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# HI and Galactic Structure

## 1. Introduction

Knowledge of the large scale structure of the Galaxy has been the single most important achievement of Galactic 21cm HI studies. The nature of Galactic rotation and the thickness of the disk were discussed in the second paper ever published on 21cm observations, mere months after the discovery (Muller & Oort 1951). The collected information is now vast. Major reviews by Burton (1988; 1992), and by Dickey & Lockman (1990), and the discussion in Binney & Merrifield (1998; hereafter BM98) have covered aspects of this topic with varying degrees of completeness. For this brief review I will narrow the focus by considering what was known of the Galaxy after the first 10 years of 21cm work and how this knowledge has been modified, refined, revised or rejected in the subsequent 40 years. The very center of the Galaxy is a topic of its own and will not be discussed. Although the general features of the Galactic system are now reasonably clear, we still have no consistent and satisfactory understanding of many fundamental aspects of the HI distribution. Only a fraction of the information has been extracted from existing HI surveys, and there remains before us the tantalizing possibility that with a single new insight, a new feature of the Galaxy might be pulled from the data.

## 2. What Oort Knew in 1961

In April 1961, Jan Oort attended a meeting in Princeton on the topic of the distribution and motion of interstellar matter in Galaxies, and contributed several papers to the proceedings (Oort 1961a, 1961b). The 21cm line had been detected ten years earlier (Ewen and Purcell 1951), but Oort had been thinking about radio spectroscopy for at least a decade before that. During the 1950s, Oort built telescopes in the Netherlands with students and colleagues, parallel work went on in Australia (e.g. Kerr, Hindman & Carpenter 1957) and in a burst of discovery the Galaxy was mapped. Seven years after the first detection of the 21cm line, the IAU had a new coordinate system.

By the Princeton meeting in 1961, the main elements of the picture were in place, derived from observations with an angular resolution of no better than half a degree and usually several times worse. The papers at the meeting are remarkably fresh in many ways, and illustrate the conceptions (and misconceptions) of the time. Here is what Oort knew then:

HI is strongly concentrated to a thin layer. In the inner Galaxy most HI lies in a layer having a FWHM $`220`$ pc with little change in this thickness between about $`0.3R_0`$ and $`0.7R_0`$. But outward from the Sun, at $`R>R_0`$, the layer thickens monotonically to the Galaxy’s edge.

The HI layer is not only thin, it is flat. In the inner Galaxy the mean deviation from a simple plane is less than 30 pc. However, beyond the solar circle the layer bends into a systematic m=1 warp whose mean distance from the plane can be several kpc, many times the layer’s thickness.

It rotates. Galactic HI is primarily in circular rotation, with noncircular components $`<10`$ km s-1 or $`<5\%`$ of the rotational velocity. The angular velocity of rotation increases toward the Galactic center. The rotational velocity is almost constant inward from $`R_0`$ to $`0.3R_0`$, but then rises to a peak at $`R0.05R_0`$.

The Galactic Center is in Sagittarius. Galactic rotation is approximately symmetric about the radio source Sgr A, but the nucleus itself contains many HI features which have large peculiar motions indicative of expansion, for example, the 3-kpc arm. There is evidence for outflow from the nucleus of $`1M_{}y^1`$.

There are some departures from circular rotation outside the nucleus. High latitude HI has systematic infall, often at large velocity. The rotation curve has small-scale structure, and the northern rotation curve deviates systematically from the southern curve.

HI shows the spiral structure of the Galaxy. But the northern and southern patterns do not match.

There is an HI halo. Considerable HI intensities are found 500 pc from the plane. These have no apparent connection with the known high-latitude continuum features.

These items will be reconsidered in light of current knowledge, but first it is useful to summarize what is now known about HI as a vehicle for learning about Galactic structure.

## 3.  Living with the Limitations: Essential Facts about Galactic HI

The activity of measuring Galactic HI spectra has gone on for fifty years, and a number of properties of the data relevant to their use for discerning Galactic structure are now evident. A more complete discussion of these issues is in Dickey & Lockman (1990; hereafter DL90); many have been known for some time (e.g. Kerr 1969).

Galactic HI is seen in all directions and at all velocities permitted by Galactic rotation given the size of the Galaxy.

The total $`N_{HI}`$ in any direction depends primarily on its Galactic latitude. We live in an edge-on system and most of the HI is piled up in the plane. Most structure visible in HI at the higher latitudes is likely the consequence of specific events in the life of the Galaxy.

The line brightness temperature does not change much with angular resolution. HI emission has a very steep spatial power spectrum $`P(k)k^\alpha `$ with $`\alpha <2`$ (e.g. Green 1993). HI is thus highly correlated from point to point, with most spatial power on the largest spatial scales. HI emission spectra in the Galactic plane change remarkably little as the angular resolution is increased from $`36^{}`$ to $`4^{}`$ (see Figure 3 of Bania & Lockman 1984).

The dynamic range in an HI emission spectrum is not large. To first order, most of the structure in brightness temperature across a spectrum, especially at low latitude, results from kinematic effects and thermodynamic structure (e.g. self-absorption). “Normal” emission features are highly blended, and efforts to isolate individual HI clouds in emission profiles are usually successful only for clouds which are atypical because of their location or velocity. For these reasons any quantity which depends on slight variations in $`T_b`$ at different directions, or at different velocities, is likely not to be well constrained.

At low latitudes the HI optical depth is $`1`$ at many velocities. Derivation of volume densities is thus uncertain, and quantities like the HI surface density over the Galaxy will also be uncertain because of the need for an opacity correction (Burton 1992; Dickey 1993).

Velocity crowding can be significant. Galactic rotation projected to the LSR often compresses a considerable distance into a small velocity interval. In the inner Galaxy objects separated by 1 kpc along the line of sight have radial velocities which typically differ by only 5 km s-1. In the outer Galaxy 1 kpc differences may project to $`<1`$ km s-1. Random and non-circular motions will cause systematic distortions in kinematically derived structures.

There are phase transitions in the ISM. In some locations HI is being lost through ionization or is recombining; in other locations it is lost to the formation of $`H_2`$ or regained through molecular dissociation. Tracing the Galaxy through observations of HI alone will surely lead to incomplete and probably misleading conclusions.

## 4.  1961 to 2001: Progress, Revisions, and One Dead End

### 4.1. Spiral Structure in HI

In February 1970, a “Spiral Workshop” was held at the University of Maryland to resolve some of the differences between the pictures that had emerged to that date. The workshop was attended by Bok, Burton, Kerr, Lin, Lindblad, Mezger, Shu, Weaver, Westerhout and other researchers active in the field (Simonson 1970; 1971).

Kerr discussed the HI arms at length, beginning by saying “…21 cm emission is the way to study the whole Galaxy…”, then, after presenting a map of spiral structure (Kerr & Westerhout 1965; Kerr 1969), he discussed a series of qualifications which progressively undermined whatever sense of confidence one might have had in that map. Acknowledging that “there is so much 21 cm emission that we’re confused by it”, and that “optical investigations tend to disagree with the 21 cm investigations in many ways”, Kerr thought that part of the trouble might be because “the apparent rotation curves are different on the two sides, in the first and fourth quadrants”, though the cure for this was perhaps worse than the disease: “the thing we’ve tended to do so far (quite incorrectly, of course) is to use two different rotation curves for the two sides of the Galaxy.” Even with this “fudge” (not the first or the last in this business, as we will see), the Kerr-Westerhout map does not look much like a spiral galaxy.

At the same meeting Burton showed that it was much easier to reproduce the observed structure in HI profiles with modest streaming motions (consistent with observations, and actually predicted by density-wave theory), than with large variations in the true HI density (Burton 1971, 1976). The converse statement though, is what doomed HI studies of spiral structure in the inner Galaxy: subtle velocity effects can mimic or mask large density differences. To be fair, this problem was known to the early researchers, but they must have hoped that the HI spiral arms would somehow shine through the uncertainties.

It is now generally accepted that evidence of spiral structure in inner Galaxy HI profiles is confused at best, and attempts to derive the spiral structure of the Galaxy from HI spectra have largely been abandoned. While HI can contribute to study of arms in the outer Galaxy, arms in the inner Galaxy seem better delineated in tracers which have a higher arm-interarm contrast, or are less ubiquitous, than HI. Molecular clouds are one alternative species, but these days anyone needing a model of our spiral structure usually turns to ionized gas, either HII regions or diffuse electrons from pulsar dispersion measures (Georgelin & Georgelin 1976; Taylor & Cordes 1993). Models of the large-scale morphology of the Galaxy are tested against the HI data rather than being derived from the data (e.g. Burton 1976; Englmaier & Gerhard 1999).

### 4.2. The Inner Rotation Curve and the Galactic Center

A triumph of early HI studies was in establishing the location of the Galactic center, whose position can be determined to within a degree or so in longitude from the kinematic symmetry of profile shapes (Oort & Rougoor 1960; Blitz 1994). The HI over a large area around the Galactic center, however, has complex kinematics, which for many years was misinterpreted as structure in the basic rotation curve.

At the Princeton meeting Oort (1961a) presented a Galactic rotation curve whose amplitude fell gently from the Sun toward the Galactic center, then rose abruptly to a narrow peak at $`R0.5`$ kpc before falling again. That rotation curve is quite consistent with current models from $`R_0`$ down to $`R1`$ kpc (e.g. Burton 1992; BM98), but the inner peak is now understood as an artifact of motions induced by a Galactic bar, motions which have about the same magnitude as circular rotation at 0.5 kpc $`R1`$ kpc. When the non-circular component is removed, the Galactic rotation curve looks similar to that of other systems and is in reasonable agreement with the stellar data (Liszt 1992; Burton & Liszt 1993). The rotation curve at $`R<R_0`$ is thus now fairly well determined, at least to within 10 km s-1 or so, which is the magnitude of motions ascribed to streaming and asymmetries (but see $`\mathrm{\S }5.7`$).

The “anomalous” HI features in the Galactic nucleus discussed in Oort’s (1961a) review grew steadily in number as more observations were made, until by 1977 there were nearly ten (Table 2 in Oort 1977). More were to follow. There were attempts to explain some of these, especially the 3-kpc arm, in terms of stable orbits rather than expulsion of gas (e.g. Shane 1972; Peters 1975), but these models fit only part of the data and also tended to predict HI features where none were observed. Finally, Burton and Liszt used new data and a full 3-d analysis to show that the kinematics and distribution of all the HI emission (and the molecules) in the inner $`1`$ kpc of the Galaxy plausibly arose from gas moving in closed elliptical orbits in a tilted, bar-like system (Burton & Liszt 1978, 1983; Liszt & Burton 1978, 1980, 1996). The HI features which Oort believed were ejecta from the nucleus, as well as much seemingly “normal” HI emission in this area, were revealed to be projections of the symmetric, tilted, elliptical disk. No net expansion or mass flux was needed. A decade later, the bar was observed in starlight at the location and orientation predicted from the HI kinematics (Blitz & Spergel 1991b; Blitz 1993).

Our current picture of the Galactic nucleus is much more satisfying (and far simpler) than the “patchwork of kinematically and morphologically diverse features” (Liszt & Burton 1980) that Oort thought was required. Though there remain many puzzles (see, e.g., BM98), and the region is quite complex, progress has been steady and is likely to continue as more elaborate models are developed and tested against the data (e.g. Fux 1999; Weiner & Sellwood 1999).

### 4.3. The Surface Density and Size of the Galaxy in HI

The full two-dimensional surface density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_H(R,\theta )`$, is unlikely to ever be known well because of non-circular motions and velocity crowding, but there is no fundamental reason why the more robust $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_H(R)`$ could not be determined with reasonable accuracy. The current state of knowledge, however, is disappointing though amusing. Consider the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_H(R)`$ curve given in Binney and Merrifield’s (BM98) excellent book as Figure 9.19, attributed to Dame (1993). It appears quite respectable: nearly flat over most of the Galaxy at $`4M_{}`$ pc-2 with an exponential decline past $`R=17`$ kpc. A look back at Dame’s paper, though, induces some doubt. His presentation of the same data has the following notes: “HI at $`R<R_0`$ \[is\] derived from midplane number densities given in Burton & Gordon (1978) and constant HI layer thickness of 220 pc (FWHM) given by Dickey & Lockman (1990); values have also been arbitrarily scaled by a factor of 2 to approximately match the value at $`R=R_{}`$ (see Liszt 1992).” The provenance of this curve does not instill confidence in its accuracy.

The situation takes an odder turn for the outer Galaxy, for Dame gives not one, but two possibilities for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_H(R>R_0)`$, both credited to Lockman (1988) and shown here in modified form as Figure 1. These two estimates were derived (using the old value of $`R_0=10`$ kpc) from identical HI data sets, but with different assumptions about the outer Galaxy rotation curve: the solid line is for a rotation curve which is flat at $`RR_0`$, while the dashed line adopts the curve of Kulkarni, Blitz & Heiles (1982) which rises linearly by a mere 14% from $`R_0`$ to $`2R_0`$ then is flat thereafter. Figure 1 was originally constructed to make the point that in the outer Galaxy small differences in the assumptions (specifically in $`|dV/dr|`$) propagate into large differences in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_H`$, but the size of the Galaxy in HI also depends on the shape of the rotation curve beyond $`R_0`$, as does the total HI mass, which changes by 20% between the two models.

The sensitivity of the surface density to the rotation curve was used by Knapp, Tremaine & Gunn (1978) to make inferences about the size of the HI disk and the form of the curve itself. They were able to limit the size because HI emission does not extend to the maximum velocity permitted by Galactic rotation. But the parameterization of the rotation curve that they adopted would not allow for the result given by the dashed line.

It has been by argued that the rotation curve is probably flat or slightly declining beyond the Sun (Binney & Dehnen 1998), but if $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_H(R)`$ is also to be flat or declining for all $`R>R_0`$, then an increase in the circular rotation velocity between $`R_0`$ and $`2R_0`$ seems required, exactly as a naive interpretation of the rotation curve data would suggest (Wouterloot et al. 1990; Merrifield 1992). While it seems certain that the vast majority of Galactic HI lies in the outer Galaxy at $`R>R_0`$, the actual amount out there is not so well known.

### 4.4. Scale Height and Mean z in the Inner Galaxy.

The high degree of flatness of the HI layer in the inner Galaxy was noted in the first surveys, and the HI plane was taken to be the best reference for a “Galactic plane” (Blaauw et al. 1960). But interestingly, although the HI layer at $`R<R_0`$ is thin and flat, it is not completely thin, and it is not completely flat: there is some residual waviness of the mean about the plane (Gum, Kerr, & Westerhout 1960). The deviation of the mean layer from $`z=0`$ is only a few tens of pc (Quiroga 1974), but the phenomenon is significant because the deviations are to some extent coherent, and are shared by every Population-I type species in the inner Galaxy, suggesting that the gravitational potential itself may be distorted (Lockman 1977; Spicker & Feitzinger 1986). There is as yet no explanation for the “corrugations”, as they are usually called, but they have been detected in other galaxies (Florido et al. 1991).

The scale height also has interesting structure. Oort (1961a) reported that it was approximately constant over much of the inner Galaxy, though somewhat smaller at small R and somewhat larger near the Sun. This has been a matter of theoretical concern, for the scale length of the stellar disk is only a few kpc, and unless supporting forces somehow compensate exactly for the change in the local gravity, the HI layer should thicken significantly from $`0.25R_0`$ to $`R_0`$ (see Ferrara 1993 for a discussion of this point, and an ingenious solution).

In the inner Galaxy the tangent points are unambiguous locations for measuring the thickness of the layer. Malhotra (1995) modeled the emission at the tangent points in the first and fourth quadrants with a single HI component and derived a scale height which is approximately constant between $`0.25R_0`$ and $`0.7R_0`$, then rises slightly approaching $`R_0`$. Although Malhotra ultimately interprets the data somewhat differently, her Figure 6 indicates that Oort’s understanding is still accurate.

The vertical structure of HI in the inner Galaxy has further interesting complexities. Figure 2 shows a velocity-latitude diagram for HI at longitude $`10^{}`$ (all v-b diagrams in this paper use data from the Leiden-Dwingeloo survey of Hartmann & Burton 1997). The tangent point here has $`R=0.17R_0`$, certain enough, but the velocity at which the tangent-point gas manifests itself depends on the rotation curve, the velocity dispersion, and the spatial arrangement of the HI. I have calculated the vertical FWHM of the HI emission at three velocities and the results are indicated by barred vertical lines at 180, 190 and 200 km s-1. At this tangent point, the FWHM is not very sensitive to the velocity at which it is measured, having a value of 120 pc at all three velocities (and note the “corrugation” of the HI upward from $`b=0^{}`$).

Figure 3 shows a similar v-b plot at longitude $`29^{}`$, where the tangent point is at $`R=0.48R_0`$. The FWHM is again calculated at three velocities, but here the scale height is very much greater in the line wings than in the brighter emission. This behavior is seen at many longitudes and shows that the Galaxy has an HI component with high velocity dispersion and high scale height which, at low latitudes, stands out only in the line wings (Lockman 1984). The high-dispersion component can be traced many hundreds of pc from the plane and is not encompassed by Malhotra’s (1995) single-component model. The gaseous “halo” discussed by Oort (1961b) has now been seen in many species, and in other galaxies, and it poses interesting problems (Lockman, Hobbs, & Shull 1986; Savage 1990; Sembach 1997; Ferrara 1993; Sancisi et al. 2001; Benjamin, this volume).

The multiple components of HI in the inner Galaxy are probably responsible for most differences in results between various studies of the HI scale height, for different methods of analysis can emphasize one component over another.

### 4.5. The Outer Galaxy: Warping and Flaring

There is considerable current interest in HI in the outer Galaxy, stimulated in part by studies of other galaxies and in part by the possibility of using HI as a tracer of dark matter. This brief discussion will not do justice to the current pace of research, especially to the extragalactic and theoretical work.

The Galactic warp is the least well-understood major Galactic structure. Whereas the flatness of the HI layer in the inner Galaxy was recognized as having “fundamental physical significance” (Blaauw et al. 1960) the shape of the warp may be a mere contingency. The description of the warp given by Oort (1961a) is still generally correct, only the scale has changed with use of newer rotation curves (Diplas & Savage 1991; Voskes & Burton 1999). A general review is in Burton (1992). The warping begins at about $`1.5R_0`$ and is seen in molecular gas as well as many species in UV absorption lines (e.g. Wouterloot et al. 1990; Savage, Sembach & Lu 1995). Emission in the 21cm line remains its best tracer. The conclusion that the Sun lies near the line of nodes of this $`m=1`$ warp is generally viewed as an unfortunate coincidence and not as a misinterpretation of something else (e.g. Kuijken & Tremaine 1994).

The dramatic flaring of the HI layer at $`R>R_0`$, in contrast to the more ambiguous run of scale-height with R in the inner Galaxy, greatly simplifies our understanding of it. As the surface density of the stellar disk decreases in the outer Galaxy, the gas layer should puff up unless its means of support also decreases. This property of HI has in fact been used to measure the disposition of dark matter in the outer Galaxy by Olling & Merrifield (2000), although in their application they assumed total turbulent support for the HI layer, an assumption which has been roundly criticized (Merrifield 1993) when applied to the solar neighborhood (Lockman & Gehman 1991).

The difficulties in a traditional kinematic analysis, and the potential importance of understanding the flaring and warp, led Merrifield (1992) to appeal to geometry and symmetry and derive the scale height and rotation curve simultaneously from the HI data. This approach has its own set of biases and may be susceptible to any ellipticity in the disk, but offers an independent constraint on Galactic parameters (Kuijken & Tremaine 1994).

Warps are now known to be extremely common among galaxies whose HI extends past the optical disk (Briggs 1990; Kuijken & Garcia-Ruiz 2001). There is a tight correlation of HI surface density with the surface density of dark matter implied from the rotation curve (Sancisi 1996; Hoekstra, van Albada, & Sancisi 2001), which has prompted suggestions that the HI is somehow coupled to the dark matter, either materially (Pfenniger, Combes & Martinet 1994) or epistemologically (e.g. Freeman 2001). This area of research is a rare one where Galactic and extragalactic studies are congruent. The region of the warp may be a zone of transition between the disk and the halo; between gas in near-circular orbits, and high-velocity clouds.

### 4.6.  Anomalous Velocity HI – High-Velocity Clouds

The sky is falling: the low-velocity HI at the Galactic poles is descending gently but systematically at a few km s-1, illustrated by Weaver (1974) in his marvelous Figure 9. There is also intermediate velocity HI falling toward the plane at about $`50`$ km s-1 over a large part of the northern sky (e.g. Kuntz & Danly 1996). Both phenomena may be local, related to the bubble of hot gas around the Sun and the relative paucity of HI at high latitude (DL90; Cox & Reynolds 1987). More generally, recent HI surveys show that almost 40% of the sky is covered with anomalous-velocity HI emission ($`|V_{LSR}|100`$ km s-1), whose velocity is unlikely to arise solely from Galactic rotation (Lockman et al. 2002). For many years high-velocity clouds were detectable only in HI. They are a source of interest, confusion and dispute. The topic is reviewed by Wakker & van Woerden (1997) and by Putman in this volume, so I will comment only on the possible connection between the high-velocity gas and Galactic structure.

If the Galactic warp extends far enough from the plane, could it be mistaken for a high-velocity cloud? In the v-b plot of Figure 4, distance from the Sun (and from the Galactic center) increases to the left. The HI contours begin to warp away from $`b=0^{}`$ around $`40`$ km s-1, and by $`125`$ km s-1 (or $`R=20`$ kpc for a flat rotation curve and $`R_0=8.5`$ kpc) the centroid is nearly five degrees above the plane at an implied $`z=1.5`$ kpc. The warp then shoots up quite steeply in faint emission at more negative velocity, and appears to be trying to connect up with several high-velocity clouds belonging to Complex C. The fact that the assuredly “Galactic” HI emission at latitudes $`<20^{}`$ seems to continue toward the high-velocity clouds lying at the same velocity, has led to suggestions that the warp and the high-velocity phenomena are the same, or at least related, though at the sensitivity level of the Leiden-Dwingeloo survey there is no connecting emission. One subclass of high-velocity clouds is generally accepted to be an extension of one of the outer arms of the Galaxy (e.g. Habing, 1966; Haud 1992), but the link between the others and the Galactic disk is more obscure and in many cases implausible.

If most of the positive-velocity high-velocity complexes at $`\mathrm{}>180^{}`$ belong to a leading arm of the Magellanic Stream (Putman & Gibson 1999; Sembach et al. 2001), then the vast majority of the high-velocity HI not associated with the Magellanic Stream has a negative velocity, and Oort’s belief that high-velocity clouds are primarily infalling with respect to the LSR remains correct.

Some of the high-velocity complexes have distances which place them only a few kpc away and thus in the Galaxy’s halo (van Woerden et al. 1999). They must give the Galaxy a very ragged edge. The environment around the Milky Way may be not too different from that of other interacting systems where Galactic disks swim in a sea of gaseous debris (e.g. Gibson et al. 2001).

### 4.7.  Galactic Asymmetries

Gas in a circular orbit around the Galactic center will have a velocity $`V_{LSR}=R_0sin(\mathrm{})cos(b)[\mathrm{\Omega }(R)\mathrm{\Omega }_0]`$. Thus, in the inner Galactic plane, the terminal velocity $`V_t(\mathrm{}^{}<90{}_{}{}^{})`$ should be of equal magnitude but opposite sign to the $`V_t`$ at the symmetric position $`\mathrm{}^{}`$, because in both directions it arises from the same galactocentric radius $`R=R_0sin(\mathrm{})`$. It was known in 1961 that the HI deviates from this symmetry at the level of $`\pm 10`$ km s-1, and that the deviations have some large-scale coherence. Simple fixes to restore the symmetry by applying a radial motion to the LSR (Kerr 1962) do not solve the problem completely (e.g. Kerr 1969; Lockman 1988).

If there is an outer edge to the HI disk which occurs at an approximately constant $`R_{max}`$ around the Galaxy, there should be another large-scale symmetry in the velocity structure of one wing of all HI profiles, proportional to $`sin(\mathrm{})`$. The true “outer edge” of Galactic HI can be fairly irregular without distorting the $`sin(\mathrm{})`$ structure because velocity crowding is so severe at large $`R`$ that details a few kpc in size are not discernible. But again, the data show clear, systematic deviations from the expected behavior (Blitz & Spergel 1991a).

Asymmetries in the inner Galaxy are probably a manifestation of the bar or other components of the Galactic potential, but the situation at the Galaxy’s edge is less certain. The observations may indicate a general asymmetry of the Galactic potential, or give proof that the HI disk is not in equilibrium or is extremely lopsided (Blitz & Spergel 1991a; Kuijken & Tremaine 1994).

## 5.  What Next?

### 5.1. More, Better, HI data

High angular resolution is not always necessary to resolve large-scale Galactic features, which is why most of what Oort knew in 1961 is still basically correct. As Kerr noted “in more recent years, new surveys with higher resolving power at Parkes and Green Bank have yielded an enormous amount of new information … but have not yet greatly improved the understanding of the basic problems” (Kerr 1969). But consider: one degree corresponds to about 150 pc at the Galactic Center, which gives a few, but only a few, independent points across the HI layer at most locations in the inner Galaxy, and resolves the warping, flaring outer Galaxy HI layer only at $`90{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{}270^{}`$. A 100-meter antenna has a resolution of $`10^{}`$, or 25 pc at the Galactic Center, which is sufficient to resolve the disk but inadequate for individual clouds or the complicated structures in the Galactic nucleus. The angular resolution of $`<1^{}`$ attained by the synthesis surveys presented elsewhere in this book allows study of structure in the warp in the first and fourth quadrants, though any single spectrum at this resolution may be dominated by small clouds in self-absorption and not by large-scale features. But the current synthesis surveys do not have the sensitivity to detect most halo gas, or most high-velocity clouds, or even to detect the disk in some high-latitude directions. There will be a continued need for different data sets, with different resolution and sensitivity, for different investigations.

A list of major HI emission surveys is given in Burton (1992) and Binney & Merrifield (BM98), to which can be added the southern counterpart to the Leiden-Dwingeloo survey (Arnal et al. 2000), the 140 Foot Telescope survey of the northern Galactic Plane (Lockman & Murphy in preparation), the HIPASS, HIJASS, CGPS, SGPS, VGPS, and IGPS discussed elsewhere in this volume.

### 5.2. More Computing, More Ideas

The data from all major HI surveys can now be stored and manipulated by relatively inexpensive computers – the type accessible to most astronomers, indeed, to most people with any kind of education. Galactic HI studies have, in principle, become democratized, and those willing to make the effort can test their ideas against the data, and possibly even make a discovery, all in the comfort of their high school classroom, home, or pub. Though all the easy questions have already been asked, the contrast with 1961 could not be more pronounced.

One area where this increase in computing power may pay off is in revealing HI features that cross longitude, latitude and velocity, and do not appear coherent in the traditional projections. Advanced visualization software may remove their obscurity.

### 5.3. Information from Other Species

The ability of the 21cm line to “see through the dust”, which made it of such interest to Oort, is now shared by many other lines in the radio (e.g., Dame, Hartmann, & Thaddeus 2001; Roshi & Anantharamaiah 2001). Fifteen years after Oort’s review, major efforts were underway to compare HI with ionized and molecular gas (Burton 1976). These days, observations in the optical and UV, though limited to directions of moderate extinction, contribute increasingly to Galactic structure studies. One recent, striking, result is the detection of the Galactic warp in UV absorption lines toward a distant quasar (Savage, Sembach, & Lu 1995). The data suggest that the metallicity at the Galaxy’s edge falls to 0.1 solar, which is the metallicity of some high-velocity clouds. A similar study in another direction shows that the abundances in a high-velocity cloud differ from those in an intermediate-velocity cloud, implying that the two clouds have very different histories (Richter et al. 2001). Current $`H\alpha `$ telescopes have the resolution in angle and velocity of the early HI surveys (Reynolds, Sterling, & Haffner 2001) and are providing information on the relationship between HI and H+ above the disk (Reynolds et al. 1995).

These other species may provide critical information to HI studies. A measurement of the HI scale height, for example, will be profoundly misleading if some fraction of the clouds are ionized at high $`|z|`$, neutral near the plane, but turn molecular at very low $`|z|`$, yet that behavior is quite possible in environments where the time scale for a phase transition is smaller than the dynamical time (Combes & Becquaert 1997). Another example is high-velocity clouds, which have long been the province of 21cm studies alone. The discovery of a cloud which is predominantly ionized (Sembach et al. 1999) shows that even for high-velocity clouds, HI may be giving us just the tip of the iceberg.

### 5.4. HI in Absorption

HI emission measurements have made enormous contributions to our understanding of the Galaxy, and it is safe to predict that they will still be important in 50 years, for 21cm emission comes from varied environments and can trace subtle phenomena in all directions. HI absorption measurements have had a more limited impact. The 21cm line can be seen in absorption against bright continuum sources (e.g. Radhakrishnan et al. 1972; Garwood & Dickey 1989), and, sometimes, in self-absorption against background HI emission (e.g. Knapp 1974; Baker & Burton 1979). Self-absorption has attracted recent attention because the high-resolution CGPS has shown that the sky is peppered with cool clouds (Gibson et al. 2000; see also the papers in this volume), but self-absorption requires such special geometry that it seems unlikely that it will yield statistically unbiased information on Galactic structure. Absorption against radio continuum sources, however, is another story.

The sensitivity of absorption surveys is discussed in DL90. There are hundreds of Galactic HII regions which are bright-enough and compact-enough to yield a good HI absorption spectrum in an hour with existing instruments. Their velocities can be derived from recombination lines, and for some, accurate distances can be determined from astrometric observations of associated OH or H2O masers. Pulsars, supernova remnants and some stars can also serve as targets. Extragalactic continuum sources can be used for measurement of the HI absorption through the entire disk of the Galaxy, analogous to emission measurements.

The current synthesis surveys are beginning to give a sense of what might be possible in mapping the cool HI throughout the Galaxy. It is amusing to consider that, with enough data, it may even be profitable to resume the old search for the HI spiral arms of the Galaxy, only this time not in emission, but in absorption!

## References

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text:
# 1 The Model

## 1 The Model

Before we describe the modifications of the saturation model, we briefly review the main features of its original formulation. Within the dipole formulation of the $`\gamma ^{}p`$ scattering,

$$\sigma _{T,L}^{\gamma ^{}p}(x,Q^2)=d^2r𝑑z\psi _{T,L}^{}(Q,r,z)\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)\psi _{T,L}(Q,r,z),$$
(1)
where $`T,L`$ denotes the virtual photon polarisation, the dipole cross section was proposed to have the form

$$\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)=\sigma _0\left\{1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r^2}{4R_0^2(x)}\right)\right\},$$
(2)
where $`R_0(x)`$ is the saturation scale which decreases when $`x0`$,

$$R_0^2(x)=\frac{1}{\text{GeV}^2}\left(\frac{x}{x_0}\right)^\lambda .$$
(3)
In order to be able to study the formal photoproduction limit, the Bjorken variable $`x=x_B`$ was modified to be

$$x=x_B\left(1+\frac{4m_q^2}{Q^2}\right)=\frac{Q^2+4m_q^2}{W^2},$$
(4)
where $`m_q`$ is an effective quark mass, and $`W^2`$ denotes the $`\gamma ^{}p`$ center-of-mass energy squared. The parameters of the model, $`\sigma _0=23\mathrm{mb}`$, $`\lambda =0.29`$ and $`x_0=310^4`$ (for the assumed quark mass $`m_q=140\text{MeV}`$) were found from a fit to small-$`x`$ data . For alternative forms of the dipole cross section parameterisation see .

As it is well known , in the small-$`r`$ region the dipole cross section is related to the gluon density

$$\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)\frac{\pi ^2}{3}r^2\alpha _sxg(x,\mu ^2).$$
(5)
where the scale $`\mu ^2`$ for small $`r`$ behaves as $`C/r^2`$. Equation (5) is valid in the double logarithmic approximation in which the constant $`C`$ is not determined. In the saturation model, eq. (2), we find for small $`r2R_0(x)`$

$$\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)\frac{\sigma _0r^2}{4R_0^2(x)},$$
(6)
i.e., the gluon density is modelled as:

$$xg(x,\mu ^2)=\frac{3}{4\pi ^2\alpha _s}\frac{\sigma _0}{R_0^2(x)}.$$
(7)
For fixed $`\alpha _s`$ this gluon density is clearly scale independent, which contradicts the QCD DGLAP evolution. Thus, in order to correctly take into account the scale dependence as given by the DGLAP evolution equations we have to modify the small-$`r`$ behaviour of the dipole cross section by incorporating the properly evolved gluon density. At the same time, we wish to preserve the idea of saturation, which reflects unitarity, and to keep unaltered the large-$`r`$ behaviour of the dipole cross section which determines the diffractive cross section.

Therefore, we propose the following modification of the model (2)

$$\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)=\sigma _0\left\{1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\pi ^2r^2\alpha _s(\mu ^2)xg(x,\mu ^2)}{3\sigma _0}\right)\right\},$$
(8)
where the scale $`\mu ^2`$ is assumed to have the form

$$\mu ^2=\frac{C}{r^2}+\mu _0^2.$$
(9)
The parameters $`C`$ and $`\mu _0^2`$ will be determined from a fit to DIS data. In a first approximation, $`g(x,\mu ^2)`$ is evolved with the leading order DGLAP evolution equation for the gluon density. In the spirit of the small-$`x`$ limit, we neglect quarks in the evolution equations. We assume the following gluon density at the initial scale $`Q_0^2=1\text{GeV}^2`$:

$$xg(x,Q_0^2)=A_gx^{\lambda _g}(1x)^{5.6},$$
(10)
where $`A_g`$ and $`\lambda _g`$ are parameters to be determined from a fit to data. The exponent $`5.6`$, determining the large $`x`$ behaviour, is motivated by one of the versions of the MRST parameterisation  of the gluon density.

For small $`r`$, the exponential in (8) can be expanded in powers of its argument, and the relation (5), with the running $`\alpha _s=\alpha _s(\mu ^2)`$, is found. In contrast to the original dipole cross section, the rise in $`1/x`$ now has become $`r`$-dependent. When inserting $`\widehat{\sigma }`$ into (1) and convoluting with the photon wave function, the integrand peaks near $`r2/Q`$ for large $`Q^2`$, and the argument of the gluon density turns into $`\mu ^2Q^2`$. Consequently, with increasing $`Q^2`$, DGLAP evolution will strengthen the rise in $`1/x`$, whereas in the original saturation model the power of $`1/x`$ had been constant. For sufficiently large $`r`$, the scale $`\mu ^2`$ is frozen at the value $`\mu _0^2`$. This prevents the effective scale of the gluon density from becoming unreasonably small. The saturation value of the dipole cross section is $`\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)\sigma _0`$, as in the original model (2). The transition from the small to the large $`r`$ region depends on $`x`$, but in detail it will be different from the original model. This will be discussed in detail in the section presenting numerical results.

## 2 Momentum space formulation

Although in this letter we will restrict ourselves to the total (and later on to the diffractive) cross section, it is instructive to rephrase these features in momentum space. In a future step, we intend to study the effects of saturation in more exclusive final states, and the translation of our dipole cross section into momentum space may serve as a first step into this direction. For this purpose let us start with the $`k_T`$-fatorization formula  for the $`\gamma ^{}p`$ cross section, e.g for the transversely polarised photon ,

$$\sigma _T^{\gamma p}=\frac{\alpha _{em}}{\pi }\underset{f}{}e_f^2_0^1𝑑z[z^2+(1z)^2]d^2𝐤\frac{d^2𝐥}{l^4}\alpha _sf(x,l^2)\left\{\frac{𝐤}{𝐤^2+\overline{Q}^2}\frac{𝐤+𝐥}{(𝐤+𝐥)^2+\overline{Q}^2}\right\}^2,$$
(11)
where $`f(x,l^2)`$ is the gluon amplitude describing an interaction of the $`q\overline{q}`$ pair with the proton, $`𝐥`$ is the transverse momentum of the gluon coupled to the quark pair and $`\overline{Q}^2=z(1z)Q^2`$. Using the relation

$$\frac{𝐤}{𝐤^2+\overline{Q}^2}=i\overline{Q}\frac{d^2𝐫}{2\pi }e^{i𝐤𝐫}\frac{𝐫}{r}K_1(\overline{Q}r),$$
(12)
the following formula is found

$`\sigma _T^{\gamma p}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3\alpha _{em}}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{f}{}}e_f^2{\displaystyle _0^1}𝑑z[z^2+(1z)^2]\overline{Q}^2{\displaystyle d^2𝐫d^2𝐫^{}\frac{𝐫𝐫^{}}{rr^{}}K_1(\overline{Q}r)K_1(\overline{Q}r^{})}`$ (13)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d^2𝐤}{(2\pi )^2}e^{i𝐤(𝐫𝐫^{})}D(𝐫,𝐫^{})}`$
where

$$D(𝐫,𝐫^{})=\frac{2\pi }{3}\frac{d^2𝐥}{l^4}\alpha _sf(x,l^2)(1e^{i𝐥𝐫})(1e^{i𝐥𝐫^{}}).$$
(14)
If the argument of the strong coupling $`\alpha _s`$ and the variable $`x`$ in the gluon amplitude in $`D(𝐫,𝐫^{})`$ do not depend on the quark transverse momenta $`𝐤`$, the integration over $`𝐤`$ in eq. (13) gives the delta function $`\delta ^2(𝐫𝐫^{})`$ which reflects the conservation of a dipole transverse size vector $`𝐫`$ during the collision. In this case the dipole formula (1) is obtained with the following identification of the dipole cross section

$$\widehat{\sigma }(x,𝐫)=\frac{2\pi }{3}\frac{d^2𝐥}{l^4}\alpha _sf(x,l^2)(1e^{i𝐥𝐫})(1e^{i𝐥𝐫}).$$
(15)
Going beyond the leading $`\mathrm{log}(1/x)`$ approximation in which eq. (11) was derived, e.g. by taking into account the exact gluon kinematics  or considering a quark virtuality $`𝐤^2+\overline{Q}^2`$ as an argument of the running coupling $`\alpha _s`$, we find that $`𝐫`$ is no longer conserved during the scattering process, and the simple relation (15) ceases to exist. As a result, the $`k_T`$-factorization formula (11) can no longer be written in the form (1), and the simple dipole picture fails. We want to avoid this situation, thus we assume that the argument of $`\alpha _s`$ is given by the gluon momentum $`𝐥^2`$ and $`x=x_{Bj}`$. Since the integration in (15) includes also small momenta, the modelling of the infrared behaviour of $`\alpha _s`$ cannot be avoided. However, we will hide this fact by analysing the combined quantity $`\alpha _sf(x,l^2)`$.

From the requirement that in the double logarithmic limit (DLL) formula (11) should be consistent with the DLL of the DGLAP formalism one can derive a relation between the gluon amplitude $`f(x,l^2)`$ and the conventional gluon distribution $`xg(x,Q^2)`$. Starting from eq. (11), using the relation $`F_T=Q^2/(4\pi ^2\alpha _{em})\sigma _T^{\gamma ^{}p}`$ and imposing the strong ordering condition: $`𝐥^2𝐤^2Q^2`$, one arrives at

$$\frac{F_T(x,Q^2)}{\mathrm{log}Q^2}=\frac{1}{3\pi }\underset{f}{}e_f^2^{Q^2}\frac{d^2𝐥}{\pi l^2}\alpha _sf(x,l^2).$$
(16)
By comparison with an analogous formula obtained in the DLL of the DGLAP evolution equations, one finds the following relation at large $`Q^2`$

$$\alpha _s(Q^2)xg(x,Q^2)=^{Q^2}\frac{d^2𝐥}{\pi l^2}\alpha _sf(x,l^2).$$
(17)
In the model (8) we go beyond the $`k_T`$-factorization formula (11) where $`f(x,l^2)`$ represent a two gluon amplitude. In the region of small $`l^2`$, the relation (17) between $`f(x,l^2)`$ and the gluon density no longer holds, and $`f(x,l^2)`$ is defined through relation (15) where for the l.h.s we use our model (8). In general, provided the dipole cross section has a finite limit: $`lim_r\mathrm{}\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)=\widehat{\sigma }_{\mathrm{}}(x)`$, the equation (15) can be inverted with the help of the following relation:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _sf(x,l^2)}{l^4}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2𝐫}{(2\pi )^2}\mathrm{exp}\{i𝐥𝐫\}\left\{\widehat{\sigma }_{\mathrm{}}(x)\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)\right\}}=`$ (18)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{8\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑rrJ_0(lr)\left\{\widehat{\sigma }_{\mathrm{}}(x)\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)\right\}.`$
In the original dipole model we find :

$$\alpha _sf(x,l^2)=\frac{3\sigma _0}{4\pi ^2}R_0^2(x)l^4\mathrm{exp}\{R_0^2(x)l^2\}.$$
(19)
For the modified dipole cross section, this inversion has to be done numerically. DGLAP evolution will affect mainly the large-$`l`$ behaviour while at small $`l`$ our modification should be less severe. The most interesting question to be addressed below concerns the transition region: to what extent does our modification affect the region of moderate momenta, i.e. could one ‘see’ saturation in diffractive final states ?

## 3 Numerical results

Let us now turn to numerical results. We performed global fits to the DIS data with $`x<0.01`$ in the range of $`Q^2`$ between $`0.1`$ and $`500\text{GeV}^2`$. For H1 and ZEUS HERA experiments the new 1996-1997 data sets were used . In addition to the HERA data also the data of the E665 experiment  were used. The statistical and systematic errors were added in quadrature. The number of degrees of freedom, $`N_{df}`$, was around 330.

The new data sets are considerably more precise (with much smaller statistical and systematic errors) then the ones used in the original analysis . As a preparatory step, we applied the original model (2), using the parameter values of the original fit, to the new data and obtained rather high value of $`\chi ^2/N_{df}3`$ (for the old data, the corresponding value was $`\chi ^2/N_{df}=1.18`$). Next, we let the new data to determine their own values of the parameters of the original model, $`\sigma _0`$, $`\lambda `$ and $`x_0`$ in eq. (2). This led to an improvement of the fit, $`\chi ^2/N_{df}2.2`$. Nevertheless, this relatively poor agreement indicates that the original model is doing not so well with the new data, especially for large values of $`Q^2`$. As a first step for the improvement, we modify the dipole cross section at small values of $`r`$ by including QCD DGLAP evolution, as given in eq. (8).

In the modified saturation model, there are five parameters to be determined: $`\sigma _0`$, $`C`$, $`\mu _0^2`$, $`A_g`$ and $`\lambda _g`$ from eqs. (8, 9, 10). We use the leading order DGLAP evolution equation for the gluon density, and we put $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}=200\text{MeV}`$ in $`\alpha _s`$ and set the number of active flavours $`N_f=3`$. Thus, although the evolution equation for the gluon is decoupled from the quarks, their presence is encoded in the assumed value of $`N_f`$.

We performed first the fit leaving all five parameters free and assumed the value of the light quark mass $`m_q=140\text{MeV}`$, as in the original formulation . A good quality fit was obtained with $`\chi ^2/N_{df}=1.05`$. The found value of the dipole cross section $`\sigma _0=27.4\text{mb}`$, however, was higher than the saturation model value, $`\sigma _0=23\text{mb}`$. Also, the corresponding value of the photoproduction cross section ($`\sigma ^{\gamma p}=204\text{mb}`$) was significantly higher than the measured value $`174\pm 1(st)\pm 13(sys)\text{mb}`$ at $`W=209\text{GeV}`$ . Thus we decided to decrease $`\sigma _0`$ and fixed it to the saturation model value $`23\text{mb}`$. This value is also advantageous for the description of the inclusive DIS diffractive cross section which is more sensitive to large dipole sizes, i.e., to the saturation region, than the total $`\gamma ^{}p`$ cross section . The resulting parameters in such fit are presented in Table 1 (Fit 1). The description is slightly worse than that described above, but both the photoproduction cross section ($`\sigma ^{\gamma p}=189\text{mb}`$) and the diffractive cross section are properly described. This is because we modified only the small dipole size part of the dipole cross section (2), without affecting the saturation part. The found gluon density gives $`39\%`$ of the total proton momentum carried by gluons resolved at the initial scale $`Q_0^2=1\text{GeV}^2`$.

The results of Fit 1 are compared to the data on $`F_2`$ in Fig. 1 for $`Q^2<1\text{GeV}^2`$ and in Fig. 2 for large $`Q^2`$ points. In all presented plots, the solid lines refer to the results obtained with the DGLAP improved model (8) and the dashed lines correspond to the saturation model (2) with the original parameters from . We see that the DGLAP evolution significantly improves agreement with the data at large $`Q^2`$ while at small $`Q^2`$ the results are practically the same. This effect is summarised in Fig. 3 where the effective slopes $`\lambda (Q^2)`$, obtained from the parameterisation of $`F_2`$ at small $`x`$: $`F_2x^{\lambda (Q^2)}`$, are plotted. Thus, the DGLAP modification of the dipole cross section for small $`r`$ is crucial for much better agreement with the data. The same effective slopes characterise the energy dependence of the $`\gamma ^{}p`$ cross section: $`\sigma ^{\gamma ^{}p}(W^2)^{\lambda (Q^2)}`$. The change from a soft dependence at small $`Q^2`$ to a hard one for large $`Q^2`$ is shown in Fig. 4. In Fig. 5 we show another aspect of the transition of $`F_2`$ to low $`Q^2`$ values, namely the emergence of the behaviour: $`F_2Q^2`$ approached in the limit $`Q^20`$ and $`y=W^2/s`$ fixed. The class of the saturation models described here nicely reproduce this behaviour, see recent Ref.  for more details on this transition.

In a second step of our investigations we relax our requirement of staying in the low-$`Q^2`$ region as close as possible to the original model. In particular, we allow the quarks in the $`q\overline{q}`$ dipole to become massless. Thus we set $`m_q=0`$ in the wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{T,L}`$ and in the kinematic relation (4). In the original model, the quark mass was introduced as an effective parameter for modelling the large-$`r`$ behaviour of the photon wave function. The non-zero quark mass allows to study the photoproduction limit of our model after the modification (4) of the Bjorken-$`x`$ in the dipole cross section, therefore, setting this parameter to zero eliminates this possibility. It allows, however, for a better description of the current data. We also fix the minimal value $`\mu _0^2`$ of the scale $`\mu ^2`$ in eq. (8) to $`1\text{GeV}^2`$ in the fits in order to avoid negative gluon density below the input scale $`Q_0^2=1\text{GeV}^2`$ for the gluon evolution111The valence-like gluon density preferred in the massless fit, as described in the text, becomes negative below the input scale due to backward evolution. In this case the dipole cross section (8) does not saturate at large $`r`$.. Since the parameters $`\sigma _0`$ and $`\lambda _g`$ are strongly correlated, we have performed a systematic search of the best $`\chi ^2`$ on the grid of fixed $`(\sigma _0`$, $`\lambda _g)`$. In each case, the remaining parameters, $`A_g`$ and $`c`$, were fitted. In this way we found two local minima for $`\chi ^2`$, shown in Fig. 6, for positive value of $`\lambda _g`$ in eq. (10) leading to strongly rising gluon density, and for negative value of $`\lambda _g`$, corresponding to valence-like initial gluon. The latter scenario gives considerable better description (with $`\chi ^2/N_{df}=0.97`$) than the first one (with $`\chi ^2/N_{df}=1.13`$). In the final analysis, after a quantitative estimation of the position of the best fit in the parameter space using the grid method, we allow $`\sigma _0`$ and $`\lambda _g`$ to be fitted together with $`A_g`$ and $`c`$. The values of these parameters for the best fit are given in Table 1 (Fit 2). The corresponding value of the gluon momentum at the input scale equals $`84\%`$. The effective slope $`\lambda (Q^2)`$ from the Fit 2 parameterisation is shown as the dotted line in Fig. 3. As expected, slight differences between the two fit scenarios only appear for small values of $`Q^2`$, below $`1\text{GeV}^2`$.

It is interesting to compare the results of the Fit 1 and Fit 2 since they lead to a different picture of the dynamics of the $`\gamma ^{}p`$ interaction. In Fit 1, the initial gluon density, $`xg(x,Q_0^2)`$, quickly rises with $`1/x`$, whereas in Fit 2 it even decreases with rising $`1/x`$. Therefore, in Fit 1 the rise of the cross section with the energy is mainly due to the intrinsic properties of the initial gluon density, with only slight corrections being due to the evolution effects at high $`Q^2`$ values, and considerable damping effects resulting from saturation at low $`Q^2`$. In Fit 2, the evolution effects are very strong (note the value of the parameter $`C`$, which is much higher then in Fit 1). The small-$`x`$ rise of the cross section is due solely to the DGLAP evolution effects with some corrections coming from saturation.

Further insight into the physical picture lying behind the fits can be gained by a closer look at $`r`$-dependence of the dipole cross section $`\widehat{\sigma }(x,r)`$, and a momentum dependence of the related gluon amplitude, $`f(x,l^2)`$. In the first row of Fig. 7 we show the dipole cross section for the two fits. As we have already discussed, for Fit 1 the DGLAP modification (solid lines) affects mostly the region of moderately small $`r`$ ($`<1\text{GeV}^1`$). In Fit 2 both the small and large $`r`$ regions are affected. In particular, the structure close to the saturation region is different from that in the saturation model (2) (dashed lines). The differences between the models are particular visible if we turn to momentum space and compute the gluon amplitude $`\alpha _sf(x,l^2)`$ for different values of $`x`$, using relation (18). The results are shown in the second row of Fig. 7, where the full lines denote the gluon amplitude from the DGLAP improved model and the dashed lines correspond to the saturation model (2). The small $`r`$ region of the dipole cross section corresponds to the large $`l^2`$ region in the gluon amplitude. The dipole cross section from Fit 1 is translated into a gluon amplitude with a double-bump structure. Notice that the second bump results from the DGLAP modification of the small-$`r`$ part of the dipole cross section. In Fit 2, however, the second bump disappears and the gluon amplitude is similar but significantly broader than the one corresponding to the saturation model. Although in Fig. 7 the various gluon amplitudes are clearly distinct, after convolution with the impact factors and turning to the $`\gamma ^{}p`$ cross sections, these differences are becoming much less visible. It is natural to expect, that some of these differences should become visible in more exclusive final states. As a first example, one might think of DIS diffraction. The inclusive diffractive process, however, is sensitive to the region of small $`l^2`$ or large $`r`$ and, therefore, has only limited value in distinguishing between the two fit solutions. On the other hand, other physics processes like jet, charm and bottom production should be more sensitive to the behaviour of the unintegrated gluon density at large gluon momenta $`l^2`$.

Looking at Fig. 7 notice that starting from certain values of $`l^2`$, the gluon amplitudes become negative. In order to understand this let us differentiate the relation (17) with respect to the large scale $`\mu ^2`$,

$$\alpha _sf(x,\mu ^2)\frac{}{\mathrm{ln}\mu ^2}\left\{\alpha _s(\mu ^2)xg(x,\mu ^2)\right\}=\alpha _s(\mu ^2)\left\{\frac{xg(x,\mu ^2)}{\mathrm{ln}\mu ^2}\frac{xg(x,\mu ^2)}{\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)}\right\}.$$
(20)
The quantity in the curly brackets in the last equality can become negative, which is shown in the bottom row of Fig. 7 by plotting the r.h.s of the above equation (dashed lines). In the shown range of $`l^2`$, eq. (20) is especially well satisfied for the parameters from Fit 2. For Fit 1 the equality is reached for much larger (not shown) values of $`l^2=\mu ^2`$.

In ref.  the critical line in the $`(x,Q^2)`$ plane was defined which marks the transition to the saturation region where a new behaviour of the structure function, $`F_2Q^2`$, emerges. Near this line, the characteristic size of the $`q\overline{q}`$ dipole, $`\overline{r}2/Q`$, equals the saturation radius $`R_0(x)`$, see section 1. In this case the argument of the exponent in eq. (2) equals one,

$$Q^2R_0^2(x)=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}$$
(21)
and $`\widehat{\sigma }(x,\overline{r})\sigma _0`$. We adopt the same criterion for the critical line in the DGLAP improved saturation model (8). Thus, we have the following condition

$$\frac{4\pi ^2}{3\sigma _0Q^2}\alpha _s(\mu ^2)xg(x,\mu ^2)=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1},$$
(22)
where $`\mu ^2=CQ^2/4+\mu _0^2`$. Eq. (22) is an implicit equation for the critical line $`Q^2=Q_s^2(x)`$, shown in Fig. 8 for the two fits. As expected, for FIT 1 the found critical line is not different from that defined in the original saturation model (dashed line) and the transition region stays around $`1\text{GeV}^2`$ in the HERA kinematics (lower band). For FIT 2 the critical line is situated at lower values of $`Q^2`$ (around $`0.5\text{GeV}^2`$). It is interesting to note that both fits predict that in the THERA kinematic range (upper band) the saturation region lies at $`Q^22\text{GeV}^2`$, which puts the perturbative QCD description of saturation effects on more solid ground.

## 4 Diffraction

One of the main advantages of dipole models is their straightforward description of diffractive processes. The generalised optical theorem applied in the framework of the dipole picture allows to express the cross section for diffractive $`q\overline{q}`$ production in which proton remains intact as

$$\frac{d\sigma _{dif}^{\gamma ^{}p}}{dt}_{t=0}=\frac{1}{16\pi }d^2r𝑑z\psi _{T,L}^{}(Q,r,z)\widehat{\sigma }^2(x,r)\psi _{T,L}(Q,r,z),$$
(23)
where $`t=\mathrm{\Delta }^2`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the four-momentum transfered into the diffractive system from the proton. In addition to the contributions of the $`q\overline{q}`$ states it is important to include the contributions of the $`q\overline{q}g`$ final states .

In the phenomenological analysis , the $`q\overline{q}g`$ diffractive amplitude was computed in the two-gluon exchange approximation with an additional assumption of strong ordering of transverse momenta of the $`q\overline{q}`$ pair and the gluon. This allows to treat the $`q\overline{q}g`$ system as a color octet dipole ($`8`$$`\overline{8}`$) in the transverse coordinate representation. Compared to the triplet dipole, the coupling of two $`t`$-channel gluons in the singlet state to the octet dipole carries the relative weight $`C_A/C_F=2N_c^2/(N_c^21)`$. Thus, in order to take into account the repeated exchange of a two gluon system, the equation (8) for the triplet dipole cross section is modified for the octet dipole as

$$\widehat{\sigma }_{gg}(x,r)=\sigma _0\left\{1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{C_A}{C_F}\frac{\pi ^2r^2\alpha _s(\mu ^2)xg(x,\mu ^2)}{3\sigma _0}\right)\right\}.$$
(24)
The above modification is done in the spirit of multiple pomeron exchange, i.e. the term proportional to $`(r^2)^n`$, resulting from the expansion of the exponent in (24), would correspond to $`n`$ exchanged pomerons with an appropriate colour factor $`(C_A/C_F)^n`$. In addition, compared to the diffractive $`q\overline{q}`$ production, the cross section formula for a diffractive $`q\overline{q}g`$ system contains an overal factor $`(N_c^21)/N_c`$.

One of the most important results of the original saturation model was that, at fixed $`Q^2`$, the ratio of the inclusive diffractive cross section and the total $`\gamma ^{}p`$ cross section is nearly constant in agreement with data. This prediction is not changed in the DGLAP improved saturation model since we modified only the short distance part of the dipole cross section. Even in the case of Fit 2, the constant ratio is preserved, as shown in Fig. 9, in contrast to the attempts in . The theoretical curves in these figures are computed using the Fit 2 results, and the experimental data are taken from ZEUS . The results for the Fit 1 computation differ only slightly from the Fit 2 one.

The diffractive data shown in Fig. 9 were obtained without the experimental identification of the forward going proton. Therefore, as described in , this data have a substantial contribution of the proton dissociation process which was estimated as $`31\pm 15\%`$. To take into account this contribution, the prediction of our model shown in Fig. 9 were multiplied by a normalisation factor of $`1/(10.31)=1.45`$. The agreement of the hight of the predicted cross section with the data is satifactory only within the relativly large error of the estimated proton dissociation factor.

We also made a comparison of our predictions with the recent preliminary diffractive data in which the forward going proton was identified in the ZEUS Leading Proton Spectrometer (LPS) . Good agreement was found which gives further support to the dynamical picture of the $`\gamma ^{}p`$ interactions developed in this and previous papers on the saturation model.

## 5 Conclusions

In this letter we have proposed a modification of the saturation model which takes into account the QCD DGLAP evolution of the gluon distribution. Fitting the parameters of our model we found a solution that describes the new HERA data on $`F_2`$ significantly better than the original saturation model, especially in the region of larger $`Q^2`$. The agreement with the DIS diffractive HERA data is also kept.

Somewhat surprisingly, we found another set of parameters which lead to even better data description departing from the original saturation model. For this description, we set the effective quark mass of the original model equal to zero, and in our comparison with the HERA data we have disregarded photoproduction data points. We found indications that this solution represents a slightly different physical picture: the initial gluon density no longer rises at small $`x`$, and QCD-evolution plays a much more significant role than in our first solution. The fact that the effective quark mass of the original model has its strongest influence in the limit $`Q^20`$ suggests that the large-$`r`$ behavior of the photon wave function requires further considerations.

We have found it useful to discuss the various versions of the saturation model not only in the $`r`$-space but also in momentum space since the latter provides more direct connection with exclusive final states. As a future step, it will be instructive to trace saturation effects in less inclusive cross sections.

We consider the modification of the saturation model presented in this paper as a first step of a more systematic program. The success of the original model indicates that this simple ansatz contains elements of the correct dynamics. Next, we have to analyse this model within QCD and to find the necessary corrections. With precise HERA data on various reactions becoming available available, all modifications have to be testet by careful comparisons.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Jan Kwiecinski and Misha Ryskin for useful discussions. This research has been supported in part by the Polish KBN grant No. 5 P03B 144 20 and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft fellowship.