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# Disk/corona model of the mean spectra of radio-quiet and radio-loud QSO

## 1 Introduction

The standard model of central engine of active galactic nuclei (AGN) consists of a massive black hole, an accretion disk, and a distant molecular torus. A major problem, however, is the location of the source of X-ray emission not expected from this simple picture. X-ray emission carries a significant fraction of the bolometric luminosity. In Seyfert 1 galaxies it is mostly in the form of a hard X-ray power law component with the high energy cut-off at about 100 keV. In Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies and quasars the hard X-ray power law contains much lower fraction of the bolometric luminosity but there is a second component in those sources - large soft X-ray excess - which carries large fraction of the luminosity. This X-ray emission comes from a relatively compact region located not too far from the accretion disk, as suggested by the fast variability in X-ray band and the presence of X-ray reflection component. However, even the extensive monitoring campaigns did not solve yet the problem of exact geometry of this region and, subsequently, of the physical process leading to the formation of the hot plasma.

In the present paper we consider a particular model of the origin of this X-ray emission which is based on physical grounds. It is a model of a hot dissipative corona above an accretion disk, as described by Janiuk & Czerny (2000). This model is based on assumptions that the corona is in hydrostatic and radiative equilibrium with the disk, the rate of energy dissipation in the corona as well as in the disk is proportional to the pressure (total pressure in the disk and gas pressure in the corona) and the spontaneous division of the flow into disk and corona reflects the thermal instability within the irradiated gas, as discussed by Krolik, McKee & Tarter (1981). This model predicts the overall shape of the spectrum optical/UV/X-ray from an accretion flow as a function of the mass of the black hole, an accretion rate and the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$. We introduce some modifications to the model and we compare it with the observational data.

One of the source of difficulties in modeling AGN is the fact that significant fraction of the bolometric luminosity is emitted in the unobserved region between far UV and soft X-rays so the bolometric luminosity and the spectral shape of the principal component - Big Blue Bump - are poorly determined for a single object. Therefore, in the present paper we decided to test the model against composite quasar spectra of Laor et al. (1997) which practically bridge the unobserved gap due to combining the spectra coming from objects at various redshifts.

In Section 2 we shortly describe the composite and a theoretical model. Section 3 describes our results. We discuss the results in Section 4. The conclusions are given in Section 5.

## 2 Method

### 2.1 Composite spectrum

The mean spectra of radio quiet and radio loud quasars were shown by Laor et al. (1997). They cover a broad frequency range $`log\nu 14.318.5`$, i.e. they extend from 15 000 Å up to 10 keV.

The mean X-ray spectrum contains the spectra of objects from the Bright Quasar Survey (Shmidt & Green, 1983) with redshift $`𝚣0.40`$ and column density $`N_{HI}^{Gal}<1.9\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. It was obtained adopting the following cosmological parameters: the Hubble constant $`H_0`$ equal $`50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, the deceleration parameter $`q=0.5`$, and the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ equal to $`=0.0`$. These low redshift objects determine the mean spectrum above $`\mathrm{log}\nu 16.7`$ (200 eV). Below it we have the unobserved range due to the Galactic absorption which extends from $`log\nu 15`$ to $`log\nu 16.7`$. This range, however, is partially covered from $`2000`$ Å to $`350`$ Å ($`log\nu 15.216.0`$) by spectrum from Zheng et al. (1997). This result is based on observations of quasars at high redshifts ($`z>0.33`$).

Final spectrum still contains a relatively short uncovered range. However, the simple extrapolation of the spectra from both sides roughly coincide which strongly suggest that the resulting spectra are a good representation of the broad band spectra of bright radio quiet and radio loud AGN.

### 2.2 Disk/corona/extended medium structure

We consider a model of stationary accretion flow onto a Schwarzschild, massive black hole which consists of an accretion disk, a hot corona and (optionally) a spherically symmetric extended hot medium. The accretion is ultimately responsible for the emission of the radiation, and the energy is dissipated partially in the disk and partially in the corona. Therefore, the accretion rate, $`\dot{M}`$, together with the mass of the central black hole, $`M`$, are the basic parameters of our model (see also Witt, Czerny & Życki, 1997; Janiuk & Czerny, 2000). The total flux generated in the corona, $`F_c`$, and in the disk, $`F_d`$, is determined by the standard formula (see e.g. Kato, Fukue & Mineshige, 1998)

$$F_d+F_c=\frac{3GM\dot{M}}{8\pi r^3}𝒢(r),$$
(1)
where $`𝒢(r)`$ represents the Newtonian boundary condition at the marginally stable orbit

$$𝒢(r)=1\sqrt{\frac{3\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{Schw}}}{r}}.$$
(2)
#### 2.2.1 Local disk spectrum

We assume that the disk is relatively cold, geometrically thin and optically thick (i. e. $`\alpha `$–disk theory, Shakura & Sunyaev, 1973). We approximate the distribution of the angular momentum in the disk and the corona by Keplerian distribution

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_K=\sqrt{\frac{GM}{r^3}},$$
(3)
where $`G`$ is the gravitational constant, $`M`$ – the mass of the black hole and $`r`$ is radial radius of the object. The disk is the source of the soft photons, $`F_{soft}`$, which are Comptonized locally in the corona and afterwards, at a greater distance, by the spherical cloud. The flux $`F_{soft}`$ consists of a flux $`F_d`$ generated in the disk at any given radius is denoted by $`F_d`$ and of a fraction of the flux $`F_c`$ generated in the corona and subsequently intercepted and thermalised in the disk. This flux determines the effective temperature of the disk at a given radius

$$F_{soft}=\sigma T_{eff}^4.$$
(4)
The spectral shape of this radiation is sometimes approximated as a blackbody. However, when an electron scattering dominate significantly over free-free and bound-free absorption this assumption is not justified. If the number of scattering events is large the saturated Comptonization effect is the most important and it shifts systematically the energy of photons while still preserving a ’black body’ spectral shape. Shimura & Takahara (1995) showed that this is an important effect in AGN accretion disks.

We introduce the spectral hardening factor $`f`$ in such way that the flux can be described by the equation (Shimura & Takahara, 1995)

$$F_\nu ^{soft}=\frac{1}{f^4}\pi B_\nu (fT_{eff}),$$
(5)
where $`T_{eff}`$ is the effective temperature, $`T_{col}=fT_{eff}`$ is the color temperature, and $`B_\nu `$ is the Planck function of blackbody.

The value of $`f`$ should come in principle from the radiative transfer computations. However, the results of Shimura & Takahara (1995) were obtained assuming pure hydrogen and helium atmosphere while heavy elements (particularly iron) are very important. Other codes (e.g. Merloni, Fabian & Ross, 2000; Sobczak et al., 1999; Madej & Różańska, 2000) also contain several approximations, mostly concerning the description of bound-free transitions and lines of heavy elements which are essential. It is therefore more convenient to parameterize this effect, compare the results to the data and ’a posteriori’ conclude which theoretical predictions are most appropriate.

This effect is particularly important in the innermost part of the disk where the ionization is the highest but it should become negligible further out. Therefore we assume that the spectral hardening factor $`f`$ is the monotically decreasing function. It decreases from the value $`f_{max}`$ at the marginally stable orbit radius to the value $`f=1`$ further away, at $`r`$ larger than $`r_{col}`$. We use basically a linear function but results obtained with other functional shapes are similar (see Sect. 3).

#### 2.2.2 Local corona

The corona is hot, optically thin and two-temperature (i. e. the ions temperature $`T_i`$ is much greater than the electrons temperature $`T_e`$, as discussed by Shapiro, Lightman & Eardley (1976)). The two-temperature corona model was considered by a number of authors (Haardt & Marashi (1991); Witt, Czerny & Życki (1997); Esin et al. (1997)). Here we follow the formulation of Janiuk & Czerny (2000).

We assume that the coronal plasma is an isothermal medium in the vertical coordinate, $`z`$, but non-isothermal toward the radial coordinate, $`r`$ (i. e. $`\frac{T}{z}=0`$ and $`\frac{T}{r}0`$).

The flux of the soft photons, $`F_{soft}`$, produced in the disk is partly Comptonized within the corona and it is partly transmitted throughout. The scattered Comptonized coronal flux, $`F_c`$, is partially directed towards the disk, $`\eta F_c`$, and partially directed outwards to an observer, $`(1\eta )F_c`$, as a hard X-ray and gamma-ray radiation (see Fig. 1). X-ray photons irradiating the disk are partially absorbed and thermalised, contributing to $`F_{soft}`$, and partially reflected by the disk surface, depending on the value of the X-ray albedo, $`a`$. We assume in our calculations that $`\eta =0.5`$ and $`a=0.2`$. Such a formulation of the radiative disk/corona coupling was introduced by Haardt & Marashi (1991).

The local flux $`F_c`$ is generated by a heating mainly of the ions, because a gravitational energy by accreting gas is transported directly to this particles (Narayan et al., 1998). In this case the flux $`F_c`$ is proportioned to $`\alpha `$-viscosity introduced by Shakura & Sunyaev (1973) and the total pressure $`P`$.

$$F_c=\frac{3}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }_K\alpha _{z_0}^{\mathrm{}}P(z)𝑑z,$$
(6)
where $`z_0`$ is the vertical coordinate at the basis of the corona. In our calculate we neglect the coronal radiation pressure and the magnetic pressure, and we employ the results of the vertical integration obtained by Witt, Czerny & Życki (1997, Appendix D). At present

$$F_c=\frac{3}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }_K\alpha P_0H\sqrt{\frac{\pi }{2}},$$
(7)
where $`P_0P(z_0)`$ is the gas pressure at the basis of the corona, $`H`$ is the pressure scale height of the corona given by the ions temperature, $`T_i`$, under the assumption of the hydrostatic equilibrium

$$H=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_K}\sqrt{\frac{kT_i}{m_H}}.$$
(8)
Such a formulation is independent from the physical mechanism of the corona heating since the scaling with pressure, $`H`$, may correspond either to the accretion heating by viscosity (Życki et al., 1995; Witt, Czerny & Życki, 1997) or to the magnetic heating (e.g. Svensson & Zdziarski, 1994).

The energy of ions in the corona is immediately transported to electrons through the electron-ion Coulomb interaction. The ions are cooled and this cooling is described by the equation (Shapiro, Lightman & Eardley, 1976)

$$F_c=\frac{3}{2}\frac{k(T_iT_e)}{m_H}\left[1+\sqrt{\frac{4kT_e}{m_ec^2}}\right]\nu _{ei}\rho _0H\frac{\sqrt{\pi }}{2},$$
(9)
where $`\nu _{ei}=2.44\times 10^{21}\rho _0T_e^{1.5}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }[\mathrm{s}^1]`$ is the electron–ion coupling rate and $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }20`$ is the Coulomb log. Here the density $`\rho _0`$ is related to the corona thickness and its optical depth $`\tau _{es}`$.

The heated electrons deliver the energy subsequently to photons in the Inverse Compton process. In this way the part of observe/UV/soft X-ray photons emerge to a observator as a hard X-ray radiation. We describe this process as

$$F_c=A(\tau _{es},T_e,T_s)F_{soft},$$
(10)
where $`A(\tau _{es},T_e,T_s)`$ is the Compton amplification factor and $`T_s`$ is the temperature of disk produced the local $`F_{soft}`$. We interpolate the factor $`A`$ from the tables prepared in advance from Monte Carlo computations.

The vertical division of the medium into hot corona and relatively cold disk at every radius should not be arbitrary. Indeed, such a division results naturally from the criterion of thermal instability in a irradiated medium studied by Krolik, McKee & Tarter (1981) which naturally develops in the surface layers of an irradiated accretion disk in hydrostatic equilibrium (Różańska & Czerny, 1996).

The ionization stage of the medium is conveniently expressed through a ionization parameter $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$. It is defined as a ratio of the ionization radiation pressure to the gas pressure

$$\mathrm{\Xi }=\frac{\eta F_c}{cP_0}.$$
(11)
The phase transition from cold to hot medium occurs with a transcend of a specific value of the ionization parameter $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ (Begelman, McKee & Shields, 1983).

$$\mathrm{\Xi }=0.65\left(\frac{10^8}{T_e}\right)^{3/2}.$$
(12)
It scales with the electron temperature and the fraction $`0.65`$ is the value of the ionization parameter for an inverse Compton temperature of $`10^8\mathrm{K}`$.

The set of equations (3) – (12) allows to calculate the properties of the corona at each radius, as a function of global model parameters, i.e. mass of the central black hole, $`M`$, the accretion rate, $`\dot{M}`$, and the value of viscosity parameter, $`\alpha `$, in the corona including the electron temperature and the optical depth.

The local spectrum is now computed as a disk spectrum (Eq. 5) Comptonized by the local corona. Comptonization process was calculated using code based on the semi-analytical formulae of Czerny & Zbyszewska (1991) for a slab geometry. This description allows for fast computations on a fine radial grid.

#### 2.2.3 Global disk/corona spectrum

The final spectrum is calculated through the integration of the local spectra over all disk radii. Since the effect of corona is strongly dependent on the radius - it is weak close to the black hole and reaches maximum at a distance about a few hundred $`\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{Schw}}`$, depending on the accretion rate, this integration is essential. It also means that hard X-ray emission comes mostly from the outer parts while weakest Comptonization in the innermost part creates a soft X-ray tail to the local disk spectrum.

#### 2.2.4 Additional Comptonizing cloud

Our corona model is universal in a sense that it does not contain any differentiation between radio loud and radio quiet objects while the composite spectra for the two classes of objects is clearly different.

To model such systematic difference we eventually allow for the existence of an additional extended medium (see Fig. 2) with parameters not determined by the accretion rate. This medium may be connected with the observed warm absorber, as a hot medium confining cooler absorbing clouds (Ogle et al., 2000). This cloud has a spherical geometry but we consider also a slab geometry. Physically it is characterized by the Thomson opacity, $`\tau _{ext}`$, and the electrons temperature, $`T_{ext}`$. The corona and mainly the disk are the source of soft photons, which are scaterred by the electrons in extended medium. In this case they are visible outward as the additional X-ray radiation.

In this case the Comptonization process is computed once per model so we use an accurate Monte Carlo method. We applied the numerical program, which was written by Gierliński (2000) and which is based on procedures by Górecki & Wilczewski (1984).

Such an accurate method would be too time consuming to apply to the Comptonization by the corona at each radius and it was not really necessary since the final integration over the disk surface (an a range of temperatures and optical depths) smeared any specific Comptonization features even if present in the spectra (mostly first scattering effect).

#### 2.2.5 Hard X-ray radiation

It is generally believed that the hard X-ray radiation in radio-loud objects comes from the jet. The extension of the hard X-ray power law into high energies is not well constrained in quasars so the nature of this emission is not known. The studies of galactic sources in their soft states, however, suggest that in such a spectral state of an accreting black hole the hard X-ray emission comes from the non-thermal tail of electron distribution (e.g. Gierliński et al., 1999, for Cyg X-1).

Therefore, we do not expect that our thermal corona model will explain the hard X-ray radiation. We treat this hard X-ray power law emission as an additional component and we add it to the resulting spectrum adopting the slope and normalization appropriate for radio loud and radio quiet objects separately.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Without extended medium

We first discuss the basic version of the model, i.e. disk plus corona, which is described by the mass of the black hole, $`M`$, accretion rate, $`\dot{M}`$, coronal viscosity parameter, $`\alpha `$, and two parameters determining the color temperature distribution in the disk: $`f_{max}`$ and $`r_{col}`$.

The UV part of the composite spectrum is mostly determined by the first two parameters which govern the total luminosity and the position of the peak on $`\nu F_\nu `$ diagram. However, the last two parameters are also important since the multicolor blackbody is too narrow to disk represent the Laor et al. (1997) spectrum adequately.

However, if we allow for the presence of the saturated Comptonization skin in the upper layers of the disk we can represent the spectra adequately.

We describe the radial dependence of the color temperature to the effective temperature ratio through a linear function of value $`f_{max}`$ at the marginally stable orbit, dropping to 1 at $`r_{col}`$ (see Fig. 3).

Both parameters, $`f_{max}`$ and $`r_{col}`$ broaden the spectral distribution in the far UV range but the deviation of the shape is somewhat different in those two cases. In Fig. 4 we show the dependence of the spectrum on the maximum value of the color to effective temperature ratio, $`f_{max}`$, and on the extension of the disk skin, $`r_{col}`$ (upper and lower part, correspondingly). We also experimented with other functional dependences of the parameter $`f`$ on the disk radius (see Fig. 3) but when the parameters were adjusted to model the data possibly well the differences in the final spectral shapes obtained with different $`f(r)`$ profiles were negligible. Therefore, in further discussion we use always the linear formula.

The value of the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$ in the corona has no influence on the optical/UV part of the spectrum but it is important for the relative efficiency of the X-ray radiation. We choose it to reproduce the observed level of the soft X-ray emission in the Laor et al. (1997) spectrum possibly well.

The best representation of the observed composite spectrum for radio quiet objects is shown in Fig. 5. The representation of the data is satisfactory in the optical/UV band in the X-ray band, where both the normalization and the slope are well reproduced. The required value of the $`f_{max}`$ parameter implies the color to temperature ratio equal 1.85 at $`10\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{Schw}}`$.

However, there is a large discrepancy between the predicted shape and the observed shape in the soft X-ray band.

In our model the soft X-ray emission comes from the Comptonization of the disk emission in the innermost part of the flow. Clearly, the coronal strength in this region (i.e. the value of the Compton parameter determined by the temperature and the optical depth) is too low to model well the observations. Since our basic model does not contain additional free parameters apart from the global parameters listed at the beginning of Sect. 3.1 we have no way to increase this effect artificially. It means that additional Comptonization is required, possibly by the extended hot medium.

However, the mean quasar spectrum of radio loud objects in the soft X-ray band is well reproduced by our basic model (see Fig. 6). It means that in this case no extended medium is needed to explain the broad band spectrum.

### 3.2 Extended medium in radio quiet objects

The model consisting of the disk and corona emission as described in Sect. 2.2 did not account for the observed shape of the composite spectrum of radio quiet quasars in the soft X-ray band. Now we consider a case when the disk/corona system is embedded in an extended hot optically thin cloud.

We fix the parameters of the disk/corona system at the previous values appropriate for radio quiet and radio loud objects, and we add two new parameters: the temperature of the extended medium, $`T_{ext}`$, and its optical depth, $`\tau _{ext}`$.

The soft X-ray emission in the composite spectrum of Laor et al. (1997) is not exactly of a power law shape but shows a discontinuity in the slope at $`log\nu 16.7`$. Therefore, if we follow this shape precisely we can determine both parameters of the extended medium independently. This would not be the case if the emission is a single power law since in such case only the slope, and subsequently the combination of the two parameters, is determined. It is difficult to say if this change of slope is real - it is caused by bridging the unobserved gap with a power law. However, the values of $`T_{ext}`$ and $`\tau _{ext}`$ still may be quite representative of the required medium.

The result of this modeling for radio quiet objects is shown in Fig. 7. Not surprisingly, this model well represents the overall spectrum. The hot medium parameters: $`T_{ext}=6075`$ keV and $`\tau _{ext}=0.550.5`$, respectively.

The exact values of the extended medium parameters depend on the adopted geometry. For a comparison, we also considered a flat configuration for the extended medium. The quality of the data representation is the same. The best values of the $`T_{ext}`$ and $`\tau _{ext}`$ are equal $`55`$ keV and $`0.45`$.

## 4 Discussion

We considered a physically justified model of the disk/corona. The emission from such a system calculated in the simplest direct way did not account for the extended shape of the spectrum in far UV and for the shape of the soft X-ray spectrum in radio quiet and radio loud objects in the composite spectra of Laor et al. (1997).

Two modifications to the simplest picture were necessary: (1) the presence of the hotter disk skin where saturated Comptonization leads to a noticeable difference between the color temperature and the effective temperature at $`r<30\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{Schw}}`$. (2) the presence of the hot extended medium surrounding the disk and the corona in the case of radio-quiet objects.

### 4.1 The reliability of the composite spectra

Our results depend sensitively on the spectral shape of the composite spectra adopted as the representation of a typical spectrum of radio loud and radio quiet quasar, respectively.

The reliability of the composite spectrum of Laor et al. (1997) may be easily questioned since various types of objects were used to construct two major parts: high redshift quasars ($`𝚣1`$) were used by Zheng et al. (1997) to obtain the far UV part and low redshift objects were used to find the soft X-ray part. This was unavoidable since this was the only way to close the observational gap between the two bands. Also the number of objects used to prepare the spectrum ($`100`$) was not very large.

The confidence in the composite may be further decreased by the presence of systematic differences between this composite and other composites in the optical/UV band.

In Fig. 8 we show the comparison of schematically drawn Zheng et al. (1997) composite and the optical part of the Laor et al. (1997) against the Francis et al. (1991; upper panel) and Morris (private communication; middle panel). We see strong flattening in Zheng et al. which lead to the conclusion about high color to effective temperature ratio in quasar accretion disks. Almost no such flattening is present in two other composites: standard black body accretion disk is almost a perfect representation of the data for Francis et al. (see Fig. 17 in the review of Koratkar & Blaes, 1999).

The difference, however, is most probably due to the difference in the studied population of quasars. Francis et al. (1991) sample consists of quasars at $`𝚣3`$ and of the bolometric luminosity of order of $`10^{47}10^{48}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ and Morris composite is based on the same sample while Zheng et al. (1997) part of the Laor composite was based on $`𝚣1`$ quasars of bolometric luminosity of order of $`10^{46}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$.

As an argument in favor of this interpretation we plot in Fig. 8 the optical/UV spectrum of PG1211+143 - a radio quiet quasar classified also as NLS1 galaxy. The bolometric luminosity of this object is $`2\times 10^{45}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Janiuk, Czerny & Madejski, 2001). The shape of this spectrum is noticeably similar to the composite and cannot be modeled with a black body accretion disk. It is definitely flatter in UV than Francis et al. (1991) composite. On the other hand, individual spectra of high redshift, bright quasars show on average much harder spectra, with mean value of the slope of 0.36 (i.e. $`F_\nu \nu ^{0.36}`$) for a total of 24 radio quiet quasars, consistent with Francis et al. (1991), in the observed 1000 - 2000 Å band in quasar rest frame (Scott et al., 2000).

The dependence of the spectral shape on the luminosity state is well known for galactic sources in their high/soft states dominated by the disk emission. Sometimes the soft component is well described as disk black body emission but frequently additional Comptonization of this component is needed, independent from the hard X-ray tail (for a review see e.g. Życki, 2001). We therefore conclude that our results apply to faint or moderately bright quasars, and do not apply to bright quasars.

Unfortunately, we cannot repeat the whole analysis for bright objects. The composite of Francis et al. (1991) appropriate for bright quasars is not supplemented by the X-ray part. The data on single bright objects suggest that the hard X-ray slope (Reeves & Turner, 2000) is similar to that given by Laor et al. (photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.89\pm 0.05`$ for radio quiet quasars and $`1.66\pm 0.04`$ for radio loud quasars). The relative level of hard X-ray emission in comparison to UV in very bright objects may also be similar: for example, very bright quasar PG 1247+268 has $`log\nu L_\nu `$ equal to 47.09 at 3000 Å (Neugebauer et al., 1987) and 45.72 at 2 keV (Reeves & Turner, 2000), meaning the same $`\alpha _{ox}`$ index as determined by Laor et al. (1997). However, the soft X-ray part becomes unconstrained since the soft X-ray excess moved into unobserved range. Therefore, it cannot be used effectively to test the corona model.

### 4.2 Mean quasar properties

Our disk/corona model implies that the studied quasar sample does not accrete at a rate close to the Eddington limit. The value of the mass of the representative black hole is about $`3\times 10^9\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for radio loud objects and somewhat lower for radio quiet objects ($`2.5\times 10^9\mathrm{M}_{}`$), and the luminosity to the Eddington luminosity ratio is equal 0.016 and 0.022, correspondingly, for a non-rotating black hole and pure hydrogen plasma. This ratio is rather low, typical for Seyfert 1 galaxies, only the mass of the black hole and consequently, the luminosity is proportionally higher. This result is a direct consequence of the high color to effective temperature ratio since roughly

$$L/L_{Edd}f^2.$$
(13)
Disk blackbody fits would therefore indicate the ratios 3-4 times higher but we did not find them satisfactory in case of Laor et al. (1997) composite. Our value of the black hole mass agrees with the value obtained by Kawaguchi et al. (2000) since the model contained similar color to effective temperature ratio. Their accretion rate for radio quiet quasars is slightly higher ($`L/L_{Edd}=0.031`$) because their model effectively accounted also for the soft X-ray excess, although at the expense of arbitrary assumptions about the corona properties.

Fits to Francis et al. (1991) composite would give similar value of the black hole mass (see e.g. Koratkar & Blaes, 1999) but much higher accretion rate, and the $`L/L_{Edd}`$ ratio closer to 1.

The value of the viscosity parameter determined from the model ($`\alpha 0.2`$) is reasonable. Similar values are derived for accretion disks in cataclysmic variables (e.g. Smak, 1999) and in galactic X-ray novae during outburst (e.g. Lasota, 2001). Models of fast variability of the microquasar GRS 1915+105 under the influence of radiation pressure instability suggest somewhat smaller value, $`\alpha 0.01`$ (Janiuk, Czerny & Siemiginowska, 2000). Determinations available for AGN based on the observed optical variability supposed to correspond to thermal timescale give rather weak constraints ($`\alpha >0.01`$, Siemiginowska & Czerny, 1989; $`\alpha 0.03`$, Webb & Malkan, 2000).

The value of the viscosity parameter is essential from the point of view of the inner boundary condition of an accretion disk. Low values, below 0.1, are consistent with the standard description of the accretion in the vicinity of the marginally stable orbit while $`\alpha >0.1`$ leads to a considerable loss of angular momentum below the marginally stable orbit due to the type of the sonic point (Muchotrzeb-Czerny, 1986; Kato, Fukue & Mineshige, 1998) or strong magnetic field (Krolik, 1999; Reynolds, Armitage & Chiang, 2001). Determined values are just at the border.

### 4.3 Disk skin

Large color to temperature ratio required by the data is an interesting issue since it requires low level of absorption and strong dominance of the disk atmosphere by electron scattering.

Significant ionization of the disk surface at small radii is not unexpected. The observation of the X-ray reflected component is a complementary way to estimate the disk opacity close to the surface observationally (for a review, see Mushotzky, Done & Pounds, 1993). Although the study of quasars are much more difficult than the study of Seyfert galaxies Nandra et al. (1997) and recently Reeves & Turner (2000) were able to determine the iron $`K_\alpha `$ line properties on the basis of ASCA data. The line energy is at $`6.57`$ keV for objects of the brightness comparable to those in the composite spectrum, which corresponds to the value of the ionization parameter $`\xi `$ about a few hundred (e.g. Życki & Czerny, 1994). The medium at the temperature $`10^6`$ K and optical depth $`\tau _{es}1`$ is expected to develop under moderate external irradiation by the (non-thermal?) hard X-ray component since the temperature corresponds to an Inverse Compton temperature for effectively soft total radiation field (e.g. Czerny & Dumont, 1998; Nayakshin, Kazanas & Kallman, 2000).

However, such a skin will result in very weak Comptonization effect, and in particular, it will not change the color temperature of the Big Blue Bump peak. To explain the color to effective temperature ratio of about 2 we need a thick layer ($`\tau _{es}100`$) remaining at the color temperature due to some heating and due to cooling by saturate Comptonization. The absorption in this zone should be negligible - otherwise the temperature would drop down to the effective temperature.

The results of Shimura & Takahara (1995) as well as Kawaguchi, Shimura & Mineshige (2000) predict such a strong Comptonization because the computations do not contain bound-bound and bound-free transitions which are efficient coolants at the discussed temperatures, particularly oxygen, carbon and iron lines are important. Computations of irradiated media including those transitions do not show the color to effective temperature ratio in the thermalised emission significantly different from 1 (e.g. Madej & Różańska, 2000; Nayakshin et al., 2000; Dumont et al., 2001). The required level of ionization for efficient Comptonization seems to be higher than naturally predicted in an irradiated medium. Similar problem was found by Czerny & Życki (1994) when they tried to explain the universal position of the soft X-ray excess as the reflection feature from the weakly ionized medium. The presence of the heavy corona further suppresses the ionization level at the disk surface if the corona is in the hydrostatic equilibrium with the disk (Różańska et al., 1999).

It is possible that the effect is caused by significant generation of the energy close to the disk surface. Such an enhanced generation was not included in the performed radiative transfer computations. It would mean that the vertical distribution of heat generation is not well parameterized by the $`\alpha P`$ prescription and the magnetic field may be responsible for such a global redistribution.

On the other hand, the conclusion on the large color to effective temperature ratio relies strongly on the shape of the composite spectrum in UV – far UV band which still has to be tested (see Sect. 4.1).

### 4.4 Soft X-ray discrepancy for radio-quiet objects

The adopted corona model adequately described the soft X-ray part of the composite spectrum for radio loud objects. Low optical depth of the corona and a broad electron temperature range predicted by the model at different radii was adequate to give the observed effect of moderate Comptonization.

However, in this model the Comptonization is definitely too weak to account for the soft X-ray spectrum of radio quiet objects. Similar modeling of the composite spectrum of radio quiet objects was performed by Kawaguchi, Shimura & Mineshige (2000) and in their case the modeling was successful. This was caused by the fact that in their approach the fraction of the energy dissipated in the corona and the optical depth of the corona at a given radius were free parameters of their model. In our corona model the radial distribution of those quantities were calculated from the global parameters (black hole mass, accretion rate and viscosity parameter) since the spontaneous division of the flow into the disk and corona part results from the cooling properties of the material in the optically thin and optically thick part. As a result, our corona was never as thick as assumed by Kawaguchi et al., independently from the assumed viscosity parameter.

Our corona model, adopted after Janiuk & Czerny (2000), contained several simplifications. However, recent progress in corona modeling does not seem to improve the situation. If the corona is assumed to be accreting, and the advection is included, the corona above a disk is even weaker than in our description (Janiuk, Życki & Czerny, 2000). Better description of the disk/corona transition and replacement of Eqs. 1112 with the disk evaporation condition due to the electron conduction (Różańska & Czerny, 2000a) leads again to the prediction of still weaker corona for high accretion rates (Różańska & Czerny, 2000b). On the other hand, the presence of the magnetic field may weaken the efficiency of the conduction and reduce the condensation effect found in the innermost part of the disk accreting at a high rate.

Although a theory did not say its last word on this subject as the formation of the corona is a badly understood process it may suggest that actually the disk corona is too weak to produce the soft X-ray spectrum of radio quiet quasars and the existence of the additional Comptonizing medium may be necessary.

The comparison of the radio loud objects and radio quiet objects may suggest that the outflow takes place in all types of AGN (for a review, see e.g. Veilleux et al., 2000). In radio loud objects the outflow is collimated in a form of jet, so the jet contributes to the hard X-ray emission but generally it does not cover our line of sight to the most part of the accretion flow. The mechanism of this collimation and its distance from the black hole is still under debate (e.g. Sikora, 2001). In radio quiet objects the outflow perhaps is not collimated so the outflowing plasma is in our line of sight and Comptonizes the disk/corona emission. We show such a putative geometry in Fig. 9.

Some kind of outflow is frequently predicted by the corona models or two-dimensional computations of the accretion flow (e.g. Begelman, McKee & Shields, 1983; Meyer & Meyer-Hofmeister, 1994; Igumenschev, 2000; Turolla & Dullemont, 2000). However, the estimate of the amount of outflowing mass and its physical conditions is difficult and no predictions differentiating between the radio loud and radio quiet objects are available within the frame of this approach. The properties of the outflowing material may significantly depend on the considered distance from the black hole as well as the inclination angle which further complicates the issue (e.g. Elvis, 2000).

### 4.5 Observational tests - soft X-ray emission lines

The dominant role of the Comptonization in formation of the soft X-ray spectra implies that no strong emission lines are expected in this band. On the other hand, models of coronal flares predict that a significant fraction of the disk is not covered by the corona but it is strongly irradiated. Such irradiated internally not heated layers are the source of rich emission line spectrum in soft X-ray band (e.g. Nayakshin, Kazanas & Kallman, 2000) since the hot layer is optically thin due to thermal instability in the heated/cooled plasma (Krolik et al., 1981; Różańska & Czerny, 1996).

High resolution observations were performed so far in the case of a few Seyfert 1 galaxies, and the results were not definite: Branduardi-Raymond et al., (2000) claimed that broad oxygen, nitrogen and carbon emission lines, of similar shape to $`K_\alpha `$ iron line, are present in the XMM-Newton spectra of MCG-6-30-15 and Mrk 766 while Lee et al. (2001) argue that they see only the warm absorber effect on the continuum in the Chandra spectrum of MCG-6-30-15. More detailed analysis of new XMM and Chandra data should resolve this issue.

## 5 Conclusions

* disk/corona model of Janiuk & Czerny (2000) based on thermal instability well describes the composite spectrum of radio loud faint quasars in the optical-soft X-ray band if the color to effective temperature ratio is close to 2 in the innermost part of the disk
* adopted disk/corona model does not account for the soft X-ray spectrum in radio quiet faint quasars and additional Comptonizing medium is required, possibly due to the uncollimated outflowing hot plasma

## Acknowledgements

We thank Paul Francis and Simon Morris for providing us with their composite spectra and Jill Bechtold and Adam Dobrzycki for the HST data of PG1211 used in Fig. 8. We thank also Marek Gierliński for his computer program and helpful discussion.

This work was supported in part by grant 2P03D01816 of the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research.

M. Nikolajuk would like to thank Prof. Dr T. Trojanowski and Dr E. Maziarz from the Neuro surgical Wards of the Clinical Hospital in Lublin and dedicate this paper to P. Sarzala (coma) and to memory of M. Kalicki (cancer).


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# Atomic Physics with the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph on the 𝐻𝑢𝑏𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑒. V. Oscillator Strengths for Neutral Carbon Lines below 1200 Å1footnote 11footnote 1Based on observations obtained with the NASA/ESA 𝐻𝑢𝑏𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑇𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑒 through the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

Accurate oscillator strengths ($`f`$-values) are needed for spectroscopic studies in astronomy. For instance, they are required when extracting reliable abundances from interstellar absorption lines, when modeling opacities in stellar atmospheres, or when utilizing temperature and density diagnostics. While analyzing such spectra from space-borne, high-resolution UV spectrographs, one can encounter the problem that uncertainties associated with observational sources are less than those from atomic physics. This is especially true when the astronomical data have signal-to-noise ratios greater than 100 to 200. One can take advantage of the situation by refining $`f`$-values for lines giving discordant results. The basic premise involves obtaining column densities and Doppler parameters from lines where there is consensus on $`f`$-values and then using this information in refining other $`f`$-values.

Several recent studies based on interstellar spectra acquired with the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) on the Hubble Space Telescope ($`HST`$) have adopted this methodology. Federman & Cardelli (1995) provided new $`f`$-values for lines of S I; many of their determinations were confirmed by subsequent theoretical (Tayal 1998) and experimental work (e.g., Biemont et al. 1998). Cardelli & Savage (1995) analyzed Fe II lines, and Zsargó, Federman, & Cardelli (1997) refined $`f`$-values for C I lines with central wavelength below 1200 Å as well as for some forbidden lines above this limit. Relative $`f`$-values were derived for singly-ionized nickel (Zsargó & Federman 1998) and singly-ionized cobalt (Mullman et al. 1998). The latter analysis was performed in parallel with laboratory measurements that placed astronomical oscillator strengths on an absolute scale. Laboratory measurements on Ni II by Fedchak, Wiese, & Lawler (2000) validated the relative $`f`$-values in our earlier work on singly-ionized nickel.

In the present paper, following the method outlined in Zsargó et al. (1997), we improved upon their $`f`$-values for C I lines with wavelength below 1200 Å and expand the number of lines in their list. In Section 2 we briefly describe the astronomical measurements available for our analysis, and in Section 3 we discuss how we obtained column densities and Doppler parameters for each absorbing component (3.1) and how we adjusted $`f`$-values (3.2). Finally, we discuss our results in Section 4.

## 2 Measurements

We retrieved observations for $`\lambda `$ Ori, 1 Sco, and $`\delta `$ Sco from the $`HST`$ archive. Most of the measurements were acquired at medium resolution (MR) and a handful of them were taken at high resolution (HR). These spectra covered several C I multiplets and forbidden lines between 1150 Å and 1700 Å.

The reduction was fairly straightforward, and only minor technical problems arose. The most serious concern was an error in the background correction on some of our preprocessed data. We detected this error on all of our HR spectra containing the $`\lambda `$1261 (UV9) multiplet of C I. The flux level of strongly saturated lines, such as those of S II and Si II, should be zero at line center; however, in some cases we measured negative or small positive values, clearly indicating an erroneous background correction. We could then apply an additional correction to compensate for the effect. The continuum placement turned out to be difficult for some multiplets, due to blending of several lines or simply because the lines were saturated. For example, in the vicinity of multiplet $`\lambda `$1261 in MR spectra, Si II and Fe II lines seriously affected the continuum placement. Following line identification and continuum placement, the Doppler shift (relative to the laboratory wavelength) and equivalent width ($`W_\lambda `$) of neutral carbon lines were measured. In some cases, only upper limits could be calculated based on the average full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the instrumental function and the root mean square (rms) average of the noise in the stellar continuum.

We now give a brief description of the available spectra for each of our targets and the data reduction done on them. We list the measured $`W_\lambda `$ values together with those calculated from synthetic profiles (see Section 3.1 for details on profile synthesis) and measured in earlier work. We note that the agreement between our $`W_\lambda `$ values and those obtained with the $`Copernicus`$ satellite (Jenkins & Shaya 1979; Jenkins, Jura, & Loewenstein 1983) is very good.

### 2.1 $`\lambda `$ Ori (HD36861)

We retrieved eight observations of $`\lambda `$ Ori from the $`HST`$ archive (see Table 1), two at high resolution and six at medium. Both HR spectra, z3di0204t and z3di0205t, were made with the Large Science Aperture (LSA) and so their resolution was slightly lower than usual ($``$4 km s-1 instead of $``$3 km s-1). The only observable C I lines in the range of HR spectra were those of the multiplets $`\lambda \lambda `$1157 (UV16), 1158 (UV15.01). There were two additional multiplets covered by the MR observations, $`\lambda `$1261 and $`\lambda `$1329 (UV4). We could measure $`W_\lambda `$ for all resolved lines (see Table 2 for measured and calculated values). The two resolved components are separated by $``$12 km s-1, as seen in Na I D spectra (Hobbs 1974).

### 2.2 1 Sco (HD141637)

We retrieved eight measurements of 1 Sco from the $`HST`$ archive (Table 1), two at high and six at medium resolution. The HR spectra contained three multiplets, $`\lambda \lambda `$1194 (UV9.02) and 1329 fully and $`\lambda `$1193 (UV11) partially. Multiplet $`\lambda `$1329 was very useful for our analysis, since it has very well established oscillator strengths. In MR spectra, we had measurements of all important multiplets with central wavelength between 1200 Å and 1700 Å \[$`\lambda \lambda `$1261, 1277 (UV7), 1280 (UV5), 1329, 1561 (UV3), and 1657 (UV2)\]. The measured and calculated $`W_\lambda `$ values, together with earlier measurements, are listed in Table 3. The two components are separated by about 7 km s-1 and correspond to the strongest components in Na I D (Welty, Hobbs, & Kulkarni 1994).

### 2.3 $`\delta `$ Sco (HD143275)

We obtained 7 observations of $`\delta `$ Sco, as listed in Table 1, from the $`HST`$ archive. Four of them were high resolution, while the rest were medium resolution. Two of the HR spectra, z3di0504t and z3di0505t, were made with the LSA; hence, their resolution was lower than usual. We could identify most members of the multiplets $`\lambda \lambda `$1157, 1158 in these observations. The other two HR observations (z34r020dt and z34r020et) were of very good quality. The Small Science Aperture (SSA) was utilized; therefore, they had the maximum possible resolution of the GHRS. Both covered multiplet $`\lambda `$1261 only, close to the upper wavelength end of the spectra, and the J=2 lines were out of the range of z34r020dt. We also had three MR spectra containing the full $`\lambda `$1261 multiplet. A combined MR spectrum was created to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. The measured and calculated $`W_\lambda `$ values, together with previous measurements, are given in Table 4. The 5 km s-1 separation in components is seen in K I also (Welty & Hobbs 2000) and between the two CH+ components found by Crane, Lambert, & Sheffer (1995).

## 3 Model

### 3.1 Profile Synthesis

Transitions belonging to the same fine structure level can be characterized by the same column density ($`N`$), Doppler or line-broadening parameter ($`b`$-value), and Doppler shift. All the other parameters are independent of the line of sight (LOS), and are transition specific. In particular, line oscillator strengths, or $`f`$-values, are needed. Our task was to specify the number of absorbing components and the corresponding column densities and $`b`$-values for all observable fine stucture levels.

The number of resolved components, which correspond to the strongest features seen in Na I, K I, and CH+ spectra, was revealed by visual inspection. There might be, of course, some unresolved ones with separation between them less than the resolution. While slight differences in extracted column densities may result in our approach, the unresolved components could be treated as a single component for all of our modelling purposes.

We had two options to find the column densities and $`b`$-values. The first, a more traditional and simpler way, is the curve of growth (COG) analysis. While it is relatively easy to implement, it is less effective in finding the parameter values, since only the $`W_\lambda `$ is used and not the entire line profile. Also, the COG method is not suitable for analyzing blended lines. We used this method only to adjust oscillator strengths, whenever it was necessary or possible to do so \[see Zsargó et al. (1997) for details\].

We used the more complex and accurate method that matches the observed profiles with synthesized ones to find the LOS-specific parameters. We calculated the “observed” fluxes for all spectra with a given set of column densities, component velocities, and $`b`$-values, and compared them to the corresponding observations. The set of initial parameters then was adjusted until a satisfactory fit could be achieved. The final sets of parameters appear in Table 5 for our lines of sight. Here for simplicity, Doppler shifts are relative to the main velocity component which was set at $``$ 0 km s-1 within IRAF, the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility from the National Optical Astronomy Observatories. The slight differences in velocity between fine structure levels (usually less than $`\pm `$ 0.5 km s-1) for the primary components are small compared to the spectral resolution of $``$ 3.5 km s-1. The velocities were fixed for the secondary component in each case. Figures Atomic Physics with the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph on the $`HubbleSpaceTelescope`$.  V. Oscillator Strengths for Neutral Carbon Lines below 1200 Å111Based on observations obtained with the NASA/ESA $`Hubble`$ $`Space`$ $`Telescope`$ through the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. and Atomic Physics with the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph on the $`HubbleSpaceTelescope`$.  V. Oscillator Strengths for Neutral Carbon Lines below 1200 Å111Based on observations obtained with the NASA/ESA $`Hubble`$ $`Space`$ $`Telescope`$ through the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. show the observed and synthesized HR spectra of multiplets $`\lambda \lambda `$1194 and 1329 for 1 Sco. We used the new oscillator strengths for multiplet $`\lambda `$1194 to produce the synthesized spectrum. Details of the profile synthesis will be presented in another paper (Zsargó, Federman, & Welty 2001).

### 3.2 Revision of Neutral Carbon Oscillator Strengths

The neutral carbon multiplets and forbidden lines that were used throughout our analysis covered the wavelength range 1150 to 1700 Å. Every multiplet above 1200 Å is thought to have well established $`f`$-values. Measurements and calculations have been performed, and a general consensus has been achieved about the values (see Morton 1991). However, for the multiplets with wavelengths below 1200 Å and for some weak forbidden lines above it, only calculations are available. The lack of laboratory and precise astronomical measurements make these oscillator strengths less reliable.

The quality of GHRS spectra are generally very good, especially those with high spectral resolution. This provides a unique opportunity to fill in the gap of missing measurements. Consider the situation where HR spectra of two multiplets for a given LOS, one with well defined and the other with poorly defined oscillator strengths, are available. The first multiplet can be used to infer the LOS information, which is then the basis for refining the $`f`$-values for the second multiplet. Obviously, the more spectra of multiplets with well-defined oscillator strengths we possess, the more precise the adjustment will be.

We adjusted oscillator strengths with a curve of growth analysis. The adjustment of ill-defined $`f`$-values is accomplished by placing all ($`f\times \lambda `$, $`W_\lambda /\lambda `$) points on the curve by a $`\chi ^2`$ analysis. A special algorithm, described in detail by Zsargó et al. (1997), was used to accomplish this goal. This algorithm allowed us to adjust the $`f`$-values either individually for each line or as a group for members of the same multiplet. It should be noted that there is danger in such an adjustment. Saturated lines lie on the flat part of the COG, and in such cases, a small uncertainty in $`W_\lambda `$ can result in a large error in $`f`$-value. Similar errors can occur if the $`b`$-value is ill defined. This parameter controls where the COG departs from the linear approximation; therefore, bad $`b`$-values can result in considerable errors in the values of the adjusted oscillator strengths. It is important to have very reasonable estimates for $`b`$-values and limit this approach for the weaker lines. While we could not quantify the effect of uncertainties in $`b`$-values, it is reassuring that we were able to get self-consistent results with the adjusted $`f`$-values toward multiple lines of sight (Zsargó et al. 2001).

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Reanalysis of J=0 Data for $`\beta ^1`$ Sco

In the course of our work here, we found that Morton’s (1991) $`f`$-value for $`\lambda `$1276 yielded more consistent results than the one given by us (Zsargó et al. 1997). Closer inspection of our earlier analysis on $`\lambda `$1276 revealed that this line was on the flat portion of the curve of growth for $`\rho `$ Oph A and $`\chi `$ Oph, and so its $`f`$-value could not be reliably determined from those data. This supports the inference made by Wannier et al. (1999) from HR spectra of C I in the envelope of the molecular cloud B5. \[The other spin-forbidden transistions studied by Zsargó et al. (1997) were weaker and lie on the linear portion of the COG.\]

Unfortunately, our analysis of the J=0 lines in the spectrum of $`\beta ^1`$ Sco was based in large measure on $`\lambda `$1276. If instead we use the multiplets $`\lambda \lambda `$1261, 1329, we obtain a column density of (1.0$`\pm `$0.1) $`\times `$ 1014 cm-2 and a $`b`$-value of 2.3 km s-1. These parameters lead to significant changes in $`f`$-values for J=0 lines below 1200 Å. The results presented in Table 6 for J=0 are from the revised analysis. Since the J=1 and 2 lines originally were based on $`\lambda \lambda `$1261, 1329, no changes were made to their $`f`$-values.

### 4.2 Comparison with Other Results

We adjusted oscillator strengths for several lines and multiplets; they are displayed in Table 6. Both the new values and others are listed, together with the ratios of the $`f`$-values from Morton’s (1991) compilation to our new values. The estimated uncertainties for the new oscillator strengths are given within parentheses and are based on the uncertainties in $`W_\lambda `$ and a 10% uncertainty in column density, taken in quadrature. The uncertainty in column density is mainly the result of continuum placement. The agreement between the present results for J=0 and those of Zsargo et al. (1997), as corrected above, is generally very good. The differences involving lines in multiplet $`\lambda `$1157 may be caused by the use of MR spectra in our earlier effort. The comparison with the recommended values of Morton (1991) for the multiplets $`\lambda \lambda `$1193, 1194 is also very good, except for the line at 1193.6 Å; the correspondence for lines at shorter wavelengths is less satisfactory. Where significant differences are found, they appear to be the result of a breakdown in LS coupling rules for dipole-allowed transitions. The comparison with the theoretical work of Hibbert et al. (1993) shows that the results are very similar. The agreement with the $`f`$-values given by the compilation of Wiese, Fuhr, & Deters (1996) is good for lines above 1158.5 Å in large measure because they adopted the results of Hibbert et al. (1993). Below this wavelength our results suggest that LS coupling breaks down. For $`\lambda `$1193.6, where a factor-of-2 difference arises in the $`f`$-value of Welty et al. (1999), it is between ours and Morton’s (1991).

The ratios given in the last column are very useful in assessing whether LS coupling applies or not. Since Morton (1991) always assumed LS coupling \[and so did Wiese et al. (1996) below 1180 Å\], any variation in the ratio within a multiplet indicates that this approximation does not apply. The results of using Cowan’s (1981) atomic structure code (Zsargó et al. 1997) can be used as a guide in describing the breakdown of LS coupling rules. As noted by Zsargó et al. (1997), configuration interaction (CI) is stronger in $`\lambda `$1194 (5$`s`$ $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0,1,2}^{\mathrm{o}}`$) than in $`\lambda `$1189 (UV14) and there is CI between $`\lambda `$1158 (6$`s`$ $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0,1,2}^{\mathrm{o}}`$) and $`\lambda `$1156 (UV19) for level J=1. Another prediction is CI between $`\lambda `$1158 and $`\lambda `$1156 for J=2, which we confirm now through observational data. We also see the predicted spin-orbit (SO) mixing between 2$`s^2`$ 2$`p`$ 6$`s`$ $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{2}^{\mathrm{o}}`$ and 2$`s^2`$ 2$`p`$ 5$`d`$ $`{}_{}{}^{3}D_{2}^{\mathrm{o}}`$ (of $`\lambda `$1157). No other strong effects are seen in $`\lambda `$1157, as predicted.

### 4.3 Concluding Remarks

In the course of a larger study involving C I excitation (Zsargo et al. 2001), we found that lines below 1200 Å gave inconsistent column densities and $`b`$-values. In the present work, we described refinements to the $`f`$-values for these lines so that a self-consistent analysis was possible. We readjusted the oscillator strengths for some lines in our earlier work (Zsargo et al. 1997) to correct for the (then) inappropriate choice of $`\lambda `$1276 as the basis of our analysis for the J=0 fine-structure level, and we find good agreement between results from the independent data sets. For the few instances where differences are seen, the current $`f`$-values are preferred because they are based on HR spectra. We also supplemented our inventory of refined $`f`$-values with lines that were not available in our earlier work. The agreement between our and other recent compilations is generally good. Where disagreements arise, they mainly result from the assumption in other work that LS coupling applies for the multiplets $`\lambda \lambda `$1157 and 1158, an approximation not supported by our measurements and analysis. Our extended set of $`f`$-values for C I lines below 1200 Å can be used with confidence in analyses of interstellar spectra acquired with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer.

This research was supported by NASA grant NAG5-7754 and STScI grant AR-08352.01-A.


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# Untitled Document

PUPT-1956

DAMTP-2000-141

hep-th/0103250

FROM PCM TO KDV AND BACK

Jonathan M. Evans

Joseph Henry Laboratories, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544, USA

DAMTP, University of Cambridge, Silver Street, Cambridge CB3 9EW, UK

Contribution to the NATO-ASI meeting

Integrable Hierarchies and Modern Physical Theories

University of Illinois at Chicago, July 2000

This is a summary of progress made \[1-4\] in understanding the occurrence and properties of local, conserved, commuting charges in non-linear sigma-models, including principal chiral models (PCMs) and WZW models. In each PCM or WZW model with target manifold a compact Lie group $`G`$, there are infinitely many commuting charges whose currents have the form $`𝒦_m=k_{a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_m}j^{a_1}j^{a_2}\mathrm{}j^{a_m}`$. The underlying fields $`j^a`$ take values in the Lie algebra $`𝐠`$ (indices $`a`$ refer to some basis) and each tensor $`k_{a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_m}`$ is totally symmetric and $`G`$-invariant. The spins of the corresponding conserved charges $`s=m1`$ run over the exponents of the algebra modulo its Coxeter number $`h`$. Such patterns of spins are familiar from the context of affine Toda field theory  and these similarities offer a natural explanation of some otherwise mysterious common properties of PCM and affine Toda S-matrices .

Initial investigations  focussed on PCMs based on classical groups $`G`$ and established that currents and symmetric tensors with the required properties could be defined by a formula $`𝒦_m=det(1\mu j^at_a)^{s/h}|_{\mu ^{s+1}}`$, where the generators $`t_a`$ belong to the defining representation of $`𝐠`$. Commutation of the resulting charges depends upon some intricate algebraic identities satisfied by the $`k`$-tensors which we shall refer to as the commutation conditions. These findings were subsequently extended to incorporate the effects of WZ terms and supersymmetry  and analogous results were also established for sigma-models whose target manifolds are symmetric spaces $`G/H`$ , but again only for $`G`$ and $`H`$ classical groups. The general case, including exceptional groups, has been treated quite recently  by making use of a direct link between the $`k`$-tensors and the Drinfeld-Sokolov modified KdV (DS/mKdV) hierarchies .

The first step in establishing this link is to show that all relevant attributes of the $`k`$-tensors can be understood as properties of the restricted tensors $`k_{i_1i_2\mathrm{}i_m}`$ defined just on the Cartan subalgebra (CSA) of $`𝐠`$ (indices $`i`$ refer to the CSA). It is well-known that any symmetric invariant tensor is completely determined by its restriction and that the remnant of $`G`$ which fixes the CSA is the Weyl group; moreover, any Weyl-invariant tensor on the CSA can be extended uniquely to a $`G`$-invariant tensor on $`𝐠`$. It is less obvious that the key commutation conditions of specific interest to us can be simply expressed in terms of restricted tensors alone, but this is in fact the case .

Recall next that the DS/mKdV hierarchy associated with a Lie algebra $`𝐠`$  involves currents of the form $`_m=h_{i_1i_2\mathrm{}i_m}u^{i_1}u^{i_2}\mathrm{}u^{i_m}+(\mathrm{derivative}\mathrm{terms})`$, where the fields $`u^i`$ live in the CSA of $`𝐠`$. The explicit term in $`_m`$ contains a certain Weyl-invariant tensor $`h_{i_1i_2\mathrm{}i_m}`$, while the additional, implicit terms involve derivatives of the fields. Drinfeld and Sokolov proved that the charges corresponding to these currents always commute. It is possible to deduce from this that the $`h`$-tensors must satisfy precisely the same commutation conditions already mentioned, notwithstanding the complications arising from the extra derivative terms.

We can conclude, therefore, that after extension from the CSA to all of $`𝐠`$, the $`h`$-tensors of the DS hierarchies provide new definitions of $`k`$-tensors with exactly the properties we require for commuting charges, for any compact Lie algebra, whether classical or exceptional. Careful examination  also reveals that whenever concrete formulas are available for the DS currents , these do indeed yield expressions for $`h`$-tensors which are equivalent to those obtained from our previous formula for $`k`$-tensors given above, so that the old and new definitions are entirely consistent. The new approach can be applied to all symmetric space sigma-models too .

The commuting quantities in the DS/mKdV hierarchies are naturally identified with the conserved charges of affine Toda field theories (the fields $`u^i`$ being derivatives of the usual Toda fields). The relationships sketched here underscore the fact that these two prominent categories of integrable Lagrangian field theories, namely sigma-models and Toda theories, have much more in common than might initially be supposed. Although the two classes of models appear to represent radically different ways of introducing interactions amongst collections of fields, we have found that they nevertheless contain a common core, each exhibiting commuting local charges based on precisely the same sets of Weyl-invariant tensors. Acknowledgements: My warm thanks to the organizers of the conference, Henrik Aratyn and Alexander Sorin, for the invitation to speak. Much of the research described here was carried out while spending a stimulating and very enjoyable year at Princeton University; I am grateful to all in the Physics Department, but especially Erik Verlinde, for making this possible. The work was supported by NSF grant PHY98-02484 and by a PPARC Advanced Fellowship.

References

 J.M. Evans, M. Hassan, N.J. MacKay, and A.J. Mountain, Local conserved charges in principal chiral models, Nucl. Phys. B561 (1999) 385-412; hep-th/9902008.  J.M. Evans, M. Hassan, N.J. MacKay, and A.J. Mountain, Conserved charges and supersymmetry in principal chiral and WZW models, Nucl. Phys. B580 (2000) 605-646; hep-th/0001222.  J.M. Evans and A.J. Mountain, Commuting charges and symmetric spaces, Phys. Lett. B483 (2000) 290-298; hep-th/0003264.  J.M. Evans, Integrable sigma-models and Drinfeld-Sokolov hierarchies; hep-th/0101231.  E. Corrigan, Recent developments in affine Toda quantum field theory, Lectures at Banff Summer School 1994; hep-th/9412213.  V.G. Drinfeld and V.V. Sokolov, Lie algebras and equations of Korteweg-deVries type, J. Sov. Math. 30 (1985) 1975-2036.


text:
# Extensive Air Shower Simulations with CORSIKA and the Influence of High-Energy Hadronic Interaction Models

## 1 Introduction

CORSIKA (COsmic Ray SImulation for KAscade) is a detailed Monte Carlo program to study the evolution of extensive air showers (EAS) in the atmosphere initiated by various cosmic ray particles. Originally, it was designed to perform simulations for the KASCADE experiment at Karlsruhe and has been refined considerably since its first version in 1989. Meanwhile, it has developed into a tool that is used for more than 30 experiments worldwide. The prediction of particle energy spectra, densities or arrival times to be observed in EAS experiments is a well suited application of CORSIKA. A detailed description of the physics incorporated in CORSIKA is given in Ref., technical details on the handling of the program are described elsewhere.

## 2 EAS Environment Parameters and Particle Transport

To simulate the evolution of EAS global parameters have to be specified: The Earth’s magnetic field affecting the movement of charged particles as well as the atmospheric model to be employed in the simulation depend on the geographic location. CORSIKA provides several atmospheric parameter sets covering the complete climatical and seasonal influence from tropical, subtropical, and mid-latitude regions to the South pole (4 seasons). The composition of air is adopted to 78.1% N2, 21.0% O2 and 0.9% Ar (volume fractions).

Within CORSIKA, various particles are followed: Besides $`\gamma `$-rays the leptons $`\mathrm{e}^\pm `$ and $`\mu ^\pm `$ ($`\nu _\mathrm{e}`$ and $`\nu _\mu `$ optionally), the mesons $`\pi ^o`$, $`\pi ^\pm `$, $`\mathrm{K}_{\mathrm{S}/\mathrm{L}}^o`$, $`\mathrm{K}^\pm `$ and $`\eta `$, the nucleons, the strange baryons with strangeness $`\left|S\right|3`$, and the corresponding anti-baryons as well as nuclei with $`A60`$ are treated. Mesonic ($`\rho ,\omega ,\mathrm{K}^{}`$) and baryonic ($`\mathrm{\Delta }`$) resonances are decaying without transport.

For each particle its transportation range is estimated. For instable particles both ranges for interaction (determined by cross section) and decay (limited by lifetime) are evaluated independently and the shorter one determines the fate of the particle at the end of its range. In decays, all branches down to the 1 % level are considered with correct kinematics in the 3-body decays. In the range determination of decaying charged particles, the ionization energy loss is considered, which especially affects muons at energies below $`10`$ GeV because of their long lifetime and low interaction cross section. This treatment slightly favors the decay of charged pions \- the main source of muons - at the expense of pion-induced interactions, dependent on energy and height of pion origin. During transport, the deflection of charged particles by the Earth’s magnetic field is considered.

In CORSIKA, electrons and gammas are treated in a tailored version of the EGS4 code and/or, less detailed but much faster, by analytical NKG-formulas. The electromagnetic interactions are believed to be treated correctly even at the highest energies by taking into account the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect. Cherenkov photons may be generated optionally. Hadronic interactions with energies $`E_{\mathrm{lab}}80`$ GeV are modeled by the GHEISHA code or, alternatively, by the UrQMD model.

## 3 Hadronic Interaction Models

The largest uncertainties in numerical simulation of EAS with primary energies above some TeV are induced by the models which describe the hadronic interactions. Especially when extrapolating to the highest energies, where the collision energies exceed those accessible by accelerators, one has to rely on theoretical guidelines to describe the interactions. Additional uncertainties stem from the fact that just those interaction products emitted at small angles into the extreme forward direction carry away the largest energy fraction, but in collider experiments those particles disappear in the beam pipe without being observable. In the development of EAS, such particles are responsible for transporting the energy down into the atmosphere.

To study the influence of models on the uncertainties of EAS observables and on their correlations, 6 different hadronic interaction codes DPMJET, HDPM, neXus, QGSJET, SIBYLL, and VENUS have been coupled with CORSIKA. They describe the hadronic interactions at energies $`E_{\mathrm{lab}}80`$ GeV. Their basic features are summarized in Table 1.

## 4 Cross Sections

The longitudinal development of hadronic EAS depends crucially on the inelastic hadron-air cross section. Lower cross sections elongate, higher ones shorten the longitudinal development.

Fortunately, the situation has improved in the last 3 years, as demonstrated in Fig. 1. The cross section differences between the models have shrunk from 80 mb to today 20 mb in the region at a few PeV. Extrapolations to the highest energies above $`10^{10}`$ GeV become much more realistic to make predictions for the Auger experiment.

## 5 Comparison with Collider Data

All models are adjusted to experimental data wherever available. Especially $`\mathrm{p}\overline{\mathrm{p}}`$ collider data should be reproduced with respect to e.g. the increase of average charged particle multiplicity with increasing energy, the spread of the number of emitted charged particles around the mean value according to a negative binomial distribution as shown in Fig. 2a, and the pseudorapidity distribution of emitted charged particles shown together with recent experimental values at $`E_{\mathrm{cm}}=630`$ GeV in Fig. 2b. The more modern models displayed here show good agreement with experimental data. A complete comparison of the older models can be found in Ref..

For some parameters, the CORSIKA interaction tests revealed differences responsible for deviating properties of EAS simulated with different models. The most frequent hadronic interaction within the development of an EAS cascade is the collision of a charged pion with a 14N nucleus. Therefore, we compare in Fig. 3a the model predictions of the average charged particle multiplicity produced by this reaction as a function of energy. In general, the higher the multiplicity, the more energy is dissipated into the production of secondaries, which gives rise to a shorter EAS longitudinal distribution. The highest multiplicities are observed for QGSJET.

In those events with many secondary particles only a small energy fraction is left for the relic of the projectile. This is demonstrated in Fig. 3b, which shows the Feynman-x distribution of the most energetic baryon from p-14N collisions. In the range $`0.1<\mathrm{x}__\mathrm{F}<0.4`$, corresponding to a moderate energy transfer to secondary particles, QGSJET exhibits the lowest rate.

Of special interest is the behavior of the Feynman-x distribution of Fig. 3b for values $`\mathrm{x}__\mathrm{F}0.85`$. This region is governed by diffractive interactions. In diffractive collisions the projectile looses only a small energy fraction, the largest energy portion is transported deeper into the atmosphere with the projectile remainder. It must be pointed out that describing correctly the diffractive phenomena is of great importance for the hadron rates which are observed at KASCADE level. The large differences between the models reflect the lack of experimental data in the forward region.

## 6 Results of EAS Simulations

Only new or recently revised models are regarded here. A more detailed comparison of the models is given in Ref.. All shower properties which can be measured with detectors placed at observation level more or less strongly depend on the ‘age’ of EAS development. As mentioned above, the inelastic hadronic cross sections as well as the ‘inelasticity’ (the fraction of energy carried away by secondary particles) of hadronic interactions are the essential quantities which determine the elongation (slow aging) or shortening (fast aging) of the EAS development.

In Fig. 4a the number of electrons (incl. positrons) is shown as a function of atmospheric depth for vertical showers induced by $`protons`$ or $`Fe`$-nuclei with energies of $`E_0=10^{14}`$ and $`10^{15}`$ eV.

The number (averaged over 500 simulated showers each) of electrons at sea level (1036 g/cm2) differs between the models by max. 14 % ($`proton`$) resp. 3 % ($`Fe`$) at $`10^{15}`$ eV, becoming even smaller at lower energies. The differences have shrunk by more than a factor of 3 with respect to a 1997 comparison of the older models.

A quantity measured by several experiments is the depth $`X_{\mathrm{max}}`$ (expressed in g/cm2) of the maximum number of charged particles within the EAS development. The $`X_{\mathrm{max}}`$-value is sensitive to the primary particle type and may be used to determine the (energy dependent) cosmic ray mass composition. Fig. 4b gives a survey of several experiments, which use different techniques (fluorescence = filled symbols, Cherenkov = open symbols) to determine $`X_{\mathrm{max}}`$ at various energies, extending over 5 decades.

The model predictions of Fig. 4b are derived from averages over 500 vertical $`proton`$-induced showers (resp. 200 $`Fe`$-induced showers) for each of the 13 equidistant reference energies. The uncertainties of the mean $`X_{\mathrm{max}}`$ are dominated by shower fluctuations and range from 5 g/cm2 at $`10^{14}`$ eV to 3 g/cm2 at $`10^{20}`$ eV for $`proton`$ EAS and amount to about the half for $`Fe`$. The mean $`X_{\mathrm{max}}`$-values are approximated by quadratic expressions of the form

$$X_{\mathrm{max}}=a+b\mathrm{lg}E+c(\mathrm{lg}E)^2,$$

which follow the simulated mean values within the error bars.

It must be emphasized that none of the models predicts a linear relation as is often assumed in oversimplified arguments. The elongation rate per energy decade decreases from c. 70 g/cm2 at $`10^{14}`$ eV to c. 50 g/cm2 at $`10^{20}`$ eV for $`proton`$-induced showers and shows a similar reduction from c. 80 to c. 60 g/cm2 for $`Fe`$-induced showers. Remarkable is the good agreement between QGSJET and SIBYLL 2.1 up to $`10^{18}`$ eV. At higher energies, SIBYLL predicts a larger $`X_{\mathrm{max}}`$-separation between $`proton`$ and $`Fe`$ showers. The new SIBYLL version 2.1 generally reveals $`X_{\mathrm{max}}`$-values reduced by $`20`$ g/cm2 relative to the older version 1.6.

## 7 Conclusion

In the last 3 years large progress is attained in EAS simulations. By the reevaluation of inelastic proton-air cross sections, a considerable agreement is achieved now up to the $`10^7`$ GeV range. A clear trend of convergence between different hadronic interaction models is obvious for primary energies up to the $`10^6`$ GeV range. Despite its age, presently QGSJET still shows the best, though not in all respects satisfying agreement with a variety of experimental results. The new SIBYLL version and the more modern ideas realized in neXus should enable a more consistent and reliable extrapolation especially to the highest energies. The announced version III of DPMJET still has to demonstrate its improved quality.

## Acknowledgments

Many thanks go to the authors of the hadronic interaction models for their help to get their programs running and for their advice in coupling the programs with CORSIKA. I am indebted to R. Engel for making available the new SIBYLL version 2.1. The partial support of this work by the British German Academic Research Collaboration (Grant 313/ARC-lk) is acknowledged.


text:
# Calorons and localization of quark eigenvectors in lattice QCD

## Abstract

We analyze the localization properties for eigenvectors of the Dirac operator in quenched lattice QCD in the vicinity of the deconfinement phase transition. Studying the characteristic differences between the $`Z_3`$ sectors above the critical temperature $`T_c`$, we find indications for the presence of calorons.

One of the most discussed topics in hadron physics is the chiral phase transition of QCD, and the microscopic processes connected with it. Many current and planned experiments are at least partially motivated by the hope that they will shed some light on the issues involved.

In this contribution we study the localization properties of the lattice Dirac operator in the neighborhood of the chiral phase transition. We are motivated by the fact that one of the most popular pictures of the phase transition relates it to the properties of QCD instantons and anti-instantons (see e.g. Ref. ). The origin of this connection is the following observation: For each isolated instanton or anti-instanton there exists a localized zero mode of the Dirac operator. For a liquid of instantons and anti-instantons these zero modes should be perturbed to form a band of small eigenvalues. At higher temperatures it is thought that instantons and anti-instantons may pair to form molecules, and that the associated modes will no longer have particularly small eigenvalues, but instead become an inconspicuous part of the bulk spectrum.

The Banks-Casher formula ,

$$\overline{q}q=\frac{\pi \rho _{\mathrm{Dirac}}(0)}{V},$$
(1)
relates the chiral condensate $`\overline{q}q`$ to $`\rho _{\mathrm{Dirac}}(0)`$, the density of Dirac eigenvalues at zero, evaluated in the (large) volume $`V`$. Thus we expect that if the instantons and anti-instantons form a liquid, chiral symmetry will be broken, but that if they form instanton–anti-instanton molecules, chiral symmetry will be restored.

If this interpretation is correct the chiral phase transition should reflect itself also in a characteristic change of the localization properties of the lowest Dirac eigenvectors. This is the main motivation for our studies.

In addition we are interested in comparing our lattice results with predictions from random matrix theory (RMT). Such a comparison allows us to distinguish generic from QCD-specific properties. Similar studies were performed before in Ref. . In this paper, however, the authors analyzed a specific instanton-liquid approximation to QCD while we study lattice QCD.

As usual, we simulate a finite-temperature system by working on a lattice with $`L_t<L_s`$, where $`L_t`$ ($`L_s`$) is the temporal (spatial) extent of the lattice. All boundary conditions are periodic except for the temporal boundary conditions of the fermions which are antiperiodic. The temperature is given by $`aT=1/L_t`$ with the lattice spacing $`a`$. We fix $`L_t=6`$ and vary $`a`$ (and hence $`T`$) by changing $`\beta =6/g^2`$.

We work in the quenched approximation with staggered fermions, i.e. with the Dirac operator

$$D=\underset{\mu =1}{\overset{4}{}}\frac{1}{2a}\alpha _\mu (x)\left[\delta _{y,x+\widehat{\mu }}U_\mu (x)\delta _{y,x\widehat{\mu }}U_\mu ^{}(y)\right],$$
(2)
where $`\alpha _\mu (x)=(1)^{x_1+\mathrm{}+x_{\mu 1}}`$ and the $`U_\mu `$ are the link variables. The eigenvalues of $`D`$ come in pairs of $`\pm \lambda `$, so we can restrict ourselves to positive eigenvalues in the following. In the continuum limit this action corresponds to four quark flavors. From now on we set $`a`$ to 1.

Quenched QCD has an additional $`Z_3`$ symmetry of the gauge sector, which is spontaneously broken in the deconfined phase . In the confined phase the expectation value of the Polyakov loop $`P`$ is zero, whereas in the deconfined phase $`|P|`$ acquires an expectation value, and the phase of $`P`$ clusters around the values $`\theta _P`$=arg($`P`$)=0,$`\pm 2\pi /3`$. The fermion action does not share the $`Z_3`$ symmetry, so fermionic quantities can depend on the $`Z_3`$ sector. It was found in Ref.  that the chiral condensate computed from the configurations with $`\theta _P=0`$ vanishes above $`T_c`$ as expected. For $`\theta _P=\pm 2\pi /3`$ it remains finite in a certain temperature range above $`T_c`$. This behavior can be understood in Nambu–Jona-Lasinio models  and in RMT . The point is that the boundary conditions of the Dirac operator are not invariant under $`Z_3`$ transformations, and for $`\theta _P=\pm 2\pi /3`$ the new boundary conditions lead to a decrease of the Dirac eigenvalues . According to the Banks-Casher relation, Eq. (1), this implies that the condensate will disappear only for larger temperatures, i.e. the transition temperature is higher for these sectors. For phenomenological comparisons one should use the $`\theta _P`$=0 sector as this one is energetically favored for dynamical fermions. (The sectors $`\theta _P=\pm 2\pi /3`$ are physically equivalent to each other.)

Large temperatures correspond to a small extension of the lattice in the temporal direction. The periodic boundary conditions for the gauge fields thus imply that the field equations have solutions with nontrivial topology which look rather like an instanton chain . Such configurations, called calorons, have been the topic of intense investigations .

The index theorem tells us that the continuum Dirac operator has a chiral zero mode in a caloron field, so we will search for calorons by looking at the chiral and localization properties of the eigenvectors of the low-lying eigenvalues of $`D`$. To calculate the eigenvalues and eigenvectors we used the Arnoldi method as implemented in Ref. . This method allows us to choose the number of the lowest eigenstates and eigenvectors to be calculated.

In the continuum a zero mode has a definite chirality (= expectation value $`\gamma _5`$) of $`\pm 1`$, while modes with $`\lambda 0`$ have $`\gamma _5=0`$. Staggered fermions possess only a restricted chiral symmetry, so in this case we expect $`\gamma _5`$ values between $`1`$ and $`1`$. In Fig. 1 we show a scatter plot of $`\gamma _5`$ against Dirac eigenvalue, for a temperature slightly above $`T_c`$. We can see that in all sectors the data points form clusters. There are some eigenmodes with very small eigenvalue, and $`\gamma _5\pm 0.2`$, while the bulk of the eigenvectors have a larger $`\lambda `$, and $`\gamma _5`$ near zero. The modes labeled 1 to 3 in Figs. 1 and 2 will be discussed below.

A large value of $`\gamma _5`$ suggests that the corresponding eigenvectors have a topological origin, in which case they should be associated with specific localized states. This interpretation is supported by the fact that these modes are approximately fourfold degenerate as they should be because of the flavor symmetry of staggered fermions in the continuum limit. One of our main results is that these states may be important for understanding the differences between the $`Z_3`$ sectors.

As a measure of the localization of our quark eigenvectors $`\psi _\lambda ^\alpha (x)`$ ($`\lambda `$ is the Dirac eigenvalue, $`\alpha `$ a color index) we use a gauge-invariant inverse participation ratio (IPR), defined by

$$I_2V\frac{_xp_\lambda (x)^2}{\left[_xp_\lambda (x)\right]^2},$$
(3)
where $`V`$ is the number of lattice sites and $`p_\lambda (x)`$ is the gauge-invariant probability density

$$p_\lambda (x)=\underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{N_c}{}}\left|\psi _\lambda ^\alpha (x)\right|^2.$$
(4)
For a completely delocalized state (all $`p_\lambda (x)`$ the same) one finds $`I_2=1`$, whereas a state localized on a single lattice site (only one non-zero $`p_\lambda (x)`$) would have $`I_2=V`$. (The staggered fermions’ chiral symmetry means that in fact an eigenstate can never be completely localized, since all eigenstates must have half their probability on even sites, and half on odd.) $`I_2`$ is also a measure of the standard deviation of $`p_\lambda (x)`$,

$$I_21=\frac{_x\left[p_\lambda (x)\overline{p}_\lambda \right]^2}{V\overline{p}_\lambda ^2}.$$
(5)
Chiral RMT predicts that the average value of $`I_2`$ is

$$I_2=\frac{(N_c+1)V}{N_cV+2}\stackrel{V\mathrm{}}{}1+\frac{1}{N_c}\mathrm{for}N_c3.$$
(6)
To elucidate the relevance of the IPR let us note that in condensed matter physics the size of the IPR decides e.g. whether a disordered mesoscopic sample is a metal ($`I_2`$ close to the RMT prediction) or an insulator ($`I_2`$ large).

We have investigated the behavior of $`I_2`$ on finite temperature lattices, on both sides of the deconfinement phase transition, which lies at $`\beta 5.89`$ for $`L_t=6`$ in the thermodynamic limit .

Slightly above $`T_c`$ the localization properties show characteristic differences for the different $`Z_3`$ sectors. In the real sector the effect of localization is strongly pronounced while it is nearly absent in the $`\theta _P=\pm 2\pi /3`$ sectors where chiral symmetry is still broken for these temperatures. This is illustrated in Figs. 2 and 3. A difference between localization in the different sectors tells us immediately that the eigenstates must be extended in the time direction, because an eigenstate localized in time would be unaffected by a $`Z_3`$ transformation.

We studied these characteristic differences for high temperatures in more detail and found features which suggest that they can be attributed to the effects of calorons, as we shall now explain.

Harrington and Shepard found exact SU(2) instanton solutions at finite temperature , which they called calorons (for a review see Ref. ). Their solution consists of a one-dimensional chain of instantons, with a periodic repeat at a distance $`1/T`$. There is a single physically relevant parameter, $`RT`$, which gives the instanton radius $`R`$, relative to the scale set by the temperature. When $`RT1`$ the solution looks like an isolated instanton, but when $`RT1`$ finite temperature effects become significant. This instanton chain satisfies the ’t Hooft ansatz , so the techniques described in Ref.  can be used to find the fermionic zero modes . For small $`RT`$ these look like the zero modes of an isolated instanton, but as $`RT`$ increases, the modes become extended in time, though they remain localized in space. These SU(2) solutions can easily be embedded in SU(3), leading to solutions which correspond to the $`\theta _P=0`$ sector. To investigate the other sectors, we need solutions where the time-like Polyakov loop has a non-zero phase at space-like infinity. We can construct such solutions either by adding a constant $`A_4`$ background field with a color that commutes with the SU(2) subgroup containing the caloron, or by choosing the fermion field boundary condition appropriately. In either case the fermionic zero modes are readily constructed. One can also find pure SU(2) solutions with a Polyakov loop background . It would be interesting to study the relationship between these solutions and the solutions found by embedding the Harrington-Shepard solution in SU(3).

The localization of the embedded caloron’s fermion zero mode depends heavily on the $`Z_3`$ sector. Asymptotically the modes fall off like

$$\left|\psi \right|^2\mathrm{exp}[2(\pi |\theta _P|)rT]/r^2$$
(7)
where $`r`$ is the three-dimensional distance from the caloron axis. (At $`\theta _P=0`$, this agrees with the behavior given in Ref. .) This is unlike the case of a single instanton, which has $`|\psi |^2`$ which drops off like a power of $`r`$. We see from Eq. (7) that the correlation length for the zero mode is smallest in the real sector ($`\theta _P=0`$), and that the complex $`Z_3`$ sectors ($`\theta _P=\pm 2\pi /3`$) have modes in which the radius is about three times greater, and so they occupy a much larger volume. It is thus tempting to assume that the strong difference between the localization properties in the $`Z_3`$ sectors is due to the fact that our lattice configurations contain calorons. If so, the localization in four dimensions should show the characteristic string-like pattern discussed above.

In Fig. 4 the localization itself and the local density of the expectation value of $`\gamma _5`$ are shown for a highly localized state in the $`\theta _P=0`$ sector (mode 1 of Figs. 1 and 2). To plot the complete four-dimensional lattice we have introduced the two coordinates $`i=x+12t`$ and $`j=y+12z`$ with the Euclidean lattice coordinates $`x,y,z=0,1,2,\mathrm{},11`$ and $`t=0,\mathrm{},5`$. This coordinate system represents the lattice as a $`6\times 12`$ array of $`x`$-$`y`$ slices, which generates the approximately periodic structure visible in the plot. From the upper plot, we see that the state is indeed spatially localized, but extended in time. The lower plot demonstrates that the eigenstate in question is an approximate chiral eigenstate. A continuum caloron would possess an exact chiral eigenstate. Unfortunately, staggered fermions exhibit only part of the continuum chiral symmetry, which is the reason why we do not find perfect $`\gamma _5`$ eigenstates. It would therefore be very interesting to repeat these studies with Ginsparg-Wilson fermions which have much better chiral properties.

The corresponding pictures for mode 2 look similar to Fig. 4. The width of the mode is, however, noticeably larger than that of mode 1. Mode 3 serves as an example for a mode with low $`\gamma _5`$, high $`I_2`$, and an eigenvalue which lies in the bulk of the spectrum. Although $`\gamma _5`$ is small, the $`\gamma _5`$-density has a region of large positive values right next to a region where the density is large and negative. This suggests mode 3 might be an instanton–anti-instanton molecule.

Modes related to instantons and calorons were recently investigated in lattice QCD with dynamical fermions . While the results below $`T_c`$ are consistent with expectations based on an instanton liquid picture, the interpretation of the observations above $`T_c`$ appears to be less straightforward.

Let us summarize: We have analyzed the localization properties of quark eigenstates in quenched lattice QCD. By concentrating on the low eigenvalues we could characterize semiclassical properties of the gauge field configurations without any cooling. (For investigations using cooling, see e.g. Ref. .) For temperatures above $`T_c`$ we found isolated modes with definite handedness which show all the properties of fermion states associated with calorons, in particular localization in space but not in time.

We wish to thank A. V. Belitsky, Ph. de Forcrand, and T. Schäfer for useful conversations.