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# Characterizing the dynamic properties of the solar turbulence with 3-D simulations: Consequences in terms of 𝑝-mode excitation.

## 1. Introduction

Turbulent motions in the upper convective zone of solar like stars, generate acoustic energy, which in turn is injected at the rate $`P(\nu )`$ into $`p`$-modes oscillations ($`\nu `$ is the frequency of a given mode). Solar-type oscillations are therefore meant as stochastically excited by turbulent convection. This type of excitation process concerns low massive stars with an outer convective zone.

Measurement of the rate of acoustic energy, $`P(\nu )`$, injected into solar-like oscillations is one of the goals of future space seismic missions COROT (Baglin et al 1998) and Eddington (Favata et al 2000). These seismic data will then make it possible to constrain the theory of excitation and damping of solar-type oscillations, which in turn will provide valuable information about the properties of stellar convection zones.

Theoretical formulations for $`P(\nu )`$ offer the advantage of testing separately several properties entering in excitation mechanism. Here we consider the formulation by Samadi & Goupil (2001, see section 2. and also Samadi (2001) for a detailed summary).

Computation of $`P(\nu )`$ requires an accurate knowledge of the dynamic properties of turbulence in stars. Unfortunately, the current observations of the solar granulation cannot provide a precise enough description of the turbulent spectrum properties.

In the present work we use a 3D simulation of the upper part of the solar convective zone to determine the dynamic properties of solar turbulence (see section 3.) which are necessary to compute $`P(\nu )`$. Our calculations are then compared with the helioseismic constraints from the GOLF/SOHO instrument (see section 4.).

## 2. A theoretical formulation for $`P(\nu )`$

The calculation of the rate $`P(\nu )`$ at which a given $`p`$-mode is excited results from an integration over the stellar mass ($`m`$) and local integrations over distance ($`r`$) and time ($`t`$) of the mode eigenfunction ($`\xi `$) and the correlation product of the excitation source ($`<\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}>`$). This expression can be written in a schematic form as :

$$P(\nu )𝑑\mathrm{m}𝑑\mathrm{r}𝑑\tau \stackrel{}{\xi }.<\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}>.\stackrel{}{\xi }$$
(1)
The excitation source ($`\stackrel{}{S}`$) has two identified origines : the turbulent Reynolds stress and the advection of the turbulent entropy fluctuations by the turbulent motions. $`<\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}>`$ is expressed in terms of the turbulent kinetic energy spectrum $`E(k,\nu )`$ and the spectrum of the entropy fluctuations $`E_s(k,\nu )`$ where $`k`$ is the wavenumber of a given turbulent element. Detailled expressions for $`P(\nu )`$ and $`<\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}>`$ are given in Samadi & Goupil (2001).

Following Stein (1967), $`E(k,\nu )`$ is split into a spatial component $`E(k)`$ and a frequency component $`\chi _k(\nu )`$ as

$`E(k,\nu )=E(k)\chi _k(\nu ).`$ (2)
The same decomposition is assumed for $`E_s(k,\nu )`$.

A gaussian shape for $`\chi _k(\nu )`$ is usually assumed in the calculation of $`P(\nu )`$ (e.g. Goldreich & Keeley 1977). This is equivalent to suppose that two distant points in the turbulent medium are uncorrelated. In section 3. below, the gaussian hypothesis is compared with the properties of $`\chi _k(\nu )`$ inferred from a 3D simulation of the solar convective zone. Section 4 discusses consequences of either choice on the excitation rate $`P(\nu )`$.

## 3. Constraints from a 3D simulation of the upper part of the solar convective zone.

We study a 3D simulation of the upper part of the solar convective zone obtained with the 3D numerical code developed at the Niels Bohr Institute for Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics (Copenhagen, Denmark). Physical assumptions are described in Stein & Nordlund (1998).

The simulated domain is 3.2 Mm deep and its surface is 6 x 6 $`\mathrm{Mm}^2`$. The grid of mesh points is 256 x 256 x 163, the total duration 27 mn and the sampling time 30s.

The simulation data are used to determine the quantities $`E(k,z)`$, $`E_s(k,z)`$ and $`\chi _k(\nu ,z)`$ involved in the theoretical expression for the excitation rate $`P(\nu )`$.

We proceed in two steps (more details will be given in Samadi et al 2002a and Samadi et al 2002b):

* We compute at each layer $`z`$ the 2D Fourier transform, along horizontal plans, of the velocity field $`\stackrel{}{u}`$ and the entropy $`s`$ and perform integrations over circles with radius $`k`$. This provides $`\widehat{𝐮}(k,z,t)`$ and $`\widehat{s}(k,z,t)`$ where $`𝐤`$ is the wavenumber along the horizontal plan. We finally time average each quantities $`\widehat{𝐮}`$ and $`\widehat{s}`$ over the time series. This provides $`\widehat{𝐮}(k,z)`$, $`\widehat{s}(k,z)`$ and then time averaged kinetic energy spectrum $`E(k)\widehat{𝐮}^2(k,z)`$ and the time averaged spectrum of the entropy fluctuations $`E_s(k)\widehat{s}^2(k,z)`$.
* At 3 different layers of the simulated domain, we compute the 3D Fourier transform, with respect to time and along the horizontal plan, of the velocity field $`𝐮`$. We next perform integrations over circles with radius $`k`$. This yields $`\widehat{𝐮}(k,z,\nu )`$ and therefore $`E(k,\nu ,z)\widehat{𝐮}^2(k,\nu ,z)`$ and - using Eq.(2) - $`\chi _k(\nu ,z)`$.

The dependence of $`\chi _k`$ with frequency is plotted at the top of the superadiabatic region -where the $`p`$-modes excitation is the largest - (Fig. 1), 0.3 Mm deeper (Fig. 2) and 0.6 Mm deeper (Fig. 3).

We compare $`\chi _k(\nu )`$ obtained from the simulation analysis with three analytical functions. These are the Gaussian function (GF hereafter):

$$\chi _k(\nu )=\frac{1}{\nu _k\sqrt{\pi }}e^{(\nu /\nu _k)^2},$$
(3)
the Gaussian plus an Exponential function (GEF hereafter):

$$\chi _k(\nu )=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{1}{\nu _k\sqrt{\pi }}e^{(\nu /\nu _k)^2}+\frac{1}{2\nu _k}e^{|\nu /\nu _k|}\right),$$
(4)
and the Gaussian plus a Lorentzian function (GLF hereafter):

$$\chi _k(\nu )=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{1}{\nu _k\sqrt{\pi }}e^{(\nu /\nu _k)^2}+\frac{1}{\pi \nu _k}\frac{1}{1+\left(\nu /\nu _k\right)^2}\right)$$
(5)
where $`\nu _k`$ is the line-width at half maximum of $`\chi _k`$. $`\nu _k`$ is related to $`\tau _k`$ the characteristic correlation time-scale of an eddy with wavenumber $`k`$ as

$$\nu _k(\pi \tau _k)^1$$
(6)
and $`\tau _k`$ is related to the velocity $`u_k`$ of an eddy with wavenumber $`k`$ as

$$\tau _k\lambda (ku_k)^1.$$
(7)
The velocity $`u_k`$ is obtained from the kinetic energy spectrum $`E(k)`$ (Stein 1967) as

$$u_k^2=_k^{2k}dkE(k).$$
(8)
The parameter $`\lambda `$ in Eq. 7 accounts for our lack of precise knowledge of the time correlation $`\tau _k`$ (or $`\nu _k`$) in stellar conditions. We find however tgat in most part of the excitation region, the line width of $`\chi _k`$ is satisfactorily reproduced with $`\lambda =1`$.

At the top of the superadiabatic region, the GF and GLF do not correctly model $`\chi _k(\nu )`$ whereas the GEF is in better agreement (see Fig. 1). However the discrepancies between the GF (or the GLF) and the simulation data occur mostly above the solar cut-off frequency ($`\nu 5.5`$ mHz). Discrepancies between the GF (or the GLF) and the simulation data have then minor consequences for the $`p`$-modes excitation in this region.

This is not the case deeper in the simulation where the largest discrepancies between the GF and data occur in the frequency range where the larger amount of acoustic energy is injected into the $`p`$-modes ($`\nu 24`$ mHz). The GEF and GLF reproduce better than the GF the $`\nu `$-variation of $`\chi _k`$ below the top of the superadiabatic region ($`z<0`$ Mm, see Fig. 2 & 3).

## 4. Consequences in terms of $`p`$-mode excitation

We compute $`P(\nu )`$ according to Eq. (1):

* The eigenfunctions ($`\xi `$) and their frequencies ($`\nu `$) are computed with Balmforth’s (1992) non-adiabatic code for a solar 1D mixing-length model based on Gough’s (1977) non-local time-dependent formulation of convection.
* The $`k`$-dependency of $`E(k,z)`$, is modeled as following :

$$\begin{array}{cccc}E(k)(k/k_0)^{+1}& \text{for}& k_0>k>0.17k_0& \\ E(k)(k/k_0)^{5/3}& \text{for}& k>k_0& \end{array}$$
(9)
where $`k_0=2\pi /\beta \mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\alpha H_p`$ is the mixing-length, $`H_p`$ the pressure scale height and $`\alpha `$ the mixing-length parameter. The value of $`\alpha `$ is this of the 1D solar model for consistency.The value of $`k_0`$ hence of $`\beta `$ is obtained from the simulation. This analytical $`k`$-dependency of $`E`$ reproduces the global features of $`E`$ arising from the simulation. Same model is considered for $`E_s(k,z)`$.
* $`E(k,z)`$ and $`E_s(k,z)`$ verifie the normalization conditions:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}dkE(k,z)\hfill & =\hfill & \frac{1}{2}<𝐮^2<𝐮>^2>(z)\hfill \\ dkE_s(k,z)\hfill & =\hfill & \frac{1}{2}<s^2<s>^2>(z)\hfill \end{array}$$
(10)
where $`<.>`$ denotes time and horizontal average. The total energy contained in $`E(k,z)`$ and $`E_s(k,z)`$ and their depth dependences are then obtained from the simulation according to Eq.(10).
* For the frequency component $`\chi _k(\nu )`$, we assume successively the GF, the GEF and the GLF (see section 3.).

Results are presented in Fig 4. Using the GF leads to a significant over-estimation of $`P(\nu )`$. This is a consequence of the large discrepancy between the GF and the 3D simulation frequency dependence of $`\chi _k(\nu )`$. Using the GLF yields a power $`P(\nu )`$ which is much larger than the observations in particular at high frequency. This is because at the top of the superadiabatic region - where the excitation is the largest - the GLF over-estimates $`\chi _k(\nu )`$.

The best agreement between computed and observed $`P(\nu )`$ is found when assuming the GEF. This is a direct consequence of the rather good agreement between the GEF and the dynamic behavior of the solar turbulence inferred from the simulation (see Sect. 3).

## 5. Conclusions

Our investigation demonstrates the non-gaussian character of the stochastic excitation of solar $`p`$-modes. Indeed, the gaussian function (GF) as a model for $`\chi _k(\nu )`$ leads to an important over-estimation of $`P(\nu )`$ whereas the Gaussian Exponential Function (GEF), which decreases more slowly with $`\nu `$ than the GF does, results in a better agreement between $`P(\nu )`$ and the seismic solar observations. The maximum value of $`P(\nu )`$ is now reproduced without any adjustement of free parameters in contrast with previous approaches.

The non-gaussian character of stochastic excitation causes the Reynolds stress contribution to be of the same order as the contribution arising from the advection of the turbulent fluctuations of entropy by the turbulent motions (not shown here, see Samadi et al 2002b). This last result is in better agreement with recent results by Stein & Norlund (2001) and contrasts with previous results by Samadi et al (2001) based on the gaussian assumption for $`\chi _k(\nu )`$ and also with the estimation carried out by Goldreich et al (1994).

### Acknowledgments.

RS acknowledges support by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the UK under the grant PPA/G/O/1998/00576. We thank Guenter Houdek for providing us the solar model and its eigenfunctions and Frederic Baudin for providing us helioseismic measurements from the GOLF/SOHO instrument.

## References

Baglin A. and The COROT Team, 1998, in IAU Symp. 185: New Eyes to See Inside the Sun and Stars, vol. 185, 301.

Balmforth N.J., 1992, MNRS, 255, 603.

Baudin et al, 2003, in preparation.

Favata F., Roxburgh I., Christensen-Dalsgaard J., 2000, in The Third MONS Workshop : Science Preparation and Target Selection, 49-54.

Goldreich P., Keeley D., 1977, ApJ, 212, 243.

Goldreich P., Murray N., Kumar P., 1994, ApJ, 424, 466.

Gough D., 1977, ApJ, 214, 196.

Libbrecht K.G., 1988, ApJ, 334, 510.

Samadi R. & Goupil M.J., 2001, A&A, 370, 136.

Samadi R., Goupil MJ, Lebreton Y., 2001a, A&A, 370, 147.

Samadi R., 2001, in SF2A-2001: Semaine de l’Astrophysique Francaise, E148.

Samadi R., Nordlund A., Stein R.F. , Goupil M.J., Roxburgh I., 2002a,”Numerical constraints on the model of stochastic excitation of solar-type oscillations” , in preparation, to be submitted to A&A.

Samadi R., Nordlund A., Stein R.F. , Goupil M.J., Roxburgh I., 2002b, “Non gaussian character of stochastic excitation of solar $`p`$-modes”, in preparation, to be submitted to A&A.

Stein R.F., 1967, Solar Physics, 2, 385.

Stein R.F., Nordlund A., 1998, ApJ, 499, 914.

Stein R.F.; Nordlund A., 2001, ApJ, 546 , 583.

Thiery S. et al, 2000, A&A, 355, 743.


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# GMRT and VLA observations of H i and OH from the Seyfert galaxy Mrk 1

## 1 Introduction

Both the AGN and the nuclear starburst activities in galaxies which require inflow of material toward the centre either to fuel the central black hole or to cause rapid burst of nuclear star formation can be accomplished by tidal interactions (Hernquist & Mihos (1995)). It is not clear, however, in the case of Seyfert galaxies whether nuclear activities in these low luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGN) are due to interactions as found in QSOs, radio galaxies, and BL Lacs (see De Robertis et al. (1998) for a review on the subject). It is generally accepted that interactions leading to mergers (bound interactions) may play a significant role in triggering nuclear activities than unbound or hyperbolic encounters (De Robertis et al. (1998)). Interactions can be effectively traced via H i 21 cm line emission from galaxies as H i disks often extend well beyond the optical radii of galaxies where the disks respond quickly to gravitational perturbations. H i emission studies may be particularly useful since most often the H i morphology provides evidences of interactions which are undetectable at optical wavelengths (e.g., Simkin et al. (1987)).

H i in absorption can trace kinematics and distribution of atomic gas near the centres of active galaxies on the size scales of their background radio sources. The advantage of absorption studies is that it can detect relatively small quantities of gas irrespective of the redshift of the object. Recently, Gallimore et al. (1999) have found H i rich absorbing disks on the scales of a few hundred parsecs in several Seyfert galaxies. As a result of intense nuclear activities, gas in the central regions of active galaxies may be perturbed due to interactions of the radio plasma with the surrounding ISM which may result in bulk outflows of material (e.g., Tadhunter et al. (2001), Morganti et al. (1998)). The molecular gas near the centres of active galaxies can be traced via 18 cm OH line in absorption. The 18 cm OH absorption line is sensitive to molecular gas in both the diffuse ISM and in the dark clouds with OH to H2 ratio being almost constant over a large variety of Galactic clouds (Liszt & Lucas (1996)). Studies have shown that chances of detecting OH absorption are higher in infrared luminous galaxies (Schmelz et al. 1986).

In this paper, we present synthesis observations of the H i 21 cm line obtained with the GMRT and the OH 18 cm line obtained with the VLA of the infrared luminous active galaxy Mrk 1 and its companion NGC 451. The global properties of Mrk 1 are summarized in the next section. The details of observations and data analyses are given in Sect. 3. The results are presented in Sect. 4. Sect. 5 discusses the radio continuum properties, H i emission, and H i and OH absorption. The conclusions are in the last section.

## 2 Global properties of Mrk 1

The global properties of Mrk 1 are listed in Table 1. Mrk 1 (NGC 449; B$`{}_{}{}^{0}{}_{\mathrm{T}}{}^{}`$ = 14.53) is a member of a poor group (WBL 035) at a redshift of 0.017 (White et al. (1999)). The other two members of this group viz., NGC 447 and NGC 451, are at projected separations from Mrk 1 of $``$ 38 kpc and $``$ 130 kpc respectively. Mrk 1 is classified as a SB O/a galaxy with a Seyfert type 2 nucleus (Markarian et al. (1989)) with no signatures of interactions in the optical images. Mrk 1 is also a luminous Infrared galaxy (L$`{}_{\mathrm{FIR}}{}^{}=1.7\times 10^{10}`$L), indicating a high rate of star formation. Mrk 1 is one among 16 galaxies detected in the 22 GHz water megamaser emission in a sample of 354 active galaxies (Braatz et al. (1994)). The nuclear optical spectrum of Mrk 1 studied by Koski (1978) and Weedman et al. (1968) shows strong emission lines typical of an active galaxy photo-ionized by hard continuum. The broad lines indicative of a hidden Seyfert nucleus are not found either in the infrared (Veilleux et al. (1997)) or in the polarized light (Kay et al. (1994)). High dispersion spectroscopic observation of the \[O iii\]$`\lambda 5007`$ line by Bergeron & Durret (1987) shows a distinct blue asymmetry indicative of an outflow of gas. Keel (1996) suggested that the nuclear activities of Mrk 1 are due to an ongoing interaction with the nearby galaxy NGC 451.

The radio continuum emission from Mrk 1 is known to have a steep spectrum with a spectral index $`\alpha `$ (S$`\nu ^\alpha `$) of 0.8 (Dickinson et al. (1976)). The 1.6 GHz EVN image (resolution $``$ 30 pc) of Kukula et al. (1999) shows the nuclear emission to consists of an unresolved core surrounded by a weak diffuse emission with a total flux density of 34 mJy. The NVSS flux density at 1.4 GHz is 75.4 mJy

The Arecibo observations by Hutchings (1989) detected H i emission and blueshifted H i absorption from Mrk 1. This single dish spectrum could not separate H i emission from Mrk 1 and NGC 451. Observations with the Nobeyama Radio Telescope detected CO (J = 1–0) emission with a total flux integral of $`11.5\pm 1.6`$ K km s-1 from the central 5 kpc region of Mrk 1 (Vila-Vilaro et al. (1998)). The search for the 18 cm OH absorption by Schmelz et al. (1986) with the Arecibo reflector resulted in a non-detection with an rms sensitivity to an optical depth of 0.02.

## 3 Observations and data analyses

### 3.1 The GMRT observations

The GMRT observations of Mrk 1 were carried out in October, 2000. A summary of the main observational parameters are given in Table 2. At the time of the observations, the GMRT was not fully operational and hence not all 30 antennas were available for observations at any given time. Two runs of observations with 18–20 antennas, each with a field of view (FWHM) 24′ centered on Mrk 1, were carried out on two different days. The GMRT has a mix of both short and long baselines (see Swarup et al. (1991) for more details), making it sensitive to diffuse emission of extent as much as $`7\mathrm{}`$ while having a maximum resolution of $`3\mathrm{}`$ at 1.4 GHz. The GMRT uses a 30-station FX correlator which produces complex visibilities over 128 spectral channels in each of the two polarizations. The bandwidth can be selected in multiples of 2 between 62.5 kHz and 16 MHz. These observations were carried out with a bandwidth of 8 MHz centered at 1395.0 MHz, which covered H i velocities in the range $`37305460`$ km s-1 with a velocity resolution of $``$ 14 km s-1.

The complex gains of the antennas were determined every 30 minute using observations of an unresolved nearby ($`4.5\mathrm{°}`$) source (3C 48) for 5 minutes. 3C 48 was also used for the flux and the bandpass calibrations. The data were reduced, following standard calibration and imaging methods, using the Astronomical Image Processing Software (AIPS) developed by the NRAO. The data were calibrated for the amplitude, phase, and frequency response for all antennas separately for each polarization. The flux density of 3C 48 was estimated to be 16.228 Jy at the observing frequency using the 1999.2 VLA flux densities of the standard VLA flux calibrators and the formula given in the AIPS task ‘SETJY’. Due to the close proximity of 3C 48 to Mrk 1 and based on some previous test experiments, we expect that the flux calibration is accurate to within 5%.

A continuum data set was formed by averaging 80 line-free channels. The data were self calibrated in both phase and amplitude. The resulting antenna gain corrections were applied to all channels. The continuum images were made using the self-calibrated averaged data from the line-free channels. The continuum flux density from each individual channel was subtracted in the (u,v) dataset by a linear fit to the visibilities in the line-free channels. Since these observations were also sensitive to H i emission, the data points were “natural-weighted” to enhance sensitivity to extended features. The resulting spectral cubes were CLEANed for signals greater than 4 times the rms noise in the channel images. The cube was blanked for emission below a level of 1.5$`\sigma `$ in the images after applying a Hanning smoothing of three velocity channels and Gaussian smoothing of five pixels (pixel size = 6″) in the spatial co-ordinates. The zeroth and first order moment maps were generated from the blanked channel images containing H i emission and two additional channels on both the sides.

### 3.2 The VLA observations

The VLA ‘B’ configuration observations were carried out in March, 2001. The observational parameters are summarized in Table 2. The data were recorded in the 1A correlator mode with a total bandwidth of 6.25 MHz divided into 128 channels. These observations covered a velocity range of $`44005550`$ km s-1 for the 1667 MHz line of OH with a velocity resolution of $``$ 9 km s-1. These observations also covered the 1665 MHz line of OH in the velocity range of $`40505200`$ km s-1. A large fluctuation in the system temperature was noticed on the first day of observations which were carried out at a centre frequency of 1640.5 MHz. These fluctuations were later identified as due to strong signals from a external interfering source operating near the frequency of observations. The observations on the next day were carried out after reducing the front-end bandwidth from 25 MHz to 12.5 MHz and shifting the centre of the band to 1640.22 MHz to avoid the external interference. The data from the first day of observations were discarded.

The VLA observations and data analyses were carried out following the same strategy as adopted for the GMRT observations described in section 3.1. The flux density of 3C 48 was estimated to be 14.270 Jy at the observing frequency. The image cube was generated using “natural-weighted” continuum-free data to get maximum signal to noise ratio. The image cube was box-car smoothed along the frequency axis using a window of 3 channels and every second channel was discarded. The resulting image cube has a resolution of $`5\stackrel{}{.}43\times 4\stackrel{}{.}93\times 27`$ km s-1. The continuum images were made using the self-calibrated averaged data from the line-free channels.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Radio continuum

The radio continuum images shown in Fig. 1 have a resolution of $`30\stackrel{}{.}75\times 25\stackrel{}{.}17`$ at 1.4 GHz, and $`17\stackrel{}{.}49\times 16\stackrel{}{.}56`$ at 1.6 GHz. These images were made using only short (u,v) spacings to enhance the sensitivity to extended features. These images have an rms of $`0.35`$ mJy beam-1 at 1.4 GHz, and $`0.19`$ mJy beam-1 at 1.6 GHz. Continuum emission is detected from both Mrk 1 and NGC 451. NGC 447 is marginally detected ($`4\sigma `$) at both 1.4 and 1.6 GHz. The flux density of Mrk 1 is estimated to be $`76\pm 4`$ mJy at 1.4 GHz, and $`68\pm 3`$ mJy at 1.6 GHz. The spectral index between 1.4 and 1.6 GHz is 0.8. The flux density of NGC 451 is $`3.3\pm 0.5`$ mJy at 1.4 GHz and $`1.8\pm 0.4`$ mJy at 1.6 GHz. Mrk 1 remains unresolved down to a resolution of $`1`$ kpc.

### 4.2 H i emission

The H i cube was made with a resolution of $`30\stackrel{}{.}67\times 27\stackrel{}{.}28\times 13.7`$ km s-1. The channel images have an rms of 0.92 mJy beam-1. The corresponding 3$`\sigma `$ sensitivity in H i column density is $`5.0\times 10^{19}`$ cm-2. The channel images of H i emission and absorption are shown in Figs. 2 and 3. The results are summarized in Table 3. H i emission is detected in the velocity range of 4698 to 4984 km s-1. H i emission from Mrk 1 appears from 4698 to 4848 km s-1. The flux integral ($`S𝑑V`$) of H i emission in this range is $`0.73\pm 0.05`$ Jy km s-1 which at the distance of Mrk 1 corresponds to a total H i mass of $`8.0(\pm 0.6)\times 10^8`$ M for Mrk 1. The estimated HI mass is a lower limit due to the effects of absorption. H i emission from NGC 451 is detected from 4807 to 4984 km s-1 with a total flux integral of $`1.20\pm 0.10`$ Jy km s-1 corresponding to a H i mass of $`1.31(\pm 0.11)\times 10^9`$ M assuming a distance to NGC 451 of 68 Mpc. The summed flux integral of Mrk 1 and NGC 451 is $`1.93(\pm 0.11)`$ Jy km s-1, which is consistent with the value obtained by the single dish observations of Hutchings (1989). See Fig. 4 for a global H i profile.

The moment zero map shown in Fig. 5 indicates that the H i emission from Mrk 1 is distributed in three clumps with almost all H i seen outside the optical extent of Mrk 1. The individual clumps having velocity dispersions of 30 to 60 km s-1 are distributed over an extent of $`30`$ kpc. The velocity field of Mrk 1 shown in Fig. 6 indicates that there is a smooth rotation of H i from one end to the other.

The H i emission from NGC 451 shown in Fig. 5 looks like that of a disk galaxy with a total projected velocity width of 170 km s-1. The H i diameter of NGC 451 is $``$20 kpc which is about twice that of the optical disk. The global parameters of NGC 451 given in Table 3 were derived from a fit to the velocity field made using a higher resolution ($`17\mathrm{}\times 14\mathrm{}`$) H i cube which is not shown here.

### 4.3 H i absorption

The channel images shown in Fig. 3 also show H i absorption from Mrk 1 (dotted contours at the location of Mrk 1) in the velocity range 4589 km s-1 to 4752 km s-1. The H i absorption spectrum shown in Fig. 7 is extracted at the radio position of Mrk 1 from a H i cube made with a resolution of $`6\stackrel{}{.}23\times 4\stackrel{}{.}39\times 13.7`$ km s-1. The rms in this cube was 0.6 mJy beam-1. The spectrum shows a broad multi-component absorption in between the velocities 4500 km s-1 and 4800 km s-1. Two Gaussian components were fitted to the H i absorption profile. The resulting parameters of the fit are given in Table 4. The peak optical depths of the two components are $`0.073\pm 0.004`$ and $`0.032\pm 0.004`$ respectively and the velocity dispersions are $``$ 44 km s-1 for both the components. The column density of H i is estimated using the relation $`N_{\mathrm{H}\text{i}}=1.82\times 10^{18}\times (T_{\mathrm{spin}}/f)\tau dv`$ cm-2; where $`T_{\mathrm{spin}}`$ is the spin temperature of H i in kelvin, $`f`$ is the covering fraction of H i gas, $`\tau dv`$ is the velocity integrated optical depth in km s-1. We assume $`f`$ to be unity. $`T_{\mathrm{spin}}`$ is an unknown quantity and we adopt a value of 100 K, typical of cold clouds in our Galaxy. The H i column densities are then $`1.5(\pm 0.2)\times 10^{21}`$ cm -2 and $`6.0(\pm 1.5)\times 10^{20}`$ cm -2 for the two components respectively.

### 4.4 OH absorption

The OH spectrum shown in Fig. 8 was extracted at the radio position of Mrk 1 from the image cube made using the VLA data with a resolution of $`5\stackrel{}{.}43\times 4\stackrel{}{.}93\times 27`$ km s-1. The cube has an rms of 0.5 mJy beam-1.

The velocity axis of Fig. 8 corresponds to the 1667 MHz OH line. In this velocity system, the 1665 MHz line will appear at +360 km s-1 from the 1667 MHz line. Since the spectrum of Fig. 8 does not have enough baseline for the 1667 MHz line and not enough signal to noise ratio for both the 1665 MHz line to get reliable estimates for velocity dispersions of individual components, only peak optical depths and center velocities were fitted while the velocity dispersions were fixed at those values found in fitting the H i absorption profile. This is a reasonably good assumption since both the 1665 and 1667 MHz profiles are qualitatively similar to the H i absorption profile. This procedure gave a reasonably good, though not unique, fit to the OH spectrum. The fitted parameters are given in Table 4.

The peak optical depths of the two components of the 1667 MHz absorption are $`0.023\pm 0.003`$ and $`0.011\pm 0.003`$ respectively. The column density of OH is estimated using the relation $`N_{\mathrm{OH}}=2.35\times 10^{14}\times (T_{\mathrm{ex}}/f)\tau _{1667}dv`$ cm-2; where $`T_{\mathrm{ex}}`$ is excitation temperature which is assumed to be 10 K and $`\tau _{1667}dv`$ is the velocity integrated optical depth of the 1667 MHz line in units of km s-1. The OH column densities are estimated to be $`6.0(\pm 1.0)\times 10^{15}`$ cm-2 and $`2.9(\pm 0.9)\times 10^{15}`$ cm-2. The peak optical depth ratio $`\tau _{1667}/\tau _{1665}`$ of the stronger OH component is $`1.6\pm 0.5`$, indicating that this component is excited under LTE conditions – the ratio is predicted to be in between 1.0 and 1.8 for LTE excitations. This ratio for the weaker component, viz., $`1.8\pm 1.3`$ indicates that this is also most likely thermally excited.

## 5 Discussion

### 5.1 Interaction of Mrk 1 with NGC 451

The disturbed H i morphology of Mrk 1 (Fig 5) indicates a gravitational interaction possibly with the nearest companion NGC 451. We explore this possibility using the two body interaction described in Binney & Tremaine (1987). The dynamical masses of galaxies are estimated using rotation curves. Since the H i morphology of Mrk 1 is disturbed, it was not possible to obtain a reliable H i rotation curve. We used the H$`\alpha `$ rotation curve of Mrk 1 (Keel 1996). The dynamical mass of NGC 451 was estimated using the H i rotation curve. The dynamical masses of Mrk 1 and NGC 451 are $`3.4\times 10^{10}`$ M and $`4.5\times 10^{10}`$ M respectively. The interaction parameters are listed in Table LABEL:tab:int.

The projected velocity difference between Mrk 1 and NGC 451 of $``$ 117 km s -1 indicates a minimum dynamical mass of this pair to be $`10^{11}`$ M. This value of dynamical mass is in close agreement with the dynamical masses of Mrk 1 and NGC 451, indicating that Mrk 1 and NGC 451 are most likely in a bound system. Tidal radii (cf. eq. 7-84, Binney & Tremaine 1987) for the given masses of Mrk 1 and NGC 451 indicate that the outer regions of the H i disk of Mrk 1 can be perturbed easily. The dynamical friction time scale (cf. eq. 7-26 and 7-13b, Binney & Tremaine 1987) of $`0.2`$ Gyr for this system is much smaller than their orbital time scale of $``$ 2 Gyr. This implies that the interaction is bound and will lead to a merger within a small fraction of the orbital time period of the two galaxies.

### 5.2 Comparison of H i and OH velocities with other velocity systems

$`Comparisonwithopticallinevelocities`$ From the comparison of the H i and OH absorption velocities of Mrk 1 with the optical line velocities listed in Table 1, it appears that the higher velocity components of the H i and OH absorption are consistent with the \[O ii\]$`\lambda 3727`$ line velocity, but are blueshifted by $``$ 100 km s-1 from the \[O iii\]$`\lambda 5007`$, \[O i\]$`\lambda 6300`$ and the systemic velocity. We explain this discrepancy in terms of co-existence of photo-ionized and shock ionized gas in active galaxies. The \[O iii\]$`\lambda 5007`$ line is primarily due to excitation from a hard continuum, and therefore, should be arising close to the nucleus. The \[O ii\]$`\lambda 3727`$ line intensity is enhanced in shock ionized regions (Dopita & Sutherland (1995)). Most often, optical line profiles are asymmetric and only peak line velocities are quoted without fitting a line profile. Mrk 1 is known to be such a case (Bergeron & Durret 1987, Dickinson et al. (1976)). Such an analysis of the optical spectrum may bias the line velocities of different species toward different regions, e.g., the peak of the \[O ii\] line may indicate a region which is shock ionized while the \[O iii\] line velocity may indicate gas which is close to the nucleus. We speculate that the higher velocity H i and OH absorption component in Mrk 1 arises in a region which is pushed forward due to shocks, thereby giving an apparent blueshift to H i, OH, and \[O ii\] lines. The fact that the \[O i\] line velocity is close to the \[O iii\] line velocity, and hence associated with photo-ionized regions, is not surprising since the \[O i\] line intensity is suppressed in the shock excited regions (Dopita & Sutherland (1995)).

$`ComparisonwithH_2OmegamaserandCOemission`$ The water megamasers are seen from Mrk 1 at a velocity of 4868 km s-1 (Braatz et al. (1994)). Since these masers are redshifted by $``$ 90 km s-1 from the systemic velocity of the galaxy, they are most likely the high velocity “satellite” features commonly seen in water megamaser galaxies (Braatz et al. (1997)) and thought to originate in the accretion disks near the nuclei (Neufeld et al. (1994)). Since the observed H i and OH absorption velocities in Mrk 1 are blueshifted from both the water megamaser velocity and from the systemic velocity of the galaxy, the absorption in the present case is most likely not related either to the gas in the accretion disk or to the torus close to the nucleus. The mean velocity of the CO emission from Mrk 1 is 4850 km s-1 (Vila-Vilaro et al. (1998)), which is redshifted by $``$ 150 km s-1 from H i and OH absorption velocities, implying that the gas traced via H i and OH absorption in Mrk 1 is also not related to the molecular gas traced by CO emission.

### 5.3 Kinematics and composition of the absorbing gas

The general properties of the gas seen in absorption are summarized in Table 6. The total column density of OH is comparable to that observed in other active galaxies (e.g., Schmelz et al. 1986, Baan et al. 1985, 1992). Both components of the OH transitions appear to be thermally excited as their optical depth ratios ($`\tau _{1667}/\tau _{1665}`$) are between 1.0 and 1.8; the values predicted for excitations in LTE conditions. The optical depth ratios $`\tau _{\mathrm{H}\text{i}}/\tau _{\mathrm{OH}}`$ for both the components of the absorbing gas are $``$ 3. This ratio has been found to be varying from as low as 5 to more than 400 in Galactic clouds (Dickey et al. (1981)). The smaller values correspond to the molecular clouds while larger values correspond to the diffuse clouds. It is therefore suggested that the H i and OH absorption, in the present case, are associated with dense molecular clouds.

The observed velocity dispersion ($`\sigma `$) of the 1667 MHz OH absorption, viz., 44 km s-1 is higher than the typical velocity dispersions ($`\sigma `$ = 3–7 km s-1) in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) of the Galactic disk. However, several high dispersion clouds ($`\sigma 40`$ km s-1) have been detected in 18 cm OH absorption within a kpc of the Galactic centre (Boyce & Cohen (1994)). The simplest explanation for such a high velocity dispersion could be a chance alignment of several normal GMCs along the line of sight, but Kumar & Riffert (1997) have shown that the probability of such alignments is small. Alternatively, if the velocity dispersion is due to a single gravitationally bound system in virial equilibrium, the mass of such an object (assuming a size of 50 pc) could be $`10^7`$ M. Cloud–cloud collisions (Klein et al. 1994b ) and interaction of shock with ISM (Klein et al. 1994a ) are also known to enhance the internal velocity dispersions of molecular clouds.

The OH column density is known to correlate with the visual extinction, Av, of molecular clouds in our Galaxy (Magnani et al. (1988)). Magnani et al. (1988) found that N(OH)/Av ratios are in the range of $`10^{14}10^{15}`$ cm-2 mag-1. For the OH column density toward Mrk 1, these ratios indicate 9 $`<`$ A$`{}_{\mathrm{v}}{}^{}<`$ 90 toward the line of sight of Mrk 1. In comparison, Veilleux et al. (1997), based on some infrared measurements, obtained a lower limit on Av to be 26 consistent with above predictions.

Using OH/H$`{}_{2}{}^{}=10^7`$ (Liszt & Lucas (1996)), the implied column density of H2 is $`10^{23}`$ cm-2. Using values of the photo-electric absorption cross sections from Morrison & McCammon (1983) for a gas having the solar abundance, a total hydrogen column density of $`10^{23}`$ cm-2 indicates that the optical depth for X-ray absorption at 1 keV will be $``$ 30. Such a high value of the optical depth will absorb almost all soft X-radiation from the nucleus of Mrk 1. Consistent with this prediction, Mrk 1 has not been detected as a X-ray source down to a sensitivity of $``$ 1041 erg s-1 (Fabbiano et al. (1992)).

## 6 Conclusions

We have presented the observations of the Seyfert 2 galaxy Mrk 1 in the H i 21 cm line using the GMRT and in the OH 18 cm line using the VLA. Unlike the optical morphology, the H i emission morphology of Mrk 1 indicates that this galaxy is disturbed which we interpret as due to tidal interactions with the nearby companion NGC 451. We also showed based on the dynamical study of Mrk 1 – NGC 451 system that the interaction is bound leading to a merger within a small fraction of their orbital time period. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the bound interactions should be more efficient in triggering nuclear activities than unbound interactions. The H i and OH absorption detected toward the nucleus of Mrk 1 indicates an outflow of both atomic and molecular gas. The column densities of the detected H i and OH absorption indicate that the line of sight toward the nucleus of Mrk 1 is rich in both atomic and molecular gas. The gas detected in absorption is kinematically different than that traced via CO emission and water megamaser emission from Mrk 1. We found evidences that shocks (presumably due to nuclear activities) can affect the kinematics of gas near the nucleus. The H i and OH absorption being blueshifted from the systemic velocity and the \[O iii\]$`\lambda 5007`$ velocity while consistent with the \[O ii\]$`\lambda 3727`$ velocity is understood in terms of the shock ionization of gas (which predicts enhancement of the \[O ii\] line intensity) and an outflow of ISM in front of the shock. Based on the optical depth ratios and the line widths of the H i and OH absorption, we speculate that the absorption is arising in turbulent molecular clouds of similar types as those found near the Galactic centre. These observations also imply that the line of sight toward the nucleus of Mrk 1 is heavily obscured.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the staff of the GMRT that made these observations possible. GMRT is run by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System. We thank Dipankar Bhattacharya for a reading of the paper and useful comments. We thank the referee for thoughtful comments.


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# An X-ray investigation of the NGC 346 field in the SMC (1) : the LBV HD 5980 and the NGC 346 cluster

## 1 Introduction

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is an irregular galaxy at a distance of 59 kpc (Mathewson, Ford, & Visvanathan, 1986) that forms a pair with the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Both are satellites of our own Galaxy. The interstellar extinction towards the Magellanic Clouds is low, allowing studies of the X-ray sources to be undertaken with clarity.

Previous X-ray observations of the SMC have been made with the Einstein Observatory, ASCA and ROSAT. These observations included surveys of the point source population (Kahabka et al., 1999; Schmidtke et al., 1999; Haberl et al., 2000; Sasaki, Haberl, & Pietsch, 2000; Yokogawa et al., 2000) and in particular studies of the properties of the X-ray binary population (Haberl & Sasaki, 2000). The recent launch of Chandra, however, provides an opportunity to study the SMC with a far greater sensitivity and spatial resolution than ever before.

We have obtained a Chandra observation of the giant H ii region N66 (Henize, 1956), the largest star formation region in the SMC, in order to study the young cluster NGC 346 and its interaction with the surrounding interstellar medium. This cluster contains numerous massive stars (Massey, Parker & Garmany, 1989), of spectral types as early as O2 (Walborn et al., 2002). The large number of massive stars is not the only feature of interest in this field. On the outskirts of NGC 346 lies the remarkable star HD 5980, which underwent a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV)-type eruption in 1994. This massive binary (or triple?) system has been monitored and analysed for its varying spectral and photometric properties in visible and UV wavelengths since the early 80’s (Koenigsberger et al. 2000; Sterken & Breysacher 1997, and references therein). Previous X-ray observations of NGC 346 (Inoue, Koyama, & Tanaka, 1983; Haberl et al., 2000) detected a bright extended source around HD 5980 which has been attributed to a supernova remnant (SNR); however, the crude instrumental resolution prohibited unambiguous detections of a point source associated with HD 5980. In addition to HD 5980, the young massive stars of NGC 346 and their interacting winds are likely to produce X-ray emission, but have not been detected previously. The sensitive, high-resolution Chandra observation of the NGC 346 field thus provides an excellent opportunity to study a variety of phenomena involving emission at X-ray energies.

In this paper, we will describe in § 2 the observations used in this study, then discuss the available data on NGC 346, HD 5980, and the extended emission in § 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Finally, conclusions are given in § 6. The second part of this work (Nazé et al., paper II) will describe the properties of the other sources detected in the field.

## 2 The Observations and Data Analysis

### 2.1 X-ray Observations

NGC 346 was observed with Chandra for the XMEGA111http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/corcoran/xmega/xmega.html consortium on 2001 May 15–16 for 100 ks (98.671 ks effective, ObsID = 1881, JD$``$2 452 045.2d). The data were recorded by the ACIS-I0, I1, I2, I3, S2 and S3 CCD chips maintained at a temperature of $`120^{}`$C. The data were taken with a frame time of 3.241s in the faint mode. The exposure was centered on the cluster, with HD 5980 lying 1.9′ to the north-east of the aimpoint on ACIS-I3. Our faintest sources have fluxes of about $`2\times 10^{32}`$ erg s-1 (see paper II), assuming a distance of 59 kpc for the SMC.

We excluded bad pixels from the analysis, using the customary bad-pixel file provided by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) for this particular observation. We have searched the data for background flares, which are known to affect Chandra data, by examining the lightcurve of the total count rate, but no flares were found. Event Pulse Invariant (PI) values and photon energies were determined using the FITS Embedded File (FEF) acisD2000-01-29fef\_piN0001.fits.

For long exposures, removing the afterglow events can adversely affect the science analysis (underestimation of the fluxes, alteration of the spectra and so on)222see caveat on http://asc.harvard.edu/ciao/caveats/acis\_cray.html. We thus computed a new level 2 events file by filtering the level 1 file and keeping the events with ASCA grades of 0, 2, 3, 4 and 6, but without applying a status=0 filter. Throughout this paper, we will use this new file for all scientific analysis.

Further analysis was performed using the CIAO v2.1.2 software provided by the CXC and also with the FTOOLS tasks. The spectra were analysed and fitted within XSPEC v11.0.1 (Arnaud, 1996). In Fig. 1, we show a 3 color image of the Chandra data of the NGC 346 cluster, HD 5980 and its surroundings. We will discuss the features of this image further in later sections.

We have investigated problems due to Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI). To remove these CTI effects, we used the algorithm of Townsley et al. (2000). Checking several sources on different chips and/or at different positions on each CCD, we concluded that the impact of the CTI was small and that it did not change significantly the spectral parameters found by using non-corrected data. When a difference was apparently found, we discovered that the best fits found on corrected and non-corrected data gave similar $`\chi ^2`$. As the work of Townsley et al. (2000)is not yet an official CXC product333http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/townsley/cti/, we chose to present here only the results of the non-corrected data.

### 2.2 HST WFPC2 Images

Two HST WFPC2 observations of the N66 / NGC 346 region in H$`\alpha `$ are available from the STScI archives. They were taken on 1998 Sept. 27 and 2000 August 7 for the programs 6540 and 8196, respectively. HD 5980 is centered on the PC in the observations from program 6540 (see Fig. 2), while program 8196 shows an area situated further south. The observations were made through the $`F656N`$ filter for 2070s (Prog. # 6540) and 2400s (Prog. # 8196). This filter, centered at 6563.7 Å with a FWHM of 21.4Å, includes the H$`\alpha `$ line and the neighboring \[N ii\] lines.

The calibrated WFPC2 images were produced by the standard HST pipeline. We processed them further with IRAF and STSDAS routines. The images of each program were combined to remove cosmic rays and to produce a total-exposure map. No obvious correlation between X-rays features and the H$`\alpha `$ emission is seen in the HST data. Fig. 2 will be discussed more extensively in § 5.

## 3 The NGC 346 Star Cluster

The NGC 346 cluster has a large number of massive stars, containing almost 50% of all early-type O stars in the SMC (Massey, Parker & Garmany, 1989). It is responsible for the ionization of N66, the most luminous H ii region in the SMC (Ye, Turtle, & Kennicutt, 1991). However, the NGC 346 cluster has not been detected in X-rays until this Chandra observation. Even though NGC 346 lies near the joint of the four ACIS-I CCD chips and part of the cluster is lost in the gaps between CCDs, the X-ray emission from the core of NGC 346 is unambiguously detected in the corner of the ACIS-I3 chip. The X-ray emission appears extended with multiple peaks corresponding to the bright blue stars MPG 396, 417, 435, 470, and 476 (Fig. 3). As only $``$300 counts are detected and the X-ray peaks are not well-resolved, we will analyze only the overall emission from the cluster.

The total count rate of this emission in the $`0.310.0`$ keV band is $`3.04\pm 0.36\times 10^3`$ cnts s-1. The spectrum of the NGC 346 cluster was extracted from a square aperture of $``$45″$`\times `$45″ with a carefully chosen background region, as close as possible to the cluster. As we regard the cluster X-ray emission to be extended, we have used the calcrmf and calcarf tools to generate the appropriate response files. The best fit ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$=0.90, $`N_{dof}`$=50, $`Z=0.1Z_{}`$) to this spectrum was an absorbed mekal model (Kaastra, 1992) with the following properties (see Fig. 4): an absorption column density $`N(H)`$ of $`0.42_{0.17}^{0.83}\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 and a temperature $`kT`$ of $`1.01_{0.61}^{2.23}`$ keV. The luminosity in the $`0.310.0`$ keV band was $`5.5\times 10^{33}`$ erg s-1, which corresponds to an unabsorbed luminosity of $`1.5\times 10^{34}`$ erg s-1. The absorption column is comparable to the value expected for NGC 346 (see paper II), but the temperature is one of the lowest we found, except for the extended source around HD 5980.

In the region of X-ray emission in NGC 346, 30 blue stars were detected by Massey, Parker & Garmany (1989): MPG 435, 342, 470, 368, 476, 396, 487, 417, 370, 471, 467, 495, 451, 330, 455, 454, 500, 445, 468, 375, 508, 395, 439, 371, 485, 561, 374, 366, 557, 400 (by increasing magnitude). Of these, 16 have known spectral types that we can use to convert magnitudes to bolometric luminosities. The bolometric correction factors were taken from Humphreys & McElroy (1984). We can then compute the expected X-ray luminosities using $`log(L_X^{unabs})=1.13\mathrm{log}(L_{BOL})11.89`$ (Berghöfer et al., 1997). If the X-rays were coming only from these 16 stars, we should expect a total unabsorbed luminosity of $`2\times 10^{33}`$ erg s-1. This represents only 13% of the detected luminosity. Several hypotheses could explain this discrepancy: a metallicity effect (Berghöfer’s relation was determined for Galactic stars but SMC stars have weaker winds); X-ray emission from the other (unclassified) stars in this region, especially from the low-mass stars (see e.g. Getman et al. 2002); additional emission linked to interactions in binary systems (such as colliding winds); or an extended region of hot gas as the winds from the individual stars combine to form a cluster wind (Ozernoy, Genzel, & Usov, 1997; Cantó, Raga, & Rodríguez, 2000).

Chandra has also observed X-ray emission from other very young (age $`<5`$ Myr) stellar clusters, comparable to NGC 346. The Arches cluster in the Galactic Center region has been observed to have emission from several different regions, with a total X-ray luminosity of $`L_X^{unabs}5\times 10^{35}`$ erg s-1 (Yusef-Zadeh et al., 2002). NGC 3603 has also been observed with Chandra (Moffat et al., 2002) and the total unabsorbed cluster luminosity is $`L_X^{unabs}1\times 10^{35}`$ erg s-1 (though in this case it is clear that a substantial fraction of the emission is from point sources in the cluster). For both the Arches and NGC 3603 clusters the fitted temperature of the X-ray emission is higher than the $`kT1`$ keV value for NGC 346.

It is important to note that the calculations presented by Cantó, Raga, & Rodríguez (2000) and Raga et al. (2001) for the Arches cluster assume that there are about 60 stellar sources having mass-loss rates of 10-4 M yr-1. If we take the list of the bluest stars in NGC 346 given by Massey, Parker & Garmany (1989), the first 60 sources have spectral types in the range O3-B0. Assuming mass-loss rates for 8 SMC stars given by Puls et al. (1996) to be typical, then all stars in NGC 346 (excluding HD 5980) have mass-loss rates smaller than 10-4 M yr-1. Only MPG 435 (O4III(n)(f)) has a mass loss rate as high as 9$`\times `$10-5 M yr-1. However, the majority of these 60 stars are late O-type Main Sequence stars or cooler, which must have much smaller mass-loss rates (10-6 M yr-1 or less), and they are more widely distributed than in Arches. Thus, it is not surprising that the X-ray luminosity is lower than in Arches, and, in fact, it may be too large to be explained solely with the cluster wind scenario.

## 4 The LBV HD 5980

Among all stars in NGC 346, HD 5980 is unique in its spectral variations in the last two decades, and warrants further examination. This eclipsing binary (or triple system?) was classified as WN+OB before 1980, but its spectral type changed to WN3+WN4 in 1980–1983, and to WN6, with no trace of the companion in 1992. In 1994, this star underwent a LBV-type eruption, and presented at the same time a WN11 type. The eruption has now settled down and the spectrum is returning to its pre-eruption state (for more details see Koenigsberger et al. 2000, and references therein). We will label the 1994 eruptor as ‘star A’ and its companion as ‘star B’.

Chandra is the first X-ray telescope to detect this peculiar system, since the low spatial resolution of previous X-ray observatories did not allow the distinction of HD 5980 from the extended emission surrounding it. However, even with a 100 ks exposure, the data possess a rather low signal-to-noise ratio. The Chandra ACIS-I count rate of HD 5980 is only $`2.98\pm 0.19\times 10^3`$ cnts s-1 in the $`0.310.0`$ keV band or about 300 counts in the total observation. This limits our ability to sensitively determine the spectral shape of the emission and to look for source variability. On the other hand, the relative faintness of the source means that photon pileup will not affect our analysis to any great degree.

We have extracted a spectrum of HD 5980 using the CIAO tool psextract. An annular background region around the source (but sufficiently far from it) was chosen, in order to eliminate contamination from the surrounding extended emission (see § 5). This spectrum is shown in Fig. 5a. The best fit model to the spectrum has the following parameters: $`N(H)=0.22_{0.14}^{0.35}\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 and $`kT=7.04_{4.35}^{13.35}`$ keV for an absorbed mekal model and $`N(H)=0.28_{0.19}^{0.44}\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=1.74$`{}_{}{}^{1.89}{}_{1.53}{}^{}`$ for an absorbed power-law. These absorption columns are consistent with the value expected for NGC 346 (see paper II) but part of these columns are probably due to wind absorption and/or absorption from the 1994 ejecta. The derived observed X-ray luminosity of HD 5980 is $`L_X=1.3\times 10^{34}`$ erg s-1 in the $`0.310.0`$ keV band for both models. Using the normalisation factor of the mekal model, we found a volume emission measure of $``$1057 cm-3 for this source.

We can compare HD 5980 with other WR stars detected in X-rays. The unabsorbed X-ray luminosity of HD 5980 is $`1.7\times 10^{34}`$ erg s-1 in the $`0.310.0`$ keV energy range and $`9\times 10^{33}`$ erg s-1 in the ROSAT range, i.e. $`0.22.4`$ keV. This places HD 5980 amongst the X-ray brightest single WN stars (Wessolowski, 1996) and the brightest WR+OB binaries (Pollock, 2002) of the Galaxy.

Two factors could explain this high X-ray luminosity. First, the fast wind from the post-eruptive phases (from 1300 km s-1 in 1994 to $``$2000 km s-1 in 2000) should now collide with the slow wind (ejected with a velocity as low as 200 km s-1 during the eruption, see e.g. Koenigsberger et al. 2000), which will increase the post-eruptive X-ray luminosity. X-ray emission from colliding ejecta has already been observed for another LBV, i.e. $`\eta `$ Carinae. An elliptically shaped extended emission of 40″$`\times `$70″(i.e. 0.4 pc$`\times `$0.8 pc) in size surrounds the star in the X-ray domain (Seward et al., 2001). It is correlated to the high velocity ejecta of the Homunculus nebula (Weis, Duschl, & Bomans, 2001), which was created after the last great eruption. For HD 5980, however, the ejecta from the 1994 eruption has not had sufficient time to form a detectable LBV nebula around the star, and no ‘Homunculus-like’ nebula from a previous eruption is visible around HD 5980 (see Fig. 2): any X-ray emission from the colliding ejecta should thus still be blended with the stellar emission from HD 5980 and that may contribute to explain the high X-ray luminosity. Unfortunately, no X-ray detection of HD 5980 before the 1994 eruption is available. A ROSAT all-sky survey image taken in 1990 (exposure number 933001) provides only an upper limit of L$`{}_{X}{}^{}`$1036 erg s-1 at the position of HD 5980. Wang & Wu (1992) gave a 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit of 2$`\times `$1034 erg s-1 for all SMC WR stars, except AB7. These limits are compatible with the detected luminosity of HD 5980 and do not allow us to quantitatively compare the pre- and post-eruption luminosities to confirm the predicted luminosity enhancement.

The fact that HD 5980 is a close binary system containing two very massive stars, suggests that colliding winds may provide another source for the observed X-rays. We can thus estimate the expected X-ray luminosity. For the system, we assume that the stellar winds of the stars have returned to their pre-eruption values and we assume that $`\dot{M}_A`$=1.4$`\times `$ 10-5 M yr-1, $`v_{\mathrm{}}(A)`$=2500 km s-1 for the O-star, and $`\dot{M}_B`$= 2$`\times `$10-5 M yr-1, $`v_{\mathrm{}}(B)`$=1700 km s-1 for the WN Wolf-Rayet star (Moffat et al., 1998). Thus the momenta of each star’s wind are very similar, and the total wind kinetic energy is $`5\times 10^{37}`$ erg s-1. These wind parameters lead to a momentum ratio of $`\eta =(M_Bv_{\mathrm{}}(B))/(M_Av_{\mathrm{}}(A))=0.97`$ (Usov, 1992) and the wind-wind collision shock will lie halfway between the stars. In this configuration we expect about 1/6 of the wind kinetic energy to pass perpendicularly through the two shocks and be thermalised (Stevens, Blondin, & Pollock, 1992), and because the systems are relatively close much of this energy will be radiated444In terms of the cooling parameter $`\chi `$ defined by Stevens, Blondin, & Pollock (1992), for the WN wind $`\chi 1`$ and for the O-star wind $`\chi 1`$..

Consequently, we would expect the X-ray luminosity of HD 5980 to be $`10^{36}`$ erg s-1 or more, rather than the observed value of $`10^{34}`$ erg s-1. The discrepancy between the predicted and observed X-ray luminosities could be due to a range of factors, e.g. the winds may not be at the pre-eruption levels - lower mass-loss rates or lower wind velocities will translate to a lower X-ray luminosity. Radiative braking, wind clumping, or the eclipse of the colliding wind region by the thick wind of star B could also reduce the luminosity. Alternatively, the wind momenta may not be so nearly equal, as a low value of $`\eta `$ also tends to lower the luminosity.

Using the ephemeris of Sterken & Breysacher (1997), we have computed a phase of $`\varphi =0.240.30`$ for our Chandra observation: this is close to the eclipse of star A by star B ($`\varphi _{ecl}`$=0.36). If the eccentricity is $`e0.3`$, a simple adiabatic model predicts that the X-ray luminosity will vary inversely with separation. We may expect a change in the intrinsic X-ray luminosity of a factor of $`2`$ through the orbit and by $``$ 10% during the Chandra observation. We have detected a variation of apparently larger amplitude (factor $``$2) in the count rate of HD 5980 (see Fig. 5b). This still suggests we are seeing orbital variability associated with colliding winds, since the additional effects of changing absorption555The colliding wind region is viewed alternatively through the atmosphere of stars A and B. The absorption thus changes with the orbital phase. on the observed luminosity can either reduce or enhance this variability. This observed variability is much more likely to be due to colliding winds than wind-blown bubble type emission, where no short timescale variability would be expected. The high fitted temperature of HD 5980 $`kT7`$ keV also suggests that we are likely seeing colliding wind emission, as this temperature corresponds to a shock velocity of $`2500`$ km s-1, comparable to the wind speed of star A ($`v_{\mathrm{}}(A)`$ above).

The detailed characteristics of the X-ray properties of HD 5980 need to be studied further, in conjunction with detailed colliding wind models (c.f. the case of $`\eta `$ Carinae; Pittard & Corcoran 2002). An XMM-Newton observation is scheduled at phases $`\varphi =0.090.10`$, just after periastron: the comparison between these two datasets may enable us to detect further the signature of the colliding wind region, and constrain it more precisely.

Finally, we note that the unabsorbed X-ray luminosity of the central source in $`\eta `$ Carinae, if we assume a distance of 2.3 kpc, varies between (0.6 and 2.5)$`\times `$1035 erg s-1 (Ishibashi et al., 1999). Such luminosities are much higher than for HD 5980.

## 5 The Extended Emission around HD 5980

Around the position of HD 5980 lies a region of bright extended X-ray emission. It was first detected by the Einstein Observatory (source IKT 18 in Inoue, Koyama, & Tanaka 1983), and subsequently observed by ROSAT (source \[HFP2000\] 148666This ROSAT source may encompass some of the X-ray emission from the cluster. in Haberl et al. 2000). The Chandra image reveals the extended emission in much more detail than previous X-ray observatories. The overall shape of the emission region is more or less rectangular, with an extension to the northeast. It contains a few bright or dark arcs, but apart from these, the brightness is rather uniform, with no obvious limb-brightening. It has a size of $`130\mathrm{}\times 100\mathrm{}`$, i.e. 37pc$`\times `$29pc at the SMC’s distance. HD 5980 lies towards the top center of the emission region. An X-ray bright filament extends from 9″ west to 23″ south of HD 5980. An X-ray dark feature appears some 30″ at the southeast of HD 5980. The total count rate of this source in the $`0.310.0`$ keV energy range is $`7.25\pm 0.17\times 10^2`$ cnts s-1. It is the softest source present in the field.

The spectrum of this extended X-ray emission was extracted in a rectangular aperture of $``$160″$`\times `$110″ with a carefully chosen background region, located as close as possible to the source and in a region on the ACIS-I1 CCD where there are no point sources. A circular region of diameter $``$5″ containing HD 5980 was removed from the extraction. As the X-ray emission is extended the reponse matrices were calculated using the calcrmf and calcarf tools. The best fit ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$=1.03, $`N_{dof}`$=244) to this spectrum was an absorbed mekal model with the following properties (see Fig. 6): $`N(H)=0.12_{0.10}^{0.15}\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2, $`kT=0.66_{0.64}^{0.68}`$ keV and $`Z=0.17_{0.15}^{0.21}Z_{}`$. The observed flux in the $`0.310.0`$ keV band was $`3.35\times 10^{13}`$ erg cm -2 s-1, i.e. an observed luminosity of $`1.40\times 10^{35}`$ erg s-1. The low value of the absorption column, compared to HD 5980 and the cluster, suggests that this X-ray source lies between NGC 346 and the observer, but still in the SMC (see paper II).

Using the normalisation factor of the mekal model, we found a volume emission measure $`n_en_H𝑑V`$ of $``$3$`\times `$1058 cm-3. Considering a constant density for the hot gas, a sperical geometry of diameter $``$33 pc for the extended emission and assuming a pure H composition, the density of the hot gas is roughly 0.2 cm-3 and the total mass of the hot gas is $``$100 M.

Using the available data, a deeper analysis was conducted, searching for the existence of a temperature gradient throughout the source area, with color and temperature maps. For color maps, we generated a set of narrow-band images, e.g. $`0.30.9`$ keV, $`0.91.2`$ keV and $`1.22.0`$ keV, that enable us to distinguish the harder components from the softer parts. In addition, temperature maps were constructed from spectral fits in small regions of the SNR. The only obvious trend in both the color and temperature maps is the softness of the northeastern extension of the SNR. However, it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions regarding the presence of any temperature gradient.

We have also constructed images of the extended emission in narrow energy bands, each correspond to a specific ion. The energy bands used for each ion are shown in Fig. 7. The data in each band were binned to obtain $`4.9\mathrm{}\times 4.9\mathrm{}`$ pixels (see Fig. 7). In contrast to N132D (Behar et al., 2001), no significative differences between the morphology of highly ionized species (Mg10+, Ne9+, Si12+, Fe19+) and lower ionization species were detected.

### 5.1 The Nature of the Extended Emission

Since its discovery the extended X-ray emission has been attributed to a supernova remnant (SNR). Further evidence was subsequently obtained to support this hypothesis; for example, Ye, Turtle, & Kennicutt (1991) found a non-thermal radio source at this position that they called SNR $`00577226`$. Using the lowest contours of Ye, Turtle, & Kennicutt (1991), the radio source is 56 pc$`\times `$52 pc, slightly larger than the X-ray source.

Moreover, evidence of high velocity motions in this region were observed in the visible and UV ranges. Using echelle spectra centered on H$`\alpha `$, Chu & Kennicutt (1988) found clumps moving at v$`{}_{LSR}{}^{}`$ 300 km s-1, redshifted from the main quiescent component by +170 km s-1: only the receding side of the expanding object is seen, suggesting a low density where the approaching side arises. UV analyses with IUE (de Boer & Savage, 1980), HST STIS (Koenigsberger et al., 2001) and FUSE (Hoopes et al., 2001) have also confirmed the presence of an expanding structure. While de Boer & Savage (1980) and Hoopes et al. (2001) found only absorptions at vLSR=+300 km s-1, Koenigsberger et al. (2001) detected both expanding sides of the object, with components at $`v_{LSR}=+21,+52,+300,+331\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. However, the absorptions at +21 and +52 km s-1 were small, and need a future confirmation. The presence of components from both approaching and receding sides of the expanding structure has now been confirmed by Danforth et al. (2002) from deep echelle spectroscopic integrations at optical wavelengths of the N66 region. Absorptions at any of these velocities are not seen in the spectra of Sk 80, a close neighbor of HD 5980 situated on the edge of the X-ray source. A fast expanding structure close to the position of HD 5980 is thus present.

Unfortunately, even the high-resolution HST WFPC2 images of the close neighborhood of HD 5980 do not show any clear nebula associated with the X-ray extended emission (see Fig. 2). A lot of filamentary structures - generally indicative of a SNR (Chen et al., 2000) \- are seen throughout the field, but are not limited to the exact location of the X-ray source. There is thus no obvious H$`\alpha `$ feature directly correlated with the extended X-ray emission.

Considering all the evidence (non-thermal emission, high velocity expanding shell etc), the X-ray / radio source should thus be regarded as a SNR located in front of HD 5980 but still belonging to the SMC. The SNR hypothesis is further supported by the comparison of the size of this feature to its X-ray and radio fluxes (Mathewson et al., 1983).

As HD 5980 is projected more or less at the center of the diffuse X-ray emission and it underwent a LBV-type eruption in 1994 (which is unlikely to be the only one undergone by the system), it is tempting to associate the diffuse X-ray emission with HD 5980. To investigate whether this association is likely, we first compare HD 5980 with $`\eta `$ Carinae, the most well-known LBV that have gone through multiple eruptions. $`\eta `$ Car is also surrounded by bright, extended X-ray emission that appears to be assciated with the Carina Nebula: it is comparable in X-ray temperature ($`kT`$), size and morphology to the X-ray emission around HD 5980 (Seward & Mitchell 1981; Fig.8). But it is generally assumed that this Nebula has been formed through the collective action of all stars of the Carina cluster, not only by the single action of $`\eta `$ Carinae.

We have also searched for clues of an interaction between HD 5980 and its surroundings (e.g. a LBV nebula). Walborn (1978) noted evidence of such interaction: an arc of radius $`30\mathrm{}`$ centered on the star is actually visible in H$`\alpha `$ and \[O iii\] (but not in \[S ii\]). However, this arc is rather diffuse (see Fig. 2), indicating a lack of shock compression. Moreover, its velocity coincides with that of the quiescent region, and no line-splitting region is seen beginning at the arc and extending towards the star (Danforth et al., 2002): this arc is certainly not the rim of an expanding shell. This optical arc has different size, shape, and location from an X-ray bright arc (Fig. 2), therefore we conclude that they are probably two distinct features unrelated to each other. Echelle spectra of this area also do not show any enhancement of the \[N ii\]/H$`\alpha `$ ratio which usually indicates the presence of circumstellar material surrounding the star. The comparison between X-rays and visible data thus do not show any clear indication of an interaction between HD 5980 and its environment. We also note that no circumstellar nebula produced by HD 5980 could explain the redshifted UV absorptions in the spectra of the star, or the non-thermal radio emission from the extended source.

The last possibility is that the source is indeed a SNR, but that HD 5980 is still directly responsible for it. Several authors have proposed the existence of a third component in HD 5980, ‘star C’, to interpret the visual light curve (Breysacher & Perrier, 1991) and the presence of stable photospheric absorptions in UV (Koenigsberger et al., 2000). To explain the existence of a SNR, an additional, fourth component of the system, ‘star D’, is needed. It would now be a compact object, a remnant of the star that exploded in SN long ago. If star C is much farther away than the system A+B+D, then the high velocity redshifted UV absorptions could be produced by star C shining through the receding back wall of the SNR. The presence of a compact object might explain the $``$6 h variations seen in the lightcurve of HD 5980 by Sterken & Breysacher (1997). Accretion onto this compact object might also constitute another source of X-rays, thus contributing to understand the high X-ray emission from the system.

## 6 Summary

In this series of articles, we report the analysis of the Chandra data of N66, the largest star formation region of the SMC. In this first paper, we have focused on the most important objects of the field: the NGC 346 cluster and HD 5980.

The cluster itself is relatively faint, with a total luminosity of $`L_X^{unabs}1.5\times 10^{34}`$ erg s-1 in the 0.3-10.0 keV energy range. Most of this emission seems correlated with the location of the brightest stars of the core of the cluster, but the level of X-ray emission probably cannot be explained solely by the emission from individual stars.

In this field lies another object of interest: HD 5980, a remarkable star that underwent a LBV-type eruption in 1994. Chandra is in fact the first X-ray telescope to detect HD 5980 individually. In X-rays, the star appears very bright, comparable only to the brightest WR stars in the Galaxy, but still fainter than $`\eta `$ Carinae. The comparison of our results with future X-ray observations will enable us to better understand HD 5980: for example, phase-locked variations will be analysed in the perspective of the colliding wind behaviour of this binary, while other variations may be related to the recent LBV eruption. Follow-up observations are thus needed to complete the study of this system.

A bright, extended X-ray emission is seen to surround HD 5980. It is most probably due to a SNR whose progenitor is unknown. The spatial coincidence of this extended X-ray emission with the peculiar massive star suggest an association between these two objects. We also note the close resemblance of this X-ray emission to the Carina Nebula in which the LBV $`\eta `$ Carinae lies.

We are grateful to Dr Martin A. Guerrero Roncel for useful suggestions on data analysis techniques. Support for this work was provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Chandra Award Number GO1-2013Z issued by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-39073. Y.N. acknowledges support from the PRODEX XMM-OM and Integral Projects, contracts P4/05 and P5/36 ‘Pôle d’attraction Interuniversitaire (SSTC-Belgium) and from PPARC for an extended visit to the University of Birmingham. IRS and JMH also acknowledge support from PPARC. AFJM thanks NSERC (Canada) and FCAR (Quebec) for financial aid. This research has made use of the SIMBAD databse, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France and NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service.