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# Mapping the submillimeter spiral wave in NGC 6946

## 1 Introduction

Modern submillimeter (submm) and far-infrared (FIR) facilities such as the Submillimeter Common User Bolometer Array on JCMT (SCUBA), Institut de Radioastronomie millimétrique (IRAM) and the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) have undertaken an invaluable rôle in re-evaluating the radial distributions and global masses of galactic dust in nearby spiral galaxies (e.g. Guélin et al 1993; Guélin et al 1995; Neininger et al 1996; Alton et al 1998a; Siebenmorgen et al 1999). Nevertheless, detailed information about how grains are distributed with respect to the spiral arm structure, or how they relate at the kiloparsec level to the various gas phases (HI, H2) has been less forthcoming (Knapen & Beckman 1996; Seigar & James 1998; Rand et al; 1999; Alton et al 2001). A major obstacle, in this respect, is the limited spatial resolution available with instruments such as ISO ($`100\mathrm{}`$ at $`200\mu `$m) – barely sufficient to resolve the spiral arms in even the closest galaxies. At wavelengths closer to 1 mm, ground-based arrays such as SCUBA and IRAM, afford considerably better spatial resolution ($`10\mathrm{}`$) but emission arises from the Rayleigh-Jeans tail in this regime and, consequently, surface brightnesses are very low (usually $`10`$ mJy/beam). The sparse emission is particularly problematic for face-on spirals and it is precisely galaxies with this kind of inclination that we need to study if we are to understand how gas and dust relate to the spiral density wave.

At the global level several important trends have emerged from recent submm/mm observations of spirals. For example, Dunne et al (2000) have shown that the total $`850\mu `$m flux density correlates more tightly with integrated CO(1-0) line emission than with the 21cm HI line emission. The mid-IR emission (7 to 15 microns) detected with ISOCAM does not correlate well with HI and CO either (e.g. Genzel & Cesarsky, 2000, Frick et al 2001). Total dust masses that include submm/mm data now begin to show signs that they are comparable to dust masses inferred from optical extinction/reddening (Block et al 1994; Alton et al 1998b). Nevertheless, at the local level ($`1`$ kpc) it is less clear how grain thermal emission relates to optical absorption lanes, star-forming regions, the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) and, of course, the various gas phases (HI,H2,HII).

In a recent paper, Alton et al (2001) collated and examined the most up-to-date estimates of spiral disk opacity. What became obvious in this study is that relatively little is known about how dust is distributed with respect to the spiral arms and, in particular, whether interarm grain material is prevalent or not. The interarm region is particularly important because it occupies more than 50% of the disk and may therefore be crucial in determining the ability of spiral disks to block background light (Heisler & Ostriker 1988; Fall & Pei 1993; Gonzalez et al 1998; Masci & Webster 1999). Furthermore, the distribution of dust with respect to the spiral density wave may hold clues as to how gas is compressed along the spiral arms to form new stars. We should not forget that half of the metals in spiral galaxies are encapsulated in grains and consequently galactic dust provides a valuable ‘fossil record’ of previous star-formation within the disk environment (Whittet 1992; Williams & Taylor 1996; Edmunds & Eales 1998).

In this paper, we address some of the issues outlined above by analysing data for NGC 6946. In most respects, this nearby (10 Mpc) galaxy resembles a typical Sc spiral and is oriented favourably for a study of face-on spiral structure (table 1). The centre of NGC 6946 evidently contains a large amount of recent star-formation (Tacconi & Young 1990; Engargiola 1991). However, there is no evidence from optical and near-infrared (NIR) imaging of tidal disturbance and indeed, the disk appears quite isolated on the sky (except for the low surface brightness spiral Cep 1, at 0.4 Mpc in projected distance, Burton et al. 1999). NGC 6946 is peculiar for its richness in CO emission, the derived molecular-to-atomic gas mass being quite high (Casoli et al, 1990). The density waves are not very regular nor contrasted, and in particular the total radio continuum emission is only slightly enhanced in spiral arms, indicating low compression (Boulanger & Viallefond, 1992). The contrast is even lower, when short spacings are added to interferometric maps (Frick et al 2001). Also, polarized radio emission is concentrated in interarm regions (Beck & Hoernes 1996).
The global FIR-to-blue luminosity ratio is close to unity which is characteristic of quiescent spirals rather than an object undergoing extensive starburst activity (Soifer et al 1987; Bianchi et al 2000a). Our submm data for NGC 6946 embrace a re-analysis of $`850\mu `$m data collected by Bianchi et al (2000b) as well as some additional mapping observations, at the same wavelength, accessed from the SCUBA archive. We begin by examining the relationship between submm emission and neutral gas (HI and H2; §3). A Monte Carlo radiative transfer model is then applied to a B-K colour map of NGC 6946 with a view to comparing visual optical depth with dust thermal emission (§4). The latter process leads to an upper limit in the grain emissivity at $`850\mu `$m (§5). Visual optical depth is then compared to column density of neutral gas in order to discover how the gas-to-dust ratio changes with galactocentric radius and gas-phase metallicity (§6). Finally, we examine the distributions of HI, H2, submm thermal emission and visual optical depth with respect to the spiral density wave, providing estimates of opacity and gas column density for both arm and interarm regions in NGC 6946 (§7).

## 2 Observational Details

Our submm data for NGC 6946 stem from two sources: 22 hours of exposure taken by ourselves during April and June 1998, and a further 5 hours of observations retrieved from the SCUBA archive. The former have been presented briefly in Bianchi et al (2000b). All the data were reduced in a similar fashion to that described in Bianchi et al but more attention was now given to the subtraction of the sky signal (which is strong with respect to the source signal). The Submillimeter Common User Bolometer Array (SCUBA) is mounted at the Nasmyth focus of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and provides simultaneous imaging at 450 and $`850\mu `$m by virtue of a dichroic beamsplitter (Holland et al 1999), with a field of view of 2.3′ . The shortwave array ($`450\mu `$m) consists of 91 bolometers (HPBW=$`7.5\mathrm{}`$) whilst the longwave array ($`850\mu `$m) is composed of 37 elements (HPBW=$`14.7\mathrm{}`$). At the shorter wavelength, we detect little more than the NGC 6946 nucleus and, therefore, our results will concentrate chiefly on the $`850\mu `$m emission.

In scan-map mode, the telescope scans the source at a rate of 24 arcsec per second and at an angle allowing the source to be fully sampled (Pierce-Price et al 2000). The scan length was 9′ , and spacing $``$ 1′ . During the scan, the secondary chops at a frequency of 7.8 Hz within the observed field facilitating the removal of sky background emission. Each scan-map is a convolution of the source with the chop and the profile of the source is eventually restored by a fourier transform (FT) technique. Scan-maps presented here cover most of the NGC 6946 disk ($`D_{25}10\mathrm{}`$) and an individual scan took typically 6 minutes. In order to sample emission over various scale-sizes, we adopted chop throws of 20, 30 and $`65\mathrm{}`$ along both the RA and Dec directions.

The dedicated SCUBA software package, SURF (Jenness 1997), was employed to clean, flatfield and calibrate the images as well as correct for atmospheric attenuation. Since the chop takes place within the source field, the software also uses the edges of each scan to remove a linear baseline corresponding to the sky. At $`850\mu `$m, the zenith optical depth was usually between 0.1 and 0.3. Scan-maps of Venus, processed in the same manner as the galaxy data, provided a calibration from Volts to Janskys for each night’s observations. The uncertainty in this calibration is estimated to be 15%.

The Emerson II technique enabled a final image to be produced from the chop-convolved data (Emerson 1995; Jenness et al 1998; Holland et al 1999). Scan-maps associated with each chop configuration were combined into a single image. Each of these 6 maps was then divided by the FT of the chop (a sine wave) in order to obtain the FT of the source. The FTs of the source were combined before the inverse FT process was carried out to produce the final image. Unfortunately, frequencies close to zero, corresponding to slow changes in the sky signal, are poorly sampled by this technique. This inadequacy is manifested by large-scale undulations in the convolved images for each chop configuration (Pierce-Price et al 2000). The difficulty was alleviated to some extent by adopting an iterative approach in the data processing. The final image at $`850\mu `$m was fed back into an earlier stage of the reduction in order to help separate sky fluctuations from object signal. In our case, this was repeated 4 or 5 times before no further change was noted in the final image. Even after this process, some fluctuations of scalesize $`5\mathrm{}`$ were still apparent in the final image. Attempts to remove these fluctuations by fitting a polynomial surface or using an unsharp-mask technique were largely successful and gave very similar results. We estimate that the largest detectable angular scale is of order 5′ . A diffuse emission with a flat radial distribution larger than 5′ , the radius of NGC 6946, would not be detected. In the end, an unsharp-mask technique was selected. Here, the original image was smoothed with a gaussian of size $`5.5\mathrm{}`$ FWHM and this smoothed version subtracted from the original version in order to give the signal above the ”local” zero point. The resultant image was adopted as our final image at $`850\mu `$m. The $`1\sigma `$ random noise in this final image is estimated to be 4.2 mJy/$`16\mathrm{}`$beam. The additional uncertainty associated with the sky subtraction (in particular the frequencies close to zero) is believed to be between 1.0 and 1.5 mJy/$`16\mathrm{}`$ beam. This systematic error was estimated by dividing the scan-maps up into 3 sets (each set taken on different dates), processing each data set separately and comparing the 3 resultant final images photometrically. Similarly, various trials in the sky-subtraction process (polynomial surface, unsharp-masking etc.) suggest uncertainties of order 1 mJy/$`16\mathrm{}`$ beam in establishing the zero baseline.

For comparison with the SCUBA data, a 12CO(2-1) image of NGC 6946 was kindly made available to us by Sauty et al (1998). These data were taken with the IRAM 30-m telescope and have a spatial resolution of $`13\mathrm{}`$. A new CO(1-0) map made with the 30-m telescope with 22″ resolution will be soon available (Walsh et al, in press) and is discussed in Frick et al (2001). It is however very similar to that from Sauty et al (1998). Nieten et al. (1999) detected CO(4-3), which indicates the presence of warm gas, as far as the outer spiral arm. Bianchi et al (2000b) have already noted a strong correlation between the $`850\mu `$m dust thermal emission and the 12CO(2-1) emission line in NGC 6946. However, the relationship is not completely linear and there is also evidence for a bifurcation in scatter-plots of two quantities (discussed below). A very extensive image of NGC 6946 ($`26\mathrm{}\times 26\mathrm{}`$), taken in the 21cm atomic hydrogen line, has been made available to us more recently by F.Boulanger. These data have a spatial resolution of $`25\mathrm{}`$ and combine both single-dish and interferometer data (Boulanger & Viallefond 1992). Deep images in the B and K wavebands, taken with the KPNO 0.9-m and 2.3-m WIRO telescopes, were obtained in April 1996 and November 1995 respectively (Trewhella 1998). The K-band image was obtained by means of the $`128\times 128`$ pixel Michigan Infrared Camera and covers an area of $`7.4\mathrm{}\times 7.4\mathrm{}`$.

## 3 Relationship between submm, CO and HI emissions

The submm emission is a function of dust column density and dust temperature, while the HI and CO emissions are function of gas column density and gas excitation. All three can be considered as gas tracers, with assumptions on gas-to-dust ratios, dust temperature and gas temperature and density.

The $`850\mu `$m emission detected from NGC 6946 constitutes almost entirely thermal emission from dust grains (at T $``$ 15K) heated by stellar radiation (Israel et al 1999). This assumption begins to break down for the central $`60\mathrm{}`$ of the disk where contamination by the 12CO(3-2) line ($`\lambda =870\mu `$m) to the SCUBA longwave filter might be as high as 33% (Mauersberger et al 1999; Dumke et al. 2001). In fig. 1, we show the SCUBA $`850\mu `$m image after smoothing to a spatial resolution of $`18\mathrm{}`$ (FWHM). The salient features of this image are similar to those described in detail by Bianchi et al (2000b). The nuclear region is a strong source of submm radiation, with a maximum surface brightness of 250$`\pm `$40 mJy/$`18\mathrm{}`$beam at $`850\mu `$m. There are also local ‘hot-spots’ situated at $`2.5\mathrm{}`$ away from the nucleus and position angles of $`44^{}`$, $`99^{}`$ and $`203^{}`$. These coincide with prominent HII regions in B-band and H$`\alpha `$ images of NGC 6946. The inner disk ($`2.5\mathrm{}\times 2.5\mathrm{}`$) is reasonably well detected in our SCUBA image.

To compare, on equal terms, the distributions of neutral gas and dust thermal emission, we smoothed the 12CO(2-1) and $`850\mu `$m images to the same spatial resolution as the 21cm HI map ($`25\mathrm{}`$) using a circular gaussian filter. Photometric sampling was then carried out, on all 3 images, for those regions where significant $`850\mu `$m emission ($`2\sigma `$) had been detected. This was conducted using a $`25\mathrm{}`$ diameter aperture for a total of 46 regions. To convert the 12CO(2-1) line emission to molecular hydrogen column density, N(H2), we adopted 0.4 as the ratio of CO(2-1) to CO(1-0) intensity (as observed by Casoli et al 1990 in the main disk). We then assumed $`X=1.5\times 10^{20}`$cm-2 K kms-1 for the conversion of CO(1-0) to N(H$`{}_{2}{}^{})`$. We recognize sizeable uncertainties in our conversion parameters, in particular a factor 2 in the adopted ‘X’ factor. More insidious perhaps is the expected radial change in ‘X’ which is probably as large as any uncertainty in the global value (Neininger et al 1996; Dumke et al 1997). Furthermore, the ratio of CO(2-1) to CO(1-0) intensity, within the $`25\mathrm{}`$ of NGC 6946, has been shown to be closer to unity rather than the value of 0.4 adopted here (Weliachew et al 1988; Casoli et al 1990). Fortunately, many of the inference we make in this paper are based on the main disk and exclude the central $`1\mathrm{}`$ of the galaxy. It is this region which is likely to show dramatic changes in the conversion factors. Finally, we emphasize that we have assumed a fairly low value for $`X`$, consistent with recent gamma ray studies and the latest review articles of the CO(1-0) to N(H$`{}_{2}{}^{})`$ conversion factor (Maloney 1990).

Fig. 2 demonstrates how the submm emission relates to the hydrogen column density derived from CO and 21cm HI maps. The top graph indicates a strong positive trend between molecular gas and $`850\mu `$m surface brightness, $`F_{850}`$. Fig. 2 also suggests little correspondance between atomic gas and the submm emission we detect. For the disk as a whole this is intuitively correct because the $`850\mu `$m flux density is clearly concentrated towards the centre whereas NGC 6946, like so many other spirals, is known to possess a central depression in HI column density (Boulanger & Viallefond 1992). Including the atomic gas in the total hydrogen column density does little to strengthen the correlation between neutral gas and $`F_{850}`$, primarily due to the dominance of N($`H_2`$) at higher submm surface brightnesses. A least squares fit between total column of neutral hydrogen, N(HI+H2), and $`F_{850}`$ yields the following:

$$\frac{N(HI+H_2)}{10^{21}}=(0.115\pm 0.0052)\times F_{850}+(1.3\pm 0.4)$$
(1)
where N(HI+H2) and $`F_{850}`$ are expressed in atoms/cm2 and mJy/$`25\mathrm{}`$beam, respectively. The two fitted coefficients for the correlation with N($`H_2`$) alone are $`0.117\pm 0.0057`$ for the slope and $`0.5\pm 0.4`$ for the zero point. The addition of HI slightly improves the correlation, but the effect is not very large, given the low HI column densities, with respect to the derived H2 ones. In order to derive a gas-to-dust ratio from this relationship we are first compelled to relate $`F_{850}`$ to the optical depth of dust in NGC 6946. This step is carried out in the next section.

## 4 Relationship between submm and reddening

In this section, we relate thermal emission from dust at $`850\mu `$m to reddening evident in optical images of NGC 6946. The deep B- and K-band images, alluded to in §2, were aligned and convolved to a common spatial resolution of $`4.2\mathrm{}`$ and the two images divided to produce a B-K colour image in magnitudes. In fig. 3 we show this reddening image with $`850\mu `$m contours superimposed. NGC 6946 is typical of a ‘grand design’ spiral galaxy with rather prominent spiral dust lanes (Trewhella 1998). We note the presence of extensive reddening $`2\mathrm{}`$ north-west of the nucleus, while our 21cm HI and CO images give the impression of little atomic and molecular gas at this location. The filamentary structure in this part of the B-K map is more suggestive of reddening by dust rather than an absence of blue stars.

Fig. 3 reveals that the alignment between reddening lanes and dust thermal emission is surprisingly poor. We have already identified some of the submm emission as hot-spots situated close to optically-bright HII regions. Thus some of the brightest regions at $`850\mu `$m may well correspond to warm grains heated by young stars (T=35K; Bianchi et al 2000b). In contrast, optical extinction is not sensitive, in any direct sense, to grain temperature although dust clouds situated in front of bright, blue star-forming regions will be detected quite readily in B-K maps. The situation contrasts strongly with the conclusions drawn for the nearby spiral NGC 891 (Alton et al 2000). Here, radial profiles along the major axis of this galaxy revealed a fairly good correspondance between optical reddening and $`850\mu `$m emission. Furthermore, there were strong indications from the thermal spectrum of NGC 891 that the submm is dominated by cold grains (15-20K) rather than dust surrounding HII regions (Alton et al 1998b). One possible explanation is that diffuse emission is dominating in NGC 6946, and remains undetected because of the face-on orientation (while it is detected in the edge-on NGC 891). Radial profiles of NGC 6946, to be discussed in §7, suggest a stronger link between visual optical depth and $`850\mu `$m surface brightness than might be surmised from fig. 3.

In addition to accentuating the absorption lanes, our B-K colour map highlights the presence of strong reddening towards the centre of NGC 6946. This is accompanied by an increase in $`850\mu `$m surface brightness; both properties, taken together, suggest an increase in dust concentration towards the galaxy nucleus. For the analysis that follows, we assume that the reddening in NGC 6946 is solely attributable to extinction by dust (and not, for example, caused by a colour change in the underlying stellar population). We adopt the observed B-K=3.1 colour at a radius of $`4.7\mathrm{}`$ ($`R0.9\times R_{25}`$) as the intrinsic, unreddened colour. This radius of $`4.7\mathrm{}`$ is chosen because extinction is small there, and it is the largest radius where colours can be estimated properly. We then assume that any increase in the colour index with radius ($`\mathrm{\Delta }(BK)`$) arises from increasing optical depth. The results in radial variation (see fig. 8) do not a posteriori show the need for a more sophisticated approach. A Monte Carlo radiative transfer model is then employed to infer the visual optical depth, $`\tau _V`$, from $`\mathrm{\Delta }(BK)`$.

The assumption that we are measuring the true, underlying colour at a radius of $`R=0.9\times R_{25}`$ is fairly robust – the optical depth is generally believed to be quite low near the $`R_{25}`$ ($`\tau _V0.2`$; Alton et al 2001). However, our assumption that an increase in $`\mathrm{\Delta }(BK)`$ is purely attributable to dust is probably incorrect, although this viewpoint has been proposed by many previous authors (Peletier et al 1995; Beckman et al 1996). Peletier et al (1995) find a statistical increase in the ratio of B-band radial scale-length to K-band radial scale-length for spiral disks more inclined to the line-of-sight. This effect is most readily explained in terms of dust reddening because the ratio would not change if the scale-lengths were determined by the stellar population gradient. In contrast, for a sample of 86 face-on spirals, de Jong (1996) concluded that the change in scale-length across several optical and NIR passbands could not be understood without gradients in star-formation and metallicity being considered as a major factor. The assumption in this paper that increased B-K colour originates purely from increased optical depth will lead us to overestimate the opacity of the NGC 6946 disk. Furthermore, since the stellar population along the spiral arms is usually considered younger, and therefore bluer, than adjacent interarm regions, we will tend to both overestimate the amount of interarm dust and, therefore, overlook the propensity for dust to clump along the spiral arms (Knapen & Beckman 1996).

Fig. 4 provides a breakdown of the reddening measured in fig. 3 on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The azimuthally-averaged radial profile in B-K colour has been superimposed. We interpret $`\mathrm{\Delta }(BK)`$ by means of the Monte Carlo radiative transfer (RT) model developed by Bianchi et al (1996). This simulation assumes smooth distributions of both stars and dust which decline exponentially with both increasing galactocentric radius and height above the midplane. The light paths of optical and NIR photons are followed, through a succession of scattering interactions, until absorption takes place or the photon in question exits from the galaxy. By comparing the number of photons that escape from each part of the object with the quantity emitted by stars in the underlying disk, it is possible to relate observed colour to visual optical depth.

For NGC 6946, we adopt a ‘standard geometry’ with dust grains extending to half the scale-height of the stellar disk and the dust radial scale-length fixed at 1.5 times the stellar scale-length. Acceptable variations in the scale-height and scale-lengths of dust with respect to the stars (Trewhella 1997; Bianchi 1999) lead to uncertainties of $`33`$% in the implied visual optical depth over most of the disk ($`50`$% for the central arcminute). An $`R^{1/4}`$ bulge was added to the stellar light so that, in total, bulge stars contributed $`\frac{1}{10}`$ of the total optical+NIR luminosity of the galaxy. Finally, it should be noted that no account is taken of dust clumping in the model which normally would lead us to underestimate the true optical depth by 50-100% (Witt & Gordon 2000; Bianchi et al 2000c).

Rather than attempt a global fit between the observed and simulated B-K colours, each pixel in fig. 3 was treated independently. A series of simulations were run, with the face-on, visual optical depth through the centre of the galaxy model varying between 2 and 10. Overall, the technique worked well; a notable exception being within $`45\mathrm{}`$ of the nucleus where the observed $`\mathrm{\Delta }(BK)`$ was too high to give a reliable indication of the underlying optical depth (B-K effectively saturates as $`\tau _V`$ approaches $`10`$).

Using the method outlined above a map of visual optical depth was created to the same spatial resolution as our K-band image ($`4.2\mathrm{}`$ FWHM). To compare with the SCUBA image (next section), the $`\tau _V`$ map was then smoothed to $`18\mathrm{}`$, yielding a central, face-on opacity of $`\tau _V^0=7.6`$ and an exponential scale-length of $`98\mathrm{}`$, close to that inferred from ISO $`200\mu `$m images. We conclude that the visual optical depths derived from our RT model are reasonable.

Fig. 5 shows how the column density of neutral hydrogen in NGC 6946, $`N(HI+H_2)`$, relates to both reddening, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(BK)`$, and the optical depth derived from RT modelling, $`\tau _V`$. If we exclude central regions saturated in B-K (and corresponding to $`\tau _V>6`$), a strong linear relationship emerges as follows (correlation coefficient 0.91):

$$\frac{N(HI+H_2)}{10^{21}}=(1.0\pm 0.1)\tau _V+(2.1\pm 0.3)$$
(2)
This is half the corresponding value measured within the solar neighborhood ($`N(HI+H_2)=2.1\times 10^{21}\tau _V`$; Bohlin et al 1978), and could be due to the difference in metallicity. To obtain a total dust mass, we now convert $`\tau _V`$ into dust column density and integrate over the whole disk. To do this, we employ the relation given by Xilouris et al (1997) corresponding to ‘classical’ Milky Way grains of size $`0.1\mu `$m and material density 3 g cm-3 (Hildebrand 1983). Thus:

$$M_D=0.27\tau _V^0(R)2\pi R𝑑R$$
(3)
where the integral is over radius $`R`$, in metres, along the disk. Here, $`\tau _V^0(R)`$ is the face-on optical depth at $`R`$ and $`M_D`$ is the total dust mass in g. Integrating eq. 3 out to a radius $`R4\mathrm{}`$, we derive $`M_D=8.6\times 10^7M_{}`$ for NGC 6946. Integrating $`N(HI+H_2)`$ over the same region leads us to a global gas-to-dust ratio of 90. This value is consistent with the somewhat shallower gradient derived in eq. 2 compared with the solar neighborhood. Given our fundamental assumption in the derivation of $`\tau _V`$ (that B-K increases due to extinction only), our estimate of the gas-to-dust ratio must be considered a lower limit.

Let us note that this value of 90 for the gas-to-dust ratio is about a factor 2 lower than the average of 200 found towards 7 spiral galaxies (including NGC 6946) by Alton et al (1998a). This is due essentially to the lower X=H2/CO conversion ratio adopted here (X=1.5 instead of 2.8 1020 cm-2 (K km s-1)-1). Also the 850$`\mu `$m SCUBA emission could trace even colder dust than the ISO 200$`\mu `$m emission used by Alton et al (1998a). For comparison, the gas-to-dust ratio for the solar neighborhood is 150, and 100-300 for NGC 891, according to the adopted conversion ratio or dust emissivity (Guélin et al. 1993, Alton et al 2000).

## 5 Inferred submm emissivity

The submm emission is not only a function of the dust column density and the dust temperature, but also of the nature of grains, which is reflected in their emissivity Q at various wavelengths.

A comparison between the SCUBA image and the optical depth just derived from RT modelling should allow us to constrain the $`850\mu `$m emissivity of dust grains in NGC 6946, $`Q(850\mu m)`$. The mass absorption coefficient ($`\kappa `$), which is often used, is related to the grain emissivity as follows: $`\kappa _{850\mu m}=\frac{3Q(850\mu m)}{4a\rho }`$, where $`a`$ and $`\rho `$ are the radius and material density of the grains respectively (Hildebrand 1983). It can be shown (e.g. Alton et al 2000) that optical depth and submm brightness are related as follows:

$$\tau _V^0=\frac{Q(V)}{Q(850\mu m)}\frac{1.67\times 10^{18}}{B(850\mu m,T)}cos(i)F_{850}$$
(4)
where $`\tau _V^0`$ is the face-on optical depth, $`Q(V)`$ is the emissivity at $`\lambda =0.55\mu m`$, $`i`$ is the inclination of the disk ($`i=90^{}`$ for edge-on), $`F_{850}`$ denotes the surface brightness of the $`850\mu `$m map, in Jy/$`18\mathrm{}`$beam, and $`B(850\mu m,T)`$ refers to the blackbody intensity at $`850\mu `$m for grains of temperature $`T`$. We can see that an estimate of $`\frac{\tau _V}{F_{850}}`$ would serve as a handle on $`\frac{Q(V)}{Q(850\mu m)}`$.

With current observational limits there exists almost an order of magnitude uncertainty in $`Q(850\mu m)`$ (and hence $`\frac{Q(V)}{Q(850\mu m)}`$, since $`Q(V)`$ is relatively well constrained to $`1.5`$; Whittet 1992). Indeed, emissivity values for wavelengths close to 1 mm are often extrapolated from observations of Galactic reflection nebulae near 100-200$`\mu `$m (see Alton et al 2000 for a full discussion). At the same time we cannot overstate the importance of determining the submm/mm emissivity because, once $`Q(\lambda )`$ is known, submm/mm observations can then be furnished with visual optical depths in a relatively straightforward manner (Hildebrand 1983; Hughes et al 1993).

Radial profiles were fitted to both SCUBA and visual optical depth maps (both after smoothing to a spatial resolution of $`18\mathrm{}`$). Values pertaining to the central arcminute of the object were discarded due to suspected saturation in the B-K colour. Fig. 6 shows that optical depth $`\tau _V`$ compares rather well to submm surface brightness $`F_{850}`$, when azimuthally averaged (while it was not true locally, cf fig. 3). A least-squares best fit between optical depth and submm brightness yielded the following:

$$\frac{\tau _V}{F_{850}}=573\pm 108$$
(5)
Given the already mentioned uncertainties on $`\tau _V`$ and $`F_{850}`$, this value of the ratio is an upper limit. If we are to derive $`\frac{Q(V)}{Q(850\mu m)}`$ from eqs. 4 and 5 we must have some notion of the grain temperature $`T`$. Unfortunately, no signal was recorded from the main disk of NGC 6946 during our $`450\mu `$m SCUBA observations (which would have allowed us to plot the thermal spectrum). ISO $`200\mu `$m images of NGC 6946, in conjunction with IRAS $`100\mu `$m HiRes data, suggest dust temperatures close to 20K in the main disk. RT modelling by Bianchi et al (2000a) points to $`T`$ falling from 23K at the centre of NGC 6946 to 17K at the $`R_{25}`$ radius (similar to values proposed for the diffuse Galactic ISM; Mathis et al 1983; Draine & Lee 1984; Reach et al 1995; Masi et al 1995). Observations at both 450 and $`850\mu `$m for the nearby spirals NGC 891 and NGC 7331 suggest that 90% of galactic dust maintains a temperature between 15 and 20K (Alton et al 1998b; Alton et al 2001; see also Guélin et al 1993). To translate $`\frac{\tau _V}{F_{850}}`$ into $`\frac{Q(V)}{Q(850\mu m)}`$ we adopt $`T=18K`$. We note that a 50% uncertainty in $`T`$ will produce a 50% variation in $`\frac{Q(V)}{Q(850\mu m)}`$ since $`F_{850}T`$ in the Rayleigh-Jeans tail of the spectrum. The substitution of temperature into eq. 4 yields $`\frac{Q(V)}{Q(850\mu m)}1.4\times 10^5`$ and a mass absorption coefficient of $`\kappa (850\mu m)0.26`$ cm2g-1 is we assume $`Q(V)=1.5`$ and grains of radius $`0.1\mu `$m and material density 3 g cm-3.

The implied $`850\mu `$m emissivity is a factor 3 lower than that measured by COBE for diffuse Milky Way dust (suggesting we detect too little $`850\mu `$m radiation compared with the optical depth inferred from RT modelling). However, we recall that our $`\tau _V`$ values are only upper limits as we assumed from the outset that B-K only changes due to extinction. The aforementioned $`850\mu `$m emissivity should therefore be considered a lower limit. Also, there might be an underestimation of the emissivity, due to the possible existence of spatially flat diffuse emission and the uncertainty in the background subtraction. In NGC 891, the submm emissivity was estimated $`9\times `$ higher than that for NGC 6946 (Alton et al 2000), which might be due to more thorough detection of the diffuse emission, because of edge-on orientation.

## 6 Gas-to-dust Ratio

Fig. 8 reveals how the derived gas content varies with respect to dust, with distance from the nucleus.

In one case, the optical depth derived from RT modelling has been used to infer the dust mass per unit area (via eq. 3). The gas surface density includes both atomic and molecular gas (the latter based on $`X=1.5\times 10^{20}`$cm-2 K kms-1). The radial gas-to-dust ratio has also been calculated using the submm profile discussed in §5 and converting $`F_{850}`$ to $`\tau _V`$ with eq. 5. The normalisation of $`F_{850}`$ to $`\tau _V`$ explains why the mean gas-to-dust ratio indicated by both gas-to-dust profiles in fig. 8 is more or less the same. Again, it must be emphasized here that both curves are only lower limits.

We should remind here that the molecular gas is dominating in NGC 6946, and its amount is estimated from the CO emission, which is itself dependent on metallicity. In NGC 891 for example, both CO emission and submillimeter dust emission have the same dependence with radius, suggesting that the CO emission falls also proportionally to the metallicity (Guélin et al. 1993).

A dashed line in fig. 8 represents the gas-phase metal abundance as measured from emission-line spectra (Vila-Costas & Edmunds 1992). The vertical axes in the plot have been aligned so that solar metallicity corresponds to a gas-to-dust ratio of 150. The proximity of our gas-to-dust estimates to the dashed line is probably fortuitous given the factor 3-4 uncertainty in deriving the former ($`X`$ factor, CO(2-1)/CO(1-0) etc.).

Nearly no radial variation of the gas-to-dust ratio is observed. This means that the CO tracer is also dependent on metallicity, in a similar way than the dust tracer.

## 7 Dust and gas within arm and interarm regions.

The arm-interarm contrast in dust and gas is difficult to determine because of limited spatial resolution – at $`60\mu `$m, an IRAS beam of $`1\mathrm{}`$ only begins to resolve spiral disks that are closer than $`5`$ Mpc. SCUBA, with a beam of $`16\mathrm{}`$ at $`850\mu `$m, can probe spiral arms separated by $`1\mathrm{}`$ (such as those in NGC 6946). However, the problem becomes one of sensitivity, with face-on disks possessing surface brightnesses of only a few mJy.

Although our 21cm HI observations are somewhat too coarse for the task ($`25\mathrm{}`$ FWHM), we have attempted a decomposition of the gas and dust associated with the spiral structure in NGC 6946, concentrating on the NE where the $`850\mu `$m emission is brightest. A series of 8 cross-sections across the arm-interarm interface were produced, sampling the opacity as well as the submm, CO and 21cm HI emission. The transects were then stacked, assuming an average arm separation of $`60\mathrm{}`$ ($`\lambda `$) and stretching or compressing to take into account the variation of $`\lambda `$ with galactocentric radius.

Fig. 9 depicts the mean profiles generated in this way. The vertical dashed lines define arm and interarm regions on the basis of the K-band profile (believed to trace the underlying stellar mass density). All the tracers of dust and gas plotted in fig. 9 show some modulation with the spiral density wave except perhaps the optical depth derived from RT modelling. The lack of variation here probably stems from the assumption that an identical intrinsic B-K colour exists for the underlying stellar population in both arm and interarm regions. In reality, the arms will tend to be inherently bluer on average, due to the presence of young stars, leading us underestimate the arm opacity with respect to the interarm value. The two forms of neutral hydrogen seem complementary in the sense that a reduced presence of HI along one arm is balanced by an enhanced level of H2 and vice versa.

Table 2 contains estimates of the optical depth and gas column density based on the profiles presented in fig. 9. The visual opacity is calculated variously from: radiative transfer (row 3); $`850\mu `$m surface brightness using eq. 5 (row 13); and the gas column density $`N(HI+H_2`$) (row12), the last of these assuming $`\tau _B\tau _V=\frac{N(HI+H_2)}{6.3\times 10^{21}atoms/cm^2}`$ as observed in the solar neighborhood (Bohlin et al 1978). Our estimate of $`\tau _V`$ based on RT modelling is expected to be an overestimate in the interarm region. Surprisingly, however, the gas column in such interstitial regions suggests equally high values of $`\tau _V`$. The submm observations favour quite a high interarm opacity as well ($`1.5\pm 0.9`$) but the combination of low signal-to-noise and difficulties in relating grain thermal emission to dust column density make the uncertainties here considerable. Attempts to determine interarm opacity by analysing the colour, surface brightness or number of background galaxies visible through a foreground spiral disk have generally led to values of less than unity for the face-on optical depth (White & Keel 1992; White et al 1996; Berlind et al 1997; Gonzalez et al 1998).

Although the definition of arms and interarms regions is subjective, we have attempted to compute the gas and dust mass in both regions. We adopt 1.5 and 3.7, respectively, for the optical depth of the interarm and arm region at a radius of $`2.3\mathrm{}`$ (table 2). In addition, we assume a radial scale-length of $`98\mathrm{}`$ for both arm and interstitial environments (§4). We suppose that interarm regions occupy only 50% of the disk at $`R=0.5\times R_{25}`$, increasing linearly with $`R`$ from 0% at the nucleus to 100% at the $`R_{25}`$ radius. Integrating eq. 3 suggests that at least 15% of galactic dust is located between the spiral arms. A similar calculation for HI+H2 (row 8, table 2) indicates that at least 68% of the neutral gas in NGC 6946 can be considered as lying outside the spiral arms.

## 8 Summary

We have analysed $`850\mu `$m SCUBA images of the nearby, (almost) face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6946. The submillimeter brightness level is low over most of the disk (often a few mJy at $`850\mu `$m) and, therefore, care has to be exercised in the subtraction of sky emission. Our main results can be summarised as follows:

1. Comparing the $`850\mu `$m flux with 12CO(2-1) and 21cm HI line intensity indicates a good correlation between dust thermal emission and CO emission. No correlation was detected between submm emission and atomic gas emission.
2. We place an upper limit on the visual optical depth in NGC 6946 ($`\tau _V`$) by means of a B-K colour map of the disk. We assume that the B-K colour at a radius $`0.9R_{25}`$ corresponds to the underlying intrinsic colour of the stellar disk, in both arm and interarm regions, and that the observed increase in B-K with diminishing radius is attributable solely to extinction by dust. With these conditions we carry out a Monte Carlo radiative transfer simulation of the disk, inferring visual optical depth from B-K colour.
3. The resultant map in $`\tau _V`$ relates fairly well to the distribution of neutral gas (HI+H2). There is no significant radial variation of the derived gas-to-dust ratio, which is easy to understand, given that the estimated gas content is dominated by the molecular gas, therefore is estimated through the CO emission tracer. Since the CO emission is also dependent on metallicity, it is not possible to derive the true gas-to-dust ratio. This will await a large-scale mapping of other tracers, such as the pure rotational lines of molecular hydrogen (e.g. Valentijn & van der Werf, 1999).
4. Radial profiles of our optical depth map and SCUBA image indicate an association between $`\tau _V`$ and (diffuse) submm emission, $`F_{850}`$. A linear regression yields $`\frac{\tau _V}{F_{850}}=573\pm 110`$ and, by corollary, a $`850\mu `$m emissivity which is no more than 3 times lower than the COBE value for Galactic grains (Boulanger et al 1996). The emissivity is also 9 times lower than in the edge-on galaxy NGC 891. This is however a lower limit, given the uncertainties on the visual opacity, and the possibility of underestimating the large-scale submm emission. The latter could be estimated in the future by more sensitive and more extended submm arrays.
5. A decomposition of spiral structure in NGC 6946 suggests an interarm optical depth of between 1 and 2 at a mean radius of $`0.4R_{25}`$. These surprisingly high values represent 40-80% of the visual opacity along the arms. Furthermore, by a similar analysis, about two-thirds of the neutral gas could be considered as lying outside the spiral arms.

###### Acknowledgements.

It is a pleasure to thank Gerald Moriarty-Schieven and Tim Jenness for their support during observations and data reduction. We are grateful to Steve Eales and Loretta Dunne for stimulating discussions on grain opacity and related matters, and to the referee for his careful reading and positive criticism.


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# In: M. Suzuki and N. Kawashima (eds.) “Coherent Approaches to Fluctuations (Proc. Hayashibara Forum 95)”, pp. 59-64, World Scientific (singapore, 1995). DYNAMIC ENTROPIES, LONG–RANGE CORRELATIONS AND FLUCTUATIONS IN COMPLEX LINEAR STRUCTURES

## 1 Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to compare different correlation measures based on methods of statistical physics. We aim to analyse correlations and fluctuations comprising at least several hundreds of letters. The characteristic quantities which measure long correlations are dynamic entropies $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$, correlations functions and mean square deviations, $`1/f^\delta `$ noise $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$, scaling exponents $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$, higher order cumulants $`^\mathrm{?}`$ and, mutual information $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$. Our working hypothesis which we formulated in earlier papers $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$, is that texts and DNA show some structural analogies to strings generated by nonlinear processes at bifurcation points. This is demonstrated here first by the analysis of the behaviour of the higher order entropies. Further analysis is based on the mapping of the text to random walk models as well as on the spectral analysis. The random walk method which was proposed by Peng et al. $`^\mathrm{?}`$, found several applications to DNA sequences $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$ and to human writings $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$. In order to find out the origin of the long–range correlations we studied the effects of shuffling of long texts on different levels (letters, words, sentences, pages, chapters etc.). The shuffled sequences were always compared with the original one (without any shuffling). We note that all our files have the same letter distribution. However only the correlations on scales below the shuffling level are conserved. The correlations (fluctuations) on higher levels which are based on the large–scale structure of texts as well as on semantic relations are conserved only in the original file. The objects of our investigation were the book “Moby Dick” by Melville ($`L1,170,000`$ letters) and the DNA–sequence of the lambda–virus ($`L50,000`$ letters).

## 2 Entropy–like Measures of Sequence Structure

Let $`A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n`$ be the letters of a given substring of length $`nL`$. Let further $`p^{(n)}(A_1\mathrm{}A_n)`$ be the probability to find in a string a block with the letters $`A_1\mathrm{}A_n`$. Then we may introduce the entropy per block of length $`n`$:

$$H_n=p^{(n)}(A_1\mathrm{}A_n)\mathrm{log}p^{(n)}(A_1\mathrm{}A_n)$$
(1)
$$h_n=H_{n+1}H_n$$
(2)
Our methods for the analysis of the entropy of sequences were in detail explained elsewhere $`^\mathrm{?}`$. We have shown that at least in a reasonable approximation the scaling of the entropy against the word length is for large n given by root laws of the type

$$H_n=c_0+c_1\sqrt{n}+c_2n.$$
(3)
$$h_n=0.5c_1n^{\frac{1}{2}}+c_2.$$
(4)
In our earlier work on Moby Dick $`^\mathrm{?}`$ we assumed $`c_2=0`$ and obtained for our empirical data in the range $`n=1026`$ the constants $`c_0=1.7`$, $`c_1=0.9`$ . As shown already in 1951 by Shannon and a few years later by Burton and Licklider, the limit of the uncertainty $`h_n`$ for large n which is given here by $`c_2`$ should be finite. With the estimate $`c_2=0.05`$ we have repeated our fit including data for Moby Dick obtained with a new method $`^\mathrm{?}`$. The parameters obtained by the new fit are $`c_0=1.7`$, $`c_1=0.5`$, $`c_2=0.05`$. The dominating contribution ist given by the root term, an observation first made by Hilberg. In this way the decay of uncertainties $`h_n`$ follows a scaling according to a power law.

We consider now a different approach to the entropy analysis which goes back to the work of Kolmogorov, Chaitin, Lempel and Ziv. The algorithmic entropy according to Lempel and Ziv is introduced as the relation of the length of the compressed sequence (with respect to a Lempel–Ziv compression algorithm) to the original length.

The results obtained for the Lempel–Ziv complexities (entropies) of Moby Dick and of the lambda virus DNA are shown in Fig. 1. We see, that the Lempel–Ziv entropy of Moby Dick having a value of about 0.56 is much higher than than the Shannon entropies derived above. This clearly shows that the compression algorithms based on the Lempel-Ziv method are by far not optimal. As show our shuffling experiments represented in Fig. 1, compression algorithms of Lempel-Ziv type are mainly based on rules below the page level.

## 3 Correlation Functions, Power Spectra, Random Walk Exponents

In this part we closely follow the method proposed by Peng et al. $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$ and the invariant representation proposed Voss $`^\mathrm{?}`$. Instead of the original string consisting of $`\lambda `$ different symbols we generate $`\lambda `$ strings on the binary alphabet (0,1) ($`\lambda =32`$ for texts). In the first string we place a “1” on all positions where there is an “a” in the original string and a “0” on all other positions. The same procedure is carried also out for the remaining symbols. Then we generate random processes corresponding to these strings moving one step upwards for any “1” and remaining on the same level for any “0”. The resulting move over a distance $`l`$ is called $`y(k,l)`$ where $`k`$ denotes the symbol. Then by defining a $`\lambda `$–dimensional vector space considering $`y(k,l)`$ as the component $`k`$ of the state vector at the (discrete) “time” $`l`$ we can map the text to a trajectory. The corresponding procedure is carried out for the DNA–sequences which are mapped to a random walk on a $`\lambda =4`$–dimensional discrete space. The power spectrum is defined as the Fourier transform of the correlation function $`C(k,n)`$ which measures the correlation of the letters of type $`k`$ in a distance $`n`$ $`^\mathrm{?}`$. The results of spectra calculations for the original file of the Bible, for Moby Dick and for the same files shuffled on the word level or on the letter level correspondingly were presented in a foregoing work $`^\mathrm{?}`$. As a new result we present here the power spectrum of Moby Dick shuffled on the chapter and on the page level (Fig. 2).

We see that the spectra of the original texts have a characteristic shape with a well–expressed low frequency part. This shows the existence of long–range correlations in Moby Dick. An estimate for the exponent is 0.8 . However it is difficult to extract a precise value for the exponent corresponding to a power law. One should better look at the shape of the whole curve which reminds a piecewise linear behaviour which is characteristic for multifractal structures. This point certainly needs further investigations. However we believe, there is no reason to expect that a long text as Moby Dick is a multifractal in a quantitative sense. On the other hand the hierarchical character of the structure of texts is beyond any doubt and we think that spectral curves may be characterised as a quantitative measure of this hierarchy. Fig. 2 shows that shuffling on the page level already destroys the low–frequency branch of the spectrum. This clearly proves that the origin of the $`1/f`$–fluctuations is on a scale which exceeds the page level. The contribution of high frequencies corresponds to the structure on the word and sentence level. Let us study now the anomalous diffusion coefficients which allow a higher accuracy of the analysis $`^\mathrm{?}`$. The mean square displacement for symbol $`k`$ is determined as

$$F^2(k,l)=<y^2(k,l)>(<y(k,l)>)^2,$$
(5)
where the brackets $`<>`$ mean the averaging over all initial positions. The behaviour of $`F(k,l)`$ for $`l1`$ is the focus of interest. It is expected that $`F(k,l)`$ follows a power law $`^\mathrm{?}`$.

$$F(k,l)l^{\alpha (k)},$$
(6)
where $`\alpha (k)`$ is the diffusion exponent for symbol $`k`$. We note that the diffusion exponent is related to the exponent of the power spectrum $`^\mathrm{?}`$. The case $`\alpha (k)=0.5`$ corresponds to the normal diffusion or to the absence of long–range correlations. If $`\alpha (k)>0.5`$ we have an anomalous diffusion which reflects the existence of long–range correlations. Beside the individual diffusion exponents for the letters we get also an averaged diffusion exponent $`\alpha `$ for the state space. The data are summarised in Fig. 1.

In the same way we can obtain other important statistical quantities: higher order moments and cumulants of $`y(k,l)`$ $`^\mathrm{?}`$ By calculations of the Hölder exponents $`D_q`$ up to $`q=6`$ we have shown, that the higher order moments show (in the limits of accuracy) the same scaling behaviour as the second moment. We repeated the procedure described above for the shuffled files. A graphical representation of the results for Moby Dick and DNA are given in Figs. 1.

We see from Figs 12 that the original sequences show strong long–range correlations, i.e. the coefficients of anomalous diffusion are clearly different from $`1/2`$ and there exists $`1/f`$–noise. After the shuffling below the page level the sequences become practically Bernoullian in comparison with the original ones since the diffusion coefficients decrease to a value of about $`1/2`$ and there is no more $`1/f`$–noise. The decrease occurs in the shuffling regime between the page level and the chapter level. For DNA–sequences the characteristic level of shuffling where the diffusion coefficient goes to 1/2 is about 500–1000. Our result demonstrates that shuffling on the level of symbols, words, sentences or pages, or segments of length 500–1000 in the DNA–case destroys the long range correlations which are felt by the mean square deviations.

## 4 Conclusions

Our results show that the dynamic entropies, the low frequency spectra and the scaling of the mean square deviations, are appropriate measures for the long–range correlations in symbolic sequences. However, as demonstrated by shuffling experiments, different measures operate on different length scales. The longest correlations found in our analysis comprise a few hundreds or thousands of letters and may be understood as long–wave fluctuations of the composition. These correlations (fluctuations) give rise to the anomalous diffusion and to long–range $`1/f`$–fluctuations. These fluctuations comprise several hundreds or thousands of letters. There is some evidence that these correlations are based on the hierarchical organisation of the sequences and on the structural relations between the levels. In other words these correlations are connected with the grouping of the sentences into hierarchical structures as the paragraphs, the pages, the chapters etc. Usually inside certain substructure the text shows a greater uniformity on the letter level. In order to demonstrate this we have shown in earlier work $`^\mathrm{?}`$ the (averaged over windows of length 4000) local frequency of the blanks (and other letters) in the text Moby Dick in dependence on the position along the text. The original text shows a large–scale structure extending over many windows. This reflects the fact that in some part of the texts we have many short words, e.g. in conversations (yielding the peaks of the space frequency), and in others we have more long words, e.g. in descriptions and in philosophical considerations (yielding the minima of the space frequency). The shuffled text shows a much weaker non–uniformity of the text, the lower the shuffling level, the larger is the uniformity. More uniformity means less fluctuations and more similarity to a Bernoulli sequence. For the case of DNA–sequences no analogies of pages, chapters etc. are known. Nevertheless the reaction on shuffling is similar to those of texts. Possibly a more careful comparison of the correlations in texts and in DNA sequences may contribute to a better understanding of the informational structure of DNA.

## References


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# Acknowledgements

## Acknowledgements

We should like to thank A. Albrecht, J. D. Bjorken, E. Bloom, G. Boerner, S. Brodsky, P. Chen, S. Drell, G. Goldhaber, T. Haensch, M. Jacob, P. Minkowski, A. Odian, H. Walther and A. Wolfe for useful discussions.


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# On the invariants of some solvable rigid Lie algebras

## 1 Introduction

An important problem arising in the theory of representations of Lie algebras and various physical applications is the determination of invariant functions for the coadjoint representation. Reductions like the Levi decomposition theorem simplify the question to the classes of semi-simple and solvable Lie algebras. The invariants in the semi-simple case were determined in $`1950`$ by Racah . Here the invariants arise as elements of the enveloping algebra, and their number coincides with the rank of the algebra. The study of the non semi-simple case is physically motivated by considerations like internal symmetries of particles or the invariant operators of symmetry groups of physical systems . Important groups as the Galilei and Poincaré have been deeply studied , as well as the subgroups of the latter. These invariants allow to characterize certain systems by giving their energy spectra, angular momenta, etc. For solvable Lie algebras, much less is known. Their invariants have been determined up to dimension six . The invariants found here need not to be polynomials any more, which suggests to call them generalized invariants. The nonexistence of classifications of solvable algebras in dimension $`n7`$ force to restrict to concrete classes. In this frame, the generalized Casimir invariants of algebras having an abelian or an Heisenberg Lie algebra as nilradical have recently been computed .
Starting from this situation, we determine fundamental systems of invariants for all solvable rigid Lie algebras whose nilradical is nonsplit of characteristic sequence $`(3,1,..,1)`$. These algebras are the natural followers of those having Heisenberg nilradicals. It is shown that the number of functionally independent invariants is a linear function of their rank. As applications, we deduce a general result on the cardinal of fundamental systems of invariants of rank one subalgebras of a solvable Lie algebra. The converse of this procedure is also of interest, since it allows to calculate fundamental systems of an algebra analyzing certain rank one subalgebras.

We convene that nonwritten brackets are either zero or obtained by antisymmetry. We also use Einstein’s convention for sums. Unless otherwise stated, any Lie algebra is nonsplit and complex.

## 2 Generalities

Let $`G`$ be a connected Lie group and $`𝔤`$ its Lie algebra. As known, the coadjoint representation is given by

$$ad^{}:GGL(𝔤^{}):(ad_g^{}x)(y)=x(ad_{g^1})y,x,y𝔤^{},gG$$

and a function $`HC^{\mathrm{}}𝔤^{}`$ is called invariant if $`H(x)=H(ad_g^{}x)`$. The purpose is to determine a maximal set of functionally independent invariants, which is called a fundamental set of invariants for the coadjoint representation. Probably the most popular procedure to calculate these invariants is the interpretation of the problem in terms of partial differential equations . Let $`=\{X_1,..,X_n\}`$ be a basis of $`𝔤`$ and consider differentiable functions $`F(x_1,..,x_n)`$, where the $`x_i`$ are commuting variables on $`𝔤^{}`$ corresponding to the dual basis $``$. If $`\left\{C_{ij}^k\right\}`$ are the structure constants of $`𝔤`$ over the preceding basis, then we can find differential operators

$`\widehat{X_i}=C_{ij}^kx_k{\displaystyle \frac{}{x_j}},1in`$ (1)
realizing the coadjoint representation. The invariants are then obtained from the linear first order partial differential equations

$`\{\widehat{X_i}.F=0,1in`$ (2)
The invariants of the coadjoint representation will also be called generalized Casimir invariants, since polynomial invariants give rise to elements in the center of the universal enveloping algebra $`𝔄`$, i.e., to the well known Casimir operators. As follows from the work of Beltrametti and Blasi , the number of functionally independent invariants of the coadjoint representation $`ad^{}`$ of a Lie algebra $`𝔤`$ is given by $`𝒩\left(𝔤\right)=dim\left(𝔤\right)r\left(𝔤\right)`$, where $`r\left(𝔤\right)`$ is the maximum rank of the commutator table considered as a matrix.
As told before, invariants of solvable Lie algebras have been determined only in low dimensions, due to the impossibility of obtaining classifications in dimensions $`n7`$. Two types of solvable algebras have been analyzed in detail in arbitrary dimension: those having abelian nilradical and those having it isomorphic to the Heisenberg Lie algebra $`𝔥_k`$. From the latter we easily see that the direct sum of $`𝔥_k`$ and a maximal torus of derivations is rigid. Since for rigid Lie algebras the torus determines completely the isomorphism class of the nilradical and these algebras decompose in a particular manner, in addition to the existing algorithms that allow (theoretically) a classification of solvable rigid Lie algebras , it is reasonable to focus on this class and their invariants. We therefore recall the most elementary facts about rigidity: Let $`𝔏^n`$ be the algebraic variety of Lie algebras laws of dimension $`n`$ over $``$. If $`\mu 𝔏^n`$ and $`\left\{e_i\right\}_{1in}`$ is a basis of $`^n,`$ then the structure constants of the law $`\mu `$ satisfy the following polynomial equations :

$`C_{ij}^k+C_{ji}^k=0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}i<jn,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}kn`$ (3)
$`{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{n}{}}}C_{ij}^lC_{lk}^s+C_{jk}^lC_{li}^s+C_{ki}^lC_{jl}^s=0,1i<j<kn,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}sn`$ (4)
So the $`C_{ij}^k`$ satisfying the system above parametrize the variety $`𝔏^n,`$ embedded in $`^{n^3}`$. The subset $`𝔑^n`$ of nilpotent Lie algebras is closed in this variety. From now on, we identify a Lie algebra with its law. The linear group $`GL(n,)`$ acts on $`𝔏^n`$ by:

$$GL(n,)\times 𝔏^n𝔏^n,(f,\mu )f^1\mu (f,f)$$

where

$$\mu (f,f)(X,Y)=\mu (f\left(X\right),f\left(Y\right))X,Y^n$$

The resulting orbit of the law $`\mu `$

$`O\left(\mu \right)=\left\{h^1\mu (h,h)\right|hGL(n,)\}`$ (5)
consists of all laws isomorphic to $`\mu `$.

###### Definition 1

A law $`\mu 𝔏^n`$ is called rigid if its orbit $`O\left(\mu \right)`$ is open in $`𝔏^n`$.

Let $`\mu 𝔏^n`$ be a solvable, non nilpotent law. The corresponding Lie algebra $`𝔤`$ is called decomposable if $`𝔤`$ admits a decomposition

$$𝔤=𝔫𝔱$$

where $`𝔫`$ is the nilradical of $`𝔤`$ and $`𝔱`$ is an abelian subalgebra consisting of $`ad`$semisimple elements. $`𝔱`$ is called exterior torus of derivations. The following theorem is an immediate consequence of Carles algebraicity theorem  :

###### Theorem 1

A rigid solvable Lie algebra $`𝔤`$ is decomposable.

In order to describe this decomposition properly, we have to find adequate elements in the torus $`𝔱`$ that describe the action on the nilradical. Let $`X𝔱`$ be a nonzero vector. We call $`X`$ regular if the dimension of the kernel of the adjoint operator is minimal among the elements of $`𝔱`$, i.e

$$dimKerad\left(X\right)=\mathrm{min}\left\{dimKerad\left(Y\right)|Y𝔱\right\}$$

If $`q=dimKerad(X),`$ then we can find a basis formed by eigenvectors of the adjoint operator $`\left(X_1,\mathrm{},X_n=X\right)`$ such that $`(X_1,..X_{p+q})`$ is a basis of the nilradical $`𝔫`$, $`(X_{p+1+q},..,X_n)`$ is a basis of $`𝔱`$ and $`(X_{p+1},..,X_n)`$ is a basis of $`Kerad\left(X\right).`$
The linear system of roots associated to $`(X_1,..,X_n)`$ is the linear system to $`n1`$ variables $`x_i`$ whose equations are

$`x_i+x_j=x_k`$ (6)
if the component of the vector $`\mu (X_i,X_j)`$ on $`X_k`$ is nonzero. We will note this system by $`S\left(X\right)`$ or simply $`S.`$ The following result establishes a necessary condition for a Lie algebra to be rigid :

###### Theorem 2

( of the rank ). If the solvable, decomposable Lie algebra $`𝔤=𝔫𝔱`$ is rigid, then for all regular vectors $`X`$ we have

$$rankS\left(X\right)=dim𝔫1$$

In particular the rank does not depend on the choice of the basis or the regular vector.

###### Corollary 1

If $`𝔤=𝔫𝔱`$ is rigid, then $`𝔱`$ is a maximal torus.

A proof of the preceding result can be found in . It allows to search rigid laws starting with a sequence of weights for a fixed regular vector $`X`$. For such an algebra, we note the rank by $`rg\left(𝔤\right)=dim𝔱`$.
We finally recall an invariant of nilpotent Lie algebras that will be helpful: Let $`𝔤`$ be a nilpotent Lie algebra and $`X𝔤C^1\left(𝔤\right)`$ a nonzero vector. We denote by $`c\left(X\right)`$ the ordered sequence of dimensions of the Jordan blocks for the adjoint operator. Considering the lexicographical order in the set of these sequences

$$(c_1,..,c_t)(c_1^{},..,c_s^{})i\text{ such that }c_j=c_j^{}\text{ for }i>j\text{ and }c_i>c_i^{}$$

we define the characteristic sequence of $`𝔤`$ as

$$c\left(𝔤\right)=\underset{X𝔤C^1\left(𝔤\right)}{\mathrm{max}}\left\{c\left(X\right)\right\}$$

A vector $`X0,X𝔤C^1𝔤`$ satisfying $`c\left(𝔤\right)=c\left(X\right)`$ is called characteristic vector.

###### Remark 1

It is obvious that abelian Lie algebras have characteristic sequence $`(1,1,..,1)`$, while for the Heisenberg Lie algebra $`𝔥_k`$ we obtain $`c(𝔥_k)=(2,1,..,1)`$. Thus it is reasonable to study the next step, the sequence $`(3,1,..,1)`$ and to determine the rigid Lie algebras having a nilradical with this sequence.

###### Theorem 3

 Any solvable rigid law whose nilradical $`𝔫`$ is nonsplit and of characteristic sequence $`(3,1,..,1)`$ is isomorphic to one of the following laws:

1. The Lie algebra $`𝔡_{2m}=𝔤_{2m}𝔱(m3)`$ with basis $`(X_0,X_1,X_2,X_3,Y_1,..,Y_{2m4},`$
$`V_1,..V_m)`$ and law

$`[X_0,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`X_{i+1},i=1,2`$
$`[Y_{2i1},Y_{2i}]`$ $`=`$ $`X_3,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_1,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`\left(i+1\right)X_i,i=0,1,2,3`$
$`[V_1,Y_{2i1}]`$ $`=`$ $`\left(i+4\right)Y_{2i1},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_1,Y_{2i}]`$ $`=`$ $`i.Y_{2i},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_2,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`X_i,i=1,2,3`$
$`[V_2,Y_{2i}]`$ $`=`$ $`Y_{2i},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_{i+2},Y_{2i1}]`$ $`=`$ $`Y_{2i1},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_{i+2},Y_{2i}]`$ $`=`$ $`Y_{2i},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
2. The Lie algebra $`𝔡_{2m+1}=𝔤_{2m+1}𝔱(m2)`$ with basis $`(X_0,..,X_3,Y_1,..,Y_{2m3},`$
$`V_1,..V_m`$ and law

$`[X_0,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`X_{i+1},i=1,2`$
$`[X_1,Y_{2m3}]`$ $`=`$ $`X_3`$
$`[Y_{2i1},Y_{2i}]`$ $`=`$ $`X_3,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_1,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`\left(i+1\right)X_i,i=0,1,2,3`$
$`[V_1,Y_{2i1}]`$ $`=`$ $`\left(i+4\right)Y_{2i1},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_1,Y_{2i}]`$ $`=`$ $`iY_{2i},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_1,Y_{2m3}]`$ $`=`$ $`2Y_{2m3}`$
$`[V_2,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`X_i,i=1,2,3`$
$`[V_2,Y_{2i}]`$ $`=`$ $`Y_{2i},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_{i+2},Y_{2i1}]`$ $`=`$ $`Y_{2i1},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$
$`[V_{i+2},Y_{2i}]`$ $`=`$ $`Y_{2i},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im3`$
3. The 7 dimensional Lie algebra $`𝔡_5^{}`$ with basis $`(X_0,..,X_3,Y_1,V_1,V_2)`$and law

$`[X_0,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`X_{i+1},i=1,2`$
$`[X_1,X_2]`$ $`=`$ $`Y_1`$
$`[V_1,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`\left(i+1\right)X_i,i=0,1,2,3`$
$`[V_1,Y_1]`$ $`=`$ $`5Y_1`$
$`[V_2,X_i]`$ $`=`$ $`X_i,i=1,2,3`$
$`[V_2,Y_1]`$ $`=`$ $`2Y_1`$

###### Remark 2

Indeed more is true: any nonsplit nilpotent Lie algebra $`𝔫`$ of characteristic sequence $`(3,1,..,1)`$ is isomorphic to the nilradical of one of the former solvable algebras .

In order to determine the invariants of these algebras, we have to find the cardinal of their fundamental systems of invariants:

###### Lemma 1

Following identities hold:

1. For $`m3`$ we have $`𝒩(𝔡_{\mathfrak{2}𝔪})=m2`$.
2. For $`m2`$ we have $`𝒩(𝔡_{\mathfrak{2}𝔪+\mathfrak{1}})=m1`$.
3. $`𝒩(𝔡_5^{})=1`$.

Proof. We prove the result for $`𝔡_{2m+1}`$, the reasoning for $`𝔡_{2m}`$ being similar. For $`𝔡_5^{}`$ the result is trivial. Clearly the nilradical of $`𝔡_{2m+1}`$ is isomorphic to the algebra spanned by $`\{X_0,X_1,Y_i\}_{1im3}`$ and the torus $`𝔱`$ is generated by the $`\left\{V_i\right\}`$. The root system $`S`$ associated to $`𝔡_{2m+1}`$ is

$`\lambda _0+\lambda _1=\lambda _2`$ (7)
$`2\lambda _0+\lambda _1=\lambda _3`$ (8)
$`\mu _{2i1}+\mu _{2i}=\lambda _3`$ (9)
$`\mu _{2m3}=2\lambda _0`$ (10)
The matrix $`A=\left(C_{ij}^k\right)`$ of structure constants for $`𝔡_{2m+1}`$ over this basis can be extracted from the following table

$`𝐱_0`$ $`𝐱_1`$ $`𝐱_2`$ $`𝐱_3`$ $`𝐲_{2m3}`$ $`𝐲_{2i1}`$ $`𝐲_{2i}`$ $`𝐯_1`$ $`𝐯_2`$ $`𝐯_{i+2}`$ $`[]`$    $`0`$ $`x_2`$ $`x_3`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`x_0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`𝐱_0`$  $`x_2`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`x_3`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`x_1`$ $`0`$ $`𝐱_1`$  $`x_3`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`x_2`$ $`x_2`$ $`0`$ $`𝐱_2`$  $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`2x_3`$ $`x_3`$ $`0`$ $`𝐱_3`$  $`0`$ $`x_3`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`2y_{2m3}`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`𝐲_{2m3}`$  $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`x_3`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`y_{2i1}`$ $`𝐲_{2i1}`$  $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`x_3`$ $`0`$ $`2y_{2i}`$ $`y_{2i}`$ $`y_{2i}`$ $`𝐲_{2i}`$  $`x_0`$ $`0`$ $`x_2`$ $`2x_3`$ $`2y_{2m3}`$ $`0`$ $`2y_{2i}`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`𝐯_1`$  $`0`$ $`x_1`$ $`x_2`$ $`x_3`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`y_{2i}`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`𝐯_2`$  $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`y_{2i1}`$ $`y_{2i}`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`0`$ $`𝐯_{i+2}`$

where the columns between double lines are representative for the vectors $`\{y_{2i1},y_{2i}\},1im2`$. For any $`1i,j3m+1`$ let $`A_{(i,j)}`$ be the matrix obtained by deletion of the $`i^{th}`$ row and $`j^{th}`$ column of $`A`$. By recurrence, let

$$A_{(i_1,j_1),..,(i_r,j_r)}=\left(A_{(i_1,j_1),..,(i_{r1},j_{r1})}\right)_{(i_r,j_r)}$$

For $`m2`$ define

$$A_m:=A_{(3m+1,3m+1),..,(2m+3,2m+3)}$$

It can easily be proven by induction over $`m`$ that $`det\left(A_{m+1}\right)=x_3^2det\left(A_m\right)`$, and since $`det\left(A_2\right)=4x_3^6`$ we get $`det\left(A_m\right)=4x_3^{2m+2}`$. From this we deduce $`rank\left(A\right)=2m+2`$. Since the vector $`V_1`$ is regular, the root system $`(S)`$ describes the torus action and the rank of the algebra. As a consequence we have that

$$2m+2=sup\left\{rankA\left(\mu \right)\right|\mu 𝒪\left(𝔤_{2m+1}\right)\}$$

and by the Beltrametti-Blasi formula we obtain $`𝒩(𝔡_{2m+1})=m1`$.

###### Theorem 4

Let $`𝔯`$ be a solvable rigid Lie algebra whose nilradical is nonsplit of characteristic sequence $`(3,1,..,1)`$. Then a set of fuctionally independent invariants is given by

1. $`\left\{\frac{y_{2k1}y_{2k}+x_3v_{k+2}}{x_3}\right\}_{1km2}`$ if $`𝔯𝔡_{2m}`$
2. $`\{\frac{x_0x_2x_3+x_2^2y_{2m3}2x_3^2v_2+v_1x_3^22x_1x_3y_{2m3}}{2x_3^2},\frac{x_3v_{k+2}+y_{2k1}y_{2k}}{x_3}\}_{1km2}`$ if $`𝔯𝔡_{2m+1}`$
3. $`\left\{\frac{\left(2x_0y_1+x_2^22x_1x_3\right)^3}{\left(x_3y_1\right)^2}\right\}`$ if $`𝔯𝔡_5^{}`$

Proof.

1. Let $`𝔯=𝔡_{2m+1}`$. The system $`(2.2)`$ is in this case:

$`\widehat{X_0}=x_2_{x_1}x_3_{x_2}+x_0_{v_1}`$ (11)
$`\widehat{X_1}=x_2_{x_0}+x_1_{v_2}`$ (12)
$`\widehat{X_2}=x_3_{x_0}+x_2_{v_1}+x_2_{v_2}`$ (13)
$`\widehat{X_3}=2x_3_{v_1}+x_3_{v_2}`$ (14)
$`\widehat{Y_{2i1}}=x_3_{y_{2i}}+y_{2i1}_{v_{i+1}},1im2`$ (15)
$`\widehat{Y_{2i}}=x_3_{y_{2i1}}y_{2i}_{v_{i+1}}+2y_{2i}_{v_1}+y_{2i1}_{v_2},1im2`$ (16)
$`\widehat{V_1}=x_0_{x_0}+x_2_{x_2}+2x_3_{x_3}+2{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{m2}{}}}y_{2i}_{y_{2i}}`$ (17)
$`\widehat{V_2}=x_1_{x_1}+x_2_{x_2}+x_3_{x_3}+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{m2}{}}}y_{2i}_{y_{2i}}`$ (18)
$`\widehat{V_{i+1}}=y_{2i1}_{y_{2i1}}y_{2i}_{y_{2i}},1im2`$ (19)
Elementary manipulations show that an invariant $`F`$ satisfies $`_{x_i}F=0`$ for $`i=0,1,2`$ and $`_{v_i}F=0`$ for $`i=1,2`$. This reduces the system to the following

$`\left(x_3_{y_{2i}}+y_{2i1}_{v_{i+1}}\right)F=0,1im2`$ (20)
$`\left(x_3_{y_{2i1}}y_{2i}_{v_{i+1}}+2y_{2i}_{v_1}+y_{2i1}_{v_2}\right)F=0,1im2`$ (21)
$`\left(x_3_{x_3}+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{m2}{}}}y_{2i}_{y_{2i}}\right)F=0`$ (22)
$`\left(y_{2i1}_{y_{2i1}}y_{2i}_{y_{2i}}\right)F=0`$ (23)
This system, which can be integrated by elementary methods , gives a fundamental set of invariants formed by the functions

$$\left\{f_i=\frac{y_{2i1}y_{2i}+x_3v_{i+2}}{x_3}\right\}_{1im2}$$
2. Let $`𝔯=𝔡_{2m+1}`$. Consider the following system of PDE’s :

$`\widehat{X_i}.F=0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}i3`$ (24)
$`\widehat{Y_{2m3}}.F=0`$ (25)
It corresponds to the system of PDEs that we obtain for $`m=2`$, and by the preceding lemma it has one solution, which can be determined by elementary methods. We obtain

$$f_1=\frac{2x_3^2v_2x_3^2v_1+2x_1x_3y_{2m3}x_0x_2x_3x_2^2y_{2m3}}{x_3^2}$$

Thus, for $`m=2`$, a fundamental set of invariants is given by $`\left\{f_1\right\}`$. For the general case $`m3`$ observe that, since $`\widehat{X_3}.F=x_3\left(2_{v_1}+_{v_2}\right)=0`$, the equation $`\widehat{Y_{2i}}.F=0`$ can be reduced to

$`\widehat{Y_{2i}^{}}.F=\left(x_3_{y_{2i1}}y_{2i}_{v_{i+2}}\right)=0`$ (26)
As a consequence, the function $`f_1`$ is a solution of $`\left(2.2526\right)`$ for any $`m3`$, and the remaining fundamental solutions are obtained from the system

$`\widehat{Y_{2i1}}.F=0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$ (27)
$`\widehat{Y_{2i}^{}}.F=0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}im2`$ (28)
For any fixed $`i\{1,..,m2\}`$ a solution of the corresponding equations is

$$f_{i+1}=\frac{x_3v_{i+2}+y_{2i1}y_{2i}}{x_3}$$

which shows that a fundamental system of invariants for $`𝔡_{2m+1}`$ is given by $`\{f_1,f_{i+1}\}_{1im2}`$.
3. It is easily verified that any invariant satisfies $`_{v_1}F=_{v_2}F=0`$. Transformations of the corresponding system show that an invariant function $`F`$ must be a solution of the following equation :

$`\left(x_2^2+y_1x_0+2x_1x_3\right)_{x_1}F+3y_1x_3_{y_1}F=0`$ (29)
This equation admits, among others, the rational solution

$`F_1={\displaystyle \frac{\left(2x_0y_1+x_2^22x_1x_3\right)^3}{x_3^2y_1^2}}`$ (30)
and it can easily verified that this function satisfies the system. Thus a set of invariants is given by $`\left\{F_1\right\}`$.

## 3 Applications to rank one subalgebras

The seven dimensional rigid Lie algebra $`𝔡_5^{}`$ is a nice example to illustrate how, under certain assumptions, we can deduce the invariants of some subalgebras. Let us consider the rank one solvable (on-nilpotent) subalgebras $`𝔡_5^{a,b}`$ of $`𝔡_5^{}`$ having the following brackets :

| $`[X_0,X_1]=X_2,`$ | $`[X_0,X_2]=X_3,`$ | $`[X_1,X_2]=Y_1,`$ |
| --- | --- | --- |
| $`[V,X_0]=aX_0,`$ | $`[V,X_1]=bX_1,`$ | $`[V,X_2]=\left(a+b\right)X_2,`$ |
| $`[V,X_3]=\left(2a+b\right)X_3,`$ | $`[V,Y_1]=\left(a+2b\right)Y_1;`$ | $`a,b`$ |

Clearly we have $`V=aV_1+bV_2`$. The system of PDEs giving the invariants of $`𝔡_5^{a,b}`$ is

$`\widehat{X_i}F=0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}i3`$
$`\widehat{Y_1}F=0`$
$`\widehat{V}F=0`$
where

$`\widehat{V}=\left(ax_0_{x_0}+bx_1_{x_1}+\left(a+b\right)x_2_{x_2}+\left(2a+b\right)x_3_{x_3}+\left(a+2b\right)y_1_{y_1}\right)`$
Now any invariant $`F`$ satisfies $`_vF=0`$, we obtain that any invariant of $`𝔡_5^{}`$ is also an invariant of $`𝔡_5^{a,b}`$, since the five first equations coincide and the sixth is a linear combination of the toral equations of $`𝔡_5^{}`$.

###### Lemma 2

For any $`a,b`$ not simultaneously zero we have $`𝒩\left(𝔡_5^{}\right)=2`$.

Proof. Since $`F_1`$ satisfies the system, $`𝒩1`$. Now it can easily be seen that the matrix obtained from the commutation table has rank four, from which the assertion follows.

We make a distinction among the subalgebras $`𝔡_5^{}`$: those having trivial center and those not. It is a routinary verification that $`𝔡_5^{a,b}`$ has nontrivial center if and only if $`a+2b=0`$ or $`2a+b=0`$. Since solvable Lie algebras having nontrivial center admit at least a polynomial invariant, we obtain the following

###### Lemma 3

Let $`𝔡_5^{a,b}`$ have nontrivial center. Then a fundamental set of invariants is given by

1. $`\{F_1,x_3\}`$ if $`2a+b=0,`$
2. $`\{F_1,y_1\}`$ if $`a+2b=0`$.

For the case of a non-trivial center, it is easy to verify that any invariant of $`𝔡_5^{a,b}`$ is a function of $`F_1,x_3`$ and $`y_1`$. Specifically, we have

###### Lemma 4

If $`Z\left(𝔡_5^{a,b}\right)0`$, a fundamental set of invariants for $`𝔡_5^{a,b}`$ is given by $`\{F_1,\frac{y_1^{2a+b}}{x_3^{a+2b}}\}`$.

The interest of this example is that it provides us with a general result: Let $`𝔯=𝔫𝔱`$ be a solvable non-nilpotent Lie algebra over $`𝕂=\{,\}`$ and $`𝔱`$ a torus of derivations. Let $`\{X_1,..,X_n,V_1,..,V_p\}`$ be a basis such that the nilradical $`𝔫`$ is generated by the $`X_i`$ and the torus by the $`V_i`$. Suppose moreover that $`𝔯`$ satisfies the following property:

$`_{v_i}F=0,1ip\text{ for any invariant }F`$ (31)
Let $`𝔱^{}`$ be a one dimensional subtorus of $`𝔱`$ and $`𝔯^{}=𝔫𝔱^{}`$ such that $`𝔱^{}.Z\left(𝔫\right)0`$, i.e., the action of the subtorus $`𝔱^{}`$ on the center of the nilradical is nonzero.

###### Proposition 1

In the preceding conditions, any element $`F`$ of a fundamental set of invariants for $`𝔯`$ is an invariant of $`𝔯^{}`$. Moreover, $`𝒩(𝔯^{})𝒩(𝔯)`$.

Proof. Let $`V`$ generate $`𝔱^{}`$. We can find coefficients $`\alpha _1,..,\alpha _p𝕂`$ such that $`V=_{i=1}^p\alpha _iV_i`$. Since $`𝔫`$ is nilpotent, its center is nonzero, and by $`𝔱^{}.Z\left(𝔫\right)0`$, we deduce that $`_vF=0`$ for any invariant $`F`$ of $`𝔯^{}`$. The system of PDEs giving the invariants is

$`\widehat{X_i}.F=[X_i,X_j]_{x_j}.F=0,`$ $`1in`$ (32)
$`\widehat{V}.F=[V,X_i]_{x_i}.F=0`$ (33)
Now $`\widehat{V}=_{i=1}^p\alpha _i\widehat{V_i}`$. This shows that any invariant $`G`$ of $`𝔯`$ also satisfies the system $`(3.6),(3.7)`$, since the equations concerning the operators $`\widehat{X_i}`$ coincide, and the last equation is a linear combination of the equations $`\{\widehat{V_i}.F=0\}`$ of $`𝔯`$. Thus any fundamental set of invariants for $`𝔯`$ is a set of functionally independent invariants for $`𝔯^{}`$. As a consequence $`𝒩(𝔯^{})𝒩(𝔯)`$.

###### Remark 3

If $`p`$ is even, by the Beltrametti-Blasi formula we deduce $`𝒩(𝔯^{})𝒩(𝔯)+1`$

The main interest of this result is its possible application in the other direction \[whenever it makes sense\], i.e., starting from the invariants of a rank one subalgebra to find a fundamental set of the algebra $`𝔯`$. We illustrate it by an example:

###### Example 1

Consider the solvable Lie algebra $`𝔤`$ given by the brackets

$`[V_1,Y_i]=iY_i,1i7`$
$`[V_2,Y_i]=y_i,2i7`$
$`[Y_1,Y_i]=Y_{i+1},2i6`$
This algebra is of rank $`2`$, and a torus is generated by $`V_1`$ an $`V_2`$. From the corresponding system (2.2) it can be seen that for any invariant $`F`$ of $`𝔤`$ we have $`_{v_i}F=0,i=1,2`$, thus we can apply the preceding proposition. Consider the one dimensional subtorus generated by $`V_2`$. The semidirect product of this torus and the nilradical is an eight dimensional Lie algebra $`𝔤^{}`$ satisfying $`𝒩(𝔤^{})=2`$. A fundamental set of invariants for this algebra is formed by the following functions:

$`g_1={\displaystyle \frac{6y_4y_6y_7^26y_3y_7^3+2y_6^48y_5y_6^2y_7+5y_5^2y_7^2}{3y_4y_7^3+y_6^3y_73y_5y_6y_7^2}}`$
$`g_2={\displaystyle \frac{5y_2y_7^4+5y_4y_5y_7^3+5y_5y_6^3y_75y_5^2y_6y7^2y_6^5+5y_3y_6y_7^35y_4y_6^2y_7^2}{3y_4y_7^4+y_6^3y_7^23y_5y_6y_7^3}}`$
As the assumption of the proposition are satisfied, we know that there exists a function $`F(g_1,g_2)`$ that forms a fundamental system of invariants for the Lie algebra $`𝔤`$. In this case it is not difficult to see that such a function is given by $`F=\frac{g_2}{g_1^2}`$.

###### Remark 4

Of course this inverse procedure is applicable only in quite concrete cases, since the algebra $`𝔯`$ could have no invariants, while a rank one odd-dimensional Lie subalgebra necessarily has solutions.

## Concluding remarks

The preceding results show that rigid Lie algebras are an adequate class for studying the generalized Casimir invariants. Since the torus determines the nilradical, the equations describing the action of the torus are of importance for the structure of the invariants, specifically if those invariants do not depend on the variables corresponding to toral elements. Since rigid Lie algebras can theoretically be classified following the algorithm given in , the analysis these algebras in relatively low dimension and their subalgebras can provide alternative criteria to attack the general case, as classifications in general are not possible. This in particular applies to the class of $`2`$-step solvable Lie algebras, for which general constructions exist . Observe further that, like proposition 1, the results do not depend on the field, which allows to derive results for both real and complex Lie algebras. The reason to analyze the complex rigid laws lies in their decomposition: for real rigid Lie algebras no result like theorem 1 is known, and it is still an open question wheter it can exist.
Finally, the same analysis could be applied to any solvable Lie algebra whose nilradical has characteristic sequence $`(p,1,..,1)`$ for $`p4`$. These algebras, which are completely classified up to $`p=5`$ , consist of a low dimensional subalgebra $`𝔪`$ generated by a characteristic vector, to which $`3`$-dimensional Heisenberg Lie algebras having its derived subalgebra in the center of $`𝔪`$ are glued. This structure makes this class worthy of being analyzed to obtain alternative criteria for the generalized Casimir invariants of solvable Lie algebras.