $`z=1.5`$ than found by Lilly et al. (1996), i.e. $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)(1+z)^{1.4}`$ rathen than $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)(1+z)^4`$ as in Lilly et al. (lillyb (1996)). In this redshift interval our observed $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$ turns out to roughly agree with results published by Cowie et al. (cowie (1999)) and Treyer et al. (treyer (1998)).

Our present results, based for the first time on a careful modelling of the whole UV-optical-NIR Spectral Energy Distributions of galaxies, then support a revision of the Lilly-Madau plot at low-redshifts for UV- and K-band selected galaxies. UV-selected and near infrared selected galaxy samples display a remarkably similar evolution of the comoving SFR density $`\mathrm{\Psi }(z)`$, at $`z<1`$.

The three above findings seem to favour the general scheme of hierarchical assembly for the formation of bright galaxies, envisaging their progressive build up during a substantial fraction of the Hubble time. After all, this is the most physically motivated present description.

In this context, a warning is in order concerning some published specializations of the Cold Dark Matter cosmogonic scheme, predicting that spheroidal galaxies in the field form at low redshift ($`z<1`$) from merging of spirals (Kauffmann & Charlot kauffmannb (1998)). This prediction is not supported by our results in Fig. 12, where Ellipticals and S0s appear to have been mostly formed at $`z=1`$, whereas spirals/irregulars keep some sustained SF activity at $`z<1`$. This result suggests that merging of spirals to form ellipticals at low redshifts cannot be a dominant process, quite in agreement with what found by Brinchmann & Ellis (brinchmannb (1998)).

It is conceivable, however, that minor modifications of the CDM hierachical scheme (e.g. in terms of different assumptions about the cosmological parameters $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$) can explain the observed differences between morphological types. In our view, these differences in the population histories are quite probably related to the presence of different environments at different densities (and consequently different cosmic timescales of formation) in what we call the ”field”. In particular, moderately high-density environments (typically galaxy groups, as found very numerous in the spectroscopic survey by Cohen et al. cohenb (1999)), with an accelerated cosmic timescale of evolution and fast gas consumption, mix with truly low-density environments, where the transformation of primordial gas into stars slowly progresses during the whole Hubble time. We believe that the two galaxy morphologies analyzed in the present paper and in FA98 trace such different environments in the universe.


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# Implementation of the Dead-Time Free F1 TDC in the COMPASS Detector Readout

## 1 Overview of the readout architecture

The large active detector volume, the necessary expandability to perform different physics experiments and the upgradeability during the longevity of the experiment requires a scalable and distributed readout system with federal event building (Figure 1). The high particle flux from the traversing beam at intensities of $`210^8`$ particles per spill (2.4 s) requires dead-timeless readout with digitisation immediately at the detector. Data are stored on the front-end boards in random access memories or pipelines for about 2 $`\mu `$s until trigger decisions have been taken. Only those hits are transmitted to the master event-builder which are time correlated to a physics trigger event. Hence background data are suppressed at an early stage of the readout chain, which reduces the necessary bandwidth significantly down to several Gigabytes per spill.

The trigger rate depends on the physics reactions to be studied and is in the range of 10–100 kHz. Trigger signals are distributed synchronously to a 38.88 MHz clock via optical fibres from the trigger control system (TCS) laser crate. Additional event information like spill and event numbers, time synchronisation signal and begin- and end-of-spill flags are transmitted through the same fibre by time multiplexing.

The readout driver named CATCH (COMPASS Accumulate, Transfer and Control Hardware ) serves as a common interface between the detector-specific front-end boards, the trigger control system and the readout buffers. Data which belong to one event are combined in a local sub-event building process and consistency checks are performed on the data integrity. The sub-events are transmitted via a fast optical link to readout buffers, which can store all data from at least one spill. Sub-events are combined and transmitted via Gigabit Ethernet to filter computers. Here the final event-building is performed, events are partly reconstructed and, based on physics cuts, data may be reduced by a factor of 5 to 10. Finally a continuous rate of 30 MByte/s of event data can be transfered to the central data recording facilities at CERN, where the events will be stored in an Objectivity/DB data base. The total amount of data accumulated each year will be about 300 Terabyte.

## 2 F1-TDC

To be in compliance with a dead-time free data-digitisation and the time resolution requirements of the detectors we developed a new TDC-chip. This device can be easily adapted to the conditions of different detector types . The F1-TDC, produced in 0.6 $`\mu `$m sea-of-gates technology, supports basically three modes: In the high rate option ($`>`$ 6 MHz input rate) the TDC chip provides a digitisation width of 60 ps on four input channels at a double pulse resolution of about 18 ns. The standard mode delivers a digitisation unit of about 120 ps on eight inputs per chip at a dynamic range of 16 bits. The latch mode implements a 32 channel low resolution ($`>`$4.7 ns) readout for multi wire proportional chambers. In all modes the hits, which are time correlated to the trigger. are selected for readout from an internal buffer.

We have chosen two options for interfacing the F1-TDC to the CATCH readout driver: For the high rate detectors like scintillating fibres, trigger hodoscopes and the beam momentum stations, the TDCs are placed on mezzanine cards, which are mounted on the CATCH, allowing for a readout speed of 120 MByte/s. Each mezzanine card hosts four TDC chips and supports 32 differential inputs in standard resolution or 16 inputs in high resolution mode (software selectable). The straw tubes, drift chambers and micromega chambers have the TDCs mounted on the front-end boards operated in standard resolution mode, as well as the multi wire proportional chambers with the F1-chip in latch mode. In case of the micromega chambers  both leading and trailing edges are read-out allowing for noise suppression and walk correction by measuring the time over threshold. For all front-end mounted F1-TDCs a DAC interface is used to set the thresholds of the external discriminators. Up to eight TDCs are placed on one front-end board and read-out through a common bus, which interfaces to a HOTLink serialiser chip.

## 3 CATCH readout driver

Four exchangeable input mezzanine cards mounted on the 9U VME module provide a highly flexible input interface (Figure 2). At the moment we have developed three different types of mezzanine cards following the IEEE CMC standard:

One type receives digitised data from up to four different front-end boards. For this mezzanine card we use the HOTLink serialising chip and a 600 MHz differential twisted pair line to achieve 400 MBaud sustained input data rate. The same patch cable is used to transmit trigger, time synchronisation and a power-up reset signal on a common line. Through a third and fourth line the reference clock and initialisation data, respectively, are distributed to the front-end boards. This card is also available with a fibre optical link to replace copper cables.

Another type of mezzanine card hosts four F1-TDC chips resulting in a 128 channel TDC module. A 32 channel 300 MHz dead-time free and trigger-latency correcting scaler is implemented on the third mezzanine card.

While framed data are transmitted at a maximum throughput of 160 MByte/s to the readout buffer via a S-LINK module , an independent spy buffer can be used to access events via the VME bus at a lower data rate. This allows for an easy setup of a stand alone DAQ without S-LINK and spill buffer at test beams.

The live insertion of the CATCH and plug & play feature for front-end and mezzanine boards greatly enhances the maintainability of the system and eliminates miscabling. The front-end boards transmit their identification and position on the detector to the CATCH, which stores this information in the geometry database and receives the corresponding initialisation data from the calibration database.

This work would be impossible without the formidable support of the local electronic workshop and engineer team. We deeply appreciate the many stimulating discussions with our colleagues from the COMPASS collaboration involved in front-end electronics development. The developments described in this report are supported by the German Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.


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# Thermal Comptonization in GRS 1915+105

## 1 Introduction

The X-ray transient GRS 1915+105 was discovered by Castro-Tirado et al. (1992) using the WATCH all-sky monitor on the GRANAT satellite. Since then it has been one of the most luminous X-ray sources in the sky. The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) has been monitoring it frequently and a rich pattern of variability has emerged from these data with time scales from years down to 15 msec (see e.g., Morgan, Remillard, & Greiner 1997; Muno, Morgan, & Remillard 1999; Belloni et al. 2000). Often the overall spectral shape in the 2–50 keV energy range has been modeled with a disk blackbody accompanied by a power law tail (e.g. Belloni et al. 1997; Muno et al. 1999).

A power law, however, is not a good approximation to the Comptonization spectrum in the energy range close to the peak of the blackbody. This fact inspired us to use a thermal Comptonization code by Poutanen & Svensson (1996, PS96) to model the spectrum. Vilhu & Nevalainen (1998) applied a similar analysis to a selected set of observations of GRS 1915+105. A spherical geometry for the hot Comptonizing plasma cloud is assumed where the seed soft photons are coming from the surrounding cool disk which has some overlap with the central cloud (Poutanen, Krolik, & Ryde 1997). A geometry, with no overlap between the disk and the hot cloud (“corona”), can correspond to a physical situation when the central part of the disk is overheated (Beloborodov 1998) at large accretion rates. The central hot cloud can also be related to the innermost part of the jet. In the opposite situation, when there is a large overlap between the disk and corona, we arrive at a simple disk-corona model (e.g. Haardt & Maraschi 1993; Svensson & Zdziarski 1994; Stern et al. 1995). Physically this could correspond to the release of a large fraction of the total energy in the surface layers of the accretion disk, for example, due to annihilation of buoyant magnetic fields (e.g. Tout & Pringle 1992; Miller & Stone 2000). The adopted geometry is thus quite generic and it can represent well the X-ray emitting region in a number of physical situations.

An important question is whether the energy distribution of electrons responsible for Comptonization is thermal or non-thermal. In Cygnus X-1, for example, when the spectrum is hard, electrons are mostly thermal (Gierliński et al. 1997; Poutanen 1998), while in the soft state, Comptonization probably proceeds in hybrid, thermal/non-thermal plasmas (Poutanen & Coppi 1998; Gierliński et al. 1999). The lower energy photons (below $`20`$ keV) are produced mostly by a thermal population of electrons, and the high energy tail extending to $`1`$ MeV is produced by single scattering off non-thermal electrons. Up to date, there are no detailed spectral studies of GRS 1915+105 using physical models. However, if one uses Cyg X-1 as an analogy, one can argue that thermal Comptonization probably dominates the spectra below 20–50 keV. In the present paper, a thermal Comptonization model is applied to the RXTE data of GRS 1915+105 collected from several observing intervals during 1996–1997.

## 2 Observations

We collected 36 Proportional Counter Array (PCA) and High-Energy X-ray Timing Experiment (HEXTE) observations of GRS 1915+105, performed during 1996–97, from the ‘production’ archive of RXTE, with typical observing times of a few hours. The selection procedure was rather random, its main purpose was to extract a sufficient number of low, medium and high luminosity states of the system. Figure 2 shows the ASM (All Sky Monitor) light curve with the selected PCA and HEXTE observations marked. The data with 128 (PCA Standard 2 data) and 64 (HEXTE) channels of spectral information and 16 s temporal resolution of five PCU’s (proportional counter units) and both HEXTE clusters were used. The background was subtracted (using PCAbackest and HEXTE rocking) although its effect is not crucial, since we limited the PCA and HEXTE spectra in the range 2–20 keV and 15–60 keV, respectively.

Inside each of the 36 observation periods the data were binned into separate luminosity groups (1–5) to accumulate a spectrum (using PCA count rate criterion), resulting in 101 individual spectra. Single spectra were used to represent the non-variable LULL-state observations (the long minimum phase in the middle of Fig. 2), while strongly oscillating observations were divided into 5 luminosity classes. These 5-class observations were 20402-01-33-00 (3000–26000 counts s-1 , $`\kappa `$), 20402-01-37-01 (3000-35000 counts s-1, $`\lambda `$), 20402-01-43-00 (5000–45000 counts s-1, mixed $`\beta `$ and $`\mu `$) and 20402-01-44-00 (5000–40000 counts s-1, $`\beta `$) where the ranges of the five PCU’s count rates and the variability types by Belloni et al. (2000) are given in the parentheses. On the average a typical observation was split into three classes.

## 3 The model

The Comptonizing cloud (corona) is represented as a homogeneous sphere of radius $`R_\mathrm{c}`$ and Thomson optical depth $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$. The electrons in the cloud are assumed to have thermal distribution of temperature $`T_e`$. The optically thick disk supplying seed photons for Comptonization and penetrating into the central cloud has an inner radius $`R_{\mathrm{in}}<R_\mathrm{c}`$. Radiative transfer in the corona (Comptonization) is handled by the code of PS96 for a hemispherical geometry of the corona. In order to model the radiative transfer in a sphere, the boundary condition at the bottom of the hemisphere is modified. A photon crossing the bottom can be mirror-reflected instead of being absorbed by the disk (or Compton reflected) with the probability defined by the ratio $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$ (Poutanen et al. 1997). The angle-dependent Compton reflection from the disk of neutral material is computed using Green’s function of Magdziarz & Zdziarski (1995).

The radial dependence of the disk temperature is that of the classical viscous disk $`T_{\mathrm{bb}}(r)=T_{\mathrm{in}}(r/R_\mathrm{c})^{3/4}`$ at $`R>R_\mathrm{c}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{bb}}(r)=T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ inside the coronal region (between $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`R_\mathrm{c}`$). There are a few reasons why such a temperature profile is chosen. First, if a large fraction of the total power is dissipated in a corona which has large scale-height and covers a significant part of the inner cold disk, the reprocessing of coronal hard X-rays can produce a rather flat temperature profile. Second, owing to the stress-free inner boundary condition at the marginally stable orbit, the temperature profile even in a standard disk is rather flat between $`3R_\mathrm{g}`$ and $`10R_\mathrm{g}`$ (where $`R_\mathrm{g}=2GM/c^2`$). Third, if $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}0`$, the $`r^{3/4}`$ profile diverges. Regarding spectral fitting, the actual temperature profile makes little difference. The local spectrum was assumed to be a blackbody.

The total spectrum contains a blackbody-type component, a Comptonized tail and a Compton reflection component. To obtain both $`T_e`$ and $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$ is beyond the RXTE capability, therefore we fixed $`kT_e`$ at 70 keV (but also made numerous fits with $`kT_e=30`$ keV and 150 keV). Instead of $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$, we then used the $`y`$-parameter ($`y=4\tau _\mathrm{T}\mathrm{\Theta }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Theta }=kT_e/m_ec^2`$) which determines the spectral slope. Thus, the free parameters of the model are $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$, $`y`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$. The inclination $`i=70^\mathrm{o}`$ was used, assuming that the radio jet is perpendicular to the disk (Mirabel & Rodríguez 1994). The important fact to notice is that the relative normalization between the disk and the Comptonized components is not free, but is a function of the model parameters mostly depending on $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$ (or $`y`$) and $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$.

## 4 Results

The PCA/HEXTE spectra of GRS 1915+105 were fitted using xspec v.10 (Arnaud 1996), and allowing 2% systematic errors. The reduced $`\chi ^2`$-values are less than 2.2 in all data sets, less than 1.6 in 64 sets, and less than 1.2 in 32 sets (for 132 degrees of freedom using 138 energy bins). The neutral hydrogen column density $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ was frozen at $`2.3\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. This value is the best acceptable common value for spectra with high, intermediate and low luminosities. It is lower than that used in many previous works (e.g. Muno et al. 1999 used $`N_\mathrm{H}=6.0\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$). However, our value is close to the galactic $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ in the direction of GRS 1915+105 (using Dickey & Lockman 1990 data, ftools/nh gives $`N_\mathrm{H}=1.75\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, see also Rodríquez et al. 1994). The normalization factor between PCA and HEXTE data was allowed to vary freely, with the best-fit always giving HEXTE/PCA = $`0.70\pm 0.05`$.

Figure 4 shows the best-fit results as a function of the disk luminosity $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ (assuming a distance of 12.5 kpc, see Chaty et al. 1996; Fender et al. 1999) which was computed from the blackbody flux corrected for scattering in the corona and the $`\mathrm{cos}i`$ angular dependence of the disk luminosity. $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ together then determine the physical size of the system $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`R_\mathrm{c}`$ (assuming blackbody emission). The hard luminosity, $`L_{\mathrm{hard}}`$, is computed from the (approximately isotropic) flux in the Comptonized component (plus reflection).

The inner disk temperature $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$ strongly correlate with the disk luminosity (Figs. 4a, d). The coronal $`y`$-parameter anticorrelates with $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ depending on $`\mathrm{ln}L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ nearly linearly (Fig. 4b). For low $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$, the spectra are hard, and for large $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ the spectra are soft. The hard Comptonized luminosity, $`L_{\mathrm{hard}}`$, is relatively constant and in some cases of large $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ significantly decreases (Fig. 4f). The geometry of the system (determined by the ratio $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$) changes dramatically when $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ varies. For large $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$, the normalization of the Comptonized component decreases relative to the disk component, leading to $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}1`$. In our model, $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}1`$ means that only a small fraction $`3\%`$ of soft disk photons are getting Comptonized, while the majority reaches the observer directly. We would not advise to take the ratios $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$ at their face value since we made an assumption of a constant $`T_e`$ (see § 5). One can conclude, however, that the number of soft photons that are intercepted by the corona (“scattered fraction”) decreases dramatically when $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ increases.

The inner disk radius (Fig. 4e) is rather constant (25–40 km, without relativistic and color corrections). However, in two observations (20402-01-43-00 and 20402-01-44-00) the radii increased above 50 km during their lowest luminosity phases (’downs’ in Fig. 4e, while ’ups’ in Fig. 4e represent their high luminosity phases). These two particular observations have $`\beta `$-type light curves (see Fig. 2X in Belloni et al. 2000) where the long minimum phases last 10–15 min (mini-lulls). It is interesting to note that these two observations preceded by 10 days those by Mirabel et al. (1998) with a similar light curve during which ejections of weak jets were discovered (seen in IR and radio).

To permit a comparison with models using a power law, we also fitted all our spectra with the ‘wabs + diskbb + powerlaw’ model of xspec (which we call the power law model hereafter) fixing $`N_\mathrm{H}=4.5\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. The best-fit power law photon index, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, is shown in Fig. 4c. One sees an anticorrelation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`y`$-parameter which is well represented by the relation $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=9/(4y^{2/9})`$ (Beloborodov 1999).

To illustrate the difference between the Comptonization and the power law models, we show the data for two observations together with the model spectra in Figure 4. (A gaussian line at 6.4 keV is added to both models.) We note that the power law model strongly overestimates the low energy part of the hard component, and therefore strongly underestimates the amplitude of the blackbody component (dotted curves). For example, the amplitude of the blackbody in the power law fit is by a factor of four too low in the upper panels (marked Lull). Another strong effect is the difference in the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ determined with the two models. Since the power law continues to low energies without a cutoff, the best fit $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ is $`(67)\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, while for the Comptonization model $`N_\mathrm{H}2.5\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. The power law model overestimates the total, corrected for absorption, luminosity if one extrapolates the model spectrum to low energies and gives also a poorer fit to the hard Lull-spectrum (compare left and right panels in Fig. 4).

## 5 Discussion and Conclusions

A strong correlation between the ratio $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$ and the luminosity $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ means that the coronal size $`R_\mathrm{c}`$ decreases when $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ increases (since $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ const). Physically this means that the range of the disk surface where energy is dissipated in the optically thin phase (corona) shrinks. When spectra are relatively hard, the geometry of the system is similar to a disk-corona. For large $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ and softer spectra, the Comptonizing plasma does not cover the disk. One can speculate that in this case hard X-rays are produced in the innermost part of the jet-like structure within the disk inner radius.

We cannot be certain, however, that the change in the geometry (i.e. $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$) obtained from the fitting is real. The problem is that we assumed a constant $`T_e`$ (since the RXTE data do not allow us to determine $`T_e`$ unambiguously). If one fixes $`T_e`$ at another value, the result does not change qualitatively (see Fig. 4d where a systematic effect on $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$ is shown by the solid curves for $`kT_e=30`$ keV and 150 keV). However, if $`T_e`$ is allowed to vary the situation changes.

Let us consider a case of large $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ when $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}1`$ and $`\tau _\mathrm{T}0.25`$ (for $`kT_e=70`$ keV). In this case only about 3% of soft disk photons are scattered in the corona. The same fraction is scattered also if $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}=0.5`$ (here about $`1/4`$ of soft photons are produced within the corona) and $`\tau _\mathrm{T}0.03`$. Then the normalization of the Comptonized spectrum relative to the blackbody emission is about the same. The spectral shape does not change much since for small optical depths and mildly relativistic temperatures the contribution of multiply scattered photons is small. Therefore, the electron temperature has to increase to only about 90 keV in order to produce a similar Comptonized spectrum in the 3–70 keV energy range. From this analysis we can only conclude that the scattered fraction decreases when $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ increases. If the geometry of the system does not change, i.e. $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}=\mathrm{constant}`$, $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$ should decrease much more than is shown in Fig. 4b. One should note that this discussion is meaningful only if the spectra are indeed produced by thermal Comptonization.

Our choice of the disk temperature profile ($`T_{\mathrm{bb}}`$ is constant inside the corona) has also some (small) effect on $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}`$, while the effect is completely negligible for other fitting parameters. For the most extreme hard spectra (marked Lull) when $`R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{c}=0.5`$, the number of seed photons is doubled if the peak temperature is reached at $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ (instead of $`R_\mathrm{c}`$), so that $`\tau _\mathrm{T}`$ should be smaller by a factor of 2 in order to produce similar spectra.

The mass accretion rate in GRS 1915+105 is high amounting to $`(0.11.5)\times \dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ (for a $`10M_{}`$ black hole), where $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}=10L_{\mathrm{Edd}}/c^2=1.39\times 10^{18}M/M_{}`$ g s-1 corresponds to a radiative efficiency of 0.1. The inner disk radius lies in a rather narrow range of 25–40 km and the soft and hard state radii do not differ considerably.

One should be cautious with the absolute $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$-values derived, since relativistic and color corrections can be large. Using the results by Zhang et al. (1997) at inclination $`70^\mathrm{o}`$, one obtains the factors 1.23 and 1.07 for a non-rotating and an extreme prograde Kerr hole, respectively, by which the radii in Fig. 4e should be multiplied to obtain the innermost radius of the disk. After these corrections the mass of GRS 1915+105 should be smaller than $`4M_{}`$ and $`22M_{}`$ for a non-rotating and an extreme prograde Kerr hole, if the average radius derived (30 km in Fig. 4e) equals the last marginally stable orbit ($`3R_\mathrm{g}`$ and $`0.5R_\mathrm{g}`$ for a non-rotating and Kerr hole, respectively).

In conclusion, the RXTE data of GRS 1915+105 in a broad luminosity range $`(230)\times 10^{38}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ can be modeled with a thermal Comptonization model. We find a strong correlation between the spectral slope, the disk temperature, and the disk luminosity $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$. The hard Comptonized luminosity decreases somewhat when the total luminosity increases (meaning that the fraction of total power dissipated in an optically thin plasma decreases substantially with luminosity). The scattered fraction of seed soft photons and the optical depth of the Comptonizing plasma decrease with $`L_{\mathrm{disk}}`$. There are indications that the size of the corona $`R_\mathrm{c}`$ shrinks at large luminosities, but this can be mimicked by corresponding changes in the optical depth. Detailed modeling of the broadband spectra (at least up to 300 keV) is needed to discriminate between those possibilities. The biggest question is, however, whether a pure thermal Comptonization model is applicable to GRS 1915+105.

Finally, we would like to point out that spectral fits using xspec diskbb + power law model underestimate the amplitude of the blackbody component and therefore the corresponding size of the emitting region. This model also overestimates the absorption column density and the luminosity corrected for absorption.

This research has been supported by the Academy of Finland (OV) and the Swedish Natural Science Research Council and the Anna-Greta and Holger Crafoord Fund (JP). JN acknowledges the grant from ESA. We thank Diana Hannikainen for reading the manuscript and the anonymous referee for valuable criticism and comments.


text:
# Comment on New Results for the Charged Pion Electromagnetic Form Factor

(October 23, 2000)

## Abstract

In the paper nucl-ex/0010009 by The Jefferson Lab $`F_\pi `$ Collaboration the new results for the charged pion electromagnetic form factor are presented. The approach given in our paper hep-ph/9811318, ”On a possible estimation of the constituent–quark parameters from Jefferson Lab experiments on the pion form factor” makes it possible to estimate the mass of constituent quark from such kind of experiment. Now this estimation gives $`M=0.21`$ GeV.

In the paper  by The Jefferson Lab $`F_\pi `$ Collaboration the new results for the charged pion electromagnetic form factor are presented. The form factor was measured in momentum transfer region $`Q^2=0.61.6`$ (GeV/c)2 . The results indicate that the pion form factor in this region is larger than previously assumed.

Some time ago using one of relativistic forms of the constituent quark model (CQM) we presented a method of calculation of the pion electromagnetic form factor . The results of our calculation indicate that the form factor dependence on the quark interaction model is weak, while the dependence on the constituent quark mass is rather significant. The curves calculated with different wave functions but one and the same quark mass form groups. The position of the group changes essentially with the quark mass. So the approach  makes it possible to estimate the mass of constituent quark from the experiment on pion form factor.

Let us remind that we have fixed the parameters of the model in the following way. At the present time there are two pion characteristics that can be extracted from the data in a model independent way and with sufficient accuracy: the mean square radius $`r_\pi ^2_{exp}^{1/2}`$, and the lepton decay constant $`f_{\pi exp}`$. We assume that the calculations for any quark interaction model satisfy (in addition to the description of the particle spectrum) the conditions:

$$r_\pi ^2^{1/2}=r_\pi ^2_{exp}^{1/2},$$

$$f_\pi =f_{\pi exp}.$$

These characteristics are not influenced by the new data.

Our results are presented in Fig.1. Instead of the group with $`M=0.22`$ GeV in  we present the group with $`M=0.21`$ GeV providing the best description of the new data.

The great accuracy of Jefferson Lab experiments  makes it possible to fix the position of ”the group” rather accurately and, so, to determine the constituent quark mass $`M`$.

So, the result is: the constituent quark mass $`M=0.21`$ GeV.


text:
# An asymmetric exclusion model with overtaking a numerical and simulation study

## 1 Introduction

Over the past few years, a great deal of progress has been achieved in our understanding of boundary and disordered-induced phase transitions in driven diffusive systems. Our understanding of such macroscopic systems, which are far from equilibrium, is still in its infancy since we need in this case, to study in detail the stochastic macroscopic dynamics of the system. It is only in one dimension that various exact and approximate solutions (See  for a review) have helped us to study the macroscopic stochastic dynamics of model systems, i.e. by writing the master equations of the underlying Markov process in suitable coordinates and solving these equations either exactly or by numerical-simulation techniques. The simplest such model is the Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process (TASEP), first introduced by Spitzer in 1970 , as an example of an interacting stochastic process . This is a model incorporating a collection of random walkers, hopping with equal rates to their right empty site on a one-dimensional lattice and interacting via exclusion. There is now a rather extensive literature on ASEP and its various generalizations (see  and references therein).

Among the generalizations, we mention one which is relevant to the present paper, namely the introduction of disorder in the hopping rates of particles . In , a closed system is considered, there is no injection to or extraction of particles out of the system. Each particle $`\mu `$ , has a hopping rate $`p_\mu `$, taken from a random distribution, the particles keep their initial order and no overtaking is possible. The bulk density of particles $`\rho `$, is an important control parameter, and it is shown that for $`\rho >\rho _c`$, where $`\rho _c`$ is a critical density, a segregated phase appears behind the slowest particle on the ring, a phenomenon shown  to be similar to Bose condensation in equilibrium statistical physics.

The same process has been simulated  on an open chain where each particle enters the left end of the system with rate $`\alpha `$ and leaves the right end with rate $`\beta `$, and the intrinsic hopping probability $`p_\mu [c,1]`$ of a particle $`\mu `$, is drawn from the distribution

$$f(p)=\frac{n+1}{(1c)^{n+1}}(pc)^n$$
(1)
Using mostly the values $`n=1`$ and $`c=\frac{1}{2}`$, it has been shown in  that the generic form of the phase diagram of the single species (pure) ASEP, prevails also in this case; that is depending on the value of alpha and beta, three phases develop in the system, namely low-density, high-density and maximal-current phases.Compared to the pure case, there is only a slight difference in the shape of the coexistence line between the low and high density phases. The small effect of disorder on the phase diagram of the pure ASEP has been attributed  to insufficient time for density inhomogeneities (platoons) to develop up to the scale of system size. This in turn has been attributed to the average passing time of particles ($`\tau `$ system size $`L`$) and the approximate rate of growth of platoon sizes ($`\xi (t)t^{\frac{n+1}{n+2}}`$) which is small compared with $`L`$, when $`L\mathrm{}`$, for any $`n`$.

The above results all apply to a model in which particles can not overtake each other. The appearance of high density phase and traffic jams are quite expected in such a model. One can however introduce models in which particles can overtake each other . It’s natural to expect that fast particles have a possibility to overtake slow ones, and one may ask to what extend this new element may affect the nature of steady state and the phase structure of the system. The model of  admits an exact solution  by way of matrix product ansatz , where the phases can be determined, although the density profiles are still very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain analytically in this model. Also it is difficult to obtain any analytical result concerning other effects like the effect of impurities or blockage.

In this paper we study the model of  by computer simulations, and will obtain the phase structure of the model and density profile near the high-density/low-density coexistence line, and compare our results with those of . We also study the effect of a fixed blockage in a simple two-species model.

## 2 The model

The model which has been first introduced in  and shown to be exactly solvable via the matrix product ansatz, refers to a process in continuous time, in which each particle of $`type\mu `$, has an intrinsic hopping rate $`v_\mu `$ to its right empty site, as in the models considered in , but when this particle encounters a site already occupied by a particle of $`type\mu ^{}`$ (with $`v_\mu ^{}<v_\mu `$), the two particles exchange their sites with rate $`v_\mu v_\mu ^{}`$, as if the faster particle stochastically overtakes the slower one (Figure 1).

The need for exact solvability of the model, enforces the injection and extraction rates of particle $`\mu `$ to be fixed as

$$\alpha _\mu =\frac{\alpha v_\mu }{p\overline{v}}$$
(2)
and

$$\beta _\mu =\frac{v_\mu }{\overline{v}}+\beta 1$$
(3)
where $`p`$ is the number of type of particles and

$$\overline{v}:=\frac{1}{p}\underset{\mu =1}{\overset{p}{}}v_\mu .$$
(4)
It is assumed that there are $`p`$ type of particles with hopping rates $`v_1v_2v_3\mathrm{}v_p`$.

Here $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are representing the *total* injection and *average* extraction rates and $`\beta >1\frac{v_1}{\overline{v}}`$, where $`v_1`$ is the slowest hopping rate. Note that for each particle $`\mu `$ , $`v_\mu `$ is its velocity in an otherwise empty lattice, averaged over many realizations of the process. Thus, hereafter, we use the words *intrinsic hopping rate* and *intrinsic velocity* interchangeably. The model can be formulated for continuous distribution of intrinsic hopping rates which we denote by $`\sigma (v)`$. In this case the rate of injection of particles of intrinsic velocity between $`v`$ and $`v+\mathrm{d}v`$ is given by $`\alpha \sigma (v)\frac{v}{\overline{v}}\mathrm{d}v`$, where the extraction rate is given by $`(\frac{v}{\overline{v}}+\beta 1)\mathrm{d}v`$. By exactly solving this model , using the matrix product ansatz, the phase diagram of this model was determined. It was shown that besides $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, the phase diagram depends crucially on a characteristic of the distribution $`\sigma (v)`$, denoted by $`l[\sigma ]`$ and given by

$$l[\sigma ]=\frac{\overline{v}^2}{v_1^2}\frac{v\overline{v}}{(vv_1)^2}$$
(5)
where $`v_1`$ is the slowest velocity and the average is taken with respect to the distribution $`\sigma (v)`$.

If $`\sigma (v)`$ is such that $`l[\sigma ]<0`$, then the phase diagram is similar to the pure ASEP, although the shape of coexistence line and the position of the triple-point do have essential dependence on $`\sigma `$. However when $`l[\sigma ]>0`$, then there is no high-density phase in the diagram (Figures 2a and 2b).

Specifically for distribution of the $`type(1)`$, the size and in fact the existence or non-existence of the high-density phase depends crucially on the parameters $`c`$ and $`n`$111The exact criteria is given in the main text.. This means that if the chance of entrance of slow particles into the system (cars into a highway) is sufficiently low, and if there is a possibility for overtaking slow cars, there will not be a high-density phase (a traffic jam), regardless of the value of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$. Note that in any case $`\beta `$ is restricted by $`\beta >1\frac{v_1}{\overline{v}}`$, so that the extraction rates of all types of particles are positive. In case $`1\frac{v_2}{\overline{v}}<\beta 1\frac{v_1}{\overline{v}}`$, the steady state will be trivial and the system will eventually be filled with particles of $`type1`$, since in this case all types of particles except $`type1`$ are extracted from the system. In any other case (e.g. $`1\frac{v_3}{\overline{v}}<\beta 1\frac{v_2}{\overline{v}}`$), the steady state depends on the initial conditions, since neither particles of $`type1`$, nor $`type2`$, are extracted and the steady state depends on the order of injection of these particles.

If to each site $`k`$, we assign a random variable $`\tau ^\mu (k)`$ which takes the value $`1`$ only if this site is occupied by a particle of type $`\mu `$, then the average density of particle of type $`\mu `$ at site $`k`$, denoted by $`\rho ^\mu (k)`$ is

$$\rho ^\mu (k)=\tau ^\mu (k)$$
(6)
where $``$ means the long time average, in the steady state. Note that in accordance with  and in contrast to the periodic lattice , a separate disorder average is not necessary, since new particles are constantly injected into the system. Two other quantities are of interest, defined as:

$$\rho ^\mu :=\frac{1}{L}\underset{k=1}{\overset{L}{}}\tau ^\mu (k)$$
(7)
$$\rho (k)=\frac{1}{p}\underset{\mu =1}{\overset{p}{}}\tau ^\mu (k)$$
(8)
which are respectively the density of particles of $`type\mu `$, average over the lattice sites; and the total local density of particles, irrespective of their type. One can also define the current of $`type\mu `$ of particles, $`J^\mu `$, which in the steady state is independent of site and in view of the definition of the process is given by

$$J^\mu =v_\mu \tau _{k1}^\mu e_k+\underset{\mu ^{}<\mu }{}(v_\mu v_\mu ^{})\tau _{k1}^\mu \tau _k^\mu ^{}\underset{\mu ^{}>\mu }{}(v_\mu ^{}v_\mu )\tau _{k1}^\mu ^{}\tau _k^\mu $$
(9)
where $`e_k:=1_{\mu =1}^p\tau _k^\mu `$ . Note that $`e_k`$ stands for the probability of site $`k`$ being empty.

The independence of this current of the site $`k`$, and its equality to the input and output current of particles of $`type\mu `$, given by

$$J_{in}^\mu =\frac{\alpha v_\mu }{p\overline{v}}e_1$$
(10)
$$J_{out}^\mu =(\beta +\frac{v_\mu }{\overline{v}}1)\tau _L^\mu $$
(11)
gives us a set of equations, which in the mean field approximation
$`\tau ^\mu (k)\tau ^\nu (k+1)\tau ^\mu (k)\tau ^\nu (k+1)`$ enables all the local densities $`\rho ^\mu (k)`$ and hence all the currents $`J^\mu `$, to be evaluated numerically.

We also study the effect of a site impurity at a given site, say $`k`$, by multiplying all the hopping rates by $`\lambda (\lambda <1)`$, when computing the currents of particles on the links $`(k1,k)`$ and $`(k,k+1)`$. The densities and the current can again be computed for this case, for various $`\lambda `$’s and $`k`$’s.

## 3 Numerical solutions and simulation results

We consider a lattice of $`200`$ lattice sites and simulate the following process with random updating on this lattice:

A *two* species process, where the hopping rates are taken to have the distinct values $`v_1`$ and $`v_2`$, with equal probabilities.

a multi-species process, where the hopping rates are taken from the distribution

$$\sigma (v)=\frac{n+1}{(1c)^{n+1}}(vc)^n,cv1$$
(12)
a *two* species process, where there is a fixed impurity on one of the sites of the lattice. When the particles reach this site, they slow down their hopping rate by a factor $`\lambda `$. The position of the impurity is denoted by $`k`$, where $`0kL`$.

In cases a and c, we complement our simulations by a mean field solution obtained by numerically solving the equations $`J_{in}^\mu =\mathrm{}=J_{(k)}^\mu =\mathrm{}=J_{out}^\mu `$.

### Results

### a) A two species process

Fixing the values of $`v_1`$ and $`v_2`$, we obtain the bulk density $`\rho `$, for different values of $`\beta `$, as function of the injection rate $`\alpha `$.

The results are shown in Figures 3a and 3b, for the two different choices of hopping rates.

It is seen that for every $`\beta `$ , there is a jump discontinuity in the bulk density at a critical value of $`\alpha _c=\alpha _c(\beta )`$. The value of the jump vanishes at a certain point $`(\alpha _c,\beta _c)`$, which makes the triple point in the phase diagram. The corresponding phase diagrams are shown in Figure 4.

### b) A multi species process

In this case we consider a continuous distribution of hopping rates. For the sake of comparison with , we take the distribution (12).

For this distribution $`l[\sigma ]`$ is calculated to be :

$$l[\sigma ]=\{\begin{array}{ccc}\mathrm{}\hfill & \mathrm{𝚒𝚏}\hfill & 0n1\hfill \\ (\frac{\overline{v}}{c})^2(n+1)\overline{v}(\frac{1}{n(1c)}+\frac{c}{(n1)(1c)^2})\hfill & \mathrm{𝚒𝚏}\hfill & 1<n\hfill \end{array}$$
(13)
where $`\overline{v}:=_c^1v\sigma (v)dv=c+\frac{n+1}{n+2}(1c)`$.

For $`n=1`$, we expect from the above formula that, since $`l[\sigma ]<0`$, we have the usual three phases seen in the pure case, namely the *low density*, the *high density* and the *maximal current* phases.this expectation is borne out in our simulation, where we have obtained the average density as a function of $`\alpha `$, for various values of $`\beta `$ (Figure 5a).

As far as $`c=\frac{1}{2}`$, one can see after a simple calculation that $`l[\sigma ]`$ can never be positive. To obtain a positive $`l`$, we take $`n=2`$ and $`c=\frac{1}{3}`$ (a broader spectrum of hopping rates) for which $`l`$ is found to be equal to $`3`$. In this case the results of simulations are shown in Figure 5b.

It is seen that when $`l[\sigma ]>0`$,no jump discontinuity exists in density, implying that there is no high density phase in the phase diagram. For all $`\beta `$, there is a critical $`\alpha _c`$ independent of $`\beta `$, after which we enter the maximal current phase ; this is in accord with the exact a analysis of . The corresponding phase diagram is shown in Figures 6a and 6b.

### c) The effect of a site impurity

In this problem, our aim is to see what effect a site impurity has on the density profiles of particles, when the particles have the possibility of overtaking each other. For simplicity, we consider a *two* species model.

It is expected that such a blockage will mostly affect *slow* particles, since *fast* particles have a chance of passing by the particle accumulated behind the blockage. This is indeed seen in our numerical solution. Figure 7a and 7b depict the density profiles of both types of particles (*fast* and *slow*) for two different values of $`v_1`$ and $`v_2`$. Density profiles changes versus the strength of impurity $`\lambda `$ (the *slowing down factor*) is shown in Figure 10.

## 4 Conclusion

In this paper we have studied an asymmetric exclusion model on an open chain with disorder in particle hopping rates. Following the method of ,and guided by the analysis of , we have shown how the distribution of hopping rates affects the generic phase diagram of the single species ASEP. In particular we have taken the hopping rates from the distribution

$$\sigma (v)=\frac{n+1}{(1c)^{(n+1)}}(vc)^n,cv1$$
(14)
also studied in , and have shown that for $`n=2`$, the high density phase may or may *not* exist depending on the value of $`c`$; i.e. *the width of the distribution*. We have also studied how in a single *two* species process, with hopping rates $`v_1`$ and $`v_2`$, a single site impurity affects the density profiles of *fast* and *slow* particles.

## Acknowledgments

We would like to thank P Abghari for providing hardware facilities for simulations.