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# Metal-insulator transition in the Hubbard model: a simple description including the Kondo effect

## I Introduction

The problem of strong correlations in many-electron systems is one of the most important in the solid state theory. The simplest model to describe correlation effects is the Hubbard model  which includes the on-site Coulomb interaction. One of most interesting phenomena is the correlation-driven metal-insulator transition (MIT), which takes place in a number of transition metal compounds. A simple description of MIT was given by Hubbard  who started from the atomic-level picture and proposed a simple interpolation self-consistent scheme.

Since the Hubbard works of 60’s, a great progress has been achieved in understanding electronic structure of highly-correlated systems. Last time, the role of the Kondo effect has been discussed within the large-$`d`$ approach ($`d`$ is space dimensionality) which reduces the original periodic Hubbard model to an effective Anderson impurity model . Such an approach (dynamical mean-field theory, DMFT) turned out to be rather successful. The corresponding density of states (DOS) has three-peak rather than two-peak structure: an additional “Kondo” quasiparticle resonance at the Fermi level occurs owing to scattering by the local moment. The spectrum structure in large-$`d`$ approaches is confirmed by the quantum Monte-Carlo (QMC) calculations (see, e.g., ) and some spectroscopic experimental results. Unfortunately, there exist some difficulties in numerical calculations within QMC and large-$`d`$ approaches, so that one needs often to introduce rather high temperatures to resolve these problems. The three-peak structure is not reproduced by most preceding analytical approaches, in particular, by the single-site Hubbard-III approximation , the reason being in that they do not take into account contributions of Fermi-like excitations in a proper way. Thus these approaches do not describe the Brinkman-Rice effective-mass enhancement which is important from the experimental point of view. Recently, an attempt has been made to improve the Hubbard-III approximation by calculating corrections owing to correlation effects ; however, the results remained qualitatively unchanged.

A detailed analysis of Hubbard-III-like approximations was performed in Refs.  within the large-$`z`$ expansion, $`z`$ being the nearest-neighbor number. In the zero order this approach reduces to the simplest Hubbard-I approximation . General expressions for $`1/z`$-corrections in the limit $`U\mathrm{}`$ were obtained in Ref. . The problem of MIT within this approach was treated in Ref. . Unfortunately, only a classical approximation (the large-$`S`$ limit of the $`s`$-$`d`$ model which generalizes the Hubbard model) was considered, and the terms with the one-particle occupation numbers, which just describe the Kondo effect in narrow bands , were neglected.

In the present paper we present a treatment that is based on the method of equations of motion for the many-electron Hubbard operators  and is a much more simple than the large-$`d`$ approach. In Sec. II, the decoupling scheme with account of the Fermi excitations is developed. In Sec. III, we present the results of numerical calculations and carry out a comparison with previous works.

## II The decoupling scheme

We start from the Hubbard model with the electron concentration $`n=1`$ (the half-filled case). The corresponding Hamiltonian reads

$$=\underset{𝐤\sigma }{}t_𝐤c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤\sigma }+U\underset{i}{}n_in_i,$$
(1)
where $`n_{i\sigma }=c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{i\sigma }`$, $`c_{i\sigma }^{}`$ and $`c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}`$ are the one-electron operators in the Wannier and quasimomentum representation. We pass to the Hubbard $`X`$-operators

$$X_i^{\alpha \beta }=|i\alpha i\beta |,X_i^{\alpha \beta }X_i^{\gamma \epsilon }=\delta _{\beta \gamma }X_i^{\alpha \epsilon },\underset{\alpha }{}X_i^{\alpha \alpha }=1,$$
(2)
so that

$$c_{i\sigma }^{}=\underset{\alpha ,\beta }{}i\alpha |c_{i\sigma }^{}|i\beta X_i^{\alpha \beta }=X_i^{\sigma 0}+\sigma X_i^{2\sigma }.$$
(3)
Then the interaction Hamiltonian takes a diagonal form and we obtain

$$=\underset{𝐤\sigma }{}t_𝐤(X_𝐤^{\sigma 0}+\sigma X_𝐤^{2\sigma })(X_𝐤^{0\sigma }+\sigma X_𝐤^{\sigma 2})+U\underset{i}{}X_i^{22}.$$
(4)
Using (3) we have for the one-electron anticommutator retarded Green’s function

$$G_{𝐤\sigma }(E)=c_{𝐤\sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E=X_𝐤^{0\sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E+\sigma X_𝐤^{\sigma 2}|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E.$$
(5)
The energy $`E`$ is supposed to be referred to the chemical potential which equals $`U/2`$ in our case. We write down the system of equation of motion

$`EA|B_E=\{A,B\}+[A,]|B_E`$

for the pair of the Green’s functions in the right-hand side of (5). Using (2) we obtain in the non-magnetic case

$`(E+U/2)X_𝐤^{0\sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1+t_𝐤c_{𝐤\sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E)`$ (8)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪(\delta (X_{𝐤𝐪}^{00})+\delta (X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }))c_{𝐪\sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E`$
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }c_{𝐪\sigma }+\sigma c_{𝐪\sigma }^{}X_{𝐤+𝐪}^{02}|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E,`$
$`\sigma (EU/2)X_𝐤^{\sigma 2}|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1+t_𝐤c_{𝐤\sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E)`$ (11)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪(\delta (X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma })+\delta (X_{𝐤𝐪}^{22}))c_{𝐪\sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }c_{𝐪\sigma }+\sigma c_{𝐪\sigma }^{}X_{𝐤+𝐪}^{02}|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E,`$
where $`\delta A=AA`$ is the fluctuation of the operator. Solving the system (8), (11) we derive

$$G_{𝐤\sigma }(E)=G_𝐤^0(E)\left(1\frac{U}{E}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)\right),$$
(12)
$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)=\underset{𝐪}{}t_𝐪\delta (X_{𝐤𝐪}^{00}+X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma })c_{𝐪\sigma }+X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }c_{𝐪\sigma }+\sigma c_{𝐪\sigma }^{}X_{𝐤+𝐪}^{02}|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E.$$
(13)
Here

$$G_𝐤^0(E)=\frac{1}{F_0(E)t_𝐤},F_0(E)=E\frac{U^2}{4E}$$
(14)
is the Green’s function of the Hubbard-I approximation (which plays the role of a mean-filed approximation for our problem), $`F_0(E)`$ being the corresponding inverse locator. The Hubbard-I spectrum contains two correlation subbands defined by the poles of (14)

$`E_{𝐤1,2}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(t_𝐤\pm \epsilon _𝐤),\epsilon _𝐤=\sqrt{U^2+t_𝐤^2}.`$

The Green’s function $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)`$ describes fluctuation corrections. The corresponding collective excitations are described by spin and charge operators.

$`S_𝐪^\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`X_𝐪^{\sigma \sigma },S_𝐪^z={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(X_𝐪^{++}X_𝐪^{}),`$
$`\rho _𝐪^+`$ $`=`$ $`X_𝐪^{20},\rho _𝐪^z={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(X_𝐪^{22}X_𝐪^{00}).`$
Further we write down the system of equations for the fluctuation Green’s functions and perform the decouplings which correspond to the first order in the formal parameter $`1/z`$ (strictly speaking, this expansion is justified in the case of long-range electron hopping). For the half-filled band, we have to take into account particle and hole excitations in an equal way. However, decouplings can violate the particle-hole symmetry. To preserve this symmetry, we make an identical transformation by taking in (13) the Green’s functions with symmetrized operator products, e.g.,

$`X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }c_{𝐪\sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\{X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma },c_{𝐪\sigma }\}|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }c_{𝐪\sigma }+c_{𝐪\sigma }X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E.`$

We also use in the equations of motion the Hamiltonian in the symmetrized form,

$`t_𝐤c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤\sigma }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}t_𝐤(c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤\sigma }c_{𝐤\sigma }c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}).`$

Then we obtain for the transverse spin fluctuation contribution

$`(E^2U^2/4Et_𝐪){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\{X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma },c_{𝐪\sigma }\}|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E`$ $`=`$ $`(E+U/2)(t_𝐪t_𝐤)(f_𝐪{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}})G_{𝐤\sigma }(E)U(t_𝐤X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }X_{𝐤+𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }`$
$`+(t_𝐪t_𝐤){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[X_𝐪^{\sigma 0},X_𝐪^{0\sigma }]\sigma X_𝐪^{2\sigma }X_𝐪^{0\sigma }G_{𝐤\sigma }(E)`$
$`(E+U/2)(f_𝐪{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}})+U{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[X_𝐪^{\sigma 0},X_𝐪^{0\sigma }]`$
$`\sigma X_𝐪^{2\sigma }X_𝐪^{0\sigma }X_{𝐤𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }X_{𝐤+𝐪}^{\sigma \sigma }.`$
Note that, as well as the standard Kondo terms, the “many-electron” terms come from the spin-flip processes, but not from longitudinal spin fluctuations. For the “transverse” charge contribution we have

$`\sigma (E^2U^2/4Et_𝐪){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\{c_{𝐪\sigma }^{}X_{𝐤+𝐪}^{02}\}|c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}_E`$ $`=`$ $`(E+U/2)(t_𝐪+t_𝐤)(f_𝐪{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}})G_{𝐤\sigma }(E)`$
$`+U(t_𝐤X_{𝐤𝐪}^{20}X_{𝐤+𝐪}^{02}+(t_𝐪+t_𝐤)\sigma X_𝐪^{2\sigma }X_𝐪^{0\sigma }`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[X_𝐪^{2\sigma },X_𝐪^{\sigma 2}])G_{𝐤\sigma }(E)`$
$`+(E+U/2)(f_𝐪{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}})U{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[X_𝐪^{2\sigma },X_𝐪^{\sigma 2}]`$
$`\sigma X_𝐪^{2\sigma }X_𝐪^{0\sigma }X_{𝐤𝐪}^{20}X_{𝐤+𝐪}^{02}.`$
A symmetry of spin and charge degrees of freedom occurs for a symmetric conduction band.

Further we neglect $`𝐪`$-dependence of spin and charge correlations functions and replace them by single-site averages, so that

$`S_𝐪^\sigma S_𝐪^\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`2S_𝐪^zS_𝐪^z=X^{\sigma \sigma },`$ (15)
$`\rho _𝐪^\sigma \rho _𝐪^\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`2\rho _𝐪^z\rho _𝐪^z=X^{22}=X^{00}.`$ (16)
Such an approximation is made (although as a rule implicitly) in practically all works on the MIT problem. This corresponds to neglecting dynamics of low-energy Bose excitations and may be justified not only in high-temperature limit, but also within the $`1/z`$-expansion. For the local-spin subsystem, this approximation is in spirit of the mean-field theory. Main part of charge dynamics (the Hubbard splitting $`U`$) is also already taken into account in the zero-order (Hubbard-I) approximation. A consistent consideration of dynamics can be made in higher orders in $`1/z`$. This may lead to a change in details of the MIT picture. However, this problem is rather difficult.

Taking into account (16) we can use the sum rule in (2) to obtain

$`G_𝐤(E)={\displaystyle \frac{a(E)}{b(E)a(E)t_𝐤}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{F(E)t_𝐤}},F(E)={\displaystyle \frac{b(E)}{a(E)}},`$ (17)
$`a(E)`$ $`=`$ $`1+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{U^2}{E^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪{\displaystyle \frac{1}{F_0(E)t_𝐪}}+{\displaystyle \frac{2U}{E}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪{\displaystyle \frac{f_𝐪}{F_0(E)t_𝐪}},`$ (19)
$`b(E)`$ $`=`$ $`F_0(E)+{\displaystyle \frac{2U}{E}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪^2{\displaystyle \frac{f_𝐪}{F_0(E)t_𝐪}}.`$ (20)
We have substituted here the one-particle correlation functions in the Hubbard-I approximation,

$`c_{𝐪\sigma }^{}X_𝐪^{0\sigma }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\epsilon _𝐪}}[(E_{𝐪1}U)f(E_{𝐪1})(E_{𝐪2}U)f(E_{𝐪2})],`$ (21)
$`c_{𝐪\sigma }^{}X_𝐪^{\sigma 2}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma }{2\epsilon _𝐪}}[E_{𝐪1}f(E_{𝐪1})E_{𝐪2}f(E_{𝐪2})],`$ (22)
$`f_𝐪c_{𝐪\sigma }^{}c_{𝐪\sigma }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\epsilon _𝐪}}[(E_{𝐪1}U/2)f(E_{𝐪1})(E_{𝐪2}U/2)f(E_{𝐪2})].`$

Due to the symmetry of the bare band, we have

$`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}f(E_{𝐪,2})\mathrm{\Phi }(t_𝐪)={\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}[1f(E_{𝐪1})]\mathrm{\Phi }(t_𝐪).`$

As a result of our way of decoupling, we have in the sums $`f(E_{𝐪1})f(E_{𝐪1})1/2`$, and the DOS of the interacting system remains symmetric.

To obtain the self-consistent (SC) approximation we have to replace in (14) the Hubbard-I Green’s functions by the exact ones,

$`G_𝐪^0(E)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{F_0(E)t_𝐪}}G_𝐪(E)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{F(E)t_𝐪}},`$

and the Fermi functions $`f_𝐪`$ by the exact occupation numbers $`n_𝐪`$, according to the spectral representation,

$`n_𝐪={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle 𝑑Ef(E)\mathrm{Im}G_𝐪(E)}.`$

Then we have the SC equation for the one-electron Green’s function in the form (17) with

$`a(E)`$ $`=`$ $`1+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{U^2}{E^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪G_𝐪(E)+{\displaystyle \frac{2U}{E}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪G_𝐪(E)n_𝐪,`$ (24)
$`b(E)`$ $`=`$ $`F_0(E)+{\displaystyle \frac{2U}{E}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}t_𝐪^2G_𝐪(E)n_𝐪.`$ (25)
Unlike the simplest self-consistency scheme considered in Ref.  \[see eq. (32) of that paper\], the approximation (II), as well as the standard Hubbard-III approximation, does not result in a violation of analytical properties.

## III Results and discussion

To investigate the MIT problem, we calculate the single-particle density of states

$`N(E)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}\mathrm{Im}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{}}G_𝐤(E).`$

The results for the approximations (II) and (II) are shown in Figs. 14, and the critical values for MIT are given in Table I. The numerical calculation were performed for the square and two cubic lattices with a symmetric bare DOS. We also treat the Bethe lattice, i.e. the model semielliptic bare conduction band with

$`N(E)={\displaystyle \frac{4}{\pi W}}\sqrt{1\left({\displaystyle \frac{2E}{W}}\right)^2},`$

($`W`$ is the bare bandwidth), the rectangular DOS, and the Gaussian DOS

$`N(E)={\displaystyle \frac{4}{\sqrt{2\pi }W}}\mathrm{exp}\left(2\left({\displaystyle \frac{2E}{W}}\right)^2\right)`$

which corresponds to the hypercubic lattice in the large-$`d`$ limit. The Gaussian DOS does not have band edges, so that the parameter $`W`$ is determined from the second DOS moment,

$`W=4\sqrt{\mu _2},\mu _2={\displaystyle E^2N(E)𝑑E}.`$

Then the quantity $`\mu _2`$ has equal expressions in terms of $`W`$ for the Gaussian and semielliptic bare DOS’s.

It is important that the quantity $`F(E)`$, unlike $`F_0(E)`$, does not diverge at $`E0`$, i.e. in the centre of the band. This fact is just due to many-electron corrections. Therefore the non-self-consistent (NSC) formulas (II) yield a metal-insulator transition at $`U0`$, unlike NSC local approximations. However, the corresponding critical value $`U_\mathrm{c}^{\mathrm{NSC}}`$ is rather small. The “false” singularities at the edges of the Hubbard-I bands occur at large $`U`$ in our NSC approximation (see the discussion in Ref. ).

The critical value for MIT $`U_\mathrm{c}`$ in the standard Hubbard-III approximation  for an arbitrary bare DOS is given by

$$U_\mathrm{c}^\mathrm{H}=2\sqrt{3\mu _2}.$$
(26)
The critical value in the SC approximation (II) is changed somewhat in comparison with the Hubbard-III result (see Table I). Unlike Ref. , where the critical value was decreased by fluctuations, $`U_\mathrm{c}/W=0.67`$ for the Bethe lattice, our approach yields an opposite tendency, in agreement with the results of the QMC calculations at finite temperatures, $`U_\mathrm{c}/W1`$ (see Table II). Within the “linearized” DMFT , an analytical expression $`U_\mathrm{c}`$ can be obtained, which exceeds the Hubbard-III value,

$$U_\mathrm{c}^\mathrm{L}=\sqrt{3}U_\mathrm{c}^\mathrm{H}=6\sqrt{\mu _2}.$$
(27)
As follows from comparison with Table II, this approximation seems to overestimate somewhat $`U_\mathrm{c}.`$

The account of the Fermi excitations results in a modification of the DOS form (cf. Ref. ). In comparison with the Hubbard-III approximation, a pronounced pseudogap exists near MIT at $`U<U_\mathrm{c}`$. The same feature can be seen from the results of Ref. . At small $`U`$, a three-peak structure can be seen in Figs. 14, which becomes smeared with approaching MIT (the central peak becomes wide, and a pseudogap occurs). The three-peak structure is more pronounced in the NSC approximation. The details of our MIT scenario differ from the DMFT picture where the central quasiparticle peak is expected to shrink gradually at $`UU_c0`$. Probably, this discrepance is connected with the overestimation of the role of the damping in our approach. The correct treatment of the damping is a difficult problem. To avoid this problem, most large-$`d`$ calculations are performed at finite temperatures. It should be noted that various DMFT versions give somewhat different MIT pictures. In some calculations, a pseudogap develops in the metallic phase near MIT (see, e.g., Refs.), as well as in our picture. The occurrence in some works of a very high and narrow peak with lowering temperature, even not too close to $`U_c,`$ is probaly an unphysical drawback. In a number of large-$`d`$ calculations (see Refs.) the height of the peak does not change when approaching MIT.

In the case of square lattice, the situation is more complicated owing to the Van Hove singularity at the band centre. The underestimation of $`U_\mathrm{c}`$ in the Hubbard-III approximation is confirmed by the calculations of Ref. where $`U_\mathrm{c}1.5W.`$ More weak Van Hove singularities are present for cubic lattices. One can see from Table 1 that the difference between our calculations and Hubbard-III results becomes rather strong for these lattices .

To conclude, we have demonstrated that a simple decoupling scheme enables one to reproduce the non-trivial spectrum structure in the half-filled Hubbard model. Our approach yields a qualitative agreement with the results of large-$`d`$ approaches and QMC calculations. At the same time, this can be easily applied for arbitrary two- and three-dimensional lattices. In principle, the many-electron Hubbard operator method enables one to consider in a regular way the problem of electron structure of systems with the Hubbard splitting. Various types of slave boson and fermion representations combined with diagram techniques can be used to this end.

Since our approach starts from Hubbard’s subbands and includes large incoherent contributions, this does not reproduce properly the Fermi-liquid (FL) description of quasiparticle states. An account of low-energy spin and charge dynamics would be useful to describe the electron spectrum picture in more detail. A possibility of the transition from FL to non-FL behavior which can take place near MIT should be also taken into account.

The work is supported in part by the Grant of RFFI No. 00-15-96544 (Support of Scientific Schools).


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# ROSAT X-ray sources in the field of the LMC

## 1 Introduction

The study of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is of prime interest for the understanding of star formation and stellar evolution under different chemical conditions. A lower metal content of the interstellar medium results most likely in a smaller amount of molecules in the ISM, thus reducing or at least affecting the star formation efficiency. Studies of the properties of the ISM of the LMC have been made through observational work by Cohen et al. (1988) in CO with a spatial resolution of 12′ . A 12CO survey of the LMC with a resolution of 2.′6 has been performed with NANTEN (Fukui et al. 1999; Mizuno et al. 1999). Luks & Rohlfs (1992) and Luks (1994) made 21-cm surveys of the LMC with the Parkes radio telescope with an angular resolution of 15′. Dickey et al. (1994) made a 21-cm absorption survey of the Magellanic system with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) towards a sample of 30 lines of sight and detected 21-cm absorption in 19 cases. Kim et al. (1998, 1999) obtained H i aperture synthesis mosaics of the LMC with a resolution of 1′ using the ATCA telescope. The cool gas phase of the LMC gas in the 30 Dor, LMC 4 and the eastern H i boundary of the LMC has been studied by Marx-Zimmer et al. (2000).

X-ray background point sources like active galactic nuclei (AGN) and quasars (QSO) can be used to probe the gas columns of a “foreground” galaxy like the LMC by measuring the X-ray absorption or the hydrogen column density $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ in the line of sight between the AGN or QSO and the observer. From X-ray observations the total absorbing column density in the line of sight of the AGN is derived. It is required that the contribution to the X-ray absorption due to the Milky Way (the galactic component) is inferred from other information (e.g. 21-cm H i surveys covering the Magellanic Clouds). Also it has to be assumed that there is no intrinsic absorption due to the AGN and also no absorbing gas between the LMC and the AGN.

Recent studies of the X-ray spectra of AGN and QSO have shown that most of these spectra can be well described by a single powerlaw model with a powerlaw index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ which is confined to a narrow range of values. Using a large number of observations from different missions like EXOSAT, ROSAT and ASCA it has been found that AGN and QSO may all have the same powerlaw photon indices (cf. Brinkmann & Siebert 1994; Schartel et al. 1996a,b; Brinkmann et al. 1997; Laor et al. 1997; Sambruna et al. 1999; George et al. 2000; Brinkmann et al. 2000). However in several works a dependence of the powerlaw photon index on the energy band has been found. The detectors (LE and ME used with EXOSAT, PSPC with ROSAT, and SIS and GIS used with ASCA) cover different energy ranges of 0.1 – 20 keV, 0.1 – 2.4 keV, and 2 – 10 keV respectively. The ROSAT PSPC covers the softest spectral band and especially in this band somewhat steeper powerlaw photon indices have been derived.

In a related article (Kahabka et al. 2001, hereafter Paper II) the sample of classified spectrally hard X-ray sources in the field of the LMC was extended by making use of a theoretical color – color diagram (the $`HR1`$$`HR2`$ plane) derived from simulations. A tentative classification for a large fraction of the spectrally hard X-ray sources was made in the central 20′ of the ROSAT PSPC detector which have been detected by Haberl & Pietsch (1999, hereafter HP99) in a 10$`\times `$ 10 field of the LMC.

Here we investigate the spectral energy distribution of the X-ray point sources toward the LMC to derive the total gas column density of the LMC for different lines of sight. We compare the X-ray derived LMC gas columns with the gas columns derived from 21-cm radio observations performed with the Parkes and ATCA radio telescopes. From comparison of the X-ray derived total hydrogen column and the 21-cm (atomic) hydrogen we deduce constraints on the content of molecular hydrogen.

## 2 The AGN sample

Several background AGN in the field of the LMC have been identified in the sample of X-ray sources detected in Einstein and ROSAT observations during optical follow-up observations (Cowley et al. 1984; Schmidtke et al. 1994; Crampton et al. 1997; Cowley et al. 1997; Schmidtke et al. 1999; Tinney 1999). One ROSAT PSPC source, RX J0515.1-6511, has been identified by HP99 with an optical galaxy from the sample of 96 galaxies behind the LMC which are brighter than V=16.5 (Gurwell & Hodge 1990).

In addition during recent radio surveys of the Magellanic Clouds (and in particular of the LMC) discrete radio sources have been detected and in part classified as background sources by Dickey et al. (1994), Marx et al. (1997, hereafter MDM97) and Filipović et al. (1998a,b).

The sample of X-ray selected background AGN has been extended by HP99 by correlating the catalog of ROSAT PSPC X-ray sources in the field of the LMC with optical and radio catalogs. Additional candidate AGN in the field of the LMC have been found by Sasaki et al. (2000, hereafter SHP00) by comparing ROSAT PSPC X-ray sources with ROSAT HRI X-ray sources which are contained in their ROSAT HRI LMC catalog. We note that we could detect one of the unclassified LMC HRI sources (RX J0536.9-6913) in one of our merged PSPC observations. The source correlates with a radio source of Dickey et al. (1994) and MDM97. It has recently been studied in detail with the Epic-PN detector of XMM-Newton and is a strong candidate for a background AGN (Haberl et al. 2001).

In addition we investigated the 35 sources classified as \[hard\] by HP99. We find that 10 of these sources are consistent with pointlike and spectrally hard sources which we classify as AGN. They have $``$200 to 800 observed counts and have been used in this work for X-ray spectral fitting. Two further sources (RX J0530.1-6551 and RX J0524.2-6620) are consistent with X-ray binaries. This classification is confirmed by making use of simulated powerlaw tracks in a color – color diagram (the $`HR1`$$`HR2`$ plane, cf. Paper II). Further 8 sources have $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}`$150 observed counts and have not been used for X-ray spectral fitting. The remaining sources have been found to be either extended or too faint for a spectral analysis.

The AGN sample used is given in Table 1.

## 3 Observations

The observations of the general LMC area were carried out with the PSPC detector of the ROSAT observatory from 1991 till 1998. They have been retrieved from the public ROSAT archive at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik (MPE). The satellite, X-ray telescope (XRT) and the focal plane detector (PSPC) are described in detail in Trümper (1983) and Pfeffermann et al. (1987). For each AGN given in Table 1 (excluding those AGN which have not been observed with ROSAT PSPC) we determined all ROSAT PSPC observations in a 2$`\times `$ 2 field centered on the AGN and merged all observations for which the AGN was observed at an off-axis angle of $`<`$50′ by using standard EXSAS procedures (Zimmermann et al. 1994).

In Fig. 1 we show a merged image of 533 ksec exposure of the ROSAT PSPC observations of the LMC field. Time intervals with a high particle background rate have been removed by selecting data with a master veto rate in the interval 10 to 170 $`s^1`$ (cf. Snowden et al. 1995). In addition time intervals with a large soft (channel 11–41) X-ray count rate above the mean (by more than $`7\mathrm{counts}\mathrm{s}^1`$) have been excluded. Such events may e.g. be due to scattered solar X-rays (cf. Kerp 1994). The image is generated in the energy band 0.4 – 1.3 keV and it has a binsize of 100″. It shows the brighter X-ray sources and the distribution of the hot diffuse X-ray flux and X-ray dark regions (X-ray shadows). We overlayed on the image with square boxes of 1$`\times `$ 1 the fields in which AGN have been analyzed (AGN for which X-ray spectral fitting has been performed in Sect. 4, which are included in Tab. 2 and which are not flagged with $`b`$).

We analyzed 139 ROSAT PSPC observations with exposure times of at least 1000 sec each in a 10$`\times `$ 10 field covering the LMC. For most of the X-ray sources which we analyzed it was required to merge several observations.

In Fig. 2 we show the exposure corrected images (0.1 – 2.0 keV) of the merged data centered on 35 AGN which have been observed with ROSAT PSPC and which are given in Table 1. In these images different observations have been merged during which the AGN was at different off-axis angles in the detector. As observations for which the AGN was at an off-axis angle $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{>}`$50′ have not been used these images may differ somewhat from the overall image in Fig. 1 which is made from all observations.

It is obvious that many additional point sources are in the total field, sometimes also close to the AGN. We note that most of these additional point sources are contained in the ROSAT PSPC catalog of the LMC of HP99.

## 4 X-ray spectral fits and gas absorption

We extracted the source plus background photon events in a circular region centered on the position of the AGN and the background events from a nearby second circular region using EXSAS procedures. We binned the spectral data with a signal to noise ratio of 3 to 5. We corrected the spectral data for vignetting and dead time using standard EXSAS procedures. We performed a spectral fit only in case the number of source photons was $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{>}`$100 after background subtraction. We verified for a few sources for which a large ($`>10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) absorbing column density is derived that the result of the spectral fitting does not depend on the chosen spectral binning.

In Table 2 we list the number of source photons available for the spectral fit of the individual AGN. RX J0515.1-6511 has not been detected in the ROSAT observations and has not been included in the table. In case the AGN is in an area of hot diffuse LMC gas then the background can be uncertain and depends on the location where the background has been determined.

### 4.1 Powerlaw with galactic foreground and LMC intrinsic absorption

We fitted the observed X-ray spectral flux with AGN model fluxes in order to characterize the source as well as to find the amount of absorption by gas. For the AGN we adopted a powerlaw spectrum for the X-ray spectral flux (cf. Laor et al. 1997). For the neutral gas we use two different absorption models making use of the photoelectric absorption cross sections given in Balucinska-Church & McCammon (1992) and using cosmic and LMC abundances with reduced metallicities respectively. We used an absorption model with galactic foreground absorption (EXSAS model gamm) and LMC intrinsic absorption using reduced metallicities (EXSAS model gabs). We do not account for gas between the LMC and the AGN and gas intrinsic to the AGN in the spectral fit.

We determined the spectral parameters (the powerlaw photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the normalisation of the flux $`\mathrm{f}_0`$) in the rest frame of the AGN in case the redshift has been determined (cf. Table 1). But we note that consideration of the low values of the redshift measured for the AGN in the LMC field (z$`<`$0.5, cf. Table 1) has little effect on the derived spectral parameters (we confirmed this finding for the X-ray brightest optically identified AGN, RX J0524.0-7011).

We used in the spectral fit galactic foreground absorbing columns $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}^{\mathrm{gal}}`$ which we determined from a Parkes survey of the galactic H i in the direction of the LMC (Brüns et al. 2001). The value of $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}^{\mathrm{gal}}`$ varies by a factor of 2 (cf. Table 1).

We determined the LMC intrinsic absorption $`N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{LMC}}`$ by adjusting the abundances of individual elements. We used for the abundances the values log(X/H) + 12 = 8.25, 6.99, 8.47 and 7.74 for C, N, O and Ne respectively (Pagel 1993). For the other elements we used a logarithmic decrement of –0.4 dex.

We first applied a spectral fit to the sample of AGN which had been optically identified, for which a redshift had been determined and for which at least $``$200 counts have been observed. We derive best-fit total hydrogen column densities due to the LMC, $`N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{LMC}}`$, which are in the range of $`10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ to a few $`10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (cf. Table 3).

We derive for the five AGN in this sample with the best determined powerlaw photon index a value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.13\pm 0.46`$ (cf. Table 3 and Fig. 3). These powerlaw photon indices fall into the interval of powerlaw photon indices derived by Laor et al. (1997) for radio loud AGN in the ROSAT band (0.1 – 2.4 keV). Brinkmann et al. (2000) derive for about 500 optically identified AGN and galaxies which have been observed during the ROSAT all-sky survey the distribution of powerlaw photon indices by grouping these sources into 4 object classes (quasars, galaxies, low luminosity AGN and BL Lacs). Half of the AGN have a counterpart in the VLA 20cm FIRST catalog. If one excludes the galaxies then the range in powerlaw photon indices of the AGN and quasar sample cover the same values as the powerlaw photon indices of the radio loud and radio quiet AGN sample of Laor et al. (1997). But for their AGN sample Brinkmann et al. (2000) do not find evidence for a bimodal distribution in the radio-loudness parameter. In Fig. 3 we show as dashed band the $`1\sigma `$ range of powerlaw photon indices covered by the AGN sample of Brinkmann et al. (2000).

We also applied a spectral fit to further 19 background X-ray sources for which the number of available counts is given in Table 2. The uncertainties in the hydrogen column densities derived for these sources from the X-ray spectral fit are considerable. We will discuss the result of the spectral fit for these sources in Sect. 5.1 where we apply additional constraints to the powerlaw photon index.

### 4.2 Uncertainties in the spectral fit

Now we discuss uncertainties in the spectral fit which may affect the value of the deduced hydrogen column density. We use in our analysis AGN lying behind a wide range of LMC neutral hydrogen column densities as inferred from the 21-cm radio observations (cf. Sect. 5). A few of these AGN are located in regions of LMC column densities $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{>}10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, behind a large cloud complex at the eastern side of the LMC and another cloud complex at the northwestern side. From ROSAT PSPC observations it has been found that these regions are associated with hot diffuse gas which emits in X-rays (Snowden & Petre 1994). This hot gas adds to the X-ray spectrum and has to be properly accounted for in the spectral fit. For that we determine the background spectrum in a region close to an AGN. But if the hot gas component varies on small scales then the result of the spectral fit depends on the location where the background is taken. Clearly, a careful selection of the background region is required.

We briefly discuss the effect of background subtraction on the result of the spectral fit by choosing different areas for the background. We use as an example the AGN RX J0532.0-6919 which is located in a region of extended and variable diffuse emission. One choice for the background is a region of lower background taken $``$6′ east of the AGN, a second choice is a region of a higher but more appropriate background. The result of the spectral fitting (the absorbing column and the photon index) is somewhat dependent on the chosen background. Depending on the chosen background region we derive total LMC hydrogen absorbing columns for RX J0532.0-6919 in the range $`(68)\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. This result shows that in regions of variable diffuse emission systematic effects can play a role in the determination of the hydrogen column density. In Fig. 4 we show the ROSAT PSPC spectrum used for the spectral fit using the best background model.

As another example we choose the AGN RX J0536.9-6913 (equal to the ATCA source MDM 65) which is located close to the 30 Dor complex. The radio source which also has the designation 0536-692 has been well studied at 21-cm (Dickey et al. 1994; Mebold et al. 1997). The X-ray source has been detected with the ROSAT PSPC in our merged image of the 30 Dor complex. SHP00 detected RX J0536.9-6913 in the HRI data but did not classify the source. But the identification with the radio source MDM 65 (= 0536-692) makes RX J0536.9-6913 a strong candidate for a background X-ray source.

Spectral fitting of the ROSAT PSPC data shows that this source is indeed very heavily absorbed. This is consistent with the fact that the source is seen through the complete gas in the 30 Dor complex. RX J0536.9-6913 is in a region of diffuse X-ray emission and the background region has to be carefully chosen as faint near-by X-ray sources and variable diffuse X-ray emission can affect the background subtraction and the result of the spectral fitting. Fortunately there exists a first light EPIC XMM-Newton image of the 30 Dor area (cf. Briel et al. 2000; Dennerl et al. 2001) which guided us to select a background region close to RX J0536.9-6913 which is free of faint X-ray sources and diffuse structure (a region south-west of the AGN).

In Fig. 4 (lower panel) we show the background subtracted ROSAT PSPC spectrum of RX J0536.9-6913 and the spectral model assuming a galactic foreground absorption $`N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{gal}}=5.0\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ and keeping the powerlaw photon index fixed to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.0`$. We derive an absorption due to LMC gas of $`N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{LMC}}=2.1\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (see also Sect. 5.1).

We note that the value for the absorbing column derived from the ROSAT PSPC data is within the uncertainties consistent with the absorbing column of $`(1.69\pm 0.25)\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ derived from recent XMM-Newton Epic-PN observations of RX J0536.9-6913 (Haberl et al. 2001).

## 5 Comparison with 21-cm radio observations

The Magellanic system has been mapped in 21-cm with the Parkes radio telescope at a resolution of $``$14′ (Luks & Rohlfs 1992; Luks 1994) and with the ATCA radio telescope at a resolution of $``$1′ (Kim et al. 1998, 1999). Luks & Rohlfs (1992) have found in their 21-cm line survey of the LMC two separate structural features, one due to a gas disk (extending all over the LMC) and a L-component at lower radial velocities. They derived for both components the distribution of the H i column density in a $`8`$.$`4`$ $`\times `$ $`8`$.$`4`$ field. The disk component has been found to contain 72% and the L-component 19% of the H i gas. The derived column densities of the H i gas due to the LMC vary from $`1\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ to at least $`3.2\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. The largest column densities are found in the 30 Dor region which is contained in a large cloud complex with an area of $`4.25`$ square degrees at the eastern side of the LMC.

We now compare the hydrogen absorbing column densities towards the AGN in the LMC field derived from the X-ray spectral fitting in Sect. 4 with the column densities of neutral hydrogen H i as inferred from 21-cm line measurements. In Sect. 4.1 we have applied a spectral fit to the ROSAT PSPC AGN spectra by fixing the galactic contribution to the absorption. We used the values derived from the Parkes 21-cm line measurements of the galactic absorption in the direction of the AGN.

In Fig. 5 we demonstrate there is excess absorption (additional to the galactic absorption) which is assumed to be due to the LMC gas. As expected we find that the total hydrogen column (galactic & LMC) lies above the hydrogen column determined from the 21-cm for the Milky Way. The excess absorption varies from a few $`10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ up to $`2\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$.

Next we compare the LMC hydrogen column density derived from the X-ray spectral fit in Sect. 4 with the LMC column density of neutral hydrogen H i as inferred from a Parkes 21-cm line survey of the Magellanic system with a resolution of $``$14′ (Brüns et al. 2001). We show the result in Fig. 6 for the sample of optically identified background AGN given in Table 3.

The LMC column densities inferred from the X-ray spectral fit cover the range from about $`10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ to $`2\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. We find that the values obtained from the spectral fit are within the uncertainties consistent with the hydrogen column densities determined from the 21-cm line measurements. Only for the background source RX J0503.1-6634 a somewhat lower value for the LMC column densities is derived from the X-ray spectral fit.

### 5.1 Constraints on the hydrogen column density for AGN type spectra

For many of the background X-ray sources given in Table 1 the uncertainties in the hydrogen column densities derived from the X-ray spectral fit are considerable and a comparison with the column densities derived from the 21-cm line measurements is not very conclusive. In order to further constrain also for these background X-ray sources the values of the hydrogen column densities (derived from the X-ray spectral fit) we make use of the assumption that all AGN have powerlaw photon indices which are consistent with the powerlaw photon indices determined by Brinkmann et al. (2000) for their AGN sample.

We already have found in Sect. 4 that the AGN which have well constrained spectral parameters have powerlaw photon indices which are consistent with the powerlaw photon indices derived by Brinkmann et al. (2000) for their AGN sample. We now use the constraint on the photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=(2.0 – 2.5) to constrain the hydrogen column densities due to LMC gas in the direction of the background AGN. This constraint is consistent with the range in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ derived for the AGN sample of Brinkmann et al. (2000). We constrain the hydrogen columns for 26 background X-ray sources and we give the result in Table 4 and for 21 of these AGN in Fig. 7. We do not include RX J0530.1-6551 in the figure which is probably an X-ray binary.

We derive values for the hydrogen column due to LMC gas ranging from $`10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ to $`(23)\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. There remain still considerable uncertainties in these values. We have determined these values from the 68% confidence contours in the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$$`N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{LMC}}`$ parameter plane. The best-fit value given for the hydrogen column is in general the value for the minimum $`\chi ^2`$ found by the grid search in the parameter plane. In Fig. 7 we compare the value for the LMC hydrogen absorbing column density in the direction of 21 of the AGN from Table 4 as inferred from the spectral fit with the value for the LMC hydrogen absorbing column density derived from a Parkes 21-cm line survey (Brüns et al. 2001). We find that most of these $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ values are consistent with the H i values inferred from the Parkes survey.111The values given for the total LMC $`N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ determined from X-ray spectral fitting differ from $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}^{\mathrm{LMC}}+N_{\mathrm{H}_2}^{\mathrm{LMC}}`$. They are the values resulting from the spectral fit and they have not been corrected taking the different photoionisation cross section for atomic and molecular hydrogen into account. $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}^{\mathrm{LMC}}+N_{\mathrm{H}_2}^{\mathrm{LMC}}`$ can be determined with Equ. 1.

But for two sources substantial amount of absorbing gas would be derived which is in excess of the value inferred from the H i survey. One of these sources, RX J0536.9-6913, is located between 30 Dor and 30 Dor C, a region where high H i columns have been measured. In this region also copious emission of diffuse gas is seen in X-rays. In addition RX J0536.9-6913 lies in a region where high columns due to molecular gas (Sect. 6) have been measured and also a dark cloud complex is seen in this region. The second source, RX J0547.0-7040, coincides with a molecular cloud complex measured with NANTEN (Fukui et al. 1999; Mizuno et al. 1999). But if we take into account the constraints applied to the powerlaw photon index and the assumption for the metallicity of the LMC gas in the direction of these two background sources the significance for absorbing gas in excess of the measured H i may not be that large.

### 5.2 Uncertainties in the 21-cm line measurements

We have used Parkes 21-cm line measurements to infer the H i column densities in the direction of the AGN. The Parkes beam has a FWHM of $``$14′ and cannot resolve H i structure on smaller scales. But this may be required as aperture synthesis mosaics from the LMC with the ATCA revealed structure in the H i on scales up to the resolution of $``$1′ (Kim et al. 1998; 1999). We illustrate this effect in Fig. 8 where we show the positions of the ROSAT AGN marked as a cross inside a circle of the size of the Parkes beam. In several cases small scale H i structure is found in the 14′ beam centered on the ROSAT AGN. The map of Kim et al. (1998) does not give the value of the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ associated with H i structures and we cannot determine the uncertainties of the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ determination if we integrate across the Parkes beam.

A hierarchial structuring of the H i gas clouds up to small scales (the resolution of their H i survey of $``$1.′5) has been found by Staveley-Smith et al. (1997) and Stanimirovic et al. (1999) with ATCA observations of the SMC. A similar structuring of the LMC H i gas clouds has been found by Kim et al. (1999). Such a structuring of the gas may affect the integrated column density of the gas along the line of sight towards a background source.

### 5.3 Comparison of LMC results with those of the SMC

In order to investigate the uncertainties associated with the determination of the LMC column density towards an AGN in the field of the LMC we made use of the high-resolution H i survey of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) performed with the ATCA radio telescope by Stanimirovic et al. (1999). We used the ROSAT PSPC catalog of point sources detected in the field of the SMC by Kahabka et al. (1999). We integrated the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ map of Stanimirovic et al. (1999) in a circular region of size 14′ (the Parkes beam) centered at the location of the X-ray sources detected with the ROSAT PSPC in the direction of the SMC.

In Fig. 9 we show the correlation between the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ determined from the ATCA map and integrated over the Parkes beam with the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ determined from the ATCA map at the location of the ROSAT source.

In Fig. 10 we show in a histogram the number of SMC sources for which the determination of the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ by these two different evaluations differs by a given percentage. Assuming this distribution is Gaussian one derives a FWHM for this distribution of $``$30% (a Gaussian $`\sigma `$ of $``$13%).

From Fig. 9 one can see that the column densities at the location of a ROSAT PSPC source in the field of the SMC as derived from the ATCA map are systematically lower for H i column densities below $``$$`3.5\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ compared to the column densities inferred from the same map but integrated within the Parkes beam. For column densities above $``$$`3.5\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ such a trend appears not to exist. We also show the histograms for these two ranges of column densities in Fig. 10.

There appears to be one straightforward explanation for this difference in the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ determination. For lower hydrogen column densities the SMC gas is transparent to a ROSAT source. So one expects to detect preferentially the sources seen through lowest columns. This is a selection effect. In addition, at lower columns fewer gas structures are expected to add up and inhomogeneities in the gas (the contrast of structures) will be better recognized. At higher columns background sources are difficult to detect and sources found are mostly sources not too deep inside the SMC. Also the contrast in H i decreases as more different structures add up. This means that the symmetry of the distribution for the higher column range, having a FWHM of $``$20% or a $`\sigma `$$``$9%, (see Fig. 10) represents the H i structure which still exists in the large column regime.

## 6 Molecular gas

Molecular hydrogen is abundant in regions of high hydrogen column densities (Savage et al. 1977). The fraction of molecular hydrogen with respect to atomic hydrogen (expressed in the molecular mass fraction $`f`$) can vary locally and may depend on the gas column density. Richter (2000) presented the molecular mass fraction of the LMC and the SMC gas in the direction of 7 stars from UV absorption. He found that the molecular mass fraction is low (less than 10%) while strongly depending on the hydrogen column density. Only in regions of hydrogen columns $`>10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ a molecular mass fraction $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{>}`$1% has been found.

We derive the column density of molecular hydrogen $`N_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ from the total hydrogen column density of the gas $`N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ as derived from the AGN X-ray spectra and the column density of atomic hydrogen H i

$$N_{\mathrm{H}_2}=\frac{1}{2.8}\left(N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}N_{\mathrm{HI}}\right)$$
(1)
Here we make the assumption that the photoionisation cross section is 2.8 times larger for molecular hydrogen than for atomic hydrogen (cf. Cruddace et al. 1974, Yan et al. 1998). The molecular mass fraction $`f`$ is then determined by

$$f=\frac{N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}N_{\mathrm{HI}}}{N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}+0.4N_{\mathrm{HI}}}$$
(2)
We note that we do not consider the contribution of warm diffuse gas to the total absorbing column density $`N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$.

The molecular mass fractions derived with Equ. 2 are uncertain due to the uncertainties in the values of the hydrogen column densities inferred from the X-ray observations. But also the H i values are uncertain due to the beam size of the Parkes beam of 14′. We therefore can derive in most cases only upper limits for the molecular mass fraction from

$$\mathrm{\Delta }f=\frac{1.4\sqrt{\left(N_{\mathrm{HI}}\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}\right)^2+\left(N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}\mathrm{\Delta }N_{\mathrm{HI}}\right)^2}}{\left(N_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{tot}}+0.4N_{\mathrm{HI}}\right)^2}$$
(3)
In Table 5 we give the derived values ($`f\pm \mathrm{\Delta }f`$) for the molecular mass fractions for 6 AGN from Table 4 with accurate $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ determinations making use of Equ. 2 and 3 and assuming $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_{\mathrm{HI}}=0.1\times N_{\mathrm{HI}}.`$ For further 6 AGN we determine only 1$`\sigma `$ upper limits for the molecular mass fraction.

We now discuss the constraints on the molecular mass fraction derived for individual AGN (cf. Table 5). RX J0534.6-6738 and RX J0532.0-6919 are located in regions where molecular gas can be inferred from the CO map of Cohen et al. (1988). RX J0532.0-6919 is located in a region with a large ($`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{>}10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) LMC H i column density (cf. Table 4). The total hydrogen column density inferred from the ROSAT PSPC X-ray spectral fit is within the uncertainties consistent with the H i column density inferred from the 21-cm line measurements. We derive for RX J0532.0-6919 a rather large upper limit for the molecular mass fraction of $``$180%.

RX J0454.1-6643, and RX J0524.0-7011 are close to regions with detected molecular gas as would be inferred from the CO map of Cohen et al. (1988). We derive upper limits for the molecular mass fraction of RX J0454.1-6643 and RX J0524.0-7011 of $``$70% and 30% respectively.

For RX J0536.9-6913 (= MDM 65), which is located in the 30 Dor complex, a very large column density of $`(1.63.4)\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ has been determined from the spectral fit to a deep (200 ksec) merged ROSAT PSPC observation. This is the largest hydrogen column determined for a LMC background X-ray source. From Parkes 21-cm line data we get here a H i column of $`3.3\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. The molecular mass fraction in the direction of RX J0536.9-6913 is found to be 82$`\pm `$6%. However, Dickey et al. (1994) have detected H i in absorption with the ATCA radio telescope in the direction of a background radio source which coincides in position with RX J0536.9-6913. The absorption is, given the radial velocity, due to gas associated with the disk (D) component of the LMC. The column density determined for the strongest absorption component is $`3.7\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (Dickey et al. 1994) and consistent with or even larger than the total column density derived from the X-ray absorption. This would mean that no large contribution due to molecular hydrogen is required to explain the X-ray absorption.

There is another ROSAT PSPC source in the 30 Dor complex, RX J0546.8-6851, for which also a large H i column density of $`3.7\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ is determined with the Parkes radio telescope. An X-ray spectral fit gives for this source a total gas column density of $`2.0`$ to $`5.5\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ assuming constraints on the photon index for AGN type spectra. This value for the absorption is consistent with the value determined from the 21-cm line measurements. The source has been classified as a likely AGN (or perhaps an X-ray binary) by SHP00. The molecular mass fraction derived for this source of $`<`$67% is somewhat lower than the fraction derived for RX J0536.9-6913. But if the absorption inferred for RX J0536.9-6913 from the 21-cm absorption line measurements is taken into account then a consistent constraint for the molecular mass fraction is derived for both sources. RX J0546.8-6851 was not studied in the ATCA 21-cm absorption line surveys of the LMC, so nothing is known about 21-cm absorption. The X-ray source does not appear to be located in an X-ray dark area of the LMC.

From these two highly absorbed ROSAT background sources we would conclude that the mass fraction of molecular gas in the 30 Dor complex is probably less than $``$70%. We infer for the other less absorbed ROSAT background sources (and excluding RX J0528.8-6539 for which the value determined for f is very uncertain) upper limits for the mass fraction for the molecular gas of about 30 to 140%. An alternative explanation for observed increased gas columns in the 30 Dor region could be a higher metal content of the star forming complexes (cf. Haberl et al. 2001; Dennerl et al. 2001).

Our result for the $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ appears to be in qualitative agreement with the measured distribution of CO in the LMC (Cohen et al. 1988). According to these measurements, the CO intensity is larger in the 30 Dor complex than $`20`$′ east of it. According to Cohen et al. (1988) a maximum column density due to $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ of $`2.6\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ is expected for the 30 Dor complex assuming an $`X`$ factor of $`X_{\mathrm{LMC}}=1.7\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{K}^1\mathrm{km}^1\mathrm{s}`$.

We would determine for RX J0536.9-6913 a rather high column density due to molecular hydrogen of $`N_{\mathrm{H}_2}=(7.8\pm 3.2)\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ if we make use of the hydrogen column inferred from the 21-cm emission line measurements. We note that such a $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ column density would imply the CO component would be above the detection limit of $`10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ of the NANTEN 12CO survey (cf. Mizuno et al. 1999 and Fukui et al. 1999). But if we use the hydrogen column density of $`3.7\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ inferred from the dominant 21-cm absorption line component (Dickey et al. 1994) then we would not require molecular hydrogen to explain the result of the X-ray spectral fit. RX J0536.9-6913 is located in an “X-ray shadow” or “dark cloud”, a region of reduced diffuse X-ray emission which could indicate for a molecular cloud complex (or alternatively a cool cloud complex). From inspection of the ROSAT PSPC image (Fig. 2) centered on the AGN we estimate the size of the cloud to $``$3.2′ which is equivalent to $``$50 pc for a distance of 50 kpc. We note that the value for the total hydrogen column density in the direction of RX J0536.9-6913, $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}+N_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ is similar to the value $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}+N_{\mathrm{H}_2}=(1.22.4)\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ as determined by Poglitsch et al. (1995) for 30 Dor.

For RX J0546.8-6851 on the other hand a lower value of the column density due to molecular hydrogen of $`N_{\mathrm{H}_2}{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}6\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ is derived from the X-ray observations. Such a $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ column density is below the detection limit of $`10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ of the NANTEN 12CO survey. The derived value for the $`N_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ corresponds for the assumed $`X`$ factor to a CO intensity of $`0.35\mathrm{K}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ which is consistent with the lowest contour in the CO map of Cohen et al. (1988).

## 7 Conclusions

We have set up a sample of 35 background X-ray sources in a 10$`\times `$ 10 field of the LMC observed with the ROSAT PSPC using the X-ray catalogs of HP99 and SHP00 and the radio catalog of MDM97. A fraction of these sources are candidate background X-ray sources which have been constrained from X-ray spectral properties.

For 7 of the background X-ray sources which are optically identified and for which a redshift has been determined we perform X-ray spectral fitting and we constrain the photon index and the hydrogen absorbing column density due to the LMC gas. We use for the galactic absorbing component values inferred from a 21-cm Parkes survey. We find for these sources powerlaw photon indices which are consistent with the powerlaw photon indices of AGN type spectra (with values in the range $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.0`$ to $`2.5`$). The total LMC absorbing columns which we derive from the X-ray spectral fit are within the uncertainties consistent with the H i columns measured with a Parkes 21-cm line survey.

For further 19 background X-ray sources we cannot constrain the powerlaw photon index accurate enough to derive secure constraints on the LMC hydrogen column density. For these sources we make the assumption that the powerlaw photon index is that of AGN type spectra $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.0`$ to $`2.5`$. With that assumption we then derive constraints on the LMC hydrogen column density for these sources.

We compare for 20 X-ray background sources the LMC absorbing columns derived from the X-ray spectral fit with the LMC H i columns derived from a 21-cm line Parkes survey. We find in general, within the uncertainties of the values derived from the X-ray spectral fit, agreement between the X-ray and 21-cm derived absorbing columns.

For two background sources RX J0536.9-6913 and RX J0547.0-7040, which are located in regions of large ($``$$`3\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) H i columns, we derive hydrogen columns from the X-ray spectral fit of $`(0.62)\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ which are in excess of the H i columns. These sources probably are seen through additional gas which may be warm and diffuse, cold or molecular. But if we take into account the constraints applied to the powerlaw photon index and the assumption made for the metallicity of the LMC gas in the direction of these two background sources the significance for absorbing gas in excess of the measured H i may not be that large.

We derive constraints on gas columns additional to H i for 10 background X-ray sources. Assuming that these columns are due to molecular gas we derive upper limits for the molecular mass fraction for these sources of $``$30 – 140%.

###### Acknowledgements.

The ROSAT project is supported by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and the Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie (BMFT). We have made use of the ROSAT Data Archive of the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik (MPE) at Garching, Germany. This research has made use of the SIMBAD data base operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. We have made use of the publicly available H i peak temperature image of the LMC (Kim et al. 1998) and of the H i image of the SMC provided by S. Stanimirovic. We have made use of the Karma software developed at ATNF. PK is supported by the Graduiertenkolleg on the “Magellanic Clouds and other Dwarf galaxies” (DFG GRK 118). We thank the referee W. Pietsch for the useful comments.


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# The coupling constants gρπγ and gωπγ as derived from QCD sum rules

## Abstract

We employ QCD sum rules to calculate the coupling constants gρπγ and gωπγ by studying the three point $`\rho \pi \gamma `$\- and $`\omega \pi \gamma `$-correlation functions. Our results for the decay widths $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\rho ^0\pi ^0\gamma )`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\omega \pi ^0\gamma )`$ calculated using the obtained coupling constants are in good agreement with the experimental values of these decay widths.

Radiative transitions of the type $`VP\gamma `$ where V and P belong the lowest multiplets of vector (V) and pseudoscalar (P) mesons have been a subject of continuous interest both theoretically and experimentally . These transitions have been considered from the point of view of a large variety of theoretical models, such as phenomenological quark models , potential models , bag models , and effective Lagrangian approaches . All these approaches provide effective methods of investigation of these hadronic phenomena for which a formulation for the application of QCD from the first principles has not been possible so far. The effective Lagrangian approach provide a framework to study in general the physics of light neutral vector mesons, $`\rho ^0`$, $`\omega `$ and $`\varphi `$, by combining the Vector Meson Dominance and Chiral Dynamics which are the two principles governing low energy QCD in a suitably constructed effective Lagrangian .

On the other hand, vector meson-pseudoscalar meson-photon $`VP\gamma `$-vertex also plays a role in photoproduction reactions of vector mesons on nucleons. Although, at sufficiently high energies and low momentum transfers electromagnetic production of vector mesons on nucleon targets has been explained by Pomeron exchange models, at low energies near threshold scalar and pseudoscalar meson exchange mechanisms become important . For the photoproduction reactions involving $`\rho ^0`$ and $`\omega `$ mesons, the effective coupling constants gρπγ and gωπγ are among the physical inputs that are used in the analyzes of these reactions. In these studies, an effective Lagrangian describing the $`VP\gamma `$-vertex is assumed, which also defines the coupling constant gVPγ, and these coupling constants are then determined utilizing the experimental decay widths $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(VP\gamma )`$ of the vector mesons. However, it should be noted that in these decays the four-momentum of the pseudoscalar meson P is time-like, $`p_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}>0`$, whereas in the pseudoscalar exchange amplitude contributing to the photoproduction of vector mesons it is space-like $`p_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}<0`$. Therefore, it is of interest to study the effective coupling constants gVPγ from another point of view as well.

In this work, we estimate the coupling constants gρπγ and gωπγ by employing QCD sum rules which provide an efficient and model-independent method to study many hadronic observables, such as decay constants and form factors, in terms of nonperturbative contributions proportional to the quark and gluon condensates . Using the techniques of QCD sum rules, the nonperturbative QCD physics is incorporated systematically as power corrections in the short-distance operator product expansion.

In order to derive the QCD sum rule for the coupling constant gVπγ where V denotes $`\rho ^0`$ or $`\omega `$ meson, we begin by considering the three point correlation function

$$T_{\mu \nu }(p,p^{})=d^4xd^4ye^{ip^{}y}e^{ipx}<o|T\{j_\mu ^\gamma (0)j_\nu ^V(x)j_5(y)\}|0>$$
(1)
where the interpolating currents $`j_\nu ^V`$ for$`\rho ^0`$ and $`\omega `$ meson are $`j_\nu ^\rho =\frac{1}{2}(\overline{u}\gamma _\nu u\overline{d}\gamma _\nu d)`$, $`j_\nu ^\omega =\frac{1}{6}(\overline{u}\gamma _\nu u+\overline{d}\gamma _\nu d)`$, respectively, $`j_5=\frac{1}{2}(\overline{u}i\gamma _5u\overline{d}i\gamma _5d)`$ is the interpolating current for $`\pi ^0`$ , and $`j_\mu ^\gamma =e_u\overline{u}\gamma _\mu u+e_d\overline{d}\gamma _\mu d`$, where $`e_u`$ and $`e_d`$ denote the quark charges, is the quark electromagnetic current. In accordance with QCD sum rules techniques, we consider the three point correlation function $`T_{\mu \nu }(p,p^{})`$ in the Euclidean region defined by $`p^2=Q^21GeV^2`$, $`p_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}=Q_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}1GeV^2`$.

The theoretical part of the sum rule for the coupling constant gVπγ is obtained in terms of QCD degrees of freedom by calculating the perturbative contribution and the power corrections from operators of different dimensions to the three point correlation function. In the region $`Q^2,Q_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}1GeV^2`$ the perturbative contribution can be approximated by the lowest order free-quark loop diagram shown in Fig. 1-a. Furthermore, we consider the power corrections from operators of different dimensions, resulting in contributions to the three point correlation function that are proportional to the terms $`<\overline{q}q>`$, $`<\sigma G>`$ and $`<(\overline{q}q)^2>`$. We do not consider the gluon condensate contribution proportional to $`<G^2>`$ since it is estimated to be negligible for light quark systems. The calculations of the power corrections are performed in the fixed point gauge . We work in the SU(2) flavour context with mu=md=mq, moreover we perform our calculations of the perturbative and power correction contributions in the limit m$`{}_{q}{}^{}=0`$. In this limit, the perturbative bare-loop diagram does not make any contribution, and only operators of dimensions d=3 and d=5 make contributions that are proportional to $`<\overline{q}q>`$ and $`<\sigma G>`$, respectively. The relevant Feynman diagrams for the calculation of these power corrections are shown in Fig. 1-b and Fig. 1-c.

We then turn to the calculation of the three point correlation function through phenomenological considerations. The vertex function $`T_{\mu \nu }(p,p^{})`$ satisfies a double dispersion relation. In general such a dispersion relation can be written in three ways by choosing two of the three channels. For our purpose, we choose the vector and pseudoscalar channels and by saturating this dispersion relation by the lowest lying meson states in these channels we obtain the physical part of the sum rule as

$$T_{\mu \nu }(p,p^{})=\frac{<0|j_\nu ^V|V><V(p)|j_\mu ^\gamma |\pi (p^{})><\pi |j_5|0>}{(p^2m_V^2)(p_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}m_\pi ^2)}+\mathrm{}$$
(2)
where the contributions from the higher states and the continuum is denoted by dots. In this expression, the overlap amplitudes for vector and pseudoscalar mesons are $`<0|j_\nu ^V|V>=\lambda _Vu_V`$ where $`u_V`$ is the polarization vector of the vector meson and $`<\pi |j_5|0>=\lambda _\pi `$. The matrix element of the electromagnetic current is given as

$$<V(p)|j_\mu ^\gamma |\pi (p^{})>=i\frac{e}{m_V}g_{V\pi \gamma }K(q^2)\epsilon ^{\mu \alpha \beta \delta }p_\alpha u_\beta q_\delta $$
(3)
where $`q=pp^{}`$ and K(0)=1. This expression defines the coupling constant gVπγ through the effective Lagrangian

$$_{V\pi \gamma }^{eff.}=\frac{e}{m_V}g_{V\pi \gamma }\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }_\mu V_\nu _\alpha A_\beta \pi ^0$$
(4)
describing the $`V\pi \gamma `$-vertex .

After performing the double Borel transform with respect to the variables $`Q^2`$ and $`Q_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$, we obtain the sum rule for the coupling constant gVπγ

$`g_{V\pi \gamma }={\displaystyle \frac{3m_V}{\lambda _V\lambda _\pi }}e^{\frac{m_V^2}{M^2}}e^{\frac{m_\pi ^2}{M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}}C_V<\overline{q}q>\left({\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{5}{32}}m_0^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{3}{32}}m_0^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}}\right)`$ (5)
where we use the relation $`<\sigma G>=m_0^2<\overline{q}q>`$. The constant $`C_V`$ that results in our calculation is $`C_V=1`$ for $`\rho ^0`$ meson and $`C_V=3`$ for $`\omega `$ meson. For the numerical evaluation of the sum rule we use the values $`m_0^2=0.8GeV^2`$, $`<\overline{u}u>=0.014GeV^3`$ , and $`m_\rho =0.770GeV`$, $`m_\omega =0.782GeV`$, $`m_\pi =0.138GeV`$  . For the overlap amplitude for the vector meson states, we use the values that are obtained from the experimental leptonic decay widths  by noting that neglecting the electron mass the $`e^+e^{}`$ decay width of vector meson is given as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(Ve^+e^{})=\frac{4\pi \alpha ^2}{3}\frac{\lambda _V^2}{m_V^3}`$, this way we obtain the values $`\lambda _\rho =0.118GeV^2`$ and $`\lambda _\omega =0.036GeV^2`$. We note that these values do obey the SU(3) relation $`\lambda _\rho =3\lambda _\omega `$ within 10$`\%`$ accuracy. The overlap amplitude $`\lambda _\pi `$ for the $`\pi `$ meson state is given by the relation $`\lambda _\pi =f_\pi \frac{m_\pi ^2}{m_u+m_d}`$ . We use the experimental value $`f_\pi `$=0.132 GeV and the physical mass $`m_{\pi ^0}`$=0.138 GeV along with $`m_u+m_d`$=0.014 GeV, and obtain this amplitude as $`\lambda _\pi `$=0.18 GeV2. In order to analyze the dependence of the coupling constant gVπγ on the Borel parameters $`M^2`$ and $`M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$, we study independent variations of $`M^2`$ and $`M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$ in the interval $`0.6GeV^2M^2,M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}1.4GeV^2`$ as these limits determine the allowed interval for the vector channel . The variation of the coupling constant gρπγ and gωπγ as a function of Borel parameters $`M^2`$ for different values of $`M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$ is shown in Fig. 2 and in Fig. 3, respectively. The examination of these figures indicate that the sum rule is quite stable with these reasonable variations of $`M^2`$ and $`M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$. Besides those due to variations of $`M^2`$ and $`M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$, the other sources contributing to the uncertainty in the coupling constants are the uncertainties in the estimated values of the vacuum condensates. If we take these uncertainties into account by a conservative estimate, we obtain the coupling constants g$`{}_{\rho \pi \gamma }{}^{}=0.63\pm 0.07`$ and g$`{}_{\omega \pi \gamma }{}^{}=1.85\pm 0.15`$. These values of the coupling constant are consistent with their values used in the analysis of $`\rho ^0`$ and $`\omega `$ photoproduction reactions through pseudoscalar exchange amplitudes which are g$`{}_{\rho \pi \gamma }{}^{}=0.54`$ and g$`{}_{\omega \pi \gamma }{}^{}=1.82`$, respectively . If we use the effective Lagrangian given in Eq. 4, then the decay width for $`V\pi ^0\gamma `$ is obtained as

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(V\pi ^0\gamma )=\frac{\alpha }{24}\frac{(m_V^2m_{\pi ^0}^2)^3}{m_V^5}g_{V\pi \gamma }^2.$$
(6)
Therefore, from our analysis we determine $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(V\pi ^0\gamma )`$ decay widths for $`\rho ^0`$ and $`\omega `$ mesons as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\rho ^0\pi ^0\gamma )=(84\pm 15)`$ KeV and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\omega \pi ^0\gamma )=(740\pm 80)`$ KeV. The measured decay widths  are $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\rho ^0\pi ^0\gamma )=(102\pm 26)`$ KeV and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\omega \pi ^0\gamma )=(717\pm 43)`$ KeV which roughly follow the SU(3) prediction for their ratio. Our results are in good agreement with the experimental values of these decay widths. We also note that the electromagnetic decays $`VP\gamma `$ of vector mesons in the flavour SU(3) sector was studied previously  by employing the method of QCD sum rules in the presence of the external electromagnetic field. Our results which are obtained by QCD sum rules utilizing three point correlation functions are consistent with the values obtained in that analysis and therefore supplements the study of these decays using QCD sum rules method.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank T. M. Aliev for helpful discussions during the course of our work.

Figure Captions:

Feynman Diagrams for the $`V\pi \gamma `$-vertex: a- bare loop diagram, b- d=3 operator corrections, c- d=5 operator corrections. The dotted lines denote gluons.

The coupling constant $`g_{\rho \pi \gamma }`$ as a function of the Borel parameter $`M^2`$ for different values of $`M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$.

The coupling constant $`g_{\omega \pi \gamma }`$ as a function of the Borel parameter $`M^2`$ for different values of $`M_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$.