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# Anomalous diffusion on dynamical networks: A model for interacting epithelial cell migration

## I Introduction

A generalization of classical Boltzmann thermodynamics as recently introduced by Tsallis tsallis88 ; tsallis96 ; tsallis98  has offered a beautiful way of describing the statistics of a multitude of physical systems, which generally involve some sort of long-range interactions, ranging from astrophysics plastino93 ; kaniadakis96  to low dimensional dissipative chaotic systems lyra98 . Systems described by this thermodynamics are often referred to as ”non-extensive”. This same modification of classical thermodynamics also seems to offer a natural understanding of the subject of anomalous diffusion. Anomalous diffusion can be thought of the propagation of particles which are restricted to move on a certain subspace of full two or three space, such as for example the propagation of water molecules in a sponge, or the flow of crude oil in porous soil. In this work we argue that the motion of living and interacting epithelial cells can be seen as a variant of anomalous diffusion on a network which changes over time. We support the idea by experimental evidence. Our experimental findings moreover strongly support very recent work on movements of interacting Hydra cells upadhyaya01 .

A living epithelial cell e.g. in two-dimensional cell culture is not a static object but moves continuously, a process which is called cellular migration lauffenburger96 ; lee93 . Cell migration is of vital importance in physiological processes such as wound healing or understanding cancerogenesis. For example, intact mammary gland tissue is stable during phases of milk secretion. In residual phases of female estrous cycle, however, it is subject to structural remodeling where cells become dynamic entities. They proliferate and migrate, eventually forming new functional secretory units hennighausen98 ; robinson95 ; schedin00 . Dysregulation of these events is believed to contribute to cancerogenesis bissell99 ; foster01 ; park00 . In-vitro experiments preserve important aspects of this epithelial biology aggeler91 ; fialka96 , and migration of single cells has been studied in cell culture systems on molecular and mechanical levels chicurel02 ; lauffenburger96 ; lee93 .

Single cells are by no means passive movers and governed by chance, but influence and control their movements themselves. For these movements to occur morphological changes are necessary which are realized in the formation of distinct subcellular domains. In Fig. 1a a single cell is shown during movement. After the formation of a so-called lamellipodium, (a V-shaped protrusion) this part of the cell attaches to the cell culture surface. The cell body is then pulled towards the front part (”leading edge”) via the activation of mechanical intracellular linkages. Eventually the ”trailing” edge, a thin, elongated structure at the opposite side of the cell with respect to the lamellipodium, detaches from the surface which allows a net translocation of the cell. In this ”polarized” fashion the cell apparently crawls on the surface of the cell culture substrate, continuously readjusting its direction. During movement cells loose tiny parts of their cytoplasm, marking at least parts of their trajectories. It is known that cells change their movement patterns when the activity of proteins involved in cell adhesion is regulated up or down ward. When these proteins for example are suppressed, cells loose their ability to migrate in a polarized fashion palacios01 ; hintermann01 . As several recent works on velocity distributions of cells show, it seems very likely that cell movement depends strongly on the surrounding of individual cells. Experimental results range from normal diffusion mombach96  to exponential velocity distributions czirok98 . It is the aim of this paper to show that an anomalous diffusion approach, already discussed in upadhyaya01 , might be general enough to explain the different experimental results on a common theoretical ground.

## II Theory

To describe the dynamics of a single cell which has the ability to detect the presence of trajectories of other cells, we propose the following model. Imagine each cells paints its trail onto the surface. The paint slowly fades, and can not be seen after a certain time. Another cell which detects the line of paint tries to follow it as good as possible. From time to time the cell will be distracted from strict path following by random (”thermal”) events. At the same time this cell also marks its trajectory with paint. As many cells move across the same surface there will evolve a network of paths. Since paint fades and new trajectories are added to the network, the network will undergo slow dynamical changes. Any cell equipped with a trail following mode will try to restrict its movements onto the network of trails of former cells. The situation here is much alike diffusion in porous media where particle trajectories are restricted onto certain pathways, and can not propagate through full two- or three-dimensional space. In the case of cell migration an individual cell tries to follow the dynamical ”web” of trajectories other cells have taken before.

Modeling cell migration as a stochastic diffusion process of this kind clearly involves non-linearities in the associated Fokker-Planck like equations

$$\frac{}{t}p(x,t)=\frac{}{x}\left(F\left[p\right](x,t)p(x,t)\right)+\frac{1}{2}\frac{^2}{x^2}\left(D\left[p\right](x,t)p(x,t)\right).$$
(1)
To incorporate the idea that cells follow the gradient of metabolites emitted by other cells along their trajectories, a non-linear flow-term of the form $`F\left[p\right]=\frac{}{x}p`$ would be reasonable. However, we neglect the flow-term in the following, since a posteriori we find almost no experimental evidence for it. To incorporate the anomalous diffusion idea, we decide the functional dependence of the diffusion parameter to be $`D[p]p=p^\nu `$. With this choice equation (1) can be solved by following the entropy approach by Tsallis tsallis88 ; tsallis98 . Here the the classical entropy definition $`S=p(u)\mathrm{ln}p(u)𝑑u`$ is modified to

$$S_q=\frac{1p(u)^q𝑑u}{q1}.$$
(2)
By maximizing $`S_q`$ while keeping energy fixed it can be shown that the resulting $`p(u)`$, i.e.

$$p_q(x,t)=\frac{\left(1\beta (t)(1q)(xx(t))^2\right)^{\frac{1}{1q}}}{Z_q(t)}$$
(3)
also solves Eq. (1) without the flow-term tsallis96 ; bologna00 . Here $`Z_q(t)`$ is the generalized $`q`$ partition function. The relation of the Tsallis entropy factor $`q`$, and $`\nu `$ in Eq. (1) is given by $`q=2\nu `$ tsallis96 . Note that this distribution is a power law, and only in the limit $`q1`$ the classical Gaussian $`p_1(x,t)=\frac{\mathrm{exp}^{\beta (t)\left(xx(t)\right)^2}}{Z_1(t)}`$ is recovered. It is relatively straight forward to derive the corresponding velocity distributions of the associated particles

$$p(v)=B_q\left[1(1q)\frac{\beta mv^2}{2}\right]^{\frac{1}{1q}}$$
(4)
which has been derived for the first time in silva98 , and which reduces to the usual Maxwell-Boltzmann result $`p(v)=\left(\frac{m}{2\pi kT}\right)^{\frac{3}{2}}\mathrm{exp}^{\frac{\beta mv^2}{2}}`$ in the limit $`q1`$. Here $`\frac{\beta m}{2}`$ can be seen as an inverse mobility factor, meaning that large values of $`\frac{\beta m}{2}`$ are associated with small average cell velocities. If cell migration is in fact describable as anomalous diffusion governed by a Fokker-Planck equation like Eq. (1) with the special choice of $`D\left[p\right]`$, the cell velocity distribution function should follow the form of Eq. (4).

To further characterize the nature of the diffusion process we will also look at normalized temporal autocorrelation functions $`AC(\tau )=\frac{1}{\sigma ^2(\xi )}\xi (t)\xi (t\tau )_t`$, and at two-point correlation functions $`C(\tau )=[\xi (t+\tau )\xi (t)]^2_t`$, of an underlying process $`\xi (t)`$, where $`._t`$ denotes the average over time $`t`$. For (fractional) Brownian motion, the correlator scales as $`C(\tau )\tau ^{2H}`$, where $`H`$ is sometimes called the Hurst exponent. For $`H=1/2`$ the classical diffusion result is obtained (Brownian motion), $`H>1/2`$ indicates correlated diffusion, which we expect in our case.

## III Experimental data

To record the trajectory of an individual mouse mammary gland epithelial cell over long time periods of up to 72 hours, epithelial cells data  were seeded sparsely onto a 2D plastic culture dish. The dish was then placed into a mini-chamber mounted on an inverted phase contrast video-microscope. This provided incubator conditions and periodic image acquisition in 90 seconds intervals was performed video . About 900 to 1000 (video) frames were taken per measurement. For our purposes we only take the first 25 hours of the recording since after that cell density becomes high, and motion of individual cells restricted, see video (http://is2.kph.tuwien.ac.at/thurner/CELLMOVE). As seen in the videos, cells move within limited regions for many timesteps, crossing and following its own and other cell’s trajectories.

From the video sequences the motion of individual cells was extracted semi-automatically by a commercial motion tracking routine tracker . Cell nuclei were tracked based on a convolution kernel of a 100 square pixel field (about half the size of the cell nucleus at the given resolution). These extracted cell trajectories, see lines in Fig. 1b and c, were recorded as the $`x_t`$ and $`y_t`$ positions in two dimensions (the subscript indicating discrete time).

Due to the limited data length it is more useful to study velocity distributions rather than spatial distributions directly. We work in polar coordinates and transform the trajectories $`(x_t,y_t)`$ to a velocity (length-increment $`v_x(t)=x_tx_{t1}`$) process $`v_t=\sqrt{v_x(t)^2+v_y(t)^2}`$ and a direction process $`\alpha _t=\mathrm{arctan}(x_tx_{t1},y_ty_{t1})`$ $`[\pi ,\pi ]`$.

As a control for the plausibility of our model we genetically modified cells from the same cell line in two virus experiments michou99 ; vietor02 ; virus . The basic idea here is to alter the cell’s motion program such that its interaction with other cells and hence its ability to follow other cell trajectories becomes effectively reduced. In the case of non-interacting cells one should expect the model loose its validity, i.e. that cell movement would approach classical diffusion, i.e. $`q1`$. In the first experiment, we infected cells with a virus carrying the coding sequence of enhanced green fluorescent protein (GFP). Since viral infection has been reported to significantly influence morphology and molecular homeostasis of mammary epithelial cells gaynor85 ; glotzer00 ; wolff92 ; wick02 , we expected alterations on cellular migration patterns as well. This condition will be referred to as ”infected” in the following. In a second experiment we inserted the coding sequence of gene TPA-Inducible Sequence 7 (TIS7) instead of GFP into the cells. TIS7, a co-repressor of gene transcription and functionally associated with loss of epithelial characteristics like cell-to-cell adhesion was chosen to additionally test for eventual alterations in cell mobility vietor02 . This experimental condition will be called ”TIS7” in the remainder of the paper and contains consequences of the viral infection itself and the effects of over-expressed TIS7.

## IV Results

For a first demonstration of correlated motion to be present, we compute $`C(\tau )`$ for the individual $`x_t`$ and $`y_t`$ components of cell trajectories. We find a Hurst exponent of about $`H0.7\pm 0.02`$ for all the experimental conditions (normal, infected, and TIS7), indicating correlated motion, see Tab. 1.

We find the direction process $`\alpha _t`$ practically equally distributed over the interval $`[\pi ,\pi ]`$. By looking at normalized autocorrelations $`AC`$ of $`\alpha _t`$, significant (99% significance level) coefficients are found which decay as a power law. The situation is shown in Fig. 2a for all three experimental conditions. Power decay exponents were fit by a least square routine in the region indicated by the straight lines; the corresponding values are collected in Tab. 1. Errors (standard mean errors over 5 independently moving cells) in the fit-regions are somewhat larger than symbol-size and were omitted for clarity of the plot. Normal cells show lower correlations, which decay slightly faster than those of the manipulated cells.

The normalized autocorrelations for the velocity process $`v_t`$ are given in Fig. 2b. Correlation coefficients are statistically significant and in the same order of magnitude as the direction series’. Again, the tails of the correlations follow a power law; for the corresponding exponents, see Tab. 1. Here normal cells have higher correlations than infected ones. Infected and TIS7 cells show a slower decay than normals. Errors here are about twice symbol size.

In Fig. 3 we show the velocity distribution (histogram) of the normal cells in a log-log plot. The solid line is a three parameter fit to Eq. 4; fit-parameters for $`q`$ and $`\frac{\beta m}{2}`$ for all conditions are listed in Tab. 1. At the low limit of $`v`$ the distribution approaches a constant, while the right tail clearly decays in a power law fashion $`v^\gamma `$. We find infected and TIS7 cells to move faster on average, as seen in the mobility factor or directly in $`v_t`$, see Tab. 1.

## V Discussion

We provide clear evidence that cell migration of interacting cells is a correlated diffusion process. This finding is supported by several facts found in our experimental data. Correlated motion is shown by the presence of a Hurst exponent significantly larger than 0.5 and by non-vanishing autocorrelation functions in the velocity and direction processes. This finding is in nice agreement with a recent and similar experiment upadhyaya01 , where an $`H`$ of $`0.62\pm 0.05`$ was found. The direction autocorrelation functions are found to decay in a power like manner, with exponents consistently smaller than 1, opening the possibility for super-diffusion. This obviously excludes naive autoregressive or moving average models (ARMA) to be realistic candidates for interacting cell migration since these models have exponential decays of autocorrelation functions. This finding means that the direction of cells is a ”long memory” process. For velocity autocorrelation functions the power decay is smaller but still present for the normal cells. The value of the correlation coefficient at $`\tau =1`$ is about the same size as for the $`\alpha _t`$ process.

The virus effect is seen in the following way. The most obvious difference of normal and manipulated cells is seen in their mobility, which is drastically enhanced for manipulated cells. This is expected because we believe that there is less effective adhesion proteins present in the infected and especially in the TIS7 cells. Very similar results have been reported in upadhyaya01 , however, with a different experimental strategy: There cells propagated in different aggregates of cell types with different adhesion properties to Hydra cells.

Infected and TIS7 cells show larger correlations in the direction process, meaning that directions are changed less frequently than normal cells do. This is expected since these cells detect trails less well and lose their ability to follow other cells. Once moving they keep their direction more strictly than normal cells. For the velocity process we observe the opposite effect: normal cells have larger autocorrelations, i.e. normal cells change their velocities less frequently than infected and TIS7 ones. We attribute this effect to a more controlled movement of normal cells when following a path, or equally, a stronger influence of random effects on infected or TIS7 cells with damaged movement control.

We now turn to the main result of this paper. The velocity distribution follows the general form of the anomalous diffusion model. Maybe most importantly this model allows to naturally understand the presence of the power tail to the right of the distribution. The power can be related (via $`q`$) to the $`\nu `$ exponent in Eq. (1). For normal cells we find $`q1.35`$ which goes down to $`q1.20`$ for the infected, and to $`q1.11`$ for the TIS7 cells. In the Tsallis thermodynamics framework this means, that infected cells approach the classical thermodynamic regime, while normal cells with their complex motion control system are governed by non-extensive statistics. In this framework it is clear that for non-interacting cells ordinary diffusion and Gaussian or exponential velocity distributions were observed in mombach96 ; czirok98 , being extreme cases of the present model. If we accept that in our experiments infection diminishes the degree of interaction between cells and their trajectories, we see that the $`q`$ value should serve as a sensible quantifier of the degree of interaction. Again, in upadhyaya01  very similar behavior of 2D moving patterns of Hydra cells were found. They reported $`q1.5`$, or a power decay in the velocity distributions of about $`\gamma 4`$ and suggest a different way of explaining the movement patterns based on granular flow models. Furthermore, these and our findings clearly exclude a Levy flight interpretation of cell movements, and led by the observation of trail-following tendencies of cells we believe that cell migration is governed by a realization of anomalous diffusion.

In conclusion, we think that the presented method provides a useful tool to qualitatively understand different movement patterns of realistic cell migration, and to quantify the degree of interaction by the value of the Tsallis $`q`$. Since epithelial cell migration plays such an important role in situations like wound healing of skin epidermis or cancer metastasis we speculate that the above way of quantification could even be a practical pathological characterization of cells, regarding diverse biological dignities and pharmacological responses, in addition to molecular and mechanical parameters. Finally, we note that the basic idea behind the presented model could also be applicable to other fields, like electrical flow through networks of biological neurons. There the effective network topology is also subject to constant changes due to synaptic plasticity (Hebb or other type of learning). Electrical current will flow on excitable media restricted to a given network and by doing so, will re-shape it by changing synaptic weights. Here we would predict power law distributions of electrical current changes, in analogy to the $`v`$ distributions presented here.

S.T. would like to thank C. Tsallis and M. Gell-Mann for the inspiring workshop on non-extensive thermodynamics they organized at the Santa Fe Institute in April 2002. We acknowledge M. Cotten for the preparation of CELO vector stocks. This work was supported by Boehringer Ingelheim and by the Austrian Science Foundation grant FWF, P13577-GEN.

FIG. 1

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# Magnetic Miniband Structure and Quantum Oscillations in Lateral Semiconductor Superlattices

## I Introduction

The energy band structure of electrons in a periodic potential is one of the fundamental concepts in solid state physics. Developed in view of natural crystalline structures and in order to understand their electronic properties the concept of Bloch electrons applies as well to man-made periodic structures, which have become available with the advent of modern technological methods of growth and structuring champ ; weiss . While in natural crystalline structures the lattice constant is fixed by the chemical binding mechanisms it can be varied over a wide range in superlattices produced by controlled technological processes. This development has renewed the interest in the challenging problem of Bloch electrons in a magnetic field, which was studied in the past by renowned theorists bloch  but is experimentally accessible now with these artificial periodic structures, in which the lattice period $`a`$ is in the same range as the classical cyclotron radius $`R_\mathrm{c}`$ at available magnetic fields.

Lateral superlattices are realized by applying lithographic techniques to impose a periodic pattern onto a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) at a semiconductor heterointerface weiss . This pattern can be an uni- or bi-directional potential modulation of different strength, thus allowing for a variety of artificial periodic structures. Magnetotransport experiments have become an efficient method for the investigation of the energy spectrum. At the beginningweis89\_wink89 , with realizable periods $`a`$ of these lateral superlattices (several $`100`$nm) much larger than the typical Fermi wavelengths $`\lambda _\mathrm{F}`$ of the 2DES (e.g. $`50`$nm), classical concepts have been successful in interpreting the magnetotransport data. One prominent example was the observation of $`1/B`$ periodic oscillations in the low magnetic field range which could be ascribed to the commensurability condition $`2R_c=a(\nu \frac{1}{4}),\nu =1,2,3\mathrm{}`$ been89 . With decreasing lattice periods (at present $`a`$ $`\stackrel{<}{}`$ $`100`$nm) quantum mechanical aspects gain importance. In fact, a new type of $`1/B`$ periodic oscillations has been detected recently in lateral semiconductor superlattices with bi- albrecht  and uni-directional deutschmann  electrostatic modulation. Their interpretation as being due to the formation of an artificial band structure was based on semiclassical arguments involving modifications of the Fermi contour of the 2DES by the superlattice potential and magnetic breakdown. It was possible to quantitatively relate the period of these novel quantum oscillations (including their dependence on electron density $`n_\mathrm{s}`$ and superlattice constant $`a`$) to the area enclosed by the Fermi contours albrecht ; deutschmann ; lgb00 .

However, except for the magnetic breakdown this explanation did not address the combined effect of periodic potential and magnetic field that gives rise to a magnetic miniband structure.

In this letter we present fully quantum-mechanical magnetotransport calculations by evaluating Kubo’s formula for a 2DES with non-perturbative treatment of both uni-directional periodic potential and magnetic field. It is shown that the new $`1/B`$ periodic quantum oscillations reported in albrecht ; deutschmann  result from the formation of magnetic minibands which (at fixed magnetic field) evolve with increasing amplitude of the potential modulation from the Landau levels of the 2DES. Besides the impurity scattering, here considered in the self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA), it is the dispersion of these magnetic minibands, that determines the magnetoconductivity. As will be shown, both mechanisms enter differently into the conductivities parallel and perpendicular to the potential modulation thus causing a phase shift by $`\pi `$ in the novel quantum oscillations. The experimental detection of this phase shift together with the period of these magnetotransport oscillations can serve as evidence for the formation of magnetic minibands.

## II Magnetic Miniband Structure

We consider electrons with effective mass $`m^{}`$ moving in the xy-plane subjected to a periodic electrostatic potential $`V(x)=\frac{V_0}{2}\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{2\pi }{a}x\right)`$. The single-particle Hamiltonian is gerh89 ; vasi89 ; zhan90

$$H=\frac{1}{2m^{}}\left(𝐩+e𝐀\right)^2+V(x),$$
(1)
where the vector potential $`𝐀`$ includes the magnetic field in z-direction and is given in Landau gauge by $`𝐀(x)=Bx\widehat{𝐞}_y`$. The amplitude $`V_0`$ of the potential modulation will be varied with respect to the Fermi energy $`E_\mathrm{F}`$ of the 2DES from weak ($`V_0E_\mathrm{F}`$) to strong ($`V_0`$$`\stackrel{<}{}`$$`E_\mathrm{F}`$). Due to the Landau gauge the Hamiltonian commutes with the $`y`$-component of the momentum. Without lateral superlattice ($`V_0=0`$) the eigenstates can be characterized by two quantum numbers, the Landau level index $`n_\mathrm{L}`$ and the center coordinate $`X_0`$, which by $`X_0=\lambda _\mathrm{c}^2k_y`$ is connected with the momentum $`\mathrm{}k_y`$ in $`y`$-direction ($`\lambda _\mathrm{c}^2=\mathrm{}/eB`$). In real space representation the eigenstates $`|n_\mathrm{L}X_0`$ are given by

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{n_\mathrm{L}X_0}(x,y)=\phi _{n_\mathrm{L}}(xX_0)\frac{1}{\sqrt{L_y}}e^{ik_yy}$$
(2)
where $`\phi _{n_\mathrm{L}}(\xi )`$ is the eigenfunction of the harmonic oscillator and the energy eigenvalues $`E_{n_\mathrm{L}}=\mathrm{}\omega _\mathrm{c}(n_\mathrm{L}+\frac{1}{2}),n_\mathrm{L}=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$ depend only on the Landau level index. $`\omega _c=\frac{eB}{m^{}}`$ is the cyclotron frequency. The spatial homogeneity of the unmodulated 2DES leads to a degeneracy of the Landau levels given by the ratio $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$, of the magnetic flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ through the sample area $`L_xL_y`$ and the elementary flux quantum $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=h/e`$. When considering the superlattice potential this degeneracy is lifted and the Landau levels evolve into magnetic minibands described by a dependence of the energy eigenvalues on $`X_0`$(or $`k_y`$), which due to the periodicity of the potential can be restricted to the interval $`[\frac{a}{2},\frac{a}{2}]`$.

The solution of the eigenvalue problem with $`H`$ from Eq. (1) is the basis for the calculation of the magnetoconductivity. (In our calculations we have used the effective mass $`m^{}=0.067m_0`$, typical for electrons in GaAs, the lattice constant $`a=100`$nm, and the carrier density n$`{}_{s}{}^{}=210^{15}`$m-2 corresponding to $`E_\mathrm{F}=7.1`$meV). The energy spectrum at fixed magnetic field ($`B=0.1`$T) is shown in Fig. 1 for two different strengths of the potential modulation $`V_0`$ (left and right part).

For weak modulation ($`V_0=0.5`$meV) the Landau level structure can still be recognized, but the degeneracy is lifted already and gives rise to magnetic minibands with weak dispersion. With increasing $`V_0`$ the dispersion gets stronger and the magnetic minibands overlap, thus the Landau level index looses its meaning and has to be replaced by the magnetic miniband index $`n`$. A striking feature of the magnetic miniband structure for strong modulation ($`V_0=2`$meV) are the sections with pronounced dispersion. Their classical analogue are channeling and drifting orbits zwer99 . These sections fall into limits defined by the dispersion of free and constantly Bragg reflected electrons fussnote .

In previous work gerh89 ; vasi89 ; zhan90  the potential modulation was treated as first order perturbation correction to the Landau levels. This treatment is justified if the potential modulation is much smaller than $`\mathrm{}\omega _c`$ and the minibands (Landau bands) still reflect the Landau level structure. This approach provided a quantum mechanical explanation of the commensurability oscillations as being due to the flat-band condition indicated by triangles in Fig. 1. In the quantum mechanical approach this condition can be formulated as $`R_c=\lambda _c^2k`$, with $`k`$ taken from the free electron dispersion relation $`E(k)=\frac{\mathrm{}^2k^2}{2m^{}}`$ and coincides with the maxima of the DOS-envelope. In this approach also the observed antiphase commensurability oscillations in the two diagonal resistivity components could be explained by invoking the two transport mechanisms due to Landau band dispersion and impurity scattering. However, first order perturbation theory is not adequate to describe the magnetotransport at very low magnetic fields, when the superlattice potential mixes the Landau levels into magnetic minibands.

## III Conductivity

Following a standard routine zhan90  we calculate the conductivity tensor in linear response theory by evaluating the Kubo formula stre75 ; kubo57 :

$$\sigma _{\mu \nu }=\frac{ie^2\mathrm{}}{L_xL_y}𝑑Ef_0(E)\text{Sp}\left\{v_\mu \frac{d𝒢^+}{dE}v_\nu \delta (EH)v_\mu \delta (EH)v_\nu \frac{d𝒢^{}}{dE}\right\}_\mathrm{I},$$
(3)
where $`v_\nu `$ are the components of the velocity operator $`\mu ,\nu \{x,y\}`$, and $`𝒢^\pm `$ is the retarded ($`+`$) and advanced ($``$) Green function. The Fermi distribution $`f_0(E)`$ includes the temperature and $`\mathrm{}_\mathrm{I}`$ denotes an average over impurity configurations. This average is performed in SCBA by assuming short range scatterers. In the complex number approximation it yields a single-particle self-energy given by

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^+(E)=\mathrm{\Gamma }^2\underset{n}{}\frac{1}{a}_{a/2}^{a/2}𝑑X_0G_{nX_0}^+(E),$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^2=\frac{1}{2\pi }\mathrm{}\omega _c\frac{\mathrm{}}{\tau }`$ is connected through the relaxation time $`\tau `$ with the zero field mobility $`\mu =e\tau /m^{}`$. The impurity average in Eq. (3) is considered by replacing $`𝒢^\pm `$ by the impurity averaged Green functions $`G^\pm =𝒢^\pm _\mathrm{I}`$. Vertex corrections, which vanish in this approximation for the homogeneous 2DES, are neglected here. In the following we concentrate on the longitudinal conductivity $`\sigma _{\mu \mu }`$ which can be written as:

$$\sigma _{\mu \mu }=\frac{e^2}{h}\frac{\mathrm{}^2\pi }{\lambda _\mathrm{c}^2}𝑑E\left(\frac{df_0(E)}{dE}\right)\underset{n_1,n_2}{}\frac{1}{a}_{a/2}^{a/2}𝑑X_0\left|n_1X_0\left|v_\mu \right|n_2X_0\right|^2A_{n_1X_0}A_{n_2X_0},$$
(5)
where $`n_1`$, $`n_2`$ denotes the magnetic miniband index. The spectral functions $`A(E)=\frac{i}{2\pi }\left(G^+(E)G^{}(E)\right)`$ are obtained from the impurity averaged Green functions. In SCBA the density of states (DOS) can be expressed by:

$$D(E)=\frac{1}{L_xL_y}\text{tr}\{A(E)\}=\frac{1}{\left(\pi \mathrm{\Gamma }\lambda _c\right)^2}\text{Im}\left\{\mathrm{\Sigma }^+(E)\right\}.$$
(6)
The center part of Fig. 1 shows how $`D(E)`$ evolves with increasing strength $`V_0`$ of the potential modulation. Weak modulation ($`V_0=0.5`$meV) causes only a slight dispersion and the DOS with well separated peaks is still reminiscent of the Landau level structure of the homogeneous 2DES as indicated by dots. This characterizes the high-field regime of magnetotransport with the Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations. With increasing modulation amplitude $`V_0`$ the energy spectrum gets more complex until due to the strong coupling of Landau levels the DOS exhibits a new periodicity (indicated by the dots in the panel for $`V_0=2.0`$meV).

In a simple picture, neglecting in Eq. (5) the dependence of the matrixelement on quantum numbers, the conductivity is related to the DOS expressed by Eq. (6). Thus it is conceivable from the discussion of Fig. 1 that due to formation of magnetic minibands with strong dispersion novel $`1/B`$ periodic quantum oscillations can show up with periods differing from those of commensurability and SdH oscillations.

In order to confirm this preliminary conclusion we turn now to the calculated conductivities perpendicular ($`\sigma _{yy}`$) and parallel ($`\sigma _{xx}`$) to the potential modulation as shown in Figs. 2 and 3, respectively.

The conductivities (for two different temperatures) are plotted here versus $`1/B`$ to expose the characteristic periodicities. In the high field regime, when the potential modulation is much weaker than $`\mathrm{}\omega _c`$, the conductivity is determined by the SdH oscillations characteristic for the Landau level spectrum. In the intermediate field regime the periods of the Weiss oscillations, determined by the commensurability condition, are marked for $`\sigma _{yy}`$ (Fig. 2).

Oscillations with a new period $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/B}=0.37`$T-1 show up in both conductivity components in the low-field regime. It is characteristic for the new oscillations to vanish by increasing the temperature from $`0.25`$K (solid curves) to $`2.0`$K (dotted curves), while the Weiss oscillations can still be seen. In order to understand these results we consult Eq. (5). Contributions with $`n_1n_2`$ are determined by the overlapping spectral functions from different magnetic minibands and will be called inter-miniband conductivity $`\sigma ^{\mathrm{inter}}`$. For weak modulation, when the overlap is caused exclusively by the SCBA broadening alone, this contribution can be ascribed to impurity scattering and is also called scattering conductivity gerh89 ; vasi89 ; zhan90 . The second mechanism deriving from terms with $`n_1=n_2`$ is due to the dispersion of the magnetic minibands exclusively (the matrixelements in Eq. (5) correspond to the group velocity) and will be called intra-band conductivity $`\sigma ^{\mathrm{intra}}`$. For systems with uni-directional potential modulation in $`x`$ direction the matrixelement $`nX_0\left|v_x\right|nX_0`$ vanishes and the intra-band conductivity contributes only to $`\sigma _{yy}`$. Thus the use of 1D lateral superlattices permits the observation of quantum oscillations of scattering and band contributions to the conductivity at the same time. Note that up to present quantum oscillations in the 1D case deutschmann  have been found only in the magnetoresistance parallel to the modulation which corresponds to the perpendicular conductivity. As can be seen in Fig. 3, $`\sigma _{xx}`$ is almost identical (in magnitude and phase) with $`\sigma _{yy}^{\mathrm{inter}}`$ except for the low field regime where the new oscillations occur. We focus our attention to this regime and to the new oscillations by showing in Fig. 4 the difference between the conductivities calculated for the two temperatures. As can be seen clearly $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{xx}=\sigma _{xx}(0.25\mathrm{K})\sigma _{xx}(2.0\mathrm{K})`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{yy}`$ oscillate in antiphase. This is a consequence of the two mechanisms (inter- and intra- miniband) contributing differently to the conductivity parallel and perpendicular to the potential modulation and thus reflects the formation of magnetic minibands: $`\sigma _{xx}`$ is dominated by inter-miniband contributions with maxima correlated with those of the DOS; $`\sigma _{yy}`$ is dominated (for the parameters used here) by intra-miniband contributions, that get large when parts of the magnetic miniband with strong dispersion, which correspond to small DOS, pass through the Fermi energy. A similar explanation has been invoked to explain the observed antiphase in commensurability oscillations yet under the assumption of weak modulation and only slightly distorted Landau band spectrum gerh89 ; vasi89 ; zhan90 . Here we provide more rigorous analysis for arbitrary modulation strength (or low magnetic field) at which the new $`1/B`$ periodic oscillations appear which together with the antiphase signature, if observed experimentally, can be taken as a proof for the formation of the magnetic minibands in 2DES with uni-directional potential modulation. In general, as the oscillations have been observed for 2D modulated systems too albrecht , the periodicity of the quantum oscillations can be explained by the density of states but the phase depends on the dominating conductivity mechanism.

## IV Summary

In conclusion we address one of the challenging single-particle problems in solid state physics: Bloch electrons in a magnetic field and a possible proof of the formation of a magnetic band structure. For this purpose we perform a quantum-mechanical calculation of the magneto conductivity by evaluating the Kubo formula for a system of 2D electrons with an uni-directional periodic potential modulation in an external homogeneous magnetic field included non-perturbatively. Such systems are realized nowadays in layered semiconductor structures with modern technologies of growth and lithography. It is shown that the formation of a magnetic miniband structure together with the impurity scattering manifests in the magneto conductivities parallel and perpendicular to the potential modulation: in the low magnetic field regime new $`1/B`$ periodic quantum oscillations show up, which are in antiphase for the two longitudinal components of the conductivity tensor due to different conductivity mechanisms and should be observable only at very low temperatures.

This work has been supported by the DFG via Forschergruppe 370 Ferromagnet-Halbleiter-Nanostrukturen.


text:
# Thermal and Nonthermal X-ray Emission from the Forward Shock in Tycho’s Supernova Remnant

## 1 Introduction

As the bright remnant of an historically observed supernova in our Galaxy, Tycho’s supernova remnant (SNR 1572) has been extensively studied, but the X-ray spectrum associated with its forward shock has not been directly measured until now. By necessity, most X-ray spectral studies have focused on the spatially integrated spectrum, which is dominated at energies below a few keV by the ejecta. A faint outer shelf of emission was identified in X-ray images from the Einstein Observatory, however, and is attributed to material behind the forward shock (Seward, Gorenstein, & Tucker 1983)—an association that is further supported by the excellent correspondence of the X-ray boundary with the sharp outer boundary seen in radio images (Dickel et al. 1991).

Imaging studies with the ROSAT X-ray Observatory establish that the expansion of the remnant varies both with azimuthal angle and radius (Hughes 2000). The faster expansion observed at the outer boundary corresponds to an average forward shock velocity of 4600 $`\pm `$ 400 ($`D`$/2.3 kpc) km/s, where $`D`$ is the distance in kpc. The expansion of the radio boundary is also observed to vary with azimuthal angle (Strom, Goss, & Shaver 1982, Reynoso et al. 1997). Strong deceleration in the east is caused by the remnant’s interaction with dense H gas (Reynoso et al. 1999). Although the outer boundaries of the X-ray and radio emission show excellent correspondence, the average expansions measured at these wavelengths are inconsistent: the expansion rate $`m`$, defined such that the time evolution of the remnant radius is $`rt^m`$, is 0.471 $`\pm `$ 0.028 in the radio (Reynoso et al. 1997), and 0.71 $`\pm `$ 0.06 for the outer radii in X-rays (Hughes 2000). This discrepancy is unresolved, but appears to be a common pattern in young remnants (such as Cas A, Koralesky et al. 1998, Vink et al. 1998, and Kepler’s SNR, Dickel et al. 1988, Hughes 1999).

In the case of Tycho’s SNR, the forward shock velocity can be measured in yet another way. The optical emission is almost exclusively H Balmer emission from nonradiative shocks propagating into partially neutral gas (Chevalier & Raymond 1978, Chevalier, Kirshner, & Raymond 1980, Kirshner, Winkler, & Chevalier 1987). The neutral H atoms are not heated by the shock, and can be collisionally excited before being ionized; these excited atoms produce narrow Balmer lines consistent with their low temperatures. Slow H atoms can also undergo charge exchange reactions with fast protons that have already been heated behind the shock; these fast H atoms contribute a broad component to the line profile. The optical emission from Tycho’s SNR is generally faint, and is detected only in the eastern and northern regions. The most prominent feature is on the eastern side of the remnant (knot g in the compilation of Kamper & van den Bergh 1978). Smith et al. (1991) and Ghavamian et al. (2001) infer shock velocities through knot g of $``$ 2000 km/s independent of the distance to the remnant. From modelling the line emission, while accounting for the effects of both the electron-ion temperature equilibration and Ly $`\alpha `$ scattering, Ghavamian et al. constrain the electron to proton temperature ratio to be $``$0.10, implying electron temperatures $``$0.8 keV in the knot.

X-ray spectral studies of Tycho’s SNR generally infer a relatively hard spectral component, presumed to be associated with the forward shock. The total spectrum from the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA) X-ray Observatory suggests a forward shock component with a temperature of roughly 4 keV that accounts for some 30% of the X-ray flux between 0.5 to 10 keV (Hwang, Hughes, & Petre 1998). This temperature is well below the mean equilibrium temperature behind a 4600 km/s shock. Hughes (2000) points out that this implies either a low efficiency for electron heating, so that the electron temperature is well below the mean, or nonlinear particle acceleration, which could result in significantly higher compressions and lower temperatures than for test-particle shocks of the same velocity (Decourchelle, Ellison & Ballet 2000). Furthermore, X-ray emission has been observed from the remnant at energies up to 25 keV (Pravdo & Smith 1979, Fink et al. 1994, Petre et al. 1999), and this emission has also been attributed to material behind the forward shock. This interpretation requires a heating mechanism that can rapidly heat the electrons to sufficiently high temperatures (e.g., Cargill & Papadopoulos 1988). The hard X-ray emission has alternatively been suggested to come from a nonthermal population of highly energetic electrons that has been accelerated at the shock (Aharonian et al. 2001).

X-ray instruments have lacked the capability to isolate the spectrum of the forward shock thus far. Recent XMM-Newton observations have now provided the first truly spatially resolved spectra of Tycho’s SNR on angular scales of several arcseconds (Decourchelle et al. 2001). Even higher spatial resolution (less than 0.5′′ FWHM) is provided by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. In this paper, we present images and spectra of selected portions of the forward shock of Tycho’s SNR using the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) on the Chandra Observatory.

## 2 Images

Tycho’s SNR was observed for 48.9 ks on 20-21 September 2000 with the ACIS spectroscopic array. The count rate was steady, and there were no background flares. The remnant has a size slightly larger than the $`8^{}\times 8^{}`$ field of view of a single ACIS CCD. The northern and eastern parts of the remnant were positioned on the back-illuminated CCD S3, the primary spectroscopic chip, while the western region of the remnant was imaged on the neighbouring front-illuminated CCD S2. This placement of the source on the detector was originally chosen to optimize observation of the ejecta knots in the east. The southernmost region of the remnant fell outside the field of view of the detector.

The broadband 0.5-10 keV image of Tycho’s SNR obtained by ACIS is shown in Figure 1(a). Also shown in Figure 1 are energy band images covering (b) the Si He $`\alpha `$ blend near 1.86 keV, with the underlying continuum subtracted, and (c) the 4-6 keV continuum band. In forming the X-ray images, the energy selection was performed after correcting for the spatial variation of the gain across the detector, as summarized in Table 1. For the Si image, the continuum underlying the line emission was determined from the shape of the local spectrum, and removed. The rather sparse 4$``$6 keV continuum image has been smoothed. Panel (d) shows the 22 cm radio image of Dickel et al. (1991), convolved with a beam of 1.45$`{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }\times 1.38^{\prime \prime }`$, and scaled to match the X-ray images in size. “Equivalent width” images of the kind presented by Hwang et al. (2000) are shown in the three panels of Figure 2 for (a) the Fe L emission (transitions to n=2 levels) near 1 keV, (b) Si He $`\alpha `$ blend, and (c) the Fe K blend (transitions to n=1 levels) near 6.5 keV. These images show the ratio of the line emission to the underlying continuum after smoothing.

### 2.1 Outer Shock

The Chandra broadband image shows that the outer edge of the X-ray emission in the northeast and west is strikingly traced by a thin, smooth rim. The rim is circular in the west, but there is a straight section in the northeast, and the rim is absent altogether in the east, where the remnant is interacting with dense H gas (Reynoso et al. 1999). The rim is also present at radio wavelengths, where it extends to the southern edge of the remnant that was not imaged by this Chandra observation (Figure 1d, Dickel et al. 1991, Reynoso et al. 1997). Overall, the radio rim corresponds closely with the X-ray rim, but the two do not track each other particularly well in brightness, as illustrated in Figure 3, which compares the surface brightness along the rim in the X-ray continuum image with that in the radio image (also see Dickel et al. 1991).

X-ray radial profiles for two azimuthal sectors in the northwest and southwest are shown in Figure 4 for both the broadband and 4-6 keV continuum images. The rim marks the location of the remnant’s forward shock, and is highlighted in the 4-6 keV X-ray continuum image. This energy band suppresses the ejecta contribution because it is virtually free of the emission lines that arise mostly from the ejecta and dominate the broadband spectrum; the thick bright shell in the broadband image disappears in the 4-6 keV continuum image. The full-width-half-maximum radial extent of the arcs is seen to be only about 4-4.5′′, compared to the remnant radius of roughly 4. The inside half of the rim is thinner in the continuum image, consistent with the emergence of thermal line emission at the inside edge behind the forward shock.

There are also a number of bright “knots” in the hard X-ray continuum image, most notably near the eastern edge and in the southwest. These knots have previously been noted in the lower spatial resolution 4-6 keV image obtained by XMM-Newton (Decourchelle et al. 2001). Radio emitting knots in the eastern part of the remnant are not at the same location as the X-ray continuum knots, but are slightly northward. Indeed, the radio knots appear to be better correlated with the Si emission, as noted by Decourchelle et al. (2001). The dense cloud of H gas discussed by Reynoso et al. (1999, their “eastern knot”) is offset by about $`1^{}`$ to the north of the eastern bright X-ray continuum knot.

### 2.2 Ejecta Distribution

The ejecta in Tycho’s SNR are visible only from their X-ray emission. The optical emission comes entirely from the forward shock, and the infrared emission is also associated with the forward shock (Douvion et al. 2001), while the radio emission is due to electrons accelerated at the shock rather than to ions. The general distribution of the ejecta is evident in the broadband X-ray image (Figure 1a), which is dominated by the Si line emission, and is seen even more clearly in the Si line image of Figure 1(b). Overall, the Si emission is distributed fairly uniformly on large scales, and is very clumpy in appearance, but not compact or knotty like the Si ejecta emission from Cas A (Hughes et al. 2000, Hwang et al. 2000).

To calibrate the observed Si line-to-continuum ratios in Figure 2b with the Si abundances, we used the ACIS detector response to compute the count rates expected from solar-abundance thermal models with various temperatures and ionization ages. We find that if the line-to-continuum ratio exceeds 3-4, the Si abundance must be enhanced above the solar value for temperatures above 0.7 keV, regardless of the ionization age. Lower values of the ratio could be consistent with enhanced abundances if the temperature is below 0.7 keV, depending on the ionization age. In the brightest Si clouds, the ratios are high enough that the element abundances must be well above solar, as expected. The finger-like projections that reach the forward shock in the west have lower values of the line-to-continuum ratio, but are shown to be associated with ejecta by the spectral analysis presented in the following section. The two large, bright, Si- and Fe- rich ejecta knots that bulge beyond the forward shock in the east were known prior to Chandra and XMM (Vancura et al. 1995, Hwang & Gotthelf 1997); it is now evident that Si ejecta reach the forward shock elsewhere in the remnant, though without distorting the remnant boundary. It is plausible that many of the Si clumps seen in the interior are similar to the finger-like features at the edges, but are seen face on.

Most of the Si emission is clumpy on angular scales greater than $`5^{\prime \prime }`$, but the continuum-subtracted Si line image (Figure 1b) shows low level emission throughout the remnant. This emission may be associated with a faint, smooth component of Si ejecta (see Wang & Chevalier 2001). To estimate the contribution of such a component, we smoothed the Si line image with an adjustable beam containing at least 25 counts, subtracted the off-source background, and determined the lowest intensity level inside the remnant. Assuming that the faint emission is distributed uniformly over the remnant, we estimate that it makes up about 25% of the Si line photons. It is possible that this faint Si emission will appear clumpy when viewed at higher statistical significance, but clumps with a significant density enhancement should be readily visible since the X-ray luminosity scales as the square of the density. The surface brightness contrast of the faintest visually identified clumps in the image is a factor of two.

In comparison to the Si images, the Fe L and K line images appear to be somewhat less clumpy, but they are also much more sparse. Moreover, it is difficult to calibrate the Fe L image, as the numerous Fe L lines are blended with each other and with lines of Ne and O, so that the true continuum cannot be determined without detailed spectral modelling. Except for the prominent Fe-rich knot in the east, we cannot ascertain from the images alone whether Fe L emission is present at the forward shock. The brightest Fe K emission is certainly associated with ejecta, as the line-to-continuum ratio is generally high, and any ratio greater than 2 indicates enhanced abundances for any temperature or ionization age. The Fe K emission is radially interior to Fe L and Si, as has already been noted (Decourchelle et al. 2001, Hwang & Gotthelf 1997); as suggested by Decourchelle et al., this is likely to be the signature of the temperature and ionization structure behind the reverse shock. Detailed discussion of the ejecta spectra will be presented elsewhere.

## 3 Spectra of the Forward Shock

We study the spectrum of the forward shock along the outer rim in the southwest, northwest, and northeast, for the regions indicated in Figure 5. We avoid the eastern region, where the rim is not clearly defined, and where the remnant is interacting with dense H gas. The spectral regions are typically $`5^{\prime \prime }`$ wide, corresponding to 0.05 pc at a distance of 2.3 kpc. With the spectra from adjacent regions behind the rim, we sample angular distances up to about 10′′ behind the shock front. The size of the spectral regions and the counts in each spectrum are given in Table 2. With one exception, each spectrum has at least $``$2000 counts. We bin the spectra to have at least 25 counts per pulse height channel, and fit the energy range from 0.5 keV up to 10 keV.

Using the tools in CIAOv2.2, we have customized the spectral calibration files for each spectrum. Since the gain and resolution vary with position on the detector, we use appropriately weighted detector response functions. Spectra were taken from a single CCD chip, with the exception of region 5, which is mostly from S3, but includes a 15% contribution from S2. Although the spectral calibration of S2 is not as complete as for S3, the results obtained for spectra taken from S2 are consistent with those from S3. We also combined the nearly featureless spectra from regions 1 and 2 in the southwest (on S2), and regions 4 and 5 in the northwest (on S2 and S3) to improve the signal-to-noise-ratio. Background spectra are taken from source-free regions on the same CCD chip (or a weighted combination from both chips, if appropriate). We fitted the spectra with both nonthermal and thermal models, as described in the following sections.

It has recently come to light that ACIS suffers from a time-dependent absorption due to the build-up of contaminants on the detector (see http://cxc.harvard.edu). The effects of this absorption increase with time and can be included in either the response function or the spectral model. For our observation, taken only 424 days after launch, the effect of this absorption on the fitted spectra is relatively small. When we include its effect in the spectral model, we find that the interstellar absorbing column density is the only parameter that is significantly affected, being reduced by about 5$`\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 from the values in Tables 3-6.

### 3.1 Models

For fitting thermal models, we primarily use single temperature, single ionization age, nonequilibrium ionization models (XSPEC v11.0, Borkowski, Lyerly, & Reynolds 2001). The ionization age $`n_et`$ is defined as the product of electron density and time since shock-heating, and parameterizes the progress toward ionization equilibrium of gas that is suddenly heated to a high temperature. Because we take very narrow regions behind the shock front, this simple model is an excellent approximation for the spectra at the rim. In the cases where the fitted ionization age is very low because of the absence of line emission, we find that a simple NEI model is essentially indistinguishable from models that approximate the emission behind a segment of a planar shock wave using a range of ionization ages ($`pshock`$), or from a simple bremsstrahlung continuum. Detailed comparisons are shown in Table 3 for such a case—the featureless spectrum from the northwest rim segments 4 and 5.

For fitting nonthermal models, we favor the synchrotron radiation cutoff model ($`srcut`$; see Reynolds & Keohane 1999, Dyer et al. 2001) over simple power-law models. The $`srcut`$ model folds the single particle synchrotron emissivity with a power-law electron energy distribution having an exponential cutoff. It is the most appropriate readily-available model for describing the synchrotron spectrum with the fewest assumptions. It takes as parameters the radio spectral index, the frequency at which the spectrum rolls off (to a factor of 6 below the extrapolation of the radio spectrum, Reynolds 1998), and the radio flux at 1 GHz as the normalization. Reynolds & Keohane use this model with the spatially integrated X-ray spectrum of Tycho’s SNR and the observed radio brightness and spectral index to determine the energy at which the photon spectrum must roll off if the model is not to exceed the observed X-ray spectrum. The electron energy is then determined from the rolloff frequency by taking the magnetic field to be a fiducial value of 10 $`\mu `$G. Reynolds & Keohane estimate the rolloff frequency to be $`8.8\times 10^{16}`$ Hz on average (corresponding to an energy of 0.4 keV), to set the upper limit on the cutoff energy of the electron spectrum at 40 TeV.

In our use of the $`srcut`$ model, we take the appropriate slope of the radio spectrum for each region of the remnant from Katz-Stone et al. (2000). The normalization of the model is taken to be the radio flux at 1 GHz, and the rolloff frequency is freely fitted. To obtain the radio flux for each spectral region, we use the 1.36 GHz (22 cm) image of Dickel et al. (1991). This 1983 image is of lower angular resolution than the Chandra image, but all the spectral regions we use are much larger than the radio beam size. We first scale the radio image to match the Chandra image, and then extract the radio fluxes from the same spatial regions used for the X-ray spectral analysis. To convert the flux at 1.36 GHz to the value at 1 GHz, we simply took the product of the fraction of the total 1.36 GHz flux in each spectral region with the total 1 GHz flux of 56 Jy (Green 2001). An indication of the uncertainty in the radio flux is given by the difference between the 1.36 GHz flux in our image and that determined by extrapolating a 1 GHz flux of 56 Jy using the average radio spectral index of 0.50 (Katz-Stone et al. 2000); this difference is about 15%.

Comparisons of thermal and nonthermal model fits for the northwest rim are also shown in Table 3. The $`srcut`$ model gives a somewhat better fit than a simple power-law. Also shown is a hybrid containing both thermal and nonthermal components, to be discussed in more detail in the following section. The northwest region of the remnant is notable for having the highest value measured for the radio spectral index, at 0.72$`\pm `$0.14 (Katz-Stone et al. 2000), but it is evident from our spectral fits that the higher-than average spectral index determined in the radio is not compatible with the radio flux together with the X-ray spectrum in the context of the $`srcut`$ model. Even allowing for $``$15% uncertainty in the radio flux normalization, an acceptable fit requires the radio spectral index to be below the low end of its error range, at a value closer to the overall average value found for the remnant. This does not seem implausible, given the difficulties inherent in measuring the radio spectral index.

### 3.2 Results for Rims

For the complete set of spectra at and behind the rim, we present the results for the thermal NEI models in Table 4 and Figure 6. The spectra in the northwest and southwest sections are pristine and show very little evidence for any line emission. The other rim spectra do show weak line emission, especially from Si and S, but generally not from Fe L; most of the spectra taken from behind the rim also show the emergence of line emission. We use a single NEI component with solar abundances to represent the forward shock, unless the poor quality of the fit warrants the addition of a second component (we choose a criterion of $`\chi ^2/dof1.3`$). Since line emission is generally responsible for the poorer fits with single component models, this second component represents ejecta. The forward shock temperatures obtained are very similar around the entire rim, at about 2 keV, and the ionization age is uniformly low, with upper limits in the range of a few times $`10^8`$ cm-3 s.

For cases like region 3 in the west, the line emission seen in the spectrum is clearly from Si and S ejecta, as is corroborated by the Si equivalent width image (Figure 2b). The line emission can be modelled with a NEI component containing only the intermediate mass elements Si and S in their solar abundance ratios (with the exception of the region behind rim 3 which requires enhanced S), and generally without significant Fe or Ni. This may be justified by the observation that the Si ejecta are, on average, more abundant at large radii than Fe ejecta (see Hwang & Gotthelf 1997). The fits are not sensitive to the temperature assumed for the ejecta, as a large range of temperatures will give satisfactory results if the ionization age is adjusted. We therefore warn that the ionization ages determined for the ejecta in Tables 4-6 should not be taken too seriously. We used an ejecta temperature of 0.9 keV, following the results for the globally averaged spectra (Hwang & Gotthelf 1997). In a few instances, the fits are substantially improved with the addition of Fe and Ni in the ejecta, generally with abundances well below the solar ratio relative to Si and S (see Table 4). In other cases, such as regions 6 or 7, the line emission may not necessarily be from ejecta, as lines of O, Ne, and Fe are present in addition to those of Si and S. This tends to be true of the regions in the north or northwest, which are also distinguished by the presence of optical emission and by distortions of the remnant boundary.

The fitted ionization ages behind the northern rim are higher than those at the rim—a result one would expect since the interstellar gas behind the rim was shocked at an earlier time. For the northwest and southwest regions (1, 2, 4, and 5), however, the fitted ionization ages behind the rim remain low, with upper limits consistent with those at the rim itself. This much smaller (i.e., undetectable in our data) change in the ionization age is qualitatively consistent with a lower density for the interstellar gas in the northwest and southwest than in the north. In turn, this is broadly consistent with the interaction of the remnant with denser gas to the north and east that is indicated by the radio observations and the presence of optical emission. The typical radio shock velocity is about 3000-4000 km/s all along the western edge of the remnant. For a velocity of 3500 km/s, a distance of 5′′ behind the shock would imply an increase in the ionization age $`n_et`$ by about $`6\times 10^8`$ cm-3 s for an ambient density of 0.3 cm-3 for Tycho’s SNR (e.g. Seward et al. 1983). Upper limits for the ionization age of $`23\times 10^8`$ cm-3 s at and behind the rim in the northwest and southwest (regions 1, 2, 4, and 5) require a lower density closer to about 0.1-0.15 cm-3; the higher ionization age of a few $`10^9`$ cm-3 measured in the north and northeast (regions 6, 7, and NE) would suggest higher ambient densities above 1 cm-3. For a higher shock velocity, the expected change in ionization age would be proportionally lower.

In our fits, higher ionization ages are also generally accompanied by higher fitted column densities that are associated with the need to absorb the He-like O lines predicted by the models. These are inconsistent, however, with the column density of $`4.5\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 determined in the radio towards Tycho’s SNR (Albinson et al. 1986), and with the fitted column densities for the adjacent regions on the rim. This discrepancy most likely indicates spectral complexity that is not well-represented by a single temperature and ionization age for all the elements. We were not able to resolve it with any simple spectral models.

A third set of spectra taken directly behind the two sets already discussed for rim segments 1, 2, 4, and 5 do finally show the emergence of strong emission lines of Si and S associated with the ejecta. The ionization age limits for the forward shocked component continue to be low at a few $`10^8`$ cm-3 s for all except region 5. The best two-component fit for region 5 shows a large increase in the ionization age associated with the forward shock, but it also shows a large increase in the column density, suggesting that the simple two-component model is not fully adequate.

Results of the nonthermal fits are given in Table 5 for the prominent major sections of the rim. The quality of the fits is generally comparable to, or perhaps slightly worse than the thermal model fits. The ejecta are included in the model for the NE filament, following the preceding discussion for the thermal fits. The radio flux has been fixed for the fits, but allowing the radio normalization to vary between 15% limits typically affects the fitted spectral index or rolloff frequency by 20-30%. The spectrum of the northeast rim is entirely consistent with the radio spectral index, giving a rolloff frequency near 5$`\times 10^{16}`$ Hz that is slightly lower than that estimated by Reynolds & Keohane (1999) for the spatially integrated spectrum of Tycho’s SNR. For the southwest, the fitted radio spectral index is acceptable, but an improved fit can be obtained with a slightly higher value that is closer to the overall average, and entirely consistent with the uncertainties in the radio measurement. Again, the rolloff frequency is then near 5$`\times 10^{16}`$ Hz. The situation in the northwest has been discussed above: the value of the radio spectral index favored by the X-ray spectral fits is marginally incompatible with the radio measurement, and the fitted rolloff frequency is possibly slightly higher than in the other sections of the rim that we examined.

The fitted values of the rolloff frequency $`\nu `$ in Table 5 can be used to deduce the maximum electron energy $`E`$, given the strength of the magnetic field $`B`$, using Eq. (2) of Reynolds & Keohane (1999):

$$\nu (Hz)=0.5\times 10^{16}Hz\left(\frac{B}{10\mu G}\right)\left(\frac{E}{10TeV}\right)^2.$$

Reynolds & Ellison (1992) estimate the magnetic field strength in Tycho’s SNR to be $`10^410^2`$ G. Taking the rolloff frequencies from Table 5 and the lower end of the values for the magnetic field, the maximum electron energies are 8-14 TeV; using the upper end of the magnetic field values, the maximum electron energies are 10 times lower, at $``$ 1 TeV.

The continuum may actually be a mixture of thermal and nonthermal emission, but it is difficult to disentangle these contributions from these spectra alone. The spectra may be fitted with such a hybrid continuum model, but the fits are not substantially improved. In the example given in Table 3, the best fit is very strongly dominated by the thermal component and the determination of the temperature is therefore not adversely affected. In other cases, there are two statistically comparable local minima in the parameter space—one where the nonthermal component dominates the flux, and the other where the thermal component dominates the flux. When the thermal component dominates the flux, the temperature inferred for the thermal component is not very different from the case with no nonthermal contamination. When the nonthermal component dominates the flux, it is not surprising that the temperature of the thermal component is more poorly constrained, with errors that can be as much as two times larger. Good fits may indeed sometimes be obtained with a hybrid model that is dominated by the nonthermal component, but in these cases, the thermal component takes on a low temperature and high ionization age in order to fit the weak line emission from ejecta. From our exploration of the spectra, we conclude that it is not likely for the temperature of the thermal component to be substantially higher than deduced using the purely thermal models.

### 3.3 Results for Hard Continuum Knots

We also examined the spectra of two prominent knotty features present to the east and the west in the hard X-ray continuum image. The spectra of both knots clearly show emission lines, and the western knot (CKW) is strongly contaminated by the presence of Si and S ejecta. To fit the spectra, we used two-component NEI models to represent solar abundance forward shocked gas and reverse shocked Si and S ejecta, as discussed in the previous section and shown in Table 6 and Figure 7. The fitted ionization age for the forward shock component in CKW is significantly higher than for the rims, at a few $`10^9`$ cm-3 s, while the eastern knot (CKE) appears to favor a low ionization age.

The eastern feature CKE is near, but not at, the eastern boundary of the remnant, and the western feature CKW is well inside the western boundary. It is possible that these are similar to the rim features that are seen along the west and south, except that by projection they appear in the interior of the remnant. Their higher surface brightness in the hard continuum image is qualitatively consistent with their higher fitted temperatures ($``$3 keV, compared to 2 keV), but their true nature remains elusive. The CKW feature has a higher fitted ionization age than the rest of the rim, and while this can generally be explained by a higher density, the ambient density is known to be higher in the east than it is in the west. One would therefore expect the opposite case of a higher ionization age for CKE than for CKW. If nonthermal emission were dominant, features corresponding to the knots might be expected in the radio images, but none are seen.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Electron Temperatures

We combined the X-ray spectral results with the radio and X-ray expansion velocities to estimate the ratio of electron to ion temperatures behind the forward shock in Tycho’s SNR. The temperature attained by particles as they pass behind the shock depends on their mass according to the shock jump conditions as $`kT\frac{3}{16}mv_s^2`$, where $`m`$ is the particle mass and $`v_s`$ the shock velocity. The different particle species will exchange energy through Coulomb collisions and eventually attain a single equilibrium temperature, but it has been proposed that this equilibration may be effected much faster by collective plasma interactions (Cargill & Papadopoulos 1988). The efficiency of these collisionless heating processes appears to decrease in inverse proportion to the Mach number of the forward shock, however, so that they may be less important for the fast shocks associated with young SNRs (Laming et al. 1996, Ghavamian et al. 2001). The electrons behind the slower shocks in the Cygnus Loop, for example, have virtually equilibrated with the ions, in contrast to those behind the faster shocks of younger remnants such as SN 1006.

We plot in Figure 8 the equilibrium temperatures for Tycho’s SNR corresponding to the radio expansion parameters determined as a function of azimuthal angle (defined counterclockwise from north) by Reynoso et al. (1997). We use their Table 2 and Figure 5, and a distance of 2.3 kpc, to compute the velocities, and take the mean molecular weight per particle to be $`\mu m_p`$, with $`\mu =0.6`$ for solar abundance gas and $`m_p`$ being the proton mass. The rather large fluctuations for angles greater than 180 are attributed by Reynoso et al. (1997) to uncertainties in determining the remnant radius. Also shown in Figure 8 are the equilibrium temperatures corresponding to the average radio expansion velocity, and the average X-ray expansion velocity given by Hughes (2000). It is not yet clear which of the radio or X-ray expansion values should be used, though the radio measurement is made with higher angular resolution data. Also, if the ejecta presently located near the forward shock have high velocities, they might bias the X-ray expansion measurement, as suggested by Wang & Chevalier (2001). This question will hopefully be better resolved with a new study of the X-ray proper motion using higher spatial resolution data.

The data points in the Figure give the temperatures determined along the rim from our fits, assuming that the X-ray emission is thermal (Table 4); the appropriate azimuthal angle is determined with reference to the center adopted by Reynoso et al. (1997). The electron temperatures we measure are clearly much lower than the mean temperatures expected for shock velocities determined from the radio expansion, with electron to mean temperature ratios of 0.10$``$0.20. If we scale the mean temperature by the ratio of the average X-ray velocity to the average radio velocity, it increases by a factor of two, and the electron to mean temperature ratios decrease accordingly. Although electron-ion temperature equilibration is not attained, the electron temperatures are higher than would be expected from Coulomb heating alone. Ionization ages as low as $`10^8`$ cm-3 s allow for negligible electron heating mediated by Coulomb collisions. The measured electron temperature is thus essentially the electron temperature attained immediately after passage through the shock front, and represents extra heating in addition to Coulomb heating.

A low degree of electron-ion equilibration is consistent with results from the optical spectra for the brightest knot in Tycho’s SNR (knot $`g`$), where the electron to proton temperature ratio is $`0.1`$ (Ghavamian et al. 2001). The degree of electron-ion equilibration has also been determined to be low in SN 1006, with the electron-to-proton temperature ratio $``$ 0.05 using UV spectra (Laming et al. 1996). In SN 1987A, the temperatures measured from Chandra X-ray spectra are also lower than would be expected for equilibrium based on the observed radio and X-ray expansion of the remnant (Michael et al. 2002). The implied ratio of electron and mean particle temperatures is about 0.1, giving an electron to proton temperature ratio of about 0.07 (with $`\mu `$ = 7 for the N-enriched circumstellar material surrounding SN 1987A). The X-ray line profiles (observed with the high spectral resolution High Energy Transmission Gratings on Chandra) are also consistent with thermal broadening due to high ion temperatures behind the shock. All these results are summarized in Figure 9. For comparison, the model of Cargill & Papadopoulos (1988) for rapid electron heating can accommodate electron-to-ion temperature ratios of about 0.20.

In contrast to these cases, the measured electron temperature behind the forward shock in the Small Magellanic Cloud remnant E0102-72 is lower than would be expected for the X-ray determined shock velocity, even with Coulomb heating alone. In this case, the low temperature is interpreted as evidence for highly efficient, nonlinear acceleration of particles behind the shock front (Hughes, Rakowski, & Decourchelle 2000). There is independent evidence that nonlinear acceleration of electrons may be occuring in Tycho’s SNR, in that the observed curvature of the radio electron synchrotron spectrum is predicted by such models (Reynolds & Ellison 1992). The brightness of the radio emission at the rim also requires the fresh acceleration of particles at the shock (Dickel et al. 1991), and this process may extend to sufficiently high energies to affect the X-ray emission. The temperatures expected behind shocks where efficient particle acceleration takes place are lower, making the ratio of measured electron temperature to mean temperature ratios higher than otherwise.

For the CKE, the observed temperature is actually consistent with temperature equilibration behind a shock at the radio velocity. The radio velocity of the rim may not be applicable there, however, as the knot is interior to the rim and is probably only projected there. This knot is also very near the position of the optical knot g, for which Ghavamian et al. (2001) determine that the electron temperature should be no higher than 0.8 keV, at 0.1 times the proton temperature. However, there is a 10′′ nominal offset between the X-ray and optical (Kamper & van den Bergh 1978) position, whereas the nominal X-ray coordinate uncertainty should be well under 3′′ (Chandra Proposer’s Observatory Guide); the optical measurements are probably not applicable to the continuum knot either. One of the radio velocity points applicable to rim segment 4 is also consistent with the measured X-ray temperature, but this point represents a sharp excursion well below the average.

The foregoing discussion is based on the assumption that the emission is thermal, but it has been seen that nonthermal and thermal models are about equally successful in individually describing the featureless rim spectra. In section 3.2, we argued that the spectra indicate that the temperatures should not be much higher than determined from the thermal fits alone, even in the presence of nonthermal emission. In the next section, we present evidence that an additional nonthermal component is indeed likely to be present.

### 4.2 Nonthermal and Thermal Emission Components

Hard X-ray emission has been unmistakably detected from Tycho’s SNR, at energies up to 25 keV with HEAO-1 (Pravdo et & Smith 1979), 20 keV with Ginga (Fink et al. 1994); and 30 keV with RXTE (Petre et al. 1999). Several models have been proposed to explain the hard X-ray continuum in Tycho’s SNR as synchrotron radiation from electrons accelerated at the shock (Heavens 1984, Ammosov et al. 1994). Given that the temperatures (in thermal models) at the forward shock in Tycho’s SNR are only about 2 keV, the X-ray emission at higher energies may well have a nonthermal origin, as has been suggested in the literature.

We estimate an upper limit to the nonthermal X-ray luminosity from Tycho’s SNR in the Chandra energy band by attributing all the flux between 4-6 keV to a nonthermal component. This is clearly an overestimate because there is a hot thermal component associated with the Fe K line emission (Hwang et al. 1998). We first obtained the total source counts between 4-6 keV by estimating and subtracting the background counts from the continuum image and multiplying by a rough geometrical correction factor of 1.15 for the portion of the remnant that was not imaged. We then took the 0.5-10 keV source luminosity of the nonthermal model for the northwest rim and scaled it up by the ratio of 4-6 keV counts in the total image to those in the rim segment, to estimate the nonthermal luminosity for the entire remnant. This maximum luminosity is about 2 $`\times 10^{35}`$ ergs/s, but could be reduced by a factor of a few if we use only the bright X-ray continuum regions in the rim and the knots in our estimate. We have not accounted for the variation in radio spectral index for different parts of the remnant, but if we use the spectrum fitted to the southwest rim, which has a much flatter radio slope, the estimated luminosity is essentially unchanged.

One can also estimate this nonthermal luminosity for Tycho’s SNR by extrapolating the flat component in the Ginga or RXTE X-ray spectra down to energies in the Chandra band. Extrapolating the power-law model given by Fink et al. (1994) for the Ginga data, we estimate a 0.5-10 keV nonthermal luminosity of about 1.5$`\times 10^{35}`$ erg/s. Aharonian et al. (2001) fitted the RXTE spectrum with a model that includes an exponential cutoff, although they inferred a steeper radio slope than is actually observed overall, and obtained a higher turnover energy of 1.6 keV ($`\nu =3.8\times 10^{17}`$ Hz). The 0.5-10 keV luminosity implied by their model is $`1\times 10^{35}`$ ergs/s. Both estimates are a substantial fraction of the maximum possible luminosity from our estimate above, indicating that perhaps half of the hard 4-6 keV X-ray emission in Tycho’s SNR is nonthermal. The nonthermal luminosity estimated from these hard X-rays is slightly higher than that of SN 1006 in the same energy range (Dyer et al. 2001).

The nonthermal X-ray emission should also be accompanied by $`\gamma `$-ray emission, since the energetic electrons that emit the X-ray synchrotron radiation will also upscatter cosmic background photons. The $`\gamma `$-ray upper limits for Tycho’s SNR have become tighter in recent years (Aharonian et al. 2001), at levels that are a few to several times lower than the detections for SN 1006 (Tanimori et al. 1998). This may be understandable from a consideration of the densities and magnetic fields in these remnants. The extrapolation of the radio spectrum to the X-ray range gives maximum electron energies comparable to those determined for SN 1006 (Reynolds & Keohane 1999), if equal magnetic field strengths of 10 $`\mu `$G are assumed. A magnetic field of $`10^4`$ to $`10^2`$ G in Tycho’s SNR from Reynolds & Ellison (1992) is higher than the 9 $`\mu `$G in SN 1006 (Dyer et al. 2001). A higher magnetic field qualitatively accounts not only for the more severe synchrotron energy losses of the electrons in Tycho’s SNR, but also its higher radio surface brightness. The maximum electron energies will be lower in proportion to $`B^{1/2}`$; on the basis of our spectral fits, the maximum electron energies would appear to be between 1-15 TeV, depending on the exact value of the magnetic field. The much lower density environment of SN 1006 (e.g., see Kirshner et al. 1987) would also allow particle acceleration to proceed to higher energies in the first place (Baring et al. 1999).

### 4.3 Mixing of Ejecta

The presence of ejecta at the forward shock requires a significant amount of mixing either during or after the explosion. Various high resolution hydrodynamical studies (Dwarkadas 2000, Wang & Chevalier 2001) show that the ejecta cannot penetrate beyond about half the interaction region through Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities alone, though early Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities might enhance the effectiveness of the Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities (Kane et al. 1999). Clumps in the ejecta (Hamilton 1985) or in the interstellar medium (Jun, Jones & Norman 1996) would, however, allow the ejecta to penetrate to large radii. Ejecta might also penetrate the forward shock in the presence of enhanced turbulence generated as the reverse shock propagates into low density bubbles of Fe, formed as the heat release from the radioactive decay of clumps of Ni ejecta allows them to expand (Blondin et al. 2001). Yet another possibility is that the ejecta can affect the forward shock when the interaction region for the shock is very thin, as could be the case with nonlinear particle acceleration behind the forward shock—a situation that might reasonably be expected to occur in young remnants (Blondin & Ellison 2001), including Tycho’s SNR in particular (Reynolds & Ellison 1992). The action of the Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities out to the forward shock is further supported by the radial orientation of the magnetic field (Dickel et al. 1991), which is observed all the way to the rim of the remnant.

One might expect that if the ejecta do penetrate the forward shock, the boundary of the outer shock would be distorted, whereas the western boundary of Tycho’s SNR is smooth and circular. This might still be possible, however, if the mixing occured early enough for the protruberances to have subsided. In their simulations, Wang & Chevalier (2001) found that it was actually difficult to deform the forward shock unless the ejecta density contrast was very high.

The qualititative appearance of the Si ejecta in Tycho’s SNR is quite different from that of the core-collapse remnant Cas A, which has also been beautifully imaged by Chandra (Hughes et al. 2000, Hwang et al. 2000). While the Si is clumpy in Tycho, it is compact and knotty in Cas A. Despite the fact that Tycho is located at a smaller distance, the angular scale of its Si features is larger than those seen in Cas A. Differences are also seen in the 4-6 keV continuum images. In Tycho’s SNR, the ejecta shell has virtually disappeared in this image, but in Cas A, the ejecta are still clearly visible. The emission associated with the ejecta is thus seen to be relatively more important at these energies in Cas A than in Tycho’s SNR. Indeed, the hard X-ray emission in Cas A has been proposed to be primarily bremsstrahlung emission from electrons that have been accelerated in the ejecta (Laming 2001ab, Bleeker et al. 2001).

The appearance of the forward shock in these two remnants is also strikingly different. Tycho’s outer rim is distorted because of its interaction in the east, but the outline of the rim is otherwise generally smooth and continuous. By contrast, the outer rim of Cas A is broken up on small scales and shows tightly curved fragments (Gotthelf et al. 2000). If some of this emission is nonthermal, this may reflect differences seen in their radio emission, as Tycho has a sharp radio rim suggesting efficient first order Fermi acceleration, whereas Cas A has no distinct radio rim and is a better candidate for second order Fermi acceleration mediated by turbulence (e.g., Dickel et al. 1991). SN 1006, another Type Ia remnant, shows the same smooth outer rim seen in Tycho’s SNR, and the same highly clumpy ejecta (in this case O ejecta; K. Long, private communication), but this is still much too small a sample for these differences to be more than suggestive.

## 5 Summary

The Chandra observatory allows the imaging and spectral study of the forward shock in Tycho’s SNR. The Si ejecta are highly clumpy and have propagated to the forward shock in several locations. The spectra at the rim show slight, but varying amounts of line emission, with continua that are well described by either thermal or nonthermal models. Spectra behind the shock show stronger line emission consistent with this gas having been shocked at earlier times. The limits on the change in ionization age behind the rim give some indication of variations in density around the remnant. Taking the electron temperature from thermal models, combined with the results of radio and X-ray expansion studies, the electron to mean temperature ratios behind the shock are $`0.10.2`$, indicating a modest amount of electron heating, but not full temperature equilibration. A consideration of the hard X-ray emission suggests, however, that an additional nonthermal component must be present. Even in the presence of such a nonthermal component, the electron temperatures do not seem likely to significantly exceed the values we measure assuming purely thermal models. Ideally, it is desirable to have energy coverage that continues above 10 keV to disentangle the nonthermal and thermal contributions to the spectrum, but such observations will not be possible in the near future.

For future work, a useful first step would be imaging the distribution of the high energy X-ray flux above 8 keV, as would be possible with XMM-Newton. To the extent that the hard X-rays are distributed like the 4-6 keV X-rays at the rim of the remnant (as seems likely), this would be consistent with their origin from electrons accelerated to high energies. It would also be beneficial to model as wide a bandwidth spectrum as possible, and to carry out a detailed study of the radio and X-ray correlations, as well as to consider the effects of nonlinear particle acceleration.

We are grateful to John Dickel for generously providing his flux-normalized 22 cm radio image, Ramesh Narayan for an inspiring conversation, and Andrew Szymkowiak for several helpful scientific discussions. We also thank our anonymous referee for a very careful review of the manuscript.


text:
# NGC 3576 IRS 1 in the Mid Infrared

## 1. Introduction

The formation mechanism of massive stars is essentially unknown. This is mostly due to observational difficulties in finding and establishing an evolutionary sequence for young stellar objects (YSOs). It is believed that during the accretion phase, YSOs remain heavily enshrouded in dusty cocoons, behind hundreds of magnitudes of extinction at visual wavelengths (even at near-infrared wavelengths for the earliest phases).

A very interesting group of YSOs has been identified in the Galactic giant HII regions (GHII) M17 (Hanson, Horwarth & Conti 1997), W43 (Blum, Damineli & Conti 1999), W42 (Blum, Conti & Damineli 2000), W31 (Blum, Damineli & Conti 2001) and NGC 3576 (Figueredo et al. 2002). These are luminous YSOs with excess emission in the K band and have color indexes H-K$`>`$2. J, H and K spectra of these objects typically show a featureless continuum. In some cases the CO 2.3 $`\mu `$m bandhead is seen in emission or absorption, and in others FeII and/or H2 are seen in emission.

Figueredo et al. (2002) identified two massive YSO candidates in the position of IRS 1 in NGC 3576. This source was discovered by Lacy, Beck & Geballe (1982) and it was recently observed at 10 $`\mu `$m by Walsh et al. (2001), but none of their images have enough spatial resolution to resolve the source.

## 2. Observations

Observations were obtained at the Gemini South Observatory 8-m telescope on December 4th, 2001. OSCIR is based on a Rockwell 128$`\times `$128 pixel Si:As BIB detector, with a 0.089 arcsec/pixel plate scale at Gemini. The total field of view of the camera is 11$`\times `$11 arcsec and the spatial resolution (FWHM of the PSF star) is $``$0.5 arcsec. The images were taken through the wide N-band filter (10.8$`\mu `$m) and IHW18 (18.2 $`\mu `$m) and the 7.9, 9.8 and 12.5 $`\mu `$m narrow filters. Flux calibration was performed by taking the flux densities of the mid-infrared standard star $`\alpha `$ CMa observed during the night as part of the baseline calibration program. The uncertainty of these procedures is estimated to be $``$10%, which is good enough for our purposes.

All images presented have on-source exposure time of 46 seconds, except the N-band image which has 40 seconds. Background and sky subtraction was done via the standard chop and nod technique.

## 3. Results

The field of NGC 3576 IRS 1 is shown in the Figure 1, for the N and IHW18 bands. IRS 1 has been resolved into 3 sources embedded in extended emission. All images were smoothed by convolving each image by the corresponding normalized PSF star fitted from the standard star using a Fourier transform.

Figure 2 shows the spectral energy distribution (SED) of each source. The JHK fluxes are from Figueredo et al. (2002), the L-band flux is from Moneti (1992). The NIR-to-MIR SEDs are very similar to the results found for a group of less massive AeBe stars by Hillenbrand et al. (1992). The stars of this group (called group II) have SEDs with infrared excess and are supposed to be young stars with intermediate masses (M$`<`$ 10 M$`_{}`$, average spectral type A5) still accreting. The infrared excess is attributed to a dense dusty accretion disk surrounding the young stars.

Figure 3 shows the spatial distribution of the dust, as well as, its color temperature map. The map at the left was obtained dividing the calibrated image taken at 9.8 $`\mu `$m by the 7.9 $`\mu `$m image. From this map, we have calculated the optical depth of the silicate absorption feature and we found $`\tau _{9.8}`$=3.7. The right panel is the dust color temperature map which was calculated from the ratio of the 7.9/18 $`\mu `$m images. From this map we can see the dust temperature associated with each source: T$``$280K (#50), T$``$210K (#48) and T$`<`$160K (#60).

## 4. Summary

We presented high-resolution mid-infrared images of NGC 3576 IRS 1, that has been resolved into 3 sources for the first time at mid-infrared wavelengths. The SEDs of each source were constructed from 1.25 to 18 $`\mu `$m with data taken from literature. Each SED shows increasing fluxes toward to longer wavelengths. Hillenbrand et al. (1992) found similar SEDs for a group of less massive young stars in process of accreting mass via an accretion disk embedded in a dusty cocoon. This similarity suggests the same interpretation for our results. Finally we presented maps of dust distribution, temperature and optical depth as well.
We thank Chris De Pree for kindly providing the FITS file of the 3.4 cm map of NGC 3576.
CLB and AD acknowledge the financial support from PROAP, PRONEX and FAPESP.
PC appreciates continuing support from the National Science Foundation.

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