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# KECK HIRES OBSERVATIONS OF THE QSO FIRST J104459.6+365605: EVIDENCE FOR A LARGE SCALE OUTFLOW

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Many QSO rest-frame UV spectra exhibit blue shifted absorption lines that are indicative of an outflow. The properties of these absorption lines vary over a wide range, from very broad ($`>`$ 10,000 km s-1) absorption lines, usually observed in high ionization species like C iv and O vi to fairly narrow ($``$ 30 km s-1) lines from the same high ionization species, or from low-ionization species like Fe ii and C ii. The absorption lines are often divided in two classes. The first class contains the Broad Absorption Lines (BALs)(Weymann, Turnshek & Christiansen 1985, Turnshek 1988) which are broad absorption troughs, and can span a large range of outflow velocities up to several times $`10^4`$ km s-1 . The second class refers to Associated Absorption Lines (AALs) (Weymann et al. 1979, Foltz et al. 1986), which have individual absorption components less than a few hundred km s-1 wide, and span a range of outflow velocities up to several thousand km s-1. It is not obvious whether this division reflects a real bimodal distribution of absorption line properties caused by two different underlying formation mechanisms. There are many examples of QSOs that exhibit both types of lines simultaneously, or have properties that are a mixture between the two classes, eg. high velocity narrow lines or low velocity broad lines.

It is generally thought that BALs are formed relatively close to the galactic nucleus ($`<1`$ parsec), although the direct observational evidence for this is not very strong. The minimum distance separating the region in which broad absorption lines arise (the BALR) from the source of the continuum radiation is set by the observation that the Broad Emission Lines are often partly or completely absorbed by the outflow (Turnshek 1988). This places the BALR outside the Broad Emission Line Region (BELR), the size of which is now relatively well established with reverberation mapping techniques at $`0.1`$ pc for an average luminosity QSO. The maximum distance of the BALR from the central source is more difficult to constrain. Adopting typical, if uncertain, physical parameters for the BAL clouds it can easily be shown that unrealistically large mass and energy loss rates are implied if the lines are formed more than a few tens of parsecs from the central engine. Further support for the conjecture that the BALR is not much larger than the BELR comes from consideration of the acceleration mechanisms, which generally require that the flow starts at a distance comparable to the size of the BELR in order to reach the high speeds observed (e.g. Arav & Li 1994). The physical conditions inside the BALR are difficult to constrain because of the extremely wide and deep absorption lines in classical BALQSOs. The width complicates the analysis because the optical depth at a certain wavelength is the convolution of the column density as a function of velocity and the multiplet structure of the line, so that the column density as a function of velocity can only be derived by a deconvolution. The large depth makes the derived column densities very sensitive to partial covering of the continuum light source.

AALs appear to be more diverse, and could arise from gas located in the AGN environment, the host galaxy, or intervening gas with a smaller cosmological redshift than the QSO. Some recent studies of AALs are Hamann, Netzer & Shields (2000), Petitjean & Srianand (1999), Srianand & Petitjean (2000), Barlow & Sargent (1997) and Ganguly et al. (1999). The analysis of AALs does not suffer as much from the problems of blending and saturation encounterd with BALs, and can give quite detailed results on the physical conditions and geometry of the absorbing gas, as demonstrated in the references above. From these studies it has become clear that the great majority of AALs show the effects of partial covering in their observed multiplet line ratios, (e.g. Hamann et al. 1997, Arav et al. 1999) which argues against a cosmological origin, and is most easily explained if the lines are formed in the AGN environment. However, to our knowledge no firm limits on the distance of the absorbers to the active nucleus have been derived so far.

Here we investigate the z=0.700 QSO FIRST J104459.6+365605 (hereafter FBQS1044+3656). This object was discovered in the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey (White et al 2000) which consists of 636 radio-selected quasars distributed over $`2700`$ square degrees. The absorption lines in the spectrum of this QSO have several unique features, allowing us to constrain the density and ionization parameter in the outflow. The spectrum contains absorption lines of Mg i , Mg ii and Fe ii. Some of the Fe ii lines arise from low-lying excited states. Most of the Fe ii lines are not very wide nor heavily saturated, behaving roughly as expected from their relative oscillator strength, making quantitive estimates of the column density possible. The derived relative populations of several low-lying energy levels of Fe ii allow us to put significant constraints on the physical conditions in the absorbing clouds.

The characteristic velocity and width of the absorption lines in FBQS1044+3656 are intermediate between BALs and AALs. The Mg ii absorption is very broad, and just fulfills the strict criterion applied to the C iv line by Weymann et al. 1991 to decide whether a QSO is a BALQSO. The lower ionization lines of Fe ii and Mg i are narrower, and more characteristic of AALs. However, we will argue that the excellent correspondence in velocity between the strongest Mg ii components and the Mg i and Fe ii lines leave little doubt that they arise from the same outflowing cloud complex.

Our analysis is similar to the study of BALQSO Q0059-2735 by Wampler, Chugai & Petitjean 1995 (hereafter referred to as WCP). Q0059-2735 is a classical BALQSO with very deep and wide BAL troughs in both high and low ionization species. Its spectrum also contains several narrow, low ionization absorption line systems, such as Fe ii, Ni ii, and Mn ii, at velocities of a few hundred km s-1. Another recent study with some similarities to ours considers narrow absorption line systems in the BALQSO APM 08279+5255 (Srianand & Petitjean 2000), which show absorption from excited states of C ii and Si ii .

## 2 Data Acquisition and Reduction

On December 26, 1998 we used the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES, Vogt et al. 1994) on the Keck I 10-m telescope to obtain $`4\times 1800`$ second exposures of FBQS1044+3656 covering 3825 - 6280Å using a 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$1 wide slit. The orders overlap up to 5128Å, beyond which small gaps occur between orders. The slit was rotated to the parallactic angle to minimize losses due to differential atmospheric refraction. The observing conditions were excellent with sub-arcsecond seeing and near-photometric skies. The spectra were extracted using routines tailored for HIRES (Barlow 2000). The resolution of the final spectrum is 4 pixels pixels FWHM, or 8.8 km s-1 in velocity space.

The redshift of FBQS1044+3656 (z=0.700) was determined by fitting a Gaussian to the Mg ii broad emission line. Because the blue wing of the Mg ii BEL is strongly affected by absorption, the redshift of the QSO rest frame is uncertain by several hundred km s-1 . Since all outflow velocities quoted in this paper are calculated from the difference in redshift between the absorbing gas and the QSO rest frame, they are uncertain by the same amount.

## 3 Analysis

In this section we will analyze the absorption lines in the spectrum of FBQS1044+3656, deriving the column densities of the observed species. In the next section, these column densities will be used to derive the physical condition in the outflow. An overview of the HIRES spectrum is shown in figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. A low resolution spectrum of FBQS1044+3656 covering a larger wavelength range has been published in White et al. 2000.

### 3.1 Mg i lines

The Mg i line at $`\lambda `$ 2852.96 Å is a singlet transition from the ground level. The line profile as a function of velocity is shown in Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, together with the profile of the Mg ii absorption. The velocity scale of the Mg ii absorption is based on the rest wavelength of the red component of the Mg ii doublet.

We divide the Mg i absorption features into two clusters, the first ranging from $`100`$ to $`1400`$ km s-1 (cluster 1), the second from $`3500`$ to $`4100`$ km s-1 (cluster 2). Some of the components in the low-velocity cluster are not connected by any absorption, so this definition of these two clusters is purely ad hoc at this point. It will turn out however that our division appears to have a physical basis since the components of cluster 2 exhibit significant absorption from excited levels of Fe ii , whereas the detection of absorption from excited levels from the components of cluster 1 is only marginal. This indicates that the physical conditions differ between the two clusters. In each cluster we have identified the two strongest components so that we can refer to these later when identifying the corresponding absorption lines of other species. Based on the assumed redshift of 0.700 for the QSO, these components correspond to an outflow speed of -205, -1227, -3557 and -3860 km s-1 for components A,B,C and D respectively.

A lower limit on the column density of Mg i can be obtained in the optically thin approximation, valid if the line is fully resolved and the absorbing gas is covering the entire continuum source:

$$N_{ion}\frac{m_ec}{\pi e^2}\frac{1}{\lambda _of_{lu}}\tau (v)𝑑v,$$
(1)
The Mg i column density derived in this way is $`1.4\times 10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ for cluster 1 and $`1.0\times 10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ for cluster 2. From the analysis of the Fe ii lines below, we will find that the Fe ii absorbing clouds do not cover the entire continuum source. It is not clear if the same applies to the Mg i line, since the continuum at the position of the Fe ii lines contains a large fraction of broad Fe ii emission which comes from a much more extended region than the continuum from the accretion disk. Thus it is possible that the outflow covers the accretion disk source completely but the Fe ii emission line regions only partially, which would lead to partial covering being observed for absorption lines in the part of the spectrum where broad Fe ii line emission contributes significantly to the background source. Even if the same partial covering would apply to the Mg i line, however, this would increase the Mg i column density only by a factor $`<2`$ since the Mg i lines are significantly shallower than the saturated Fe ii lines. Larger deviations could occur if the covering factor for the Mg i producing clouds is very different from that of the Fe ii producing clouds. This possibility can not be excluded, but the fact that the Mg i line profile can be used as template for both strong and weak Fe ii lines (as shown below) argues against it. The presence of Mg i in FBQS1044+3656 stands in important contrast with the absence of Mg i absorption in Q0059-2735, which was used by WCP to obtain an upper limit on the distance of the clouds to the continuum source.

### 3.2 Mg ii lines

From the comparison of Mg i and Mg ii absorption as a function of velocity in Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, it can be seen that the Mg ii absorption extends to much higher velocities than Mg i. There is a strong component centered around $`4115`$ km s-1 that does not appear in Mg i, and further contiguous absorption is visible up to $`5700`$ km s-1. At even higher velocities, some very shallow absorption systems at -6500, -7310 and -7410 km s-1 are probably due to Mg ii since both components of the doublet are visible.

The Mg ii lines are heavily saturated allowing only a lower limit on the column density. Over the velocity range covered by cluster 1 and 2, we estimate lower limits on the Mg ii column density of $`2.610^{14}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ and $`5.810^{14}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ respectively, but the real columns are likely to be significantly higher. The differences between the Mg ii and Mg i profiles do not imply that the ionization state has to change with velocity: the column density of Mg i associated with the high velocity Mg ii components would be too small to be detected if the Mg i/ Mg ii ratio is the same as in the strongly saturated Mg ii components. This interpretation is supported by the high-velocity absorption not being readily detectable in the weakest Fe ii absorption lines, but being just visible in the strongest Fe ii lines.

### 3.3 Fe ii lines

#### 3.3.1 Analysis using the Mg i template

Most of the physical constraints on the absorbing gas can be extracted from the numerous absorption lines of Fe ii in the spectrum of FBQS1044+3656. Because of the blending of the Fe ii lines, most of our analysis must use a template for the column density as a function of velocity, which we derive from the unblended singlet transition of Mg i, an approach similar to that of Arav et al. 1999a. The template method is based on the assumption that the column density of Fe ii in each energy level $`k`$ between velocity $`v`$ and $`v+dv`$ is proportional to the column density of Mg i in the same velocity interval:

$$\frac{dN_{FeII}^k}{dv}=c_k\frac{dN_{MgI}}{dv}$$
(2)
The column density of Mg i is derived from the Mg i absorption line profile using

$$\frac{dN_{MgI}}{dv}=\frac{m_ec}{\pi e^2}\frac{1}{\lambda _{Mg}f_{Mg}}(\mathrm{ln}I(v))$$
(3)
where $`I(v)`$ is the remaining flux in the normalized line profile, and $`f_{Mg}`$ the oscillator strength of the Mg i resonance line. By using Equation 3, we implicitly assume that partial covering effects are not important for Mg i (see above), and that the absorption lines are fully resolved. Any quantitative analysis must make the second assumption, although it should be kept in mind that the thermal line width of Fe and Mg at the temperatures of a few thousand degrees that are expected for the line forming regions are only of order 1-2 km s-1 , i.e. well below the resolution of our observations. When the constants of proportionality $`c_k`$ between the column densities of Mg i and Fe iik are specified, we can calculate the optical depth in every Fe ii line as a function of velocity, and construct a model Fe ii absorption line spectrum that can be compared to the observed spectrum of FBQS1044+3656.

From a first inspection of the spectrum it is clear that the components of cluster 2 show significant absorption in excited Fe ii lines, whereas the components of cluster 1 show up only very weakly in these lines. Therefore, the two clusters appear to arise from physically distinct cloud complexes. To keep the number of free parameters in our fit manageable, we will assume that the level populations do not vary between different components within each cluster, but allow for different level populations between the two clusters.

The Fe ii lines considered in our study are listed in Table 1. We included all lines from the lowest energy ($`a^6D`$) term, and the strongest lines from the next two terms ($`a^4F`$ and $`a^4D`$) with lowest levels at approximately 0.2 and 1 eV, respectively. In total, we consider 43 lines arising from 10 energy levels.

The fit was obtained by first choosing values for the $`c_k`$’s for each cluster and then comparing the predicted and observed Fe ii absorption line spectra. The values of the $`c_k`$’s were successively improved by adjusting them to reproduce the observed flux at the positions in the spectrum where the specific $`c_k`$ is best constrained. To be properly constraining, we required that the parts of the spectrum used to adjust the fit contain a cluster component that is not blended with another line, and is not very deep so that partial covering effects play as small a role as possible. Although many lines are blended, all levels give rise to some absorption components that occur in a part of the spectrum where blending is not a problem.

Note that this method of fitting a model to the observed spectrum does not try to fit individual lines, but rather level populations and thus attempts to fit all lines from a given lower level with one parameter, the column density of Fe ii in the state corresponding to this lower level. Because isolated, medium depth lines arising from the level are the most accurate indicators of this column density, these are the main drivers for the fit.

The model resulting from the fit obtained in this way is compared with the observed spectrum in figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. The thin line represents the reconstructed spectrum based on the model parameters in Table 2. We express the model parameters in terms of relative level populations and a total column density. $`\zeta _k`$ is the level population per unit statistical weight of level $`k`$ relative to that of the ground level,

$$\zeta _k\frac{N_{FeII}^k/g_k}{N_{FeII}^0/g_0}$$
(4)
$`\zeta _k`$ is equal to 1 if the levels are in LTE with $`\mathrm{kT}>>\mathrm{E}_\mathrm{k}`$. The total Fe ii column density is $`\mathrm{log}N_{FeII}=14.7(0.2)`$ for cluster 1 and $`\mathrm{log}N_{FeII}=15.3(0.1)`$ for cluster 2. The upper limits and error estimates were obtained by visually comparing model spectra with the observations and estimating how much deviation from either 0 or the measured value could be tolerated. Systematic effects such as errors in oscillator strength or continuum level are thus not included.

The heavily blended regions of the spectrum are well reproduced using the $`c_k`$’s obtained from the isolated lines, proving the consistency of the result. The figure shows that for most of the absorption components the fit is satisfactory, considering that the problem is heavily overconstrained and that the number of lines that have to be reproduced is several times larger than the number of energy levels included in the fit. The most significant differences between the observed spectrum and the model that can not be removed by changing the model parameters occur in the strongest absorption lines from the ground level. These strong lines show absorption at high velocity, extending beyond the highest velocity seen in cluster 2 of Mg i. This extra absorption is also seen as the very deep component at $`4115`$ km s-1 in Mg ii. The other major deviation between model and observation is that the strongest Fe ii lines are much deeper in the model. It is impossible to obtain a good fit to the five lines originating from the ground state simultaneously. The most likely explanation for this discrepancy is partial covering of the continuum source, which fills in the bottom of the strongest lines. Note that the underprediction of flux in the deepest lines is the result of our choice to optimize the fit for medium depth lines (which are the weakest lines when considering lines from the ground level).

There are several other sources of uncertainty that may also contribute to discrepancies between the model and the observed spectrum. One is that there are still some uncertainties in the oscillator strengths of the UV Fe ii absorption lines studied here. Table 1 shows a comparison of these oscillator strengths from different literature sources. In this work we have used the oscillator strengths of Fuhr, Martin & Wiese 1988 (NIST database), which are generally in reasonable agreement with recent experimental values of Bergeson et al. 1996. The only data source that has significant outliers are the theoretical values from the Iron Project (Nahar 1995), with some discrepancies as large as a factor of 5. For one of the important transitions for this study ($`\lambda `$ 2374.46 Å, a line from the Fe ii ground level) the Nahar value is almost 2 times larger than the others. Using observations of Fe ii absorption lines from the interstellar medium Cardelli & Savage 1995 derived an oscillator strength of 0.0326(14) for this transition, in good agreement with the laboratory experiments of Bergeson et al. 1996. Thus the theoretical value of 0.0527 derived by Nahar 1995 is unlikely to be correct. For this transition only, we have not used the oscillator strength of Fuhr, Martin & Wiese 1988 but instead a compromise between the two recent experimental values of 0.032. More recent theoretical calculations (Raassen & Uylings 1998) appear to reproduce the experimental values quite well, but are not as extensive as the Iron Project results.

Another source of uncertainty is the exact level of the continuum. The continuum contains several undulations, that are likely to be due to the presence of broad Fe ii emission, as can be seen from figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, or even more clearly from the low resolution spectrum of FBQS1044+3656 published in White et al. 2000 which covers a larger wavelength range. The relative contribution of the Fe ii BELs to the continuum can be estimated from the broad trough in the spectrum around 2650 Å which is actually a gap between Fe ii emission line complexes (see e.g., Verner et al. 1999). This trough is also present in the LBQS composite spectrum (Francis et al. 1991), but is especially deep in FBQS1044+3656, indicating that at least 30% of the apparent continuum is actually broad Fe ii emission. The strongest Fe ii emission lines are expected at the same wavelengths where the absorption lines occur (Verner et al. 1999), and since the main blended absorption complexes themselves are also quite broad, it might well be possible that there is emission at the position of the absorption complexes that has not been accounted for in our continuum normalization. The spectrum of J121442+280329 published in White et al. 2000 is a clear example of a QSO spectrum in which a complex interplay between Fe ii absorption and emission is shaping the spectrum, and modelling of the absorption would be impossible without considering the emission lines. In the case of J121442+280329 the problem is more obvious because the emission lines are narrower. Note that the lines from the Fe ii ground level are distributed over a wavelength range several 100 Å wide, i.e. they are separated by much more than the width of a single Fe ii broad emission line. This means each absorption line will be affected by a different set of Fe ii emission lines, unlike the case of most doublet lines where the separation is much smaller than the emission line width, and the presence of broad emission is unlikely to have a strong differential effect on the continuum level between the positions of the two doublet components.

#### 3.3.2 Partial covering

The five strong lines arising from the Fe ii ground level can not be fitted simultaneously using the preceding template approach when it is assumed that the continuum source is completely covered by the outflow. Partial covering has been shown to be important in several other QSOs with absorption lines (e.g., Hamann, Barlow, & Junkkarinen 1997, Barlow & Sargent 1997, Arav et al. 1999b), usually by considering the relative depth of the two lines of one of the major doublets, such as C iv and Si iv. When relatively narrow absorption components are present so that the two lines of the doublet are visible (which implies that this type of analysis can generally only be applied to AALs and not BALs), it is possible to derive a model for the outflow in which at each velocity a fraction $`C(v)`$ of the continuum source is covered with a homogeneous layer of absorbing gas with optical depth $`\tau _1(v)`$ in line 1 of the doublet. This is done by solving the set of coupled equations

$`I_1(v)`$ $`=`$ $`(1C(v))+C(v)e^{\tau _1(v)}`$ (5)
$`I_2(v)`$ $`=`$ $`(1C(v))+C(v)e^{\frac{(f\lambda )_2}{(f\lambda )_1}\tau _1(v)},`$ (6)
for every velocity $`v`$. Here $`I`$ is the residual intensity in the normalized spectrum, the subscripts 1 and 2 refer to the two lines of the doublet, and $`(f\lambda )_2/(f\lambda )_1`$ is the known ratio of the optical depths in two lines that originate from the same lower level.

The same analysis can be applied to every pair chosen from the 5 lines arising from the Fe ii ground level, and if the partial covering model used is correct, then each pair should yield the same covering factor as a function of velocity, providing a strong confirmation of the simple partial covering model. Several complications crop up when analysing the Fe ii lines in this way, the most serious being line blending. If one of the two lines used to solve for optical depth and covering factor is contaminated by another absorption line, the solution will be erroneous and often no solution is possible at all. A second problem is that the oscillator strengths of the lines are not accurately known, in contrast to the case of the doublet lines where the ratio is exactly 2. When the optical depth is very low, small continuum errors also cause problems.

In spite of these difficulties, we can still derive some insights from such a covering factor analysis. We first consider the $`C(v)`$ that can be derived from the two Fe ii lines at 2600 Å and 2586 Å; these suffer the least from blending with other lines and therefore give the cleanest solutions. In figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, we show what fraction of the continuum source must be uncovered to make the profiles of these two lines consistent, both for cluster 1 and cluster 2. At some velocities, contamination by other lines or noise do not allow a solution for $`C(v)`$, and we have indicated these points with asterisks above the spectrum. To reduce the effect of noise, the spectrum was smoothed with a 5-point moving average before solving equation 6. The shape of the strongest line is almost entirely determined by the covering factor, as is expected on the basis of our previous result that the template fitting procedure predicts a much smaller flux at the bottom of the strongest Fe ii lines than is actually observed. This applies both in cluster 1 and cluster 2. Thus, the residual flux at the bottom of the strong lines is either due to a small part the continuum source not being completely covered by the outflow, or due to scattering of continuum light around the absorbers. In the case of FBQS1044+3656 we consider the first possibility more likely, because the strong variations of covering factor as a function of velocity are not expected if the remaining flux is due to scattered light.

The covering factor solutions based on other line pairs suffer more from all of the problems mentioned above. Nevertheless, it is very important to check whether the solutions obtained from different pairs yield more or less consistent covering factors. Cluster 1 is too much affected by blending to make a useful comparison. In figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, we compare the solutions for the covering factor in cluster 2 for the 5 most suitable line pairs. In view of all the uncertainties, the solutions are consistent. There is a systematic difference between the pairs including the line 2344.2 Å and the other pairs, in the sense that they yield a smaller covering factor outside the deepest components in the profile. Such behavior could be caused by an error in the oscillator strength of the line 2344.2 Å, an error in the continuum level, or by a wavelength dependent continuum source size. Since the line is close to the blue cut-off of the spectropgraph, the S/N ratio at the position of the 2344.2 Å line is considerably worse than at the position of the other lines, which may also contribute to the discrepancy. Since our continuum consists of a combination of a smooth underlying continuum generated in a very small region and broad undulating Fe ii emission lines from a much larger region, we consider a wavelength dependent continuum source geometry to be the most likely explanation.

In principle, the covering factor solution also yields the optical depth as a function of velocity, and hence the column density. The velocity integrated column densities derived in this way for each cluster are typically 2-3 times higher than those derived from the template fitting. Since the column densities derived from template fitting mainly depend on the weakest non-saturated lines, this difference can not be attributed to the effects of partial covering. Instead, the cause of the discrepancy is that the integrals of optical depth over velocity are dominated by large peaks that occur when the residual fluxes in the two lines used to derive the covering factor solution become almost equal, which can occur because of small continuum errors when the lines are weak, or because of another absorption line falling into the profile of the weaker line. This forces a solution with very high optical depth at this velocity. Since this is not physical, we consider the column densities derived from the template fitting more reliable.

We now verify that the results for the level populations obtained by the covering factor approach and the template fitting procedure are consistent. The foregoing analysis shows that the covering factor completely determines the profiles of the two strongest Fe ii lines, so the covering factor as a function of velocity can be estimated from the remaining flux in these lines as,

$$(1C(v))=\frac{1}{2}[I_{2382}(v)+I_{2600}(v)].$$
(7)
The thick line in Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS again shows the model fit based on the parameters in Table 2, this time including the effect of the covering factor defined by equation 7. All the lines are now well-reproduced by the model. Note that if multiple lines from gas at different velocities (and hence with different covering factors) contribute to the absorption at a given wavelength, the total remaining flux depends on whether the gas at different velocities covers the same region of the background source or not. For the model presented here, we have assumed that there is no correlation between the positions of the covered or uncovered regions for gas with different velocities. Numerically, this means that each line contributing to the absorption at a given wavelength reduces the flux by a factor $`r`$ equal to

$$r=(1C(v))+C(v)e^{\tau (v)}$$
(8)
### 3.4 Other lines

The only other feature that we can identify with certainty is Mn ii absorption from cluster 2. All three lines from the Mn ii ground state (2576.877, 2594.499 and 2606.462 Å) are detected. The depth of the Mn ii features is well fit if we use the Mg i absorption template, and assume that the column density of Mn ii is $`10^2`$ times the column density of Fe ii ($`\mathrm{log}N_{MnII}=13.3`$), in good agreement with standard abundance ratios. In Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS the positions of the Mn ii absorption lines are indicated.

Absorption lines of Fe i are absent from the spectrum, providing an important constraint on the ionization parameter of the absorbing gas. The strongest line from the Fe i ground level (2484.0209 Å rest wavelength) is not detected (see figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS). We have determined an upper limit on the Fe i column density by trying to fit model Fe i spectra using the Mg i absorption template, and estimating by eye how much Fe i could be tolerated without the line being clearly detected. Because of the relatively smooth continuum in the relevant part of the spectrum, we are able to constrain the column density of Fe i in the ground state to $`\mathrm{log}N_{FeI}<13.0`$. It would be useful to have some information on the Fe iii abundance (WCP), but our wavelength coverage does not include any Fe iii lines.

## 4 DISCUSSION

### 4.1 The electron density in the outflow

Our most important result is the finding that absorption from excited levels of Fe ii is detected, and that the level populations are smaller than expected for LTE. This shows that the electron density in the outflowing clouds in FBQS1044 is lower than that in the lower velocity clouds in spectrum of Q0059-2735 studied by WCP, which were found to be in LTE. An accurate electron density estimate based on the observed level populations is difficult to obtain, since only a small fraction of the radiative transition probabilities for the strongly forbidden transitions within and between the $`a^6D`$, $`a^4F`$ and $`a^4D`$ terms are known (Nussbaumer & Storey 1980, Quinet, Le Dourneuf & Zeippen 1996).

A very rough estimate of the electron density can be obtained by considering only the relative populations of the ground level and the lowest excited level ($`E=384\mathrm{cm}^1`$). This level can only decay radiatively to the ground level and not make other radiative decays with unknown transition probabilities. The electron density can be estimated assuming that there is equilibrium between collisional excitation into this level from the ground level and radiative de-excitation to the ground level. For this transition the radiative decay probability $`A_{21}`$ is 0.00213 (Quinet, Le Dourneuf & Zeippen 1996) , and collision strength $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{12}`$ is 5.5 (Zhang & Pradhan 1995). Taking into account the formal errors on the level populations in Table 2, and constraining the temperature of the absorbing gas to lie in the range between 300 and 10.000 K, we obtain $`\mathrm{log}n_e=3.55(0.25)`$ for cluster 2 and $`\mathrm{log}n_e=3.0(0.4)`$ for cluster 1. Using the observed level populations and the collision strengths from Zhang & Pradhan 1995, it is easily verified that for $`\mathrm{log}n_e=3.55`$ and a temperature of 5000 K the total collisional excitation rate out of the lowest excited level is 0.24 times the radiative decay rate to the ground level, so that its neglect is justified for this rough estimate.

We can also derive an estimate of the electron density by using the most recent attempt at modelling the level populations of Fe ii as a function of density using a full multilevel calculation by Verner et al. 1999. In these models the unknown transition probabilities have been set to such a small value that they are effectively neglected. Based on these results we can make an estimate of the electron density by comparing the departure coefficient of the ground level (the only level among the ones relevant here for which results are presented in Verner et al. 1999) with the predicted value as a function of electron density. We define an “observed” departure coefficient for the ground level as

$$b_{0,obs}=\left(\frac{n_{0,obs}}{n_{i,obs}}\right)\left(\frac{g_ie^{(E_i/kT)}}{g_0}\right)$$
(9)
where the sum is over the levels $`i`$ given in table 2, and the temperature was taken to be 5000 K for consistency with the Verner et al. model. For this temperature, the contribution of the higher energy levels to the partition function will be very small because of the Boltzmann factor, and their neglect is well justified. The observed departure coefficients are $`\mathrm{log}b_{0,obs}=0.33(0.08)`$ for cluster 2 and $`\mathrm{log}b_{0,obs}=0.37(0.17)`$ for cluster 1. Using Figure 3 in Verner et al. 1999 we can convert these limits to $`\mathrm{log}n_e=3.8(0.3)`$ for cluster 2 and $`\mathrm{log}n_e=3.5(0.5)`$ for cluster 1. These values are in reasonable agreement with the results obtained above by treating the ground and lowest excited level of Fe ii as a two-level atom.

### 4.2 Ionization modelling

We have used the photoionization code CLOUDY (Ferland 1996) to model the ionization state of the outflow to derive additional constraints on the absorbing gas. Our observational data yield the following constraints on the outflow in FBQS1044+3656: a Mg i column density $`2\times 10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, a lower limit on the Mg ii / Mg i ratio of $`30`$, an Fe ii column density $`3\times 10^{15}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, an upper limit on the Fe i column density of $`10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ and an estimate of the electron density of $`4\times 10^3\mathrm{cm}^3`$. It turns out that the lower limit on the Mg ii / Mg i ratio is not very useful, so we will concentrate on the Mg i, Fe ii, and Fe i column densities.

#### 4.2.1 Dust-free models

We will first consider simple models of the absorbing clouds, investigating their structure as a function of ionization parameter, density and shape of the ionizing spectrum. For the moment we ignore the possible effects of dust, which can introduce significant complications. The clouds are modelled as thin constant density slabs. In order to satisfy the observational constraints, the slabs are truncated when a value of the Fe ii column density of $`\mathrm{log}N_{FeII}=15.5`$ is reached. Furthermore, to satisfy the electron density constraint we have adjusted the density of the slab in each model so that the Fe ii weighted mean electron density is $`4\times 10^3\mathrm{cm}^3`$. In this way the ionization parameter , the abundances and the shape of the ionizing spectrum remain as parameters that can be adjusted to satisfy the constraints on the Mg i and Fe i column densities. The parameters and properties of the ionization models presented here are given in Table 3.

Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS illustrates the structure of the slab as a function of ionization parameter for gas with solar composition irradiated by a standard Matthews & Ferland (1987) AGN spectrum. When modelling the very low ionization species considered here with the CLOUDY code, one encounters the difficulty that Mg i, Fe i and Fe ii can occur in gas with a temperature below the limit at which CLOUDY results are reliable. We therefore had to stop the calculation of the cloud structure at the depth where the temperature falls below 1000 K, if this occurs before the required Fe ii column density is reached. At temperatures below 1000 K Fe ii is still the main form of Fe. This means that when the calculation is stopped because of the temperature constraint (which occurs for low ionization parameters), the column densities found are only lower limits.

The run of temperature and electron density through the slab is similar to that found in the detailed Fe ii BEL models of e.g. Wills et al. (1985) and Collin-Souffrin et al. (1986), with an almost fully ionized Strömgren layer at the illuminated side of the side, followed by a partially ionized zone in which most of the column density of Fe ii resides. To understand the behaviour of the Mg i column density as a function of the model parameters it is important to realize that the ionization equilibrium of Mg behaves slightly counter-intuitively, in the sense that the fraction of neutral Mg drops sharply behind the hydrogen ionization front. The reason for this behaviour is that the photoionization rate of Mg i is hardly affected by the front because the ionization potential of Mg i is considerably lower than that of hydrogen, whereas the recombination rate is much reduced because of the sharp drop in electron density. Therefore, the Mg i column density of the slab resides almost entirely in the ionized Strömgren layer.

The three models with $`\mathrm{log}U3`$ all have Mg i column densities less than $`10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (see Table 3), between 3 and 10 times less than observed in FBQS1044+3656. The three models with $`\mathrm{log}U`$ equal to –4, –5 and –6 run into the 1000 K temperature limit before a high enough Fe ii column density is reached, so that the column densities of Fe i and Mg i are lower limits only. The model with $`\mathrm{log}U=6`$ is excluded, since it already has an Fe i column density higher than our upper limit when the Fe ii column density is only $`2.510^{14}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. Thus of the models presented in Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, only those with $`\mathrm{log}U=4`$ and $`\mathrm{log}U=5`$ may explain the observed column densities in FBQS1044+3656. Although the column densities may be consistent with such a very low ionization parameter model, they are not likely to provide a good explanation for the observed Fe ii lines in detail, since most of the Fe ii column density would have to reside in the region with a temperature below 1000 K, which is difficult to reconcile with the observed population of the excited state at 1873 cm-1 because the Boltzmann factor for this level should be $`<0.067`$. Thus we conclude that simple solar composition ionization models are not able to reproduce the observed column densities.

Model 2 ($`\mathrm{log}U=2`$) only fails to reach the observed Mg i column density by a factor of 3. Such a relatively small discrepancy may be fixed by changing the abundances from the solar values. The simplest solution is to increase the Mg abundance by a factor of 3, which brings the Mg i column density very close to the observed value. Increasing the Fe abundance reduces the thickness of the slab for a given Fe ii column density, but because most of the Mg i resides in the Strömgren layer, this hardly affects the Mg i column density. Thus with an overall increase in metallicity to 3 times solar (Model 7) the observed column densities can be reproduced.

Although the column densities can be reproduced by this high metallicity model, there are two problems that remain to be resolved. The first is that these models are rather contrived in the sense that extreme fine tuning of the cloud geometry is required to obtain the correct Fe ii column density. Most Fe ii resides in a thin layer at the back side of the cloud, with a thickness much smaller than the thickness of the Strömgren layer, a problem also pointed out by WCP (see below). Since the thickness of the slab is set by the Fe ii column density, this problem can be remedied by reducing the Fe abundance by a very significant factor. This leads to slabs with a much thicker partially ionized zone. The larger extent of the partially ionized zone does not contribute appreciably to the Mg i column density however, so that an enhanced Mg abundance is still required. The second problem is that the Mg i and Fe ii reside in different zones of the slab. In FBQS1044+3656, the gas along the line of sight is broken up into many clouds at different velocities, and we would not expect to see such a good correspondence between the absorption components of Fe ii and Mg i if these lines were not formed in the same gas.

In figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS we investigate the sensitivity of these results to our assumptions about the shape of the ionizing spectrum. The AGN spectrum used above has a very strong EUV bump. Some more recent observation (e.g. Laor et al. 1997) suggest that in at least some active galaxies the EUV flux is considerably smaller than predicted by the Matthews & Ferland spectrum. To investigate this effect, we have repeated some models with a simple power law spectrum with slope -1.4 between 10 microns and 50 keV, which effectively removes the EUV bump. Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS compares the models with $`\mathrm{log}U`$ equal to -2, -4 and -6 for the two choices of ionizing spectrum. Although the temperature and electron density in the partially ionized zone are higher in the case of the power law spectrum, the column densities are very similar, so that our conclusions from Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are not very dependent on the exact shape of the ionizing spectrum.

#### 4.2.2 Models with dust

From the ionization models above we have found that the low ionization species we have been studying are mainly found in gas with a temperature of a few thousand Kelvin. This means it is very well possible that some form of dust will be present in the outflowing clouds. As we will demonstrate, this can change the ionization models significantly. The presence of dust will have three main effects:

1. Fe is likely to be strongly depleted. This means that the hydrogen column density required to obtain the observed Fe ii column density is much larger.
2. It is possible that Fe and Mg are depleted by different depletion factors. Thus the column density ratios between Fe and Mg ions will be changed.
3. The dust absorbs ionizing radiation, which changes the ionization equilibrium in the slab.

The following models are based on the Orion dust model in CLOUDY, which is in turn based on the work on abundances and dust properties in the Orion Nebula H II regions (Ferland 1996, Baldwin et al. 1991, Osterbrock et al. 1992). The properties of this dust model that are important for this work are the depletions of Fe and Mg ($``$ 0.1 for both) and the dust opacity, which reflects the absence of small grains. The physical conditions in the clouds we consider are more similar to those in H II regions than those in the local ISM, for which a different depletion pattern and grain size distribution has been derived(e.g Cowie & Songaila 1986).

The results of the ionization models including dust are illustrated in Figure ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. The most obvious effect of the presence of dust is the depletion of Fe, which leads to thicker slab models with a much thicker partially ionized zone, as discussed above. However, the most important physical difference between these models and the models without dust is that the Mg i fraction no longer drops as steeply behind the ionization front, so that the largest contribution to the Mg i column density now comes from the partially ionized zone rather than the Strömgren layer. The reason for this behaviour is that the Mg i ionizing flux (including trapped Ly $`\alpha `$) is absorbed by dust, so that the reduction in recombination rate due to the drop in electron density is partially compensated. Thus in the models with dust the Fe ii and Mg i column density reside in the same region of the slab, whereas they are separated in the models without dust. Since the partially ionized zone now contributes to the Mg i column, the observed column can be explained with a much smaller Mg abundance than in the models without dust.

The largest Mg i column density for the given Fe ii column density is produced for $`\mathrm{log}U=3`$ (Model 13). Even for this model it is still necessary to assume that Mg is three times less depleted than in the standard Orion dust model (i.e. by a factor of 0.33 instead of 0.1) to reproduce the observed Mg i column. For lower ionization parameters the models run into the 1000 K temperature limit again, which means that most Fe ii would be too cold to explain the Fe ii excitation, as discussed above. Higher ionization parameters can also reproduce the Mg i column density if we allow Mg to be even less depleted. However, the models with larger ionization parameters are effectively excluded by another constraint, which is that the spectrum of FBQS1044+3656 does not appear to suffer from very strong extinction. The extinction at 2500 Å predicted by the models with dust is given in Table 3. A comparison of the spectrum of FBQS1044+3656 with the mean QSO template of Weymann et al. 1991 shows that the extinction at 2500 Å is not likely to be larger than 1.0 magnitude, unless the spectrum is intrinsically very steeply rising towards shorter wavelengths. This excludes the models with higher ionization parameters than $`\mathrm{log}U=3`$.

All models with $`\mathrm{log}U>6`$ have Fe i column densities that lie well below our upper limit. We conclude that models with dust can explain the observed properties of the outflow reasonably well, and do not suffer from the problems with an improbable cloud geometry and separation of the Mg i and Fe ii producing zones encountered in the high metallicity models without dust.

### 4.3 The size of the outflow

For the cosmological parameters $`H_0=50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{sec}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, the absolute B magnitude of FBQS1044+3656 is $`M_B=26.2`$. Assuming further that the shape of the continuum is close to the typical AGN spectrum described by Matthews & Ferland (1987), we estimate the luminosity of FBQS1044+3656 to be close to the canonical QSO value of $`10^{46}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$. In table 3, the distance between the source of ionizing radiation and the absorbing cloud corresponding to each model is tabulated assuming this luminosity. Both the high metallicity models without dust and the dusty models require that the outflow is situated at a distance of several hundred parsecs from the source of ionizing radiation, i.e typical of the QSO narrow line region. This distance is about two orders of magnitude larger than the distance derived by WCP for the Fe ii absorbing clouds in the BALQSO Q0059-2735.

This large size of the outflow raises several questions. The velocity of the outflow is considerably larger than that of material in the narrow line region, and is more typical of the BEL clouds that are situated at only 0.1 parsec from the nucleus. The combination of a large distance and the very small cloud size implied by partial covering re-emphasizes the problems associated with the stability of small, high speed clouds with a very low filling factor , which have been discussed extensively in the context of the formation of broad absorption lines (Weymann, Turnshek & Christiansen 1985, Begelman, de Kool & Sikora 1991, Weymann 1997). Although the small implied sizes of the clouds are hard to understand theoretically, we do point out that the small transverse cloud size implied by partial covering is consistent with the physical thickness of $`10^{16}`$ cm of the slabs in our ionization models as derived from the hydrogen densities and column densities.

One of the main objections to large distances for BAL-like outflows comes from constraints on the mass and energy involved using the typical parameters of high-ionization BALs. The low ionization absorption lines studied in this paper, however, have rather low velocity and equivalent width compared to typical high-ionization BALs. We can estimate the mass loss rate and kinetic energy of the outflow for the specific case of FBQS1044+3656 to see if they are unreasonably large. The mass involved in the low ionization outflow can be estimated from

$$M_{outflow}>10^7N_{21}R_{21}^2f_{cov}\mathrm{M}_{}.$$
(10)
where $`N_{21}`$ is the hydrogen column density normalized to $`10^{21}`$ cm-2, $`R_{21}`$ the size of the outflow in units of $`10^{21}`$ cm and $`f_{cov}`$ is the global covering factor of the outflow. Since Fe ii absorption is not very common in QSOs, $`f_{cov}`$ could be as small as $`10^2`$ for Fe ii absorption-producing outflows. Alternatively the outflows may be short lived phenomena, in which case the constraints on the mass loss rate are also less severe. Taking the parameters of our preferred Models 7 or 15 and estimating the flow time to be $`R/v`$, the implied mass outflow rate is $`70f_{cov}`$ Myr-1 and the kinetic power of the outflow is $`3\times 10^{44}f_{cov}`$ erg s-1. These are values that do not argue strongly against the large size of the outflow.

### 4.4 Is FBQS1044+3656 a BALQSO?

As mentioned in the Introduction, the characteristics of the absorption lines in FBQS1044+3656 are intermediate between those of BALs and AALs. Weymann et al. (1991) classified a QSO as a BALQSO if the C iv line profile showed a continuous absorption of at least 10% in depth spanning more than 2000 km s-1 in velocity, discounting absorption closer than 3000 km s-1 bluewards of the emission peak. The Mg ii absorption in FBQS1044+3656 meets these criteria, even when a correction is made for the fact that the doublet separation in Mg ii is larger than in C iv . The total width of the Mg ii absorption is about the same as in Q0059-2735 which exhibits extremely strong BALs in the higher ionization lines, and it is an established property of low ionization BALQSOs that the absorption troughs of higher ionization species like C iv or O vi are generally much wider than the Mg ii absorption (Weymann et al. 1991). Thus, considering the properties of the Mg ii absorption alone FBQS1044+3656 should be classified as a BALQSO. In the standard picture of BALQSOs, the absorption lines are formed in an outflow with a typical size of a few parsec.

The characteristics of the very low ionization lines of Mg i and Fe ii are typical of AALs (Weymann et al. 1979, Foltz et al. 1986), for which no firm distance scale has been established so that the distance of a few hundred parsec found in this paper is perhaps not a surprise. The remarkable fact lies in the excellent correspondence in velocity between the strongest Mg ii features and the Mg i and Fe ii absorption lines, which establishes without a doubt that the very low ionization lines and the Mg ii lines are formed in the same outflow. The association of the Fe ii and Mg i absorption with the Mg ii BAL is much clearer in FBQS1044+3656 than in Q0059-2735, which only shows a number of relatively narrow Fe ii components with outflow speeds of a few hundred kilometer per second, and a very smooth Mg ii BAL profile.

The combined properties of the Mg ii , Mg i and Fe ii lines seem to indicate that FBQS1044+3656 contains an outflow with BAL-like characteristics situated at a distance of a few hundred parsec from the nucleus, a scale very much larger than would have been attributed to the outflow on the basis of the Mg ii lines only. At this time, FBQS1044+3656 is a unique object and we do not know how general these results are. In view of the importance of establishing the relation between the large scale outflow found here and the classical high ionization BAL phenomenon, the essential next step in the study of FBQS1044+3656 is to obtain a UV spectrum of the source to compare the absorption profiles of the low and high ionization species.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Part of this work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.


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# Abelian varieties over finite fields with a specified characteristic polynomial modulo ℓ

## 1. Introduction

Let $`𝐅`$ be a finite field of characteristic $`p`$ and order $`q`$, and $`\mathrm{}`$ a prime not equal to $`p`$. Let

$$P(T)=(T^{2g}+q^g)+a_1(T^{2g1}+q^{g1}T)+\mathrm{}+a_{g1}(T^{g+1}+qT^{g1})+a_gT^g$$

be a polynomial. The goal of this paper is to estimate the number of isogeny classes of abelian varieties over $`𝐅`$ of dimension $`g`$ for which the characteristic polynomial for the action of Frobenius is congruent to $`P(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$.

The initial motivation for this problem came from the following question, posed in  and related to the Fontaine-Mazur Conjecture for number fields:

###### Question 1.

Let $`k`$ be a function field over a finite field $`𝐅`$ of characteristic $`p`$ and order $`q`$, and $`\mathrm{}`$ a prime not equal to $`p`$. Let $`K=k𝐅_{\mathrm{}^{\mathrm{}}}`$ be obtained from $`k`$ by taking the maximal $`\mathrm{}`$-extension of the constant field. If $`M`$ is an unramified $`\mathrm{}`$-adic analytic $`\mathrm{}`$-extension of $`k`$, and $`M`$ does not contain $`K`$, must $`M`$ be a finite extension of $`k`$?

In general the answer to Question 1 is no, with examples due to Ihara () and to Frey, Kani, and Völklein (). However, the following theorems were proved in :

###### Theorem 1 (Theorem 2 of ).

Let $`k_0`$ be a function field over a finite field of characteristic $`p`$, and let $`k`$ be a constant field extension. Let $`\mathrm{}`$ be a prime not equal to $`p`$. If $`\mathrm{}`$ does not divide the class number $`P(1)`$ of $`k_0`$, then any everywhere unramified powerful (*a fortiori* uniform) pro-$`\mathrm{}`$ extension of $`k`$, Galois over $`k_0`$, with no constant field extension, is finite.

###### Theorem 2 (See Corollary 4.11 of ).

Let $`k_0`$ be a function field over a finite field of characteristic $`p`$, and let $`k`$ be a constant field extension. Let $`\mathrm{}`$ be a prime not equal to $`p`$. Let $`P(T)`$ be the characteristic polynomial of Frobenius for the Jacobian of the curve associated with $`k_0`$. Suppose that the distinct roots of $`P(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$ (possibly in some extension of $`𝐙/\mathrm{}𝐙`$) consist of $`\lambda _0,\lambda _1,\mathrm{},\lambda _n`$ such that for all $`ij`$, $`\lambda _i\lambda _j1`$. Suppose further that if any $`\lambda _i=1`$, $`\lambda _i`$ is at most a double root of $`P(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$, and if any $`\lambda _i=1`$, $`\lambda _i`$ is only a simple root of $`P(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$. Then there are no unramified infinite powerful pro-$`\mathrm{}`$ extensions of $`k_n`$, Galois over $`k_0`$, with no constant field extension.

In the paper , Jeffrey Achter and the author address the question of how many function fields are associated with a given $`P(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$, and thus how many fall under the purview of Theorem 1 and Theorem 2. In this paper we will address the different but related question of how many isogeny classes of abelian varieties have a given characteristic polynomial $`P(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$. As an application we find the proportion of isogeny classes of abelian varieties with a rational point of order $`\mathrm{}`$.

We have chosen the following way to address these questions, starting with the application to rational points. Fix distinct primes $`p`$ and $`\mathrm{}`$. For each $`r`$, let $`𝐅_{p^r}`$ be the finite field with $`p^r`$ elements. By the work of Tate and Honda, two abelian varieties are isogenous if and only if they have the same zeta function. Thus to each isogeny class of abelian varieties defined over $`𝐅_{p^r}`$ we associate the unique polynomial $`P(T)`$ (the *Weil polynomial* or *Weil $`q`$-polynomial*) which is the characteristic polynomial for the action of Frobenius and the reciprocal of the numerator of the zeta function of any variety in the isogeny class. Then $`\mathrm{}`$ does not divide $`P(1)`$ if and only if each abelian variety in the class has an $`𝐅_{p^r}`$-rational point of order $`\mathrm{}`$. For each $`g`$, there are finitely many isogeny classes of abelian varieties with dimension $`g`$. Let $`d_{r,g}`$ be the fraction of isogeny classes of dimension $`g`$ over $`𝐅_{p^r}`$ for which $`\mathrm{}`$ does not divide $`P(1)`$. Then

###### Theorem 3.

For fixed $`g`$,

$$\underset{r\mathrm{}}{lim}d_{r,g}=\frac{\mathrm{}1}{\mathrm{}}.$$

This result and the other major result of the paper could also be obtained using the techniques of . The proofs given here are perhaps more elementary, and also give some access to the number of isogeny classes and not merely the proportion satisfying each condition.

## 2. Lattices

The proof of Theorem 3 relies on the method of counting abelian varieties introduced by DiPippo and Howe in . Let $`q=p^r`$ and $`I(q,g)`$ be the number of isogeny classes of $`g`$-dimensional abelian varieties over $`𝐅_q`$. Let $`P(T)`$ be as before. Write

$$P(T)=\underset{j=1}{\overset{2g}{}}(T\alpha _j).$$

Then $`P(T)`$ has the property that $`\left|\alpha _j\right|=q^{1/2}`$, and the real roots, if any, have even multiplicity. If we write

$$P(T)=(T^{2g}+q^g)+a_1(T^{2g1}+q^{g1}T)+\mathrm{}+a_{g1}(T^{g+1}+qT^{g1})+a_gT^g$$

and let $`Q(T)=P(\sqrt{q}T)/q^g`$, then $`P(T)`$ is associated with another polynomial

$$Q(T)=(T^{2g}+1)+b_1(T^{2g1}+T)+\mathrm{}+b_{g1}(T^{g+1}+T^{g1})+b_gT^g.$$

Let $`V_g`$ be the set of vectors $`𝐛=(b_1,\mathrm{},b_g)`$ in $`𝐑^g`$ such that all of the complex roots of $`Q(T)`$ lie on the unit circle and all real roots occur with even multiplicity. Let $`𝐞_1,\mathrm{},𝐞_g`$ be the standard basis vectors of $`𝐑^g`$ and let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_q`$ be the lattice generated by the vectors $`q^{i/2}𝐞_i`$. DiPippo and Howe explain that if $`P(T)`$ is the Weil polynomial of an isogeny class then the coefficients $`a_i`$ are such that $`(a_1q^{1/2},\mathrm{},a_gq^{g/2})\mathrm{\Lambda }_qV_g`$. Further, if we let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_q^{}`$ be the lattice generated by the vectors $`q^{1/2}𝐞_1,\mathrm{},q^{(g1)/2}𝐞_{g1}`$ and $`pq^{g/2}𝐞_g`$, then all of the polynomials $`P(T)`$ with coefficients $`a_i`$ are such that $`(a_1q^{1/2},\mathrm{},a_gq^{g/2})(\mathrm{\Lambda }_q\mathrm{\Lambda }_q^{})V_g`$ are exactly the Weil polynomials of isogeny classes of ordinary varieties. Finally, let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_q^{\prime \prime }`$ be the lattice generated by the vectors $`q^{1/2}𝐞_1,\mathrm{},q^{(g1)/2}𝐞_{g1}`$ and $`sq^{g/2}𝐞_g`$, where $`s`$ is the smallest power of $`p`$ such that $`q`$ divides $`s^2`$. Then the set of polynomials $`P(T)`$ with coefficients $`a_i`$ such that $`(a_1q^{1/2},\mathrm{},a_gq^{g/2})\mathrm{\Lambda }_q^{\prime \prime }V_g`$ contains (perhaps properly) the set of Weil polynomials of isogeny classes of non-ordinary varieties.

These facts are relevant because of Proposition 2.3.1 of . In a slightly generalized form, the proposition says:

###### Proposition 2.1 (see 2.3.1 of ).

Let $`n>0`$ be an integer and let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }𝐑^n`$ be a rectilinear lattice (possibly shifted) with mesh $`d`$ at most $`D`$. Then we have

$$\left|\mathrm{\#}(\mathrm{\Lambda }V_g)\frac{\text{volume }V_n}{\text{covolume }\mathrm{\Lambda }}\right|c(n,D)\frac{d}{\text{covolume }\mathrm{\Lambda }}$$

for some constant $`c(n,D)`$ depending only on $`n`$ and $`D`$ which can be explicitly computed. (We will not need the explicit computation in this paper.)

Let $`v_n`$ be the volume of $`V_n`$; Proposition 2.2.1 of  calculates it explicitly but we will not need that here. Let $`r(q)=11/p`$. The lattice $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_q`$ has covolume $`q^{g(g+1)/4}`$ and mesh $`q^{1/2}`$. The lattice $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_q^{}`$ has covolume $`pq^{g(g+1)/4}`$, and it has mesh $`q^{1/2}`$ unless $`g=2`$ and $`q=p`$, in which case it has mesh $`1`$. Lastly, the lattice $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_q^{\prime \prime }`$ has covolume $`sq^{g(g+1)/4}`$ and its mesh is at most $`1`$. It is then an easy consequence of the proposition that

$$\begin{array}{c}v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}2c(g,1)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}\hfill \\ \hfill \begin{array}{cc}& I(q,g)\hfill \\ & v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}+\left(v_g+3c(g,1)\right)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}.\hfill \end{array}\end{array}$$

(See  for details.)

Now let $`I_{\mathrm{}}(q,g)`$ be the number of isogeny classes of $`g`$-dimensional abelian varieties over $`𝐅_q`$ such that $`\mathrm{}`$ divides $`P(1)`$. Using the above notation we have

$$P(1)=(1+q^g)+a_1(1+q^{g1})+\mathrm{}+a_{g1}(1+q)+a_g.$$

Then

$$I_{\mathrm{}}(q,g)=\underset{\begin{array}{c}(1+q^g)+m_1(1+q^{g1})+\mathrm{}+m_{g1}(1+q)+m_g0(mod\mathrm{})\\ 0m_i<\mathrm{}\end{array}}{}I_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}(q,g)$$

where $`I_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}(q,g)`$ is the number of isogeny classes of $`g`$-dimensional abelian varieties over $`𝐅_q`$ such that $`a_im_i`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$. There are exactly $`\mathrm{}^{g1}`$ terms on the right hand side of this expression.

Now let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}`$ be the lattice generated by the vectors $`\mathrm{}q^{i/2}𝐞_i`$ and then shifted by $`_im_iq^{i/2}𝐞_i`$, and let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}^{}=\mathrm{\Lambda }_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}\mathrm{\Lambda }_q^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}^{\prime \prime }=\mathrm{\Lambda }_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}\mathrm{\Lambda }_q^{\prime \prime }`$. Then $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}`$ has covolume $`\mathrm{}^gq^{g(g+1)/4}`$ and mesh $`\mathrm{}q^{1/2}`$; $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}^{}`$ has covolume $`\mathrm{}^gpq^{g(g+1)/4}`$, and it has mesh $`\mathrm{}q^{1/2}`$ unless $`g=2`$ and $`q=p`$, in which case it has mesh $`\mathrm{}`$; and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}^{\prime \prime }`$ has covolume $`\mathrm{}^gsq^{g(g+1)/4}`$ and mesh at most $`\mathrm{}`$.

We can then prove:

###### Proposition 2.2.

$$\begin{array}{c}v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}\mathrm{}^g2c(g,\mathrm{})q^{g(g+1)/41/2}\mathrm{}^{1g}\hfill \\ \hfill \begin{array}{cc}& I_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}(q,g)\hfill \\ & v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}\mathrm{}^g+\left(v_g+3c(g,\mathrm{})\right)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}\mathrm{}^{1g},\hfill \end{array}\end{array}$$

and thus:

###### Proposition 2.3.

$$\begin{array}{c}v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}\mathrm{}^12c(g,\mathrm{})q^{g(g+1)/41/2}\hfill \\ \hfill \begin{array}{cc}& I_{\mathrm{}}(q,g)\hfill \\ & v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}\mathrm{}^1+\left(v_g+3c(g,\mathrm{})\right)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}.\hfill \end{array}\end{array}$$

Combining this with our earlier result, we get

$$\begin{array}{c}\frac{v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}\mathrm{}^12c(g,\mathrm{})q^{g(g+1)/41/2}}{v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}+\left(v_g+3c(g,1)\right)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}}\hfill \\ \hfill \begin{array}{cc}& \frac{I_{\mathrm{}}(q,g)}{I(q,g)}\hfill \\ & \frac{v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}\mathrm{}^1+\left(v_g+3c(g,\mathrm{})\right)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}}{v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}2c(g,1)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}}.\hfill \end{array}\end{array}$$

Thus we have:

###### Theorem 4.

For fixed $`g`$,

$$\underset{r\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{I_{\mathrm{}}(p^r,g)}{I(p^r,g)}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}.$$

from which Theorem 3 follows immediately.

## 3. The general case

Obviously, an identical argument could be used to establish the fraction of isogeny classes of dimension $`g`$ for which $`P(x)y`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$ for any $`x`$ and $`y`$ in $`𝐙`$. More generally, we can establish the fraction of isogeny classes of dimension $`g`$ for which $`P(T)f(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$ for any given polynomial $`f(T)`$ of the correct form. Fix

$$f(T)=(T^{2g}+q^g)+m_1(T^{2g1}+q^{g1}T)+\mathrm{}+m_{g1}(T^{g+1}+qT^{g1})+m_gT^g.$$

For fixed $`p`$ and $`\mathrm{}`$, let $`e_{r,g}`$ be the fraction of isogeny classes of $`g`$-dimensional abelian varieties over $`𝐅_{p^r}`$ such that $`P(T)f(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$.

###### Theorem 5.

For fixed $`g`$,

$$\underset{r\mathrm{}}{lim}e_{r,g}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}^g}.$$

###### Proof.

We can follow the same argument as we did for Theorem 3. Let $`J_{\mathrm{}}(q,g)=e_{r,g}I(q,g)`$ be the number of isogeny classes of $`g`$-dimensional abelian varieties over $`𝐅_{p^r}=𝐅_q`$ such that $`P(T)f(T)`$ modulo $`\mathrm{}`$. Then our bounds on $`J_{\mathrm{}}(q,g)=I_{m_1,\mathrm{},m_g}(q,g)`$ and $`I(q,g)`$ give us

$$\begin{array}{c}\frac{v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}\mathrm{}^g2c(g,\mathrm{})q^{g(g+1)/41/2}\mathrm{}^{1g}}{v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}+\left(v_g+3c(g,1)\right)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}}\hfill \\ \hfill \begin{array}{cc}& \frac{J_{\mathrm{}}(q,g)}{I(q,g)}\hfill \\ & \frac{v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}\mathrm{}^g+\left(v_g+3c(g,\mathrm{})\right)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}\mathrm{}^{1g}}{v_gr(q)q^{g(g+1)/4}2c(g,1)q^{g(g+1)/41/2}}.\hfill \end{array}\end{array}$$

On taking the limit, the theorem follows. ∎


text:
# Searching for high-𝑧 field ellipticals: successes and problems

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The question on the formation of the present-day massive spheroidals is one of the most debated issues of galaxy evolution and it is strongly linked to the general problem of structure formation in the universe (see  for a recent review). In one scenario, massive spheroidals are formed at early cosmological epochs (e.g. $`z>3`$) through the “monolithic” collapse of the whole gas mass. Such a formation would be characterized by an episode of intense star formation, followed by a passive evolution (or pure luminosity evolution, PLE) of the stellar population to nowadays. In marked contrast, the hierarchical scenarios predict that massive spheroidals are the product of rather recent merging of pre-existing disk galaxies taking place mostly at $`z<1`$. In hierarchical scenarios, fully assembled massive field spheroidals at $`z>1`$ are rare objects, and the spheroids of cluster ellipticals were assembled before those of field ellipticals. From an observational point of view, a direct way to test the above scenarios is to search for massive field ellipticals at $`z>1`$ and to compare their number with the model predictions (see the introduction of  for a recent review on observational tests).

## 2 HOW TO FIND $`z>1`$ ELLIPTICALS ?

Since the near-IR light is a good tracer of the galaxy mass, $`K`$-band imaging provides an important possibility to perform surveys aimed at selecting massive ellipticals at high-$`z`$. A galaxy with a stellar mass of about $`10^{11}`$ M is expected to have $`18<K<20`$ for $`1<z<2`$, thus implying that moderately deep $`K`$-band surveys can efficiently select massive galaxies.

A first selection criterion to find ellipticals at $`z>1`$ is to apply a color threshold to $`K`$-band selected galaxies. In the framework of passive evolution, such a threshold is set by the colors expected for a galaxy at $`z>1`$ formed at a given $`z_f`$. For instance, according to the Bruzual & Charlot (1999) spectral synthesis models ($`Z=Z_{}`$, Salpeter IMF), a very red color of $`RK>5.3`$ would allow to select $`z1`$ passively evolving galaxies formed at $`z_f>2`$ ($`H_0`$=50 km s-1 Mpc-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.11.0`$), thus allowing to search for elliptical candidates formed at early epochs. However, searches based on color selection criteria gave discrepant results: some works showed that the number of such red galaxies is lower compared to the predictions of PLE, whereas others did not confirm such a deficit up to redshifts of about two.

In order to avoid the possible biases (e.g. star formation) present in the color selection technique, another approach is to derive the fraction of ellipticals by taking spectra of all the galaxies in $`K`$-selected samples irrespectively of colors (see also http://www.arcetri.astro.it/$``$k20/). This method allows to overcome the putative problem of ellipticals missed because bluer than the adopted color threshold due to a low level of residual star formation.

Finally, the third possibility to find $`z>1`$ ellipticals is to select galaxies according to their morphology and surface brightness profiles (with or without an associated color selection criterion). This approach was adopted for example by  for $`0.2<z<1.0`$, and by  for $`z>1`$. While the results seem to agree with no or little number density evolution for early type galaxies at $`z<1`$, the analysis of the $`z>1`$ samples led again to discrepant results, thus making the question on $`z>1`$ ellipticals even more controversial.

## 3 RECENT IMAGING AND SPECTROSCOPY RESULTS

After several small field surveys ($``$1-60 arcmin2, see references in previous section) leading to discrepant results, the most recent success was provided by a wide field survey for extremely red objects (EROs). Such a survey (the widest so far: 700 arcmin2 to $`K<18.8`$, with a sub-area of 447 arcmin2 to $`K<19.2`$) provided a complete sample of about 400 objects with $`RK>5`$ suitable for reliably constraining the number density of high-$`z`$ elliptical candidates. The main results of such a survey are the detection of strong angular clustering of EROs (an order of magnitude larger than that of field galaxies; see Fig. 1-2), and the accurate estimate of the surface density of elliptical candidates at $`z>1`$. The observed clustering can explain the previous discrepant results on the surface density of $`z>1`$ ellipticals as due to strong field-to-field variations (the “cosmic variance”), and it suggests that most EROs are ellipticals rather than dust reddened starbursts (see  for more details). Finally, even in the conservative case where up to 70% of EROs are not ellipticals, the observed surface density (complemented by the results of ) is in good agreement with the predictions of PLE (Fig. 3), suggesting that most field ellipticals were fully assembled at least by $`z=2.5`$. This result does not imply that the formation of massive spheroidals occurred necessarily through a “monolithic collapse” scenario, but it simply constrains the epoch when the formation took place, and it implies that, if ellipticals formed through merging, this occurred mostly at $`z>2.5`$.

In addition to wide field imaging, the existence of galaxies with the colors expected in the case of passive evolution and with de Vaucouleurs $`r^{1/4}`$ surface brightness profiles consistent with being dynamically relaxed spheroidals at $`z>1`$ has significantly grown thanks to HST deep imaging (e.g ).

The spectroscopic confirmation of high-$`z`$ ellipticals is extremely challenging because of their faintness both in the optical and in the near-IR, and because of the few characteristic spectral features present in their spectra: mainly the strong 4000 Å continuum break, the weaker breaks at 2600 Å, 2900 Å and 3260 Å, and a handful of absorptions detectable with the present-day largest telescopes and very long integration times (Fig. 4). Moreover, for $`1.3<z<1.9`$, the 4000 Å break falls in a critical spectral region where the optical and near-IR spectrographs are less efficient and the atmosphere severely hampers the observations.

Despite such difficulties, the Keck telescopes and the ESO VLT are confirming the existence of $`z>1`$ passively evolving ellipticals with old ages ($`14`$ Gyr) consistent with being formed at remote cosmological epochs (Fig. 4(a)), as well as ellipticals displaying a low level of star formation indicated by the possible detection of weak \[OII\]$`\lambda `$3727 emission (see Fig. 4(b); see also).

## 4 PROBLEMS

The major problem affecting the statistical studies of $`z>1`$ ellipticals is the “pollution” of color-selected samples by a fraction of star forming galaxies reddened by strong dust extinction. The fraction of dusty EROs is currently unknown, but its accurate estimate is crucial to infer a reliable surface density of high-$`z`$ ellipticals “cleaned” by the contamination of dusty systems. This goal can be reached observing complete samples of EROs with optical+near-IR spectroscopy (when feasible), deep HST imaging and submm photometry. Although based on small and/or incomplete samples, recent submm and HST observations suggested that the dusty galaxies are probably segregated among the reddest EROs with $`RK>7`$ or $`IK>6`$.

The other major problem in the identification of $`z>1`$ ellipticals is that a large fraction of EROs are beyond the spectroscopic limits of the present largest telescopes (e.g. $`R>25`$, $`K>1920`$). This strongly limits our ability to spectroscopically confirm the nature of a high-$`z`$ elliptical candidate.

## 5 PROSPECTS FOR THE LBT

The Large Binocular Telescope will play an important role in the study of high-$`z`$ ellipticals. As a single-dish telescope, deep spectroscopy in the ranges 0.7-1.0$`\mu `$m and 0.9-1.8$`\mu `$m will be possible with the MODS and the LUCIFER spectrographs respectively. This will allow us to enlarge the samples of spectroscopically identified high-$`z`$ ellipticals and, for instance, to infer their luminosity function and 3D clustering at $`z>1`$. As a diffraction limited telescope, the LBT will provide high angular resolution near-IR images that will be crucial in deriving the surface brightness profiles and, for instance, to extend the Kormendy relation and to attempt the Tolman test at $`z>1`$. Finally, in case of objects unfeasible with spectroscopy, the combination of high resolution imaging and optical + near-IR photometry (possibly done with special medium band filters) will allow us first to confirm the spheroidal nature of the elliptical candidates, and then to reliably estimate their photometric redshifts.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Alvio Renzini for reading this manuscript and for the constructive comments, and to Shri Kulkarni for “politely” pointing out the “high quality” of the spectra.