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# Evidence for chemical evolution in the spectra of high redshift galaxies Based on observations obtained with the FORS Instruments at the ESO VLT, Paranal, Chile on the course of the observing proposals 65.O-0049(A), 66.A-0547(A), 68.A-0013(A), 68.A-0014(A)

## 1 Introduction

Among the unsolved questions of cosmology is the beginning and evolution of the star formation process at early cosmic epochs. From the presence of heavy nuclei in high-z quasars and galaxies it is clear that star formation started rather early (see e.g. Hamann and Ferland 1999, Dietrich et al. 1999). Moreover, galaxy counts and emission line studies of high-z galaxies indicate that the star formation rate (SFR) declined rapidly since at least the epoch corresponding to redshifts of $`z2`$ (see e.g. Madau et al. 1996, Madau 2000). On the other hand intrinsic interstellar extinction (which may affect strongly the rest-frame UV of distant galaxies) and uncertainties concerning the relation between line emission and the star formation introduce considerable uncertainties into the derivation of the global star formation rate at early cosmic epochs from visual galaxy counts and emission line studies, while investigations using IR and mm-wave data are hampered by small samples.

An alternative approach to investigate the early star formation history of the universe is the evaluation of the chemical enrichment history of the universe, as star formation and the rapid evolution of massive stars results in a production of heavy nuclei more or less proportional to the SFR. Steidel et al. (1996a, 1996b) and Lowenthal et al. (1997) have demonstrated that galaxies with redshifts up to about $`z5`$ can be observed with optical photometry and spectroscopy during periods of high star formation activity (resulting in high rest-frame UV emission which is redshifted into the optical wavelength range in the observers frame). Basic properties of these objects, such as number densities, luminosities, colors, sizes, morphologies, star formation rates, overall chemical abundances, dynamics and clustering have been investigated in various recent papers (cf. e.g. Steidel et al. 1996b, Yee et al. 1996, Lowenthal et al. 1997, Pettini et al. 2000, and Leitherer et al. 2001). Steidel et al. (1996a, 1996b) already noted that the high-z galaxies show, on average, relatively weak metallic absorption lines, and they ascribe this finding tentatively to a lower metal content (a suggestion which has later been reiterated in several subsequent papers). On the other hand most of the published spectra of high-z galaxies are not of sufficient S/N to provide qualitative information on the metal content. Therefore, we obtained new high S/N spectra of galaxies with $`z3.5`$ with the aim of studying the chemical evolution of starburst galaxies at high redshifts.

In the present paper we describe results on the C iv absorption line strength and their interpretation in terms of chemical evolution with cosmic age at redshifts $`0<z<3.5`$. Most of the new spectra were obtained with the FORS instruments at the ESO VLT in the course of a photometric and spectroscopic study of distant galaxies in the FORS Deep Field (FDF) (Appenzeller et al. 2000, Heidt et al. 2001, Bender et al. 2001). Due to its combination of depth and a (compared to the HDFs) relatively large area the FDF is particularly well suited for statistical studies of high-redshift galaxies. In the present investigation we restrict ourselves to redshifts $`z3.5`$ since at higher redshifts the position of the redshifted C iv resonance lines tends to coincide with strong OH night sky lines. Hence, for an accurate sky subtraction a higher spectral resolution or longer exposure times than we could achieve so far would be needed. In Sect. 2 we describe the sample selection and the observations. In Sect. 3 we present and discuss the measurement of the C iv (and Si iv) equivalent widths, from which we estimate the metallicities of the investigated objects in Sect. 4. In Sect. 5 we compare our results with data available in the literature, in Sect. 6 we draw our conclusions.

## 2 Sample selection and observations

The data set used in this study combines spectra of high-redshift galaxies observed with the ESO VLT and spectra of local starburst galaxies taken from the IUE archive. 51 of the high-redshift spectra were selected (according to the criteria listed below) from about 300 low-resolution spectra observed mainly during the spectroscopic observing runs of the FDF program (in 3 nights in Sept. and Oct. 2000 and 3.5 nights in Oct. and Dec. 2001). For these observations we used FORS1&2 at the VLT in MOS and MXU mode with a slit width of 1′′ and the 150I grism. (For instrumental details see the FORS Manual at the ESO web page www.eso.org). A few additional spectra had already been obtained during the commissioning phases of FORS1&2 in 1998, 1999 and 2000 using the same spectroscopical setup as described above. All spectra cover a spectral range (in the observer’s frame) from about 3400 Å to about 10000 Å with a spectral scale of 5 Å/pixel and a spectral resolution of about 200. Although spectra of galaxies as faint as I = 26.0 mag have been observed successfully in the FDF, in the present investigation only galaxies with I $`24.5`$ mag were included. Depending on the objects’ magnitude and the seeing conditions ($`0\stackrel{}{.}7`$ on average) the integration times ranged between 2 and 12 hours. The data reduction (bias subtraction, flatfielding, cosmic ray elimination, sky subtraction, wavelength calibration, etc.), was performed using standard MIDAS routines. A detailed description of the FDF spectroscopic observing program and the data reduction procedures will be presented by Noll et al. (2002).
With respect to the photometric redshift catalogue of the FDF (see Bender et al. 2001) our spectroscopic sample is complete to about 85% for our limiting magnitude (I $`24.5`$ mag) for photometric redshifts in the range $`2.2<z_{\mathrm{phot}}<3.5`$. The distribution of the spectroscopic redshifts is in good agreement with the photometric redshift distribution of the FDF which has peaks at redshifts of around 2.4 and 3.4 (see Fig. 3 in Bender et al. 2001). Exceptions are the redshifts in the range $`1.4z2.2`$ where a lack of strong spectroscopic features in our observed wavelength range makes a reliable spectroscopic redshift determination rather difficult, resulting in an artificial low number of objects in our spectroscopic sample.

For the present investigation we selected those FDF galaxies showing absorption line spectra with an adequate S/N ($`>10`$ per resolution element) for a meaningful quantitative analysis of the C iv resonance doublet. All these galaxies show typical starburst characteristics in their spectra such as intense (rest frame) UV continua and highly ionized metal absorption lines. Three examples of FDF spectra are displayed in Fig. 1. The 10 high-redshift galaxies which are dominated by their Lyα emission were not included in our study. This leads to a limitation of the sample to galaxies with $`z<4`$, since most of the few FDF galaxies with larger redshifts (up to 5.0) observed so far show strong Ly$`\alpha `$ emission (while pure absorption line spectra dominate at lower redshifts; see Noll et al. 2002). Also excluded from our study were 4 objects that show absorption lines with clear emission components, forming P-Cygni profiles. (The apparent emission peak redwards from the C iv absorption feature in Fig. 1c is not a P Cygni emission component. The absorption line is unshifted and, as pointed out in the caption, the apparent emission component is an artifact).

In order to enlarge our sample somewhat we added 6 additional FORS spectra (matching the criteria listed above) which had been observed with the same setup during the FORS commissioning runs (and are now available from the VLT archive). Four of these additional spectra were selected among the gravitationally amplified galaxies behind the cluster 1E0657-558 (Mehlert et al. 2001). We further included two spectra from the HDF-S and AXAF Deep Field follow-up studies (Cristiani et al. 2000), which met our criteria.

The comparison sample of IUE low resolution spectra from the IUE archive111http://ines.laeff.esa.es consists of 36 local ($`z0`$) starburst galaxies investigated by Heckman et al. (1998)222 The sample investigated by Heckman et al. (1998) actually contains 45 galaxies. But 3 of these spectra are not available on the IUE archive, and 6 were excluded from our study for having either a too low S/N or showing strong emission lines or defects close to the Si iv and/or C iv lines.. All these IUE spectra were obtained with the Short Wavelength Prime Camera in the low dispersion mode and, therefore, cover a similar rest-frame spectral range with a slightly better spectral resolution as our FORS spectra of high redshift objects. The IUE spectra were reduced using the pipeline provided by the archive and smoothed to attain the same spectral resolution as the VLT spectra.

## 3 Equivalent widths

In an earlier investigation, based on smaller samples of high-redshift galaxies, we noticed an apparent anticorrelation between redshift and the strength of the C iv 1550 Å doublet (Mehlert et al. 2001, 2002). According to Walborn et al. (1995) high-excitation lines like C iv and Si iv are produced mostly in stellar photospheres and winds and their strengths depend sensitively on the stellar metallicity. Although in a few cases a non-negligible ($``$ 50%) contamination of the C iv and Si iv features by interstellar absorption could not be excluded, Heckman et al. (1998) find for their sample of 45 nearby starburst galaxies that the C iv and Si iv absorption is normally produced by photospheric and stellar wind lines of the unresolved stars. We found further evidence for a close relation between the strength of these resonance lines and the metallicity of the observed starburst galaxies by measuring the equivalent widths of the C iv 1550 Å and Si iv 1398 Å doublets in synthetic spectra of starburst galaxies with different metallicities taken from Leitherer et al. (2001) (see Fig. 2). According to Fig. 2 for ages $`10`$ Myr the measured equivalent widths depend strongly on the metallicity but are almost independent of the age of the starburst.

Therefore, we measured for those galaxies with reliable spectroscopic redshifts $`z>1.35`$ (i.e. galaxies where the C iv doublet was redshifted into our observed spectral range) the rest-frame equivalent widths $`W_0`$ of this feature, which is defined by

$$W_0=_{\lambda 1}^{\lambda 2}\left(1\frac{S(\lambda )}{C(\lambda )}\right)𝑑\lambda .$$
(1)
Here we used following approximation:

$`W_0=\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{1}{C(\lambda _0)}}{\displaystyle _{\lambda 1}^{\lambda 2}}S(\lambda )𝑑\lambda \mathrm{with}`$
$`\lambda _1=\lambda _0{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda }{2}};\lambda _2=\lambda _0+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda }{2}}.`$
The central wavelength for C iv is $`\lambda _0`$ = 1549.5 Å and for the width of the line window we chose $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =30`$ Å. The continuum flux at the central rest frame wavelength $`\lambda _0`$ was approximated by the mean flux within two well defined continuum windows, one on each side of the line window. Each of these continuum windows has a width of 75 Å and is separated from the line window by 5 Å. Since the correct continuum determination is critical for the resulting $`W_0`$, its level was checked interactively. In particular it turned out that the influence of the B-Band, that lies in the right continuum window of the highest-z objects is negligible with respect to the resulting $`W_0`$.

For objects with $`z>1.7`$, where in addition the Si iv doublet ($`\lambda _0=1398.3`$ Å) became visible, we also measured $`W_0`$(Si iv) with the same bandwidth and continuum window definitions as for C iv. The same measurements were also carried out in the IUE spectra of the comparison sample of $`z0`$ starburst galaxies. Statistical mean errors of the individual $`W_0`$ measurements were calculated from the S/N of the individual spectra and the errors of the continuum fits ($`10`$ %). Equivalent width measurements in the spectra of faint objects can be affected severely by errors in the sky background subtraction. Therefore, during the reduction of our FORS spectra a particular effort was made to keep these errors low. Various tests showed that for all FORS spectra used in this study the errors in determining the continuum level remained below 5% (see Noll et al. 2002). Hence, systematic errors in the measured equivalent widths due to an incorrect sky subtraction are well below the statistical errors in most cases.

Another source of systematic errors in our $`W_0`$ measurements is our low spectral resolution, which in most cases did not allow us to resolve the line profiles. However, since equivalent widths measurements of strong isolated lines are in principle independent of the spectral resolution and since all our conclusions are based on differences between measurements carried out with the same procedure in spectra of the same resolution, these systematic errors are expected to cancel out and therefore are not expected to affect the results of this paper significantly. On the other hand, since the C iv doublet is not a truly isolated feature, our numerical results for the equivalent widths should not be directly compared to results obtained from spectra with a different spectral resolution.

The results of our $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ measurements are listed in Table 1 and plotted in Fig. 3. In order to avoid a crowding of data points at $`z0`$, we plotted for the local (IUE) starburst galaxies only the average value and indicate the $`1\sigma `$ scatter of the individual values by a bar. For the high-redshift galaxies the individual data points and their mean errors are given.

As demonstrated by Fig. 3 our high-redshift galaxies with $`z<2.5`$ show about the same average C iv equivalent widths and about the same scatter around the average as the local starburst galaxies. However, for redshifts larger than about 2.5 the average C iv equivalent widths and their scatter clearly decrease with $`z`$ in our sample. As described in Sect. 2 this decrease is not driven by any selection effect since the spectroscopic redshift distribution of the included FDF galaxies is in good agreement with the photometric redshift distribution.

Fig. 3 obviously confirms the effect suspected by Steidel et al. (1996a) quantitatively. In order to estimate (in view of the observed scatter) the statistical significance of the effect, we calculated averages and their mean errors of the $`W_0`$(C iv) values for selected redshift bins. The results are listed in Table 2 and plotted in Fig. 4. The table confirms that there is no statistically significant difference between the results for the first three bins while the difference between the local sample and our starburst galaxies with $`z>3.0`$ is highly significant ($`>9\sigma `$). Tests with other bin sizes and binning intervals showed that the high significance of the result persists for any reasonable bin distribution.

In Fig. 5 we present analogously to Fig. 3 the observed Si iv equivalent width values as a function of redshift. Similarly as in the case of the C iv doublet the average Si iv strength does not change with redshift for $`z<2.5`$. However, unlike the average C iv strength the average Si iv $`W_0`$ values remain at the local value even beyond $`z>2.5`$. As a result, the ratio between the Si iv and C iv resonance doublets, which is practically constant for low $`z`$, varies for high redshifts in our sample. This is demonstrated quantitatively by Table 3 and Fig. 6.

As noted above, for local starburst galaxies the C iv doublet as well as the Si iv doublet are good metallicity indicators. Since both elements are produced during the evolution and explosion of massive stars, a greatly different relative chemical abundance of C and Si in the high-$`z`$ starburst galaxies appears very unlikely. In spite of the unsatisfactory state of present SN II models and the remaining large uncertainties concerning the intermediate mass element yields for different initial stellar masses, it seems very difficult to enhance Si production relative to C. On the other hand, it is well known that individual hot stars of the same metallicity show a wide range of C iv to Si iv line ratios. Strong C iv absorption is well known to be universally present in O stars of all luminosity classes, while $`W_0(\text{Si }\text{iv})`$ is luminosity dependent and decreases rapidly from supergiant stars to dwarfs (Walborn & Panek 1984, Pauldrach et al. 1990, Leitherer et al. 1995). This line is, therefore, used as a luminosity indicator in UV stellar classification schemes. Moreover, Si iv has a pronounced maximum in early B stars while C iv changes monotonically with temperature. Finally the Si iv strength is more strongly affected by population differences (i.e. stellar age differences) than the C iv doublet. A scatter in these population differences can easily mask any metallicity dependence in the Si iv line strength.

Hence, assuming that the observed absorption lines are dominated by contributions of the stellar photospheres and winds, the $`W_0(\text{Si }\text{iv})/W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ ratio can, in principle, be used to derive informations on the star formation history (instantaneous or continuous) and/or the stellar mass distribution (see also Mas-Hesse & Kunth 1991). Therefore, Fig. 6 can possibly be understood by assuming that at the epochs corresponding to $`z>3`$ (i.e. during the first two Gyrs of the universe) instantaneous star bursts played an important role while “continuous star formation” is the normal mode for local and lower redshift starburst galaxies. However, since the different parameters which determine the value of $`W_0(\text{Si }\text{iv})/W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ cannot be disentangled reliably without including additional lines in the analysis, spectra of higher resolution and higher S/N are required to finally settle this issue.

The investigation of the purely interstellar lines of lower ionisation like e.g. Si ii $`\lambda `$ 1260, O i/Si ii $`\lambda `$ 1303 and C ii $`\lambda `$ 1335 is in progress and the results will be published in a separate paper.

## 4 Metallicities

Since, in contrast to the variations of the Si iv line, differences of the C iv line strength cannot be easily explained by population differences in the starburst galaxies, the observed decrease of the C iv equivalent width values for $`z>2.5`$ in our sample can at present only be interpreted as a metallicity effect. Hence, the decrease of $`W_0`$(C iv) with $`z`$ is expected to contain information on the evolution of the metal content of starburst galaxies with cosmic age. In order to derive a more quantitative measure of the metallicity evolution apparently observed in Fig. 3, we made an attempt to calibrate the observed $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ values in terms of the O/H ratios. For this purpose we used the oxygen abundances listed in Heckman et al. (1998) for all the local starburst galaxies of this sample and derived metallicities using the relation $`\mathrm{log}Z=12+\mathrm{log}(O/H)`$.

In Fig. 7 we plotted for the local starburst galaxies the metallicity relative to the solar value ($`\mathrm{log}Z_{}=8.93`$) as a function of our measured $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ values. We also included the theoretical values determined for synthetic starburst galaxies with solar and LMC metallicities taken from Leitherer et al. (2001). Although the scatter is rather large (RMS = 0.27), the plot indicates a dependence of log Z on $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ which can be approximated by a linear relation. The best linear least square fit to these data gives

$$\mathrm{log}Z/Z_{}=0.13(\pm 0.02)\times W_0(\text{}\text{iv})1.10(\pm 0.12).$$
(3)
This calibration of the C iv strength in terms of metallicity should be a reasonable approximation for statistical applications at least for local starburst galaxies and the objects with $`z<2.5`$. However, in view of the population differences evident from the different Si iv to C iv ratio, its applicability to the $`z>2.5`$ objects is less clear. Nevertheless, because of the absence of other more reliable calibration procedures, and since (in view of the physics of hot stars) the relation between the C iv strength and the metallicity should not be much affected by population details of starbursts we will assume for the following that the correlation between the oxygen abundances and $`W(\text{}\text{iv})`$ observed for low redshift starburst galaxies is also valid at high redshifts. With this assumption we convert our observed C iv equivalent width values to metallicities using Eq. 3. In this way we obtain for our starburst galaxies with $`z>3`$ ($`<z>=3.24`$) an average metallicity of about $`0.16Z_{}`$ and for $`<z>=2.34`$ a value of $`0.42Z_{}`$. The corresponding local ($`z=0`$) value would be 0.56 $`Z_{}`$. In terms of cosmic time scales (for a universe with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7,\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.3,H_0`$ = 67 km sec-1 Mpc-1 used throughout the paper) this would correspond to an increase of the mean metallicity in starburst galaxies by a factor of 2.5 within $`1`$ Gyr between cosmic ages of about 1.9 Gyrs and 2.9 Gyrs. For later epochs the data suggest only little further enrichment. Because of the approximative nature of Eq. 3 these numbers are rough estimates only. Still, they agree surprisingly well with earlier theoretical predictions of the cosmic chemical enrichment history of the universe by e.g. Fritze-von Alvensleben (1998) and by Renzini (1998, 2000), who predicts that the metallicity had been $`0.1Z_{}`$ at $`z=3`$ and has increased to a value of $`1/3Z_{}`$ in the local universe.

Two effects may affect the validity of Eq. 3 at high redshifts: First, in the IUE spectra of the local starburst galaxies contributions of the Milky Way halo components are present, while they are absent in the high-z spectra. Savage & Massa (1987) showed that the C iv equivalent width of distant halo stars are normally $`<0.5`$ Å. This is one order of magnitude lower than the values measured in the local starburst galaxies. Hence its effect on Equ. 3 should be on a 10 % level, at most. Secondly, the spectrum of the magnified high-$`z`$ object MS1512-cb58 ($`z`$ = 2.727) published by Pettini et al. (2000) suggests that the contribution of the interstellar line to the C iv absorption feature increases with redshift. If this holds for all galaxies at similar redshifts, this could result in a general difference of the mean C iv equivalent width between local starburst galaxies and high-redshift objects, but it could not explain the observed evolution of the C iv equivalent width between $`z`$ = 2.5 and $`z`$ = 3.5. Furthermore, by applying the local relation to high redshifts we would overestimate the mean metallicity at young epochs.

## 5 Luminosity effects

When interpreting the data described above one has to keep in mind that for local ($`z0`$) galaxies the metallicities are known to depend on the galaxies’ blue and infrared luminosities, with luminous galaxies tending to have higher metallicities (see e.g. Kobulnicky & Zaritsky 1999 and Heckman et al. 1998). Since at high redshifts we observe only very luminous galaxies. Therefore, if a metallicity-luminosity correlation exists these bright objects should be metal rich and we should find an opposite correlation between metallicity and redshift than the one detected in this work. To test whether at high redshifts a metallicity-luminosity correlation does exist and may affect our detected metallicity evolution we plotted in Fig. 8 the absolute B-magnitudes MB of all high-redshift FDF galaxies as well as MB for the local starburst galaxies. For the local objects the MB was taken from Heckman et al. 1998 (transformed to the cosmology used in this paper), for the FDF galaxies we computed MB as follows: We derived the best fitting SED, scaled to the total I flux derived by SExtractor (FLUX\_AUTO) as determined by our photometric redshift code (see Bender et al. 2001). Then this SED was transformed to $`z=0`$ (using the observed spectroscopic redshift) to derive the rest-frame B-magnitude of the galaxies. Since for the redshift range in question the measured J and K bands bracket the rest-frame B, this procedure is nearly equivalent to an interpolation, minimizing the uncertainties in the K corrections. A detailed description of the method can be found in Gabasch et al. (2002). Using the photometric instead of the spectroscopic redshifts would produce a typical variations of $`\pm 0.2`$ mag. Absolute magnitudes were derived assuming the cosmology parameter $`H_0=67`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$. Our MB have been corrected for foreground Galactic extinction but not for any internal extinction in the starburst galaxies. From Fig.8 we see that the local starburst galaxies indeed show the expected correlation between $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ and the luminosity. On the other hand, for the high-redshift galaxies we cannot determine whether a metallicity-luminosity relation does exist or not, since we do not have any faint objects in our high-$`z`$ sample. But it is evident that the high-redshift galaxies are on average overluminous for their metallicities compared with local starburst galaxies. This agrees well with earlier results from Pettini et al. (2001) and Kobulnicky & Koo (2000) who find this trend for Lyman-break galaxies. Hence, if a metallicity-luminosity relation does exist at high redshifts, our data suggest that it has a clear offset to the local correlation, which seems to evolve with redshift. Moreover, from Fig.8 it is obvious that for the high-redshift galaxies there is no correlation between the measured $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ and the luminosity that could cause the correlation with $`z`$ found in this paper.

Since at high redshifts we do not have any faint objects in our sample, while in the local universe we do not find bright starburst galaxies, we have to make sure that our detected metallicity evolution with redshift is not produced by comparing different objects at different redshifts. For that reason we separately investigated all galaxies, which are brighter than the faintest one at $`z3`$ (which is M$`{}_{\mathrm{B}}{}^{}=22.36`$mag; solid line in Fig. 8). In our sample we only find galaxies brighter than this limit for $`z2`$. Their average values of the measured $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ and the mean error at redshift 2.4 and 3.3 as well as the single $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ measurement for this brightest local galaxy are additionally indicated by open triangles in Fig.4. Obviously these subsample show the same trend with decreasing redshift as the total galaxy sample at $`z2`$. Furthermore we investigated all galaxies fainter than M$`{}_{\mathrm{B}}{}^{}=21.52`$mag (brightest local galaxy) and brighter than M$`{}_{\mathrm{B}}{}^{}=20.38`$mag (faintest galaxy with $`z1`$). The average values of the measured $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ and the mean error at redshift 0, 1.5 and 2.4 are also indicated in Fig.4 by open squares and again show the same trend with decreasing redshift. From these test we conclude that the observed dependence of $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ on redshift is not caused by a luminosity effect. Moreover the two open symbols in Fig. 4 for $`z2.4`$ indicate that a metallicity-luminosity correlation also exists at this redshift.

The following additional selection effects could be present (and possibly weaken) the observed correlation between metallicity and redshift at high-$`z`$: It could, in principle, be possible that at high-$`z`$ we preferentially see objects with low internal extinction, which have low dust content and hence low metallicity. In this case we would expect to find a negative correlation between the UV luminosity of our galaxies and their metallicity. To test whether this correlation is present in our high-$`z`$ galaxies we calculated the UV luminosity as follows:

$`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{UV}})=\mathrm{log}<F>_{1432}^{1532}+{\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{m}\mathrm{M})}{2.5}}`$
$`+\mathrm{log}(4\pi (10pc)^2)`$
where $`<`$$`F`$$`>_{1432}^{1532}`$ is the mean flux between 1432 Å and 1532 Å (as defined by Kinney et al. 1993), (m-M) is the distance modulus calculated using the cosmological parameters mentioned above. We did not correct for intrinsic reddening since such a correction would have involved considerable uncertainties and is not needed for the the present test. From Fig. 9, where we plotted the C iv equivalent widths for the high-$`z`$ FDF galaxies as a function of LUV, we see that no such correlation is evident for our high-$`z`$ objects. Hence our galaxy sample seems not to be affected by this selection effect.

## 6 Comparison with literature data

Although most published spectra of high redshift galaxies lack the S/N required to carry out a study of the type presented here we tried to compare our results with the limited information available on this subject in the literature. For this purpose we measured the C iv equivalent width for all high-z galaxy spectra published in the papers listed in the caption of Table 4. As in our samples, spectra with strong Ly$`\alpha `$ emission were disregarded, and only equivalent width values with estimated (rest frame) mean errors $`1.0`$ Å were used for the comparison. The number of the (for our purpose) usable spectra of each publication is listed in column 4 of Table 4. (Tests showed that including less accurate data lead to similar results, but with much larger statistical errors). For the objects observed by Yee et al. (1996) and by Pettini et al. (1998, 2000) the author kindly made their spectra available to us in electronic form. Hence, to measure $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ in these literature objects we were able to apply exactly the same procedure as used for the galaxies presented in this work. For the objects investigated by Steidel et al. (1996a, 1998), Lowenthal et al. (1997) and Trager et al. (1997) we measured the $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ from enlarged tracings. We tested the reliability of measuring $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ from tracings using some of our own high-z galaxies. The difference between the two measurement methods turned out to be $`10\%`$. Although the spectral resolutions of the different investigations are not exactly the same, the individual resolutions are sufficiently close to allow a direct comparison within the accuracy needed here. Table 4 and Fig. 10 show that the average C iv values derived from the literature high-$`z`$ spectra are in reasonably good agreement with the mean values derived for the galaxies investigated in this work. However, the scatter of the literature data at high redshift is larger. Although this larger scatter is presumably dominated by the on average low S/N of the literature spectra, we cannot exclude that environmental effects may influence the evolution of the C iv strength at high redshifts.

The best investigated individual high-$`z`$ galaxy is, so far, the gravitationally magnified object MS1512-cb58 ($`z=2.727`$) (cf. e.g. Yee et al. 1996, Seitz et al. 1998, Pettini et al. 2000, Teplitz et al. 2001, Savaglio et al 2002). By measuring the C iv equivalent width on low resolution spectra and using Eq. 3 we obtain for this galaxy a metallicity of $`0.4Z_{}`$ and $`0.2Z_{}`$ from P00’s and Y96’s data, respectively. Within our error limits these values are in good agreement with the result of Pettini et al. (2000) (who derive $`0.25Z_{}`$ by comparing the galaxy spectrum with synthetic starburst galaxy spectra from Leitherer et al. (2001)) and Teplitz et al. 2001 (who found $`0.32Z_{}`$ from measuring its oxygen abundance on NIR spectra using the strong line index $`R_{23}`$ which relates (O/H) to the relative abundance of $`[`$OII$`]`$, $`[`$OIII$`]`$ and H$`\beta `$). This comparison seems to support our assumption that our calibration of the C iv strength in terms of metallicity is applicable to high redshift objects at $`z=2.7`$, although the redshift of MS1512-cb58 is too small to estimate the accuracy of the method for the interesting $`z>3`$ objects.

For four further high-z Lyman-break galaxies Pettini et al. (2001) determined the oxygen abundance from NIR spectra using the strong line index $`R_{23}`$. Since the relation between $`R_{23}`$ and O/H has an upper and a lower branch these abundances show the well-known two-value ambiguity. Hence these results do not provide a reliable test of our conclusions. Nevertheless, in Fig. 11 we plot the allowed ranges of oxygen abundance for these 4 Lyman-break galaxies as well as for MS 1512-cb58 together with the metallicities of our starburst galaxies (as derived from the C iv strength via the calibration described above) as a function of redshift. This comparison shows that all data are at least mutually compatible, although for the two highest-z galaxies from Pettini et al. (2001) only the lower-branch results are in reasonable agreement with a strong increase of metallicity from redshift $`3.2`$ to $`2.3`$ suggested by our results.

Our results are also in line to those obtained by de Breuck et al. (2000), who find a qualitative increase of metallicity from higher to lower redshift for a sample of high-z radio galaxies. Furthermore Pettini et al. (1997) and Savaglio et al. (2000) report on evidence for a gradual chemical enrichment of the gas producing the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ lines in QSO spectra, although their trends are only weakly significant. Compared to Savaglio et al. (2000) we find a zero point offset of the metallicity-redshift relation of about 0.7 in $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{log}Z`$ at $`z=2.5`$. Such a difference is not unexpected since the metal absorbers in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems most likely sample the outermost regions of galaxies and therefore a different environment than the dense interstellar matter of which the massive stars seen in starbursts have been formed.

## 7 Conclusions

Our study shows that the FDF starburst galaxies at $`z3.2`$ have on average significantly lower C iv equivalent widths than starburst galaxies at lower redshifts. In view of the known close relation of the C iv strength to the metallicity in local starburst galaxies, it appears likely that this effect is due to a significant evolution of the average metallicity in such objects at high redshifts. Using data from well studied local starburst galaxies we calibrated the C iv strength in terms of the heavy element content of these objects. Assuming that this calibration is applicable to high redshift starburst galaxies we find that the mean cosmic metallicity as observed in starburst galaxies has increased significantly between the cosmic epochs corresponding to $`z3.2`$ and $`2.3`$ (when the universe was between 2 and 3 Gyrs old). If this interpretation of the increase of the C iv absorption strength with decreasing redshift is correct, an intense phase of star formation and evolution of massive stars must have occurred during this period. At lower redshifts ($`z<2.5`$) our data indicate little further increase of the average metallicity of starburst galaxies. Hence, the further cosmic chemical enrichment seems to have been insignificant during the last 11 Gyrs. The metallicity evolution indicated by our data is in reasonable agreement with published theoretical chemical enrichment models due to star formation at early cosmological epochs. Our results are also in agreement with a metallicity evolution found in high-z radio galaxies (de Breuck et al. 2000) and the tentative evidence for a gradual chemical enrichment of the gas producing the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ lines (Pettini et al. 1997, Savaglio et al. 2000).

Since the FDF observations provide a fairly complete sample of the bright starburst galaxies in the observed direction and redshift ranges, the observed chemical evolution should be characteristic of the cosmic volumes with the most intense star formation at the corresponding epochs. However, it is also clear, that our results do not apply to all objects and volumes at a certain redshift or epoch. It is, e.g., well known that the BLR gas of high-redshift QSOs is characterized by high metallicities and that no significant chemical evolution is observable in these objects up to at least $`z=5`$ (see e.g. Hamann and Ferland, 1999, Dietrich et al. 1999, Dietrich and Wilhelm-Erkens, 2000). Obviously, in the environment of these early QSOs much star formation and stellar evolution must have taken place at epochs corresponding to even higher redshifts. It is also known, however, (and confirmed from the FDF survey) that high-z starburst galaxies are much more frequent than bright high-z QSOs. Hence, the starburst galaxies are expected to be a more representative tracer of the history of the overall cosmic chemical evolution than the QSOs.

From our data we cannot determine whether at high redshift a metallicity-luminosity relation does exist, since we do not have any faint objects in our high-$`z`$ sample. But it is evident that the high-redshift galaxies are on average overluminous for their metallicities compared with local starburst galaxies. This trend is also found by Pettini et al. (2001) and Kobulnicky & Koo (2000) for Lyman break galaxies. From tests on various subsamples we find that the observed dependence of $`W_0(\text{}\text{iv})`$ on redshift is not caused by a luminosity effect. Furthermore we showed that this dependence is also not cause by the possible selection effect of preferentially observing galaxies with low dust content and hence low metallicity at high redshifts.

Differences in the Si iv to C iv ratios between local and high-$`z`$ galaxies in our sample suggest differences in the population and star formation history in the galaxies with $`z>3`$. Short bursts of star formation may have been more important (relative to periods of “continuous star formation”) at these early epochs.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are greatly indebted to Drs. M. Pettini and H.K.C. Yee for providing the ASCII files of their high redshift spectra published in Yee et al. (1996) and Pettini et al. (1998, 2000). We thank the referee C. Leitherer for valuable comments. We also want to thank Paranal staff for their support. This research was supported by the German Science Foundation (DFG) (Sonderforschungsbereiche 375 and 439).


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# Chandra imaging spectroscopy of 1E 1740.7 – 2942

## 1 Introduction

The Black Hole Candidate (BHC) 1E 1740.7 – 2942 is the brightest hard X-ray source close to the centre of our Galaxy, with a hard X-ray spectrum and luminosity comparable to Cygnus X-1 (Liang & Nolan 1984; Sunyaev et al. 1991a; Liang 1993). Interest in this source increased following the discovery of its association with a double sided radio-emitting jet by Mirabel et al. (1992), since when it has been classified as a *“microquasar”*. Unfortunately 1E 1740.7 – 2942 suffers from extremely high galactic extinction: intense searches, both in the optical and IR band, have failed to identify a counterpart (Prince & Skinner 1991; Mereghetti et al. 1992; Djorgovski et al. 1992; Mirabel & Duc 1992; Marti et al. 2000; Eikenberry et al. 2001). It has been proposed that 1E 1740.7 – 2942 is accreting from a nearby molecular cloud in which the source is likely to be embedded (Bally & Leventhal 1991; Mirabel et al. 1991; Phillips et al. 1995; Yan & Dalgarno 1997). Recently, Smith et al. (2001) reported the detection of a weak periodic modulation in the long-term X-ray lightcurve: a period of about 12.5 days has been estimated. In addition much effort has been devoted to the possible identification of 1E 1740.7 – 2942 with a source of 511 keV annihilation radiation, but any definitive confirmation has been not reported so far (Bouchet et al. 1991; Sunyaev et al. 1991b; Anantharamaiah et al. 1993; Jung et al. 1995). Due to its very high hydrogen column density ($`N_H10^{23}`$ cm-2 – e.g. Sheth et al. 1996; Churazov et al. 1996; Sakano et al. 1999) this object is in principle an ideal candidate to investigate the properties of the X-ray scattering halos which are known to be generated by dust grains along the line of sight and which provide an unique opportunity to probe the dust component of the interstellar medium (see Predehl & Schmitt 1995) as well as potentially measuring the distance (Predehl et al. 2000). X-ray halos have been observed by *Einstein, ROSAT* and *ASCA*, but thanks to the *Chandra*’s angular and energy resolution it is now possible to detect and investigate them in far greater detail than ever before. More recently Cui et al. (2001) observed 1E 1740.7 – 2942 with *Chandra* HETGS and reported the detection of an elongated X-ray feature in the zeroth-order image, with an extension of about 3 arcsec, orientated roughly perpendicular to the radio-jet axis.
This paper is structured as follows: in section 2 we describe the observation and present our results focusing on the spectral analysis and on the overall structure of the source, which has been reconstructed both from our observation and from another public observation (see Cui et al. 2001), in which the effects of the pile-up do not distort the central region of the image. In section 3 we show some preliminary results on the X-ray halo investigation, comparing the radial profiles of 1E 1740.7 – 2942 with those of an X-ray point-like source which is supposed to be unscattered, while in the fourth section we provide an estimate of X-ray and radio fluxes coming from the radio emitting region which as been identified as the hot spot at the end of the northern jet of 1E 1740.7 – 2942. The last section is devoted to our summary and conclusions.

## 2 Observation and data analysis

We observed 1E 1740.7 – 2942 with the *Chandra* Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS, Garmire 1997) on 2000 August 30 16:59-20:00 with the nominal frame time of 3.2 sec, for a total on source time of about 10 ks. Standard processing of the data was performed by the *Chandra* X-ray Center (CXC). The Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations (CIAO) tools (version 2.2) together with XSPEC (version 11.1) have been used for analysing the data. The ACIS-I camera consists of an array of four front-illuminated CCDs. The physical pixel size is 0.24 $`\mu `$m, which at the aim-point of the telescope is comparable to the 0”.5 spatial resolving power of the High Resolution Mirror Assembly (HRMA). Each CCD contains 1024 x 1024 pixels organized into four readout nodes each of which reads out 1024 rows and 256 columns of pixels. The source was positioned close to the aim-point of the telescope, which is about 960 rows away from the readout node, on ACIS-I device I3. As expected due to the relatively high luminosity of 1E 1740.7 – 2942, the image suffers from severe pile-up effects, which affect especially the central region, giving rise to an apparent “hole” of no events at the centre of the source. That means that the total energy of the events is larger than the threshold ($``$ 15 keV) and is then rejected. In addition clearly visible is the “readout streak”, which arises as a result of all pixels in the column in which the bright source lies being exposed to that source for 40 microseconds. The measured count rate for a circular region with a radius of 4 pixels centered on 1E 1740.7 – 2942 is 0.053 count/sec. Note that, based on previous observations of 1E 1740.7 – 2942, PIMMS predicts a pile-up fraction for *Chandra* ACIS-I of $`75\%`$.

### 2.1 X-ray spectrum

Despite the poor statistics we were able to extract the spectrum from the readout streak which does not suffer of pile-up effects due to about 80

times shorter exposure. In order to do this we isolated a region of width 5 pixels (PSF FWHM is about 2 pixels), centered on the readout streak, extending from just outside the core region to the edge of the CCD. The result is shown in Fig. 1, left panel. The best fit model ($`\chi ^2/d.o.f.`$=82/80) requires an absorbed power law with a photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.54_{0.37}^{+0.42}`$. The hydrogen column density turns out to be extremely high, even for a source located in the Galactic centre: $`N_H=11.8_{1.9}^{+2.3}\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2. The integrated unabsorbed 2-10 keV flux is $`4.6\times 10^{11}`$ erg/cm2/sec, corresponding to an unabsorbed soft X-ray luminosity of $`4\times 10^{34}`$ erg s-1, at a distance of 8.5 kpc. An alternative approach delivering more counts but possibly more vulnerable to pile-up effects, is to take the X-ray spectrum from an annulus about the piled-up core. In this case we have extracted the spectrum from an annulus between 4 and 30 arcsec (Fig. 1, right panel). The best fit parameters are: $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.42_{0.14}^{+0.14}`$, for $`N_H=10.45_{0.70}^{+0.73}\times 10^{22}cm^2`$ with $`\chi ^2/d.o.f.=430/331`$, i.e. consistent with those obtained from the readout streak. We do not believe that scattering in the dust halo reported in section 3 will significantly affect this spectral analysis, as the strongest scattering will occur at energies which are heavily absorbed. Our analysis is consistent with a black hole low/hard state, in agreement with Main et al. (1999), who performed a long term monitoring of 1E 1740.7 – 2942: the source was observed 77 times over a period 1000 days: its photon index varied between about 1.4 and 1.8. Note that other recent papers (Sakano et al. 1999, Cui et al. 2001) have however reported rather harder spectra than expected for the low/hard X-ray state, with $`0.9\mathrm{\Gamma }1.3`$.

### 2.2 Morphology

Cui et al. (2001) observed 1E 1740.7 – 2942 for about 10 ks with *Chandra* HETGS (Observation Identity 94) adopting an alternating exposure data mode, with three long frames (nominal 3.2 sec readout time) and one short (readout time of 0.3 sec) in order to mitigate pile-up. Inspecting the zeroth-order image they found evidence of an elongated X-ray feature, with an extent of about 3 arcsec, roughly perpendicular to the axis of the radio lobes. In order to establish the reality of this structure they ran MARX simulations for the HETGS zeroth-order image of a point source and fitted the simulated Point Spread Function (PSF) to the short-frame radial profile, collapsed along the elongation of such a feature. Based on this approach they estimated that the measured profile is not point like at a confidence level of 99.9 $`\%`$.
In Fig. 2 we show our ACIS-I image of 1E 1740.7 – 2942, smoothed with a 4 arcsec Gaussian: we do not see any asymmetry in the X-ray emission on scales of a few arcmin. However, these data are not useful for investigating the elongated feature reported by Cui et al. , due to the aforementioned pile-up effects. Nevertheless, we have also looked at the data of Cui et al. (2001), now publicly available, by using a quite different approach, as follows: the CIAO package tool *mkpsf* performs an interpolation between PSF library files, which consist of two dimensional simulated monochromatic PSF images, stored in multi-dimensional FITS “*hypercubes*” with energies ranging from 0.277 keV to 8.6 keV and azimuth/elevation steps of either 1 or 5 arcminutes. We extracted the *Chandra* PSF in the brightest point of the image at 5.5 keV, where the energy histogram of the short frame image reaches its maximum. Then we normalised the PSF we obtained to the total number of counts of the source and subtracted it from the short frame image of 1E 1740.7 – 2942, in order to identify some excess.

The result is shown in Fig. 3 : simple visual inspection of the PSF (central panel) suggests that the apparent E-W elongation could be an artifact because it appears in the PSF image itself. This conclusion is confirmed by the subtraction (right panel), which does not reveal the presence of any significant asymmetry. The visible residuals appear to be due to the fact that the normalised PSF, which is of course energy dependent, has been calculated at 5.5 keV, where the short frame image shows its maximum in the number of counts versus energy plot. Furthermore, our experience with observations of unscattered point sources (see below) suggests that the genuine wings of the PSF are even broader than those of the library PSFs.

## 3 X-ray halo

It is well known that sufficiently dense dust clouds along the line of sight to a bright X-ray source are expected to produce halos of faint and diffuse high energy emission because of the (small angle) scattering of the primary radiation by cosmic dust grains. Our goal was to extract the radial profiles of 1E 1740.7 – 2942 in different energy bands and compare them to the *Chandra*’s PSF in order to identify any X-ray excess. Following the CIAO threads we decided to use annuli from 3-100 arcsec with 2 arcsec binning, while an annulus from 100-110 arcsec has been used for the background region. As first step we compared the measured profile with that of the *Chandra* PSF we obtained through an interpolation of library PSFs, as we explained in the previous section. However, these library PSFs have not been derived from on-orbit calibration information; a detailed comparison to observations is still incomplete. There are indications that the shape of the library PSFs do not match the real data very well. In particular the wings (for distances in excess of about 10 arcsec), which result mainly from scattering from the microroughness on the X-ray optic surfaces, seem to be quite different 111See:  *http://asc.harvard.edu/ciao/caveats/psflib.html* and *http://cxc.harvard.edu/cal/Hrma/hrma/psf/psfwings/psfwings.html* . Following the same path described in the preceding section, we generated the *Chandra* PSF, by interpolation of library files, in the centre of our image. Then we extracted the PSF radial profile and normalised it to 1E 1740.7 – 2942 at a radial distance of 4 arcsec ($``$ 8 pixels) (at which radial distance pile-up effects are negligible). The slope of the PSF radial profile generated in this way is quite steep compared to the data: if fitted by a simple power law model, the profile of the PSF (in count/sec/pixel vs. pixel) has a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=3.2\pm 0.1`$ while the profile of 1E 1740.7 – 2942 is well fitted by a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.8\pm 0.1`$ power law.
In order to rule out the suspicion that such a discrepancy was not due to an underestimation of the PSF wings we decided to use as point-like source a public *Chandra* observation of the high Galactic latitude Active Galactic Nucleus PKS 2155-304 (Observation Identity 3167). Predehl & Schmitt (1995), who performed a very accurate study on X-ray halos around 25 point source observed by *ROSAT*, have identified this object as an unscattered X-ray point source.

Our aim was to obtain the radial profile of this source in units of count sec-1arcsec-2 vs. arcsec and, again, compare it to the 1E 1740.7 – 2942 profile. We calculated the surface brightness distributions using 50 annuli from 0.5-125 arcsec (1–300 pixels). Due to the severe pile-up effects in our observation of 1E 1740.7 – 2942, the comparison between the two profiles is strongly sensitive to the normalisation factor: as we did before, we chose to normalise them to the measured surface brightness distribution value at about 4 arcsec, i.e. in a region where the amount of lost and undetected events should be negligible. In Fig. 4 we show the results of our halo analysis in the two representative energy bands: 2.5-3.5 keV and 4.5-5.5 keV. Clearly distinguishable is the turn over due to the pile-up, which completely obliterates the information in the innermost regions for 1E 1740.7 – 2942.

Looking at the left panel, where the surface brightness distributions between 2.5 and 3.5 keV are plotted, we can see the profile of 1E 1740.7 – 2942 quite significantly exceeding that of PKS 2155-302 between about 5-30 arcsec.

The amount by which 1E 1740.7 – 2942 exceeds PKS 2155 – 304 is dependent on a number of factors; seeking to minimize the effect of pile-up, as noted above, we have normalised the data sets at a radius of 4 arcsec. In Fig. 5 we plot the fractional halo intensity, defined as *halo/(source+halo)*, as a function of angular distance from 1E 1740.7 – 2942. The excess, at a level 30–40$`\%`$ (mean value 32$`\pm 7\%`$), is detected out to 40 arcsec from the core, in the lower (2.5-3.5 keV) energy band. In the higher energy band (4.5-5.5 keV) there is no significant excess, although the poor statistics means the 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit is only 30$`\%`$.
Based on Predehl and Schmitt (1995) we would expect a *total* fractional halo intensity (i.e. summed over all angles) of $`50\%`$ at 3 keV and $`20\%`$ at 5 keV for such a large $`N_H`$. However, uncertainties in the angular and energy dependence of both the pile-up and PSF, as well as in the angular distribution of scattered photons, do not allow us to easily estimate this value. We do note however that the apparent weakness of the halo at 5 keV may suggest that most of the absorption is made locally at the source. Actually such a possibility has already been proposed in previous works, where 1E1740.7 – 2942 is supposed to be embedded in dense molecular cloud (Bally & Leventhal 1991; Mirabel et al. 1991; Phillips et al. 1995; Yan & Dalgarno 1997). If there was dust scattering emission potentially associated with a local evironment, *Chandra*, with its excellent angular resolution, should in principle be able to detect that, although it would require a much longer observing time.
Obviously our analysis is biased by several approximations: first of all, the severe pile-up effects, which make necessary the choice of a normalisation factor between the source and PSF profiles. In addition, the choice of the PSF itself, which, being different from the proper calibrated *Chandra* PSF, certainly introduces errors due to for instance position dependence, different background level and so on.

## 4 Constraining B in the radio lobes

1E 1740.7 – 2942 is associated with an unresolved, flat-spectrum radio core and two extended, optically thin radio lobes (Mirabel et al. 1992; Anantharamaiah et al. 1993). The high-energy electrons present in such lobes are expected to Comptonise the ambient photons and as a result should produce some high-energy X-ray emission. We have inspected our image for X-ray emission associated with the northern lobe (lobe ‘B’), in order to place limits on any Comptonised component. Unfortunately, this lobe partially lies on the gap between the ACIS-I3 and I2 chips; however after calculating the exposure maps we are still able to place a limit on the X-ray flux associated with the lobe. The net count rate in a circular region of radius 8 arcsec centred on lobe B is $`2.0\times 10^3`$ count/sec. We then ran a PIMMS simulation in order to evaluate the X-ray flux emerging from that region: we used the NH column density obtained from the readout streak spectrum and chose a power law model with a photon index of 1.5, i.e. the typical slope due to single-scattering Comptonisation. In that way we were able to estimate a firm upper limit to the X-ray flux, which turned out to be $`8.8\times 10^{14}`$ erg/cm2/sec. Note that at such an angular distance from the core, in fact, the contaminations to the X-ray emission from the PSF and dust scattering halo are far from being negligible; however without a good model we are not able to do any better than this currently. We then evaluated the radio flux between 1 and 6 GHz assuming a spectral index of $`\alpha =0.9`$ (using the conventional definition: S$`{}_{\nu }{}^{}\nu ^\alpha `$), according to Mirabel et al. 1993, and a peak flux density of 0.27 mJy at 5 GHz (Anantharamaiah et al. 1993). In that way we obtained a radio flux of $`2\times 10^{16}`$ erg/cm2/sec, giving a ratio $`E_X`$/$`E_{Radio}`$ $``$ 500. This ratio constrains the ratio of photon to magnetic energy densities, $`U_\gamma :U_B`$, subject to the caveat of our rather limited spectral coverage and assuming isotropic emission in both bands. In the galactic centre region, the photon energy density has been recently estimated to be $`10`$ eV cm-3, i.e. $`2\times 10^{11}`$ erg cm-3 (Strong, Moskalenko & Reimer 2000); thus our observations roughly constrain the magnetic field in the lobes to $`B1\mu `$Gauss. Given that the equipartition fields associated with the radio jets and lobes of X-ray binaries are typically estimated to be of order mG or more (e.g. Spencer 1996), this is not surprising. Nevertheless, it does provide an entirely independent lower limit on the magnetic field in the lobes.

## 5 Conclusions

We have performed a detailed analysis of a 10 ksec Chandra ACIS-I observation of the black hole candidate 1E 1740.7 – 2942. The conclusions of this work are as follows:

* We have utilised two approaches to measuring the X-ray spectrum without suffering the effects of pile-up, which are very strong in the core of our image. Using the readout streak, the 2-10 keV spectrum is well fitted by an absorbed power law with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.54_{0.37}^{+0.42}`$ and N$`{}_{H}{}^{}=11.8_{1.9}^{+2.3}\times 10^{22}`$cm-2. Using an annulus from 4–30 arcsec, providing more counts but potentially more prone to pile-up effects, we also fit an absorbed power law, with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.42_{0.14}^{+0.14}`$ and $`N_H=10.45_{0.70}^{+0.73}\times 10^{22}cm^2`$ with $`\chi ^2/d.o.f.=430/331`$. Both results are consistent, as expected, with a black hole low/hard state, and furthermore indicate that the annulus approach does not suffer too badly, if at all, from pile-up.
* We do not confirm the presence of an elongated X-ray feature (about 3 arcsec) reported by Cui et al. 2001. Analysing the same data set, now public, we did not find evidence for any asymmetric X-ray structure within about 4 arcsec from the centre. On larger angular scales there is no obvious asymmetry – in deeper images from our new data – to several arcmin.
* We calculated and compared the surface brightness distributions of 1E 1740.7 – 2942 to those of an unscattered X-ray source in different energy bands. Despite complications due to pile-up effects and uncertain PSF, which lead the comparison between the profiles to be very sensitive to the normalisation factor, we found clear evidence for scattered X-rays in the energy range 2.5-3.5 keV at an angular separation $`\stackrel{<}{}`$ 40 arcsec from the core. At higher energies and/or larger angular separations, the scattering halo is not clearly detectable.
* We provide an upper limit on the ratio between X-ray and radio fluxes in the region which corresponds to the hot spot at the end of the northern radio jet emitted by 1E 1740.7 – 2942, from which we can crudely constrain $`B_{lobe}1\mu `$G.

Even though 1E 1740.7 – 2942 is in principle an ideal candidate for the study of X-ray scattering halos because of its huge column density, which is proportional to the amount of dust grains along the line of sight, such an investigation is complicated by the fact that the source is almost completely absorbed below about 3 keV. Theoretically, the optical depth due to scattering scales as $`E^2`$, making the softer, *i.e. the absorbed*, band more suitable for investigating X-ray halos. This demonstrates that a limit exists to the study of halos which can be perfomed with *Chandra* for such strongly absorbed sources like 1E 1740.7 – 2942, since the absorbing $`N_H`$ column is also proportional to the amount of dust scattering. Comparing the halo brightness with X-ray absorption would allow to directly quantify the amount and the density of that molecular clouds; a detailed analysis of the relation between halo and scattering dust properties is however beyond the aim of this paper.

Finally we would like to stress that, in order to correctly compare the radial profile of a source which is supposed to show an X-ray scattering halo or other extended features with that of a point-like source it will be necessary a detailed comparison between simulated and measured PSF wings profiles. However, until a complete calibration of the PSF wings are available, using real observations as a template remains our best option.

## Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Michiel van der Klis for useful comments and the anonymous referee for his/her constructive criticism which helped significantly to improve the paper.


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# Husimi functions at dielectric interfaces: Inside-outside duality for optical systems and beyond

## Abstract

We introduce generalized Husimi functions at the interfaces of dielectric systems. Four different functions can be defined, corresponding to the incident and departing wave on both sides of the interface. These functions allow to identify mechanisms of wave confinement and escape directions in optical microresonators, and give insight into the structure of resonance wave functions. Off resonance, where systematic interference can be neglected, the Husimi functions are related by Snell’s law and Fresnel’s coefficients.

Optical microresonators receive growing interest over the last years, because of the intricate interplay of shape (leading to irregular classical ray dynamics), openness of the system (offering means of excitation and escape), and the wave nature of the field. This interplay, together with the promising prospect of applications in future communication devices, has stimulated experiments franzosen ; sangwook ; rexstone  as well as theoretical investigations noeckelstone ; annbillpre  that were based on concepts well-known from scattering theory, classical ray dynamics, semiclassics, and quantum chaos stoecki . A particularly useful tool to study waves in dynamical systems is the Husimi representation of the wave function in classical phase space. So far, the Husimi representation was mostly used to study the closed analogues of optical microsystems, with the dielectric interface being replaced by hard walls, and the principal confinement and radiation directions have been inferred by adding the laws of reflection and refraction by hand. Most notably, efforts in this direction suffer from the fact that the incident and emerging wave components cannot be discriminated by the conventional Husimi representation. The reasons for these fundamental shortcomings arise from the facts that the wave function of the dielectric system is only partially confined by the internal reflection at the refractive index boundary, and that it is affected by the different nature of the boundary conditions, which are neither of Dirichlet nor of von-Neumann type but of a mixed type that follows from Maxwell’s equations (both the wave function and its derivative are non-vanishing at the interface).

In this paper we introduce four Husimi functions appropriate for dielectric interfaces, corresponding to the intensity of incident and emerging waves at both sides of the interface. In the regime of ray optics it will be demonstrated that these Husimi functions are related across the interface via Fresnel’s formulas, with phase space being deformed according to Snell’s law. This connection can be seen as a new variant of the inside-outside duality IOS . However, ray optics only applies when the wave length is short and when systematic interference effects can be neglected. The Husimi functions do not require these limitations and develop their full predictive power especially when systematic interference effects lead to strong deviations from Fresnel’s and Snell’s laws. In particular, ray optics breaks down close to resonances, where the internal part of the scattering wave function is known to be almost independent of the incoming wave that excites the system. The Husimi functions still provide an accurate representation of the wave function (in particular, they nicely display the radiation directions of the field). We illustrate these features using the dielectric circular disk and an annular system as examples remark\_pol .

Microresonators and ray optics. Consider the light that illuminates and permeates a dielectric system confined by a refractive-index boundary, as shown in Fig. 1. The disk (and also the annulus) are confined by a circular dielectric interface of radius $`r_c1`$. Polar coordinates $`r`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ will be used to parameterize position space. We distinguish four wave components: The incident (inc) wave and the emerging (em) wave on both sides of the interface (region 0 with refractive index $`n_0=1`$ outside the microresonator, region 1 with $`n_1n`$ inside the microresonator). In the regime of ray optics, the wave is represented by rays, where the angles of incident and emerging rays are related by the laws of reflection and Snell’s law, $`n\mathrm{sin}\chi _1=\mathrm{sin}\chi _0`$. For our circular interfaces Snell’s law is equivalent to conservation of the angular-momentum variable $`m=k_j\mathrm{sin}\chi _j`$, where $`k_0`$ and $`k_1=nk_0`$ are the wave number in each region. The ray intensities on either side follow from Fresnel’s laws,

$`I_0^{\mathrm{em}}`$ $`=`$ $`R_0(\chi _0)I_0^{\mathrm{inc}}+T_1(\chi _1)I_1^{\mathrm{inc}},`$ (1)
$`I_1^{\mathrm{em}}`$ $`=`$ $`R_1(\chi _1)I_1^{\mathrm{inc}}+T_0(\chi _0)I_0^{\mathrm{inc}}.`$ (2)
The reflection and transmission coefficients $`R_i`$ and $`T_i`$ are related by

$$R_0(\chi _0)=R_1(\chi _1)R,T_0(\chi _0)=T_1(\chi _1)=1R,$$
(3)
with remark\_pol  $`R=\mathrm{sin}^2(\chi _1\chi _0)/\mathrm{sin}^2(\chi _1+\chi _0)`$.

Husimi functions at a dielectric interface. The Husimi function at the system boundary of closed systems was introduced in Refs. stattSchubertBaecker ; Schubert  by projection of the conventional Husimi function from full phase space \[coordinates $`(r,\mathrm{\Phi })`$, momentum $`(k_j\mathrm{sin}\chi _j,k_j\mathrm{cos}\chi _j)`$\] onto the reduced phase space at the boundary $`r=r_c`$ with coordinates $`\varphi =\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}\chi _j`$ remark\_nonspherical . The four different Husimi functions (corresponding to the incident and emerging wave at both sides of a dielectric interface) can be constructed by the same procedure when the appropriate boundary conditions are employed. The intensities $`I(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi )=H(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi )d\varphi d\mathrm{sin}\chi `$ will turn out to be related by the laws (1), (2) when ray optics applies, but also accurately describe the wave function when ray-optical relations across the interface break down, as expected, e.g., for resonances.

The conventional Husimi function for a given wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }(r,\mathrm{\Phi })`$ of the dielectric system is obtained as the overlap with a wave packet with minimal uncertainty in the variables $`(r,\mathrm{\Phi })`$ for real space and $`(k_j\mathrm{sin}\chi _j,k_j\mathrm{cos}\chi _j)`$ for momentum space. The projection onto the boundary can be formulated rigorously Schubert : The wave function is expressed by means of advanced and retarded Green’s functions, which in turn allow to distinguish between incident and emerging waves. Green’s formula is then used to express the solution $`\mathrm{\Psi }_j`$ of the Helmholtz equation in region $`j=0`$, $`1`$ as an integral over the boundary, involving both $`\mathrm{\Psi }_j`$ and its normal (radial) derivative $`\mathrm{\Psi }_j^{}`$. A semiclassical (saddle-point) approximation then allows to identify in these expressions the following four different Husimi functions on the interface,

$`H_j^{\mathrm{inc}(\mathrm{em})}(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi )`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{k_j}{2\pi }}\left|(1)^j_jh_j(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi )+(){\displaystyle \frac{i}{k_j_j}}h_j^{}(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi )\right|^2,`$ (4)
with the angular-momentum dependent weighting factor $`_j=\sqrt{n_j\mathrm{cos}\chi _j}`$ remark\_cutoff . Here the functions

$`h_j`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}r𝑑r{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Psi }_j(r,\mathrm{\Phi })\xi (r,\mathrm{\Phi };\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi ),`$ (5)
$`h_j^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}r𝑑r{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Psi }_j^{}(r,\mathrm{\Phi })\xi (r,\mathrm{\Phi };\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi )`$ (6)
are overlaps with the minimal-uncertainty wave packet

$`\xi (r,\mathrm{\Phi };\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{l}{}}e^{\frac{1}{2\sigma }(\mathrm{\Phi }+2\pi l\varphi )^2ik\mathrm{sin}\chi (\mathrm{\Phi }+2\pi l)}`$ (7)
$`\times (\sigma \pi )^{\frac{1}{4}}\delta (rr_c)`$
(a periodic function in $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$), which is restricted to the interface and centered around $`(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi )`$. The parameter $`\sigma `$ controls its extension in $`\varphi `$-direction, thereby also fixing the uncertainty in $`\mathrm{sin}\chi `$. We set $`\sigma =\sqrt{2}/k_1`$. The scaling with $`k_1`$ results in the same resolution in $`\varphi `$ for all four Husimi functions.

Inside-outside duality. As a consequence of the boundary conditions derived from Maxwell’s equations we find the identities $`h_0(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _0)=h_1(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _1)`$, $`h_0^{}(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _0)=h_1^{}(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _1)`$, where the angles $`\chi _i`$ are related by Snell’s law. From these relations it follows that our Husimi functions strictly fulfill the condition of intensity conservation,

$`nH_0^{\mathrm{em}}(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _0)+H_1^{\mathrm{em}}(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _1)`$ (8)
$`=`$ $`nH_0^{\mathrm{inc}}(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _0)+H_1^{\mathrm{inc}}(\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _1),`$
where the factor $`n=d\mathrm{sin}\chi _0/d\mathrm{sin}\chi _1`$ accounts for the phase-space deformation by Snell’s law. Additional relations between the Husimi functions can be anticipated in the regime of ray optics: The intensities on one side of the interface should be related to the intensities on the other side by Eqs. (1), (2). We then expect validity of the resulting inside-outside duality relations

$`H_0^{\mathrm{em}}`$ $``$ $`S(H_0^{\mathrm{em}})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}{\displaystyle \frac{12R}{1R}}H_1^{\mathrm{inc}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}{\displaystyle \frac{R}{1R}}H_1^{\mathrm{em}},`$ (9)
$`H_0^{\mathrm{inc}}`$ $``$ $`S(H_0^{\mathrm{inc}})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}{\displaystyle \frac{R}{1R}}H_1^{\mathrm{inc}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1R}}H_1^{\mathrm{em}},`$ (10)
which express the Husimi functions in region $`0`$ by the Husimi functions in region $`1`$. The notation $`S()`$ indicates that the approximation is of semiclassical (short wave length) nature; most noticeably, the Husimi functions (intensities) are added incoherently. The duality relations can also be inverted,

$`H_1^{\mathrm{em}}`$ $``$ $`S(H_1^{\mathrm{em}})=n{\displaystyle \frac{12R}{1R}}H_0^{\mathrm{inc}}+n{\displaystyle \frac{R}{1R}}H_0^{\mathrm{em}},`$ (11)
$`H_1^{\mathrm{inc}}`$ $``$ $`S(H_1^{\mathrm{inc}})=n{\displaystyle \frac{R}{1R}}H_0^{\mathrm{inc}}+n{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1R}}H_0^{\mathrm{em}}.`$ (12)
However, the Husimi functions in region 1 can only be reconstructed in the strip $`|\mathrm{sin}\chi _1|<1/n`$, because the rest of phase space is isolated from region 0 by total internal reflection.

The duality relations are exactly fulfilled in two simple cases, namely, if one incident or emerging wave vanishes or when the two incident waves have the same intensity (the two emerging waves then have the same intensity, as well). We now test the duality relations in more general situations.

The panels on the left in Fig. 2 show the exact Husimi functions from Eq. (4) for the case of the circular disk which is excited by a plane wave at an off-resonant excitation frequency. The illuminating plane wave is clearly visible in the Husimi function $`H_0^{\mathrm{inc}}`$, around the polar angle $`\varphi =\varphi _{\mathrm{ill}}=\pi `$, while the focal point of the dielectric disk results in a bright spot in $`H_0^{\mathrm{em}}`$ that is located around $`\varphi =0`$. There is a close correspondence between the Husimi functions of the incident and emerging waves, and the deformation of phase space by the stretching factor $`n`$ of Snell’s law is clearly visible.

The right panels of Fig. 2 show for comparison the predictions of Eqs. (9)–(12). In the reconstruction we used the slightly modified semiclassical versions of Fresnel’s coefficients and Snell’s laws given in Ref. ghspre , which are appropriate for the present case of a curved interface (this results in a slight, but still noticeable quantitative improvement of the reconstruction). We observe a good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the exact Husimi functions. Regions with unphysical negative intensities are small. The most interesting deviations between the exact and the reconstructed Husimi functions occur around the central spot at $`\varphi =\pi ,\mathrm{sin}\chi _j=0`$, where the incoherent predictions of Eqs. (9)–(12) underestimate the exact Husimi densities $`H_0^{\mathrm{inc}}`$, $`H_0^{\mathrm{em}}`$, while they overestimate the intensities $`H_1^{\mathrm{inc}}`$, $`H_1^{\mathrm{em}}`$ in the same area of phase space. These deviations arise from a Fabry-Perot like systematic interference which is constructive in backward direction at the presently chosen frequency. At other frequencies the interference is destructive, and both cases alternate periodically.

Resonances. Figure 3 displays the situation for excitation at a frequency which is close to a narrow resonance, a whispering gallery (WG) mode located around $`\mathrm{sin}\chi _1=0.667`$. The top panel shows that the wave function is now well confined inside the disk (region 1). Correspondingly, the Husimi functions $`H_1^{\mathrm{inc}}`$ and $`H_1^{\mathrm{em}}`$ noticeably exceed the Husimi functions $`H_0^{\mathrm{inc}}`$ and $`H_0^{\mathrm{em}}`$. Moreover, the Husimi functions $`H_1^{\mathrm{inc}}`$ and $`H_1^{\mathrm{em}}`$ are dominated by the characteristics of the resonance wave function and consequentially are almost independent of the choice of the exciting wave. (The remnants of the exciting plane can be identified when comparing Fig. 3 with Fig. 2.) Hence the reconstructed Husimi functions deviate noticeably from the exact Husimi functions around $`|\mathrm{sin}\chi _1|1/n`$. This is no surprise since resonances are formed by systematic constructive interference, and incoherent ray optics cannot be expected to apply under these circumstances. Most importantly, by principle, the confined wave intensity in the region $`|\mathrm{sin}\chi _1|>1/n`$ cannot be reconstructed because classically no refracted rays ever reach this region (which is dark off resonance). On the other hand, the exact Husimi functions display nicely all the features of the resonance wave function in phase space.

Finally, let us illustrate the usefulness of the Husimi functions (4) also for a more complex system than the circular disk, the annular system formed by regions of different refractive indices that are confined by two eccentric disks. The ray optics in this system corresponds to nonintegrable dynamics in phase space, which allows for a multifaceted set of resonance wave functions annbillpre . Off resonance (Fig. 4) the scattering wave function enters the dielectric system only barely, and the situation is similar to the circular disk because the internal disk is not explored extensively. At resonance the situation is very different. Figure 5 shows a typical resonance wave function in real space and its Husimi representation in phase space. The intensity of the resonance wave function is concentrated on straight segments which can be identified as a short stable periodic trajectory of the corresponding classical ray dynamics. The Husimi functions display a strong intensity exactly in the vicinity of this trajectory in classical phase space.

In conclusion, we introduced four Husimi representations of the scattering wave function at the interfaces of dielectric microresonators, corresponding to the incident and emerging waves at both sides of the interface. These Husimi functions are easily computed from the wave function and have many desirable properties: They are related by the laws of Fresnel and Snell in the ray-optics regime (i.e., short and off-resonant wavelength) and generally provide valuable detailed insight into the wave dynamics in complex dielectric systems, most notably even close to resonances where ray optics breaks down.

We gratefully acknowledge helpful discussions with Jan Wiersig, Arnd Bäcker, and Christian Miniatura.


text:
# Minimalization of uncertainty relations in noncommutative quantum mechanics

## 1 Introduction

There are strong indications coming from the study of brane configurations in string theory or matrix model of M-theory that noncommutative spaces are of some importance for very high energy physics . As a result, there appeared a large number of papers devoted to the study of field theories on such spaces . In order to reveal the important aspects of quantum theory on noncommutative spaces one should tend to simplify the systems under consideration as much as possible. By considering the low-energy limit of one-particle sector of field theory on noncommutative space one arrives at what is called noncommutative quantum mechanics. Again various aspects of it have been studied recently -. In particular, in  we considered single-particle quantum mechanics on noncommutative plane defined by the following commutation rules

$`[\widehat{x}_i,\widehat{x}_j]`$ $`=i\theta ϵ_{ij}I`$ (1a)
$`[\widehat{x}_i,\widehat{p}_j]`$ $`=i\mathrm{}\delta _{ij}I`$ $`i,j=1,2`$ (1b)
$`[\widehat{p}_i,\widehat{p}_j]`$ $`=0;`$ (1c)
here we can assume $`\theta >0`$ without loosing generality.

By standard arguments, eqs. (1) result in the following uncertainty relations

$`\mathrm{\Delta }x_1\mathrm{\Delta }x_2`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}`$ (2a)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }x_1\mathrm{\Delta }p_1`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}`$ (2b)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }x_2\mathrm{\Delta }p_2`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}`$ (2c)
In the previous paper  we studied the above inequalities in some detail. In particular we have shown that, contrary to the commutative ($`\theta =0`$) case, for a given state $`\psi `$ at most one of the inequalities (2) can be saturated. We have also outlined the construction of the states saturating any of them.

In the present paper we support and extend these results by explicit calculations. In section 2 we find (or, rather, remind) the construction of Fock space representation of the algebra (1). Then, in sec. 3, the explicit construction of all states saturating the uncertainty relations (2) is given; the relevant ingredients here are the standard construction of coherent states and appropriate Bogolubov transformations. Sec. 4 is devoted to the study of minimalizing states in coordinate representation. Their coordinate wave functions are given explicitely and it is checked by straightforward calculations that no wave function exists which saturates more than one of the inequalities (2). Finally, some basic facts concerning the standard coherent states are collected in Appendix.

## 2 Representations of the basic algebra

It is not difficult to find irreducible representation of the algebra (1). In fact, this algebra is equivalent to standard Heisenberg-Weyl algebra:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \stackrel{~}{x}_i& \widehat{x}_i+\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}ϵ_{ij}\widehat{p}_j\hfill \\ \hfill \stackrel{~}{p}_i& \widehat{p}_i\hfill \end{array}$$
(3)
obey standard H-W commutation rules. Eq. (3) suggests the following definition of creation/anihilation operators (we work with $`\omega =1`$, $`m=1`$ units)

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill a_i& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}(\widehat{x}_i+(i\delta _{ij}+\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}ϵ_{ij})\widehat{p}_j)\hfill \\ \hfill a_i^{}& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}(\widehat{x}_i+(i\delta _{ij}+\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}ϵ_{ij})\widehat{p}_j)\hfill \end{array}$$
(4)
Then the only nonvanishing commutator reads

$$[a_i,a_j^{}]=\delta _{ij}$$
(5)
and we arrive at the standard Fock space spanned by the orthonormal vectors

$$|n_1,n_2=\frac{1}{\sqrt{n_1!}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{n_2!}}(a_1^{})^{n_1}(a_2^{})^{n_2}|0$$
(6)
The inverse relations to (4) read

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \widehat{x}_i& =\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}(a_i+a_i^{})+\frac{i\theta }{2\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}ϵ_{ij}(a_ja_j^{})\hfill \\ \hfill \widehat{p}_i& =\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\frac{a_ia_i^{}}{i}\hfill \end{array}$$
(7)
It is often convenient to work with the modified creation/anihilation operators carrying definite angular momentum. To this end we define

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill a_\pm & \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(a_1ia_2)\hfill \\ \hfill a_\pm ^{}& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(a_1^{}\pm ia_2^{});\hfill \end{array}$$
(8)
The new basis is

$$|n_+,n_{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{n_+!}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{n_{}!}}(a_+^{})^{n_+}(a_{}^{})^n_{}|0$$
(9)
In terms of new variables the angular momentum operator reads

$$\widehat{L}=i\mathrm{}ϵ_{ij}a_i^{}a_j=\mathrm{}(a_+^{}a_+a_{}^{}a_{})$$
(10)
The angular momentum of the state (9) equals $`\mathrm{}(n_+n_{})`$.

## 3 Saturating uncertainty relations

Let us first find all vectors saturating the uncertainty relation (2a). The relevant commutation rule (1a) resembles the one concerning $`\widehat{x}_1`$ and $`\widehat{p}_1`$, with $`\widehat{p}_1`$ replaced by $`\widehat{x}_2`$ and $`\mathrm{}`$ replaced by $`\theta `$. Therefore, it is not surprising that we can use the same strategy as described in Appendix once the appropriate creation/anihilation operators are found. To this end we define

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill b& \sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}}{2\theta }}\left(\left(1+\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}\right)a_{}+\left(1\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}\right)a_+^{}\right)\hfill \\ \hfill b^{}& \sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}}{2\theta }}\left(\left(1+\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}\right)a_{}^{}+\left(1\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}\right)a_+\right)\hfill \\ \hfill c& \sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}}{2\theta }}\left(\left(1+\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}\right)a_++\left(1\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}\right)a_{}^{}\right)\hfill \\ \hfill c^{}& \sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}}{2\theta }}\left(\left(1+\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}\right)a_+^{}+\left(1\frac{\theta }{2\mathrm{}}\right)a_{}\right)\hfill \end{array}$$
(11)
One easily verifies that $`b`$, $`c`$, $`b^{}`$, $`c^{}`$ form the set of independent creation/anihilation operators.

The key point is that $`b`$–operators are related to $`\widehat{x}`$–operators in the standard way

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill b& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\theta }}(\widehat{x}_1+i\widehat{x}_2)\hfill \\ \hfill b^{}& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\theta }}(\widehat{x}_1i\widehat{x}_2)\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
Therefore, we can repeat the procedure outlined in Appendix to find the states saturating (2a). They read

$$|z,\gamma _\varphi =e^{\frac{1}{2}|z|^2}e^{+\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{ln}\gamma ((b^{})^2b^2)}e^{zb^{}}|\varphi $$
(13)
where $`|\varphi `$ is arbitrary state such that

$$b|\varphi =0$$
(14)
The ”vacuum” state is by far not unique; it may contain an arbitrary number of $`c`$–excitations.

The representation given by $`b`$, $`b^{}`$, $`c`$, $`c^{}`$ is unitary equivalent to that defined by $`a_\pm `$, $`a_\pm ^{}`$. In fact, one can check that

$`b`$ $`=Wa_{}W^{},`$ $`b^{}`$ $`=Wa_{}^{}W^{}`$ (15)
$`c`$ $`=Wa_+W^{},`$ $`c^{}`$ $`=Wa_+^{}W^{}`$
where

$$W=e^{\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{2\mathrm{}}{\theta }\right)(a_+a_{}a_+^{}a_{}^{})}$$
(16)
This can be seen by using the results of . However, we prefer to give a straightforward proof. Define for any $`t`$

$$W(t)=e^{t(a_+a_{}a_+^{}a_{}^{})}$$
(17)
and

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill b(t)& W(t)a_{}W^{}(t)\hfill \\ \hfill c^{}(t)& W(t)a_+^{}W^{}(t)\hfill \end{array}$$
(18)
Then $`b(0)=a_{}`$, $`c^{}(0)=a_+^{}`$ while simple computation gives

$$\left(\begin{array}{c}\dot{b}(t)\hfill \\ \dot{c}^{}(t)\hfill \end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0\hfill & 1\hfill \\ 1\hfill & 0\hfill \end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}b(t)\hfill \\ c^{}(t)\hfill \end{array}\right)$$
(19)
Therefore

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \left(\begin{array}{c}b(t)\hfill \\ c^{}(t)\hfill \end{array}\right)& =\left(\mathrm{exp}\left(\begin{array}{cc}0\hfill & t\hfill \\ t\hfill & 0\hfill \end{array}\right)\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}a_{}\hfill \\ a_+^{}\hfill \end{array}\right)=\hfill \\ & =\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cosh}t\hfill & \mathrm{sinh}t\hfill \\ \mathrm{sinh}t\hfill & \mathrm{cosh}t\hfill \end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}a_{}\hfill \\ a_+^{}\hfill \end{array}\right)\hfill \end{array}$$
(20)
For $`t=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{2\mathrm{}}{\theta }\right)`$ we arrive at (15).

Eqs. (15), together with the results presented in Appendix allow us to conclude that the states saturating (2a) are linear combinations (with respect to $`n_+`$ but with $`z`$, $`\gamma `$ fixed) of the states

$$|z,\gamma ,n_+=e^{\frac{1}{2}|z|^2}We^{\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{ln}\gamma (a_{}^2(a_{}^{})^2)}e^{za_{}^{}}|n_+,0$$
(21)
Let us note that $`W`$ commutes with $`\widehat{L}`$. This implies that the states $`z=0`$, $`\gamma =1`$ are eigenstates of $`\widehat{L}`$. This conclusion is rather obvious: real and imaginary parts of $`z`$ are related to expectation values of $`\widehat{x}_1`$, $`\widehat{x}_2`$ (which should be zero from rotational invariance) while expectation values of $`\widehat{x}_1^2`$, resp. $`\widehat{x}_2^2`$ are proportional to $`\gamma `$, resp. $`\frac{1}{\gamma }`$.

Let us now consider the states saturating

$$\mathrm{\Delta }x_1\mathrm{\Delta }p_1\frac{\mathrm{}}{2}$$
(22)
We follow the same strategy. First, define new creation/anihilation operators

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill d& =a_1+\frac{i\theta }{4\mathrm{}}(a_2a_2^{})\hfill \\ \hfill d^{}& =a_1^{}+\frac{i\theta }{4\mathrm{}}(a_2a_2^{})\hfill \\ \hfill e& =a_2+\frac{i\theta }{4\mathrm{}}(a_1a_1^{})\hfill \\ \hfill e^{}& =a_2^{}+\frac{i\theta }{4\mathrm{}}(a_1a_1^{})\hfill \end{array}$$
(23)
which obey

$$d=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}(\widehat{x}_1+i\widehat{p}_1)$$
(24)
Unitary equivalence of old and new operators,

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill d& =Ta_1T^{}\hfill \\ \hfill e& =Ta_2T^{}\hfill \end{array}$$
(25)
is obtained by choosing T in the form (cf. )

$$T=e^{\frac{i\theta }{4\mathrm{}}(a_1a_1^{})(a_2a_2^{})}$$
(26)
Consequently the states saturating (26) can be written as linear combinations, with respect to $`n_2`$ but with $`z`$, $`\gamma `$ fixed, of the states

$$|z,\gamma ,n_2=e^{\frac{1}{2}|z|^2}Te^{\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{ln}\gamma (a_1^2(a_1^{})^2)}e^{za_1^{}}|0,n_2$$
(27)
The states saturating (2c) are obtained by replacing $`12`$, $`\theta \theta `$:

$$|z,\gamma ,n_1=e^{\frac{1}{2}|z|^2}T^{}e^{\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{ln}\gamma (a_2^2(a_2^{})^2)}e^{za_2^{}}|0,n_1$$
(28)
## 4 Coordinate representation

For the variables $`\stackrel{~}{x}_i`$, $`\stackrel{~}{p}_i`$ we use standard representation

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \stackrel{~}{x}_i& =x_i\hfill \\ \hfill \stackrel{~}{p}_i& =i\mathrm{}\frac{}{x_i}\hfill \end{array}$$
(29)
which implies

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \widehat{x}_i& =x_i+\frac{i\theta }{2}ϵ_{ij}\frac{}{x_j}\hfill \\ \hfill \widehat{p}_i& =i\mathrm{}\frac{}{x_i}\hfill \end{array}$$
(30)
The state $`\psi `$ saturating (2a) obeys

$$(\widehat{x}_1\alpha )\psi =i\gamma (\widehat{x}_2\beta )\psi $$
(31)
which , due to eqs. (30), takes the form

$$\frac{\theta }{2}\left(\gamma \frac{}{x_1}+i\frac{}{x_2}\right)\psi +((x_1+i\gamma x_2)(\alpha +i\gamma \beta ))\psi =0$$
(32)
The general solution reads

$$\psi (x_1,x_2)=f\left(\frac{x_1}{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\sqrt{\gamma }x_2\right)e^{\frac{1}{\theta }\left(\left(\frac{x_1^2}{\gamma }+\gamma x_2^2\right)z\left(\frac{x_1}{\sqrt{\gamma }}i\sqrt{\gamma }x_2\right)\right)}$$
(33)
with $`z\frac{\alpha }{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\sqrt{\gamma }\beta `$; f is an arbitrary function such that $`\psi `$ is normalizable. In particular, the eigenstate of $`\widehat{L}`$ corresponding to the eigenvalue $`\mathrm{}m`$ reads

$$\psi (x_1,x_2)=\frac{2^{\frac{m+1}{2}}}{\sqrt{\pi }\sqrt{m!}\theta ^{\frac{m+1}{2}}}e^{im\varphi }r^me^{\frac{r^2}{\theta }}$$
(34)
One can check explicitly that $`\widehat{x}_1^2=\widehat{x}_2^2=\frac{\theta }{2}`$ as it should be.

Let us note that only eigenstates with nonnegative eigenvalues $`m0`$ can saturate (2a). This can be easily understood. We have

$$\widehat{x}_1^2=\widehat{x}_2^2=\frac{1}{2}\widehat{x}_1^2+\widehat{x}_2^2=\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{~}{x}_1^2+\stackrel{~}{x}_2^2+\frac{\theta ^2}{4\mathrm{}^2}(\stackrel{~}{p}_1^2+\stackrel{~}{p}_2^2)\frac{\theta }{\mathrm{}}\widehat{L};$$
(35)
the right-hand side is the combination of harmonic oscillator and angular momentum. Standard reasoning gives for the spectra

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \stackrel{~}{x}_1^2+\stackrel{~}{x}_2^2+\frac{\theta ^2}{4\mathrm{}^2}(\stackrel{~}{p}_1^2+\stackrel{~}{p}_2^2)\frac{\theta }{\mathrm{}}\widehat{L}:& \theta (2n_{}+1)\hfill \\ \hfill \widehat{L}:& \mathrm{}(n_+n_{})\hfill \end{array}$$
(36)
The states saturating (2a) correspond to $`n_{}=0`$; but $`n_+n_{}=m`$, i.e. $`m=n_+0`$.

Let us look for the states saturating (2a). The relevant equation

$$\widehat{x}_1\psi _1=i\gamma _1\widehat{p}_1\psi _1$$
(37)
reads

$$\left(\frac{i\theta }{2}\frac{}{x_2}+\gamma _1\mathrm{}\frac{}{x_1}\right)\psi _1+x_1\psi _1=0$$
(38)
and gives

$$\psi _1=f_1(x_1+\frac{2i\gamma _1\mathrm{}}{\theta }x_2)e^{\frac{3x_1^2}{8\gamma _1\mathrm{}}\frac{\gamma _1\mathrm{}x_2^2}{2\theta ^2}+\frac{ix_1x_2}{2\theta }},$$
(39)
where $`f_1`$ is arbitrary such that $`\psi `$ is normalizable.

The states saturating (2c) are obtained by replacement $`x_1x_2`$, $`\theta \theta `$, $`\gamma _1\gamma _2`$

$$\psi _2=f_2(x_2\frac{2i\gamma _2\mathrm{}}{\theta }x_1)e^{\frac{3x_2^2}{8\gamma _2\mathrm{}}\frac{\gamma _2\mathrm{}x_1^2}{2\theta ^2}\frac{ix_1x_2}{2\theta }},$$
(40)
It is not difficult to show that there exists no state saturating both (2b) and (2c). To this end we insert (40) into eq. (37) and find

$$\frac{f_{}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}\left(x_2\frac{2i\gamma _2\mathrm{}}{\theta }x_1\right)}{f_2\left(x_2\frac{2i\gamma _2\mathrm{}}{\theta }x_1\right)}=\frac{\left(\frac{5}{4}\frac{\gamma _1\gamma _2\mathrm{}^2}{\theta ^2}\right)x_1i\left(\frac{3\theta }{8\gamma _2\mathrm{}}+\frac{\gamma _1\mathrm{}}{2\theta }\right)x_2}{\frac{2i\gamma _1\gamma _2\mathrm{}^2}{\theta }\frac{i\theta }{2}}$$
(41)
The left-hand side depends only on one variable $`x_2\frac{2i\gamma _2\mathrm{}}{\theta }x_1`$ so the right-hand side must also; this is, however, imposible as one can immedietely check.

One can also ask whether (39) ((40)) can be an eigenstate of $`\widehat{L}`$ provided an appropriate choice of $`f_1`$ ($`f_2`$) has been made. Again we check that this is impossible inserting (39) into the eigenequation

$$\widehat{L}\psi =\mathrm{}m\psi $$
(42)
Let us finally insert eq. (33) into eq. (37). The resulting equation for the function $`f`$ reads

$$\frac{f^{}\left(\frac{x_1}{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\sqrt{\gamma }x_2\right)}{f\left(\frac{x_1}{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\sqrt{\gamma }x_2\right)}=\frac{\left(1\frac{2\gamma _1\mathrm{}}{\gamma \theta }\right)x_1i\gamma x_2+z\left(\frac{\sqrt{\gamma }}{2}+\frac{\gamma _1\mathrm{}}{\theta \sqrt{\gamma }}\right)}{\frac{\theta \sqrt{\gamma }}{2}\frac{\gamma _1\mathrm{}}{\sqrt{\gamma }}};$$
(43)
the consistency condition (the right-hand side should depend only on $`\frac{x_1}{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\sqrt{\gamma }x_2`$) implies

$$\frac{\gamma _1\mathrm{}}{\gamma \theta }=1$$
(44)
Under this condition the solution to (43) reads

$$f=Ce^{\frac{1}{\theta }\left(\frac{x_1}{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\sqrt{\gamma }x_2\right)^2\frac{3\sqrt{\gamma }}{\theta }z\left(\frac{x_1}{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\sqrt{\gamma }x_2\right)}$$
(45)
Inserting this back to (33) we conclude that $`\psi `$ is nonnormalizable. This shows that also (2a) and (2b) cannot be simultaneously saturated.

We verified explicitly that, for a given state $`\psi `$, at most one of the inequalities (2a)–(2c) can be saturated; this confirms the general theorems of .

Although there are no states saturating both (2b) and (2c), both lower bounds can be simultaneously approached as close as one wishes. To see this we select the state

$$\psi =\sqrt{\frac{2\delta }{\pi }}e^{\delta (x_1^2+x_2^2)}$$
(46)
Then $`\widehat{L}\psi =0`$, $`\widehat{p}_1=0`$, $`\widehat{x}_1=0`$, and

$`\widehat{p}_1^2_\psi `$ $`=\delta \mathrm{}^2,`$ $`\widehat{x}_1^2`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\delta }}+{\displaystyle \frac{\theta ^2\delta }{4}};`$ (47)
consequently

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }x_1)_\psi ^2(\mathrm{\Delta }p_1)_\psi ^2=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{4}+\frac{\theta ^2\mathrm{}^2\delta ^2}{4}$$
(48)
By symmetry

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }x_2)_\psi ^2(\mathrm{\Delta }p_2)_\psi ^2=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{4}+\frac{\theta ^2\mathrm{}^2\delta ^2}{4}.$$
(49)
(46) is normalizable for any $`\delta >0`$. The bounds are saturated for $`\delta 0`$; however, the state (46) becomes nonnormalizable in the limit $`\delta 0`$.

## Appendix: Uncertainty principles and coherent states

First let us remind the general setting for uncertainty principles  (for recent alternative approach see ). Given two observables $`\widehat{A}`$, $`\widehat{B}`$ subject to commutation rule:

$$[\widehat{A},\widehat{B}]=i\widehat{C},$$
(50)
one can derive the following inequality (generalized Heisenberg principle)

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }A)_\psi (\mathrm{\Delta }B)_\psi \frac{1}{2}|C_\psi |,$$
(51)
with $`|\psi `$ normalized to unity and

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }A)_\psi =\sqrt{\psi |(\widehat{A}\widehat{A}_\psi I)^2|\psi },\text{etc.};$$
(52)
(51) is saturated iff the following condition holds

$`(\widehat{A}\widehat{A}_\psi I)|\psi =i\gamma (\widehat{B}B_\psi I)|\psi ,`$ $`\gamma `$ (53)
Acting with $`\widehat{A}\widehat{A}_\psi I`$ on both sides of (53), using (50) and again (53) one arrives at

$$(\widehat{A}\widehat{A}_\psi I)^2|\psi =\gamma ^2(\widehat{B}\widehat{B}_\psi I)^2|\psi +\gamma \widehat{C}|\psi $$
(54)
or, on multiplying by $`|\psi `$ from the left

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }A)_\psi ^2+\gamma ^2(\mathrm{\Delta }B)_\psi ^2=\gamma C_\psi .$$
(55)
(55), together with the saturated form of (51) gives (provided $`\gamma 0`$)

$`(\mathrm{\Delta }A)_\psi ^2`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\gamma }{2}}C_\psi ,`$ $`(\mathrm{\Delta }B)_\psi ^2`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\gamma }}C_\psi `$ (56)
which explains the meaning of $`\gamma `$.

Let us apply this scheme to the standard Heisenberg relation

$$[\widehat{x},\widehat{p}]=i\mathrm{}$$
(57)
The relevant inequality reads

$$\mathrm{\Delta }x\mathrm{\Delta }p\frac{\mathrm{}}{2};$$
(58)
(58) is saturated iff

$`(\widehat{x}\alpha )|\psi `$ $`=i\gamma (\widehat{p}\beta )|\psi ,`$ $`\alpha =\widehat{x}_\psi ,\beta =\widehat{p}_\psi `$ (59)
Let us define creation/anihilation operators (we work with $`\omega =1`$, $`m=1`$ units)

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill a& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}(\widehat{x}+i\widehat{p})\hfill \\ \hfill a^{}& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}(\widehat{x}i\widehat{p})\hfill \\ \hfill [a,a^{}]=1.& \end{array}$$
(60)
Hilbert space of states is spanned by the vectors

$$|n=\frac{1}{\sqrt{n!}}(a^{})^n|0$$
(61)
To find the general solution to (59) first note that $`\gamma >0`$. In fact, $`\gamma 0`$ because $`\widehat{x}\alpha I`$ cannot have normalized eigenvectors (operators commuting to $``$–number have no normalized eigenvectors in their common invariant domain); for $`\gamma 0`$ (56) gives $`\gamma >0`$. We start with $`\gamma =1`$. Eq. (59) can be rewritten as

$`a|\psi `$ $`=z|\psi ,`$ $`z`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha +i\beta }{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}}`$ (62)
The eigenstates of the anihilation operators are called coherent states (cs). Vacuum state is the coherent state corresponding to $`z=0`$. In order to find other cs one defines, for any $`z`$, the unitary operators

$$U(z)e^{za^{}\overline{z}a}=e^{\frac{1}{2}|z|^2}e^{za^{}}e^{\overline{z}a}$$
(63)
One easily checks that

$$U^{}(z)aU(z)=a+zI$$
(64)
Therefore, the coherent states are given by

$$|zU(z)|0=e^{\frac{1}{2}|z|^2}e^{za^{}}|0=e^{\frac{1}{2}|z|^2}\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{z^n}{\sqrt{n!}}|n$$
(65)
Consider now the case $`\gamma 1`$. Eq. (59) can be written as

$$a_\gamma |\psi =z|\psi $$
(66)
where

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill z& =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}\left(\frac{\alpha }{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\beta \sqrt{\gamma }\right)\hfill \\ \hfill a_\gamma & =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}\left(\frac{\widehat{x}}{\sqrt{\gamma }}+i\sqrt{\gamma }\widehat{p}\right)\hfill \\ \hfill a_\gamma ^{}& =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}}}\left(\frac{\widehat{x}}{\sqrt{\gamma }}i\sqrt{\gamma }\widehat{p}\right)\hfill \end{array}$$
(67)
Again, $`[a_\gamma ,a_\gamma ^{}]=1`$ and $`a_{\gamma =1}=a`$. Solutions to (66) can be constructed with the help of $`a_\gamma `$, $`a_\gamma ^{}`$, and $`\gamma `$–vacuum $`|0_\gamma `$. However, all representations of Fock algebra are unitarily equivalent. Indeed one can easily verify that, with the unitary operator $`V(\gamma )`$ defined by

$$V(\gamma )=e^{\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{ln}\gamma (a^2(a^{})^2)},$$
(68)
the following relations are obeyed

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill V(\gamma )aV^{}(\gamma )& =a_\gamma \hfill \\ \hfill V(\gamma )a^{}V^{}(\gamma )& =a_\gamma ^{}\hfill \end{array}$$
(69)
The solution to eq. (59) can be now written as

$$|z,\gamma =V(\gamma )U(z)|0;$$
(70)
the complex parameter $`z`$ is related to the mean values of $`x`$ and $`p`$ while $`\gamma `$ describes their dispersions:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill (\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2& =\frac{\gamma \mathrm{}}{2}\hfill \\ \hfill (\mathrm{\Delta }p)^2& =\frac{\mathrm{}}{2\gamma }\hfill \end{array}$$
(71)