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# Yaroslavl State UniversityPreprint YARU-HE-00/03hep-ph/0003216 Lepton pair production by high-energy neutrino in an external electromagnetic field

## Abstract

The process of the lepton pair production by a neutrino propagating in an external electromagnetic field is investigated in the framework of the Standard Model. Relatively simple exact expression for the probability as the single integral is obtained, which is suitable for a quantitative analysis.

Nowadays, it is well established that a medium makes an active influence on the quantum processes. It stimulates a constantly growing interest in the particle physics in medium, especially in view of possible astrophysical manifestations. It should be noted that a consideration of an intense electromagnetic field as the medium, along with a dense matter, is physically justified indeed. Really, the field strengths inside the astrophysical objects can reach the critical Schwinger value $`B_e=m_e^2/e4.4110^{13}`$ G 111We use natural units in which $`c=\mathrm{}=1.`$, and even could exceed it essentially. On the other hand, the situation is possible when the so-called field dynamical parameter $`\chi `$ of the relativistic particle 222Its definition is: $`\chi =e(p_\alpha F_{\alpha \beta }F_{\beta \sigma }p_\sigma )^{1/2}/m^3`$, where $`p_\alpha `$ is the particle four-momentum, $`F_{\alpha \beta }`$ is the electromagnetic field tensor. propagating in a relatively weak electromagnetic field, $`F<B_e`$ ($`F=`$ and/or $`B`$), could appear rather high. In this case the field in the particle rest frame can exceed essentially the critical value and is very close to the crossed field ($`\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{B}`$, $`=B`$). Thus, the calculation in a constant crossed field is the relativistic limit of the calculation in an arbitrary relatively weak smooth field. Consequently, the results obtained in a crossed field possesses a great extent of generality, and acquires interest by itself.

It is known that such intense electromagnetic fields allow the processes which are kinematically forbidden in vacuum, such as the creation of the lepton pair by a neutrino, $`\nu \nu \mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}^+(\mathrm{}=e,\mu ,\tau )`$. It should be noted, that the $`\mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}^+`$ pair can have a sufficiently large space-like total momentum in an electromagnetic field, due to the specific kinematics of a charged particle in this field. Therefore, the process with a relativistic neutrino becomes purely diagonal with respect to the neutrino flavor and is insensitive to its mass and to the mixing in the lepton sector.

The theoretical study of the process of the electron - positron pair production by a neutrino in the crossed field limit has a rather long history . A correct type of the dependence of the probability on the dynamical parameter $`\chi `$ in the leading log approximation, namely, $`\chi ^2\mathrm{ln}\chi `$, was found in the paper , where the numerical coefficient was wrong, however. In the succeeding papers attempts were made to adjust this coefficient and to find the next post-logarithm terms which could appear quite essential when $`\mathrm{ln}\chi `$ was not very large.

According to the definition of the problem in the crossed field approximation, one should speak about the ultrarelativistic neutrino only, which exists as the left-handed one due to the chiral type of its interaction in the frame of the Standard Model, even if the neutrino mass is non-zero. A lack of understanding of the fact that nonpolarized ultrarelativistic neutrinos did not exist in Nature, often led to the appearance of an erroneous extra factor 1/2 in expressions for the probabilities of the processes with initial neutrinos, due to an unphysical averaging over the neutrino polarizations, see e.g. the papers .

The results for the probability of the process $`\nu \nu e^{}e^+`$ in the crossed field, which were obtained in the listed papers, had essential distinctions. This probability for the case of a high-energy neutrino ($`\chi 1`$) can be presented in the following form

$$w(\nu \nu e^{}e^+)=Kw_0\chi ^2\left(\mathrm{ln}\chi \frac{1}{2}ln3\gamma _E+\mathrm{\Delta }\right),$$
(1)
where

$$w_0=\frac{G_F^2(g_V^2+g_A^2)m_e^6}{27\pi ^3E_\nu },$$
(2)
$`\gamma _E=0.577\mathrm{}`$ is the Euler constant, $`g_V,g_A`$ are the constants in the effective local Lagrangian of the $`\nu \nu ee`$ interaction, see Eq. (3) below. In the recent paper  devoted to the study of the massive neutrino decay $`\nu _i\nu _je^{}e^+(m_i>m_j+2m_e)`$ in an external field, a comparance was also made of various results for the process probability. However, the statement which was made in  about a mutual agreement of the results was incorrect, in our opinion. Really, the constants $`K`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ introduced in Eq. (1), were obtained by the authors as follows, see Table 1.

Note that in the papers  calculations were performed for the case of the electron – neutrino interaction via the $`W`$ \- boson only. To compare our Eq. (1) with the results of these papers, one should suppose in this formula $`g_V=g_A=1`$ , and $`g_V=g_A=|U_{ei}U_{e3}|`$ , correspondingly. Loss of the factor $`m_e/E_\nu `$ in the resulting expressions for the probability in Ref.  was not the numerical mistake but rather the physical one, because it led to the loss of Lorentz invariance of the product of the probability and the neutrino energy.

As it was mentioned above, the formula (1) for the probability described a rather particular case of $`\mathrm{ln}\chi 1`$. On the other hand, the situation is realized under some physical conditions where the dynamical parameter takes the values which are moderately large, namely, $`\chi 1`$, but $`\mathrm{ln}\chi 1`$. The crossed-field approximation is valid in this case, but the condition $`\mathrm{ln}\chi 1`$ fails, and a consideration is necesary in Eq. (1) of the next terms of expansion over the inverse powers of the large dynamical parameter $`\chi `$. The expressions for the probability at an arbitrary value of the $`\chi `$ parameter, presented in some of the listed papers, have a cumbersome form of multiple integrals, which are not suitable for an analysis.

Hence the problem is urgent of obtaining the probability of the lepton pair ($`e^{}e^+`$ or $`\mu ^{}\mu ^+`$) production by a neutrino propagating in the crossed field for an arbitrary value of the $`\chi `$ parameter. In this paper we present our result for the probability of the process $`\nu \nu \mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}^+`$ which is rather simple and suitable for a quantitative analysis.

We will consider the case of relatively low momentum transfers ($`|q^2|m_W^2`$). Under this condition, the weak interaction of neutrinos with charged leptons can be considered in the local limit by using the effective Lagrangian

$$=\frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}\left[\overline{\mathrm{}}\gamma _\alpha (g_Vg_A\gamma _5)\mathrm{}\right]\left[\overline{\nu }\gamma ^\alpha (1\gamma _5)\nu \right],$$
(3)
where $`g_V=\pm 1/2+2sin^2\theta _W,g_A=\pm 1/2`$. Here the upper signs correspond to the situation when the neutrino flavor coinsides with the lepton $`\mathrm{}`$ flavor ($`\nu =\nu _{\mathrm{}}`$), in this case both $`Z`$ and $`W`$ boson exchange takes part in a process. The lower signs correspond to the case $`\nu =\nu _{\mathrm{}^{}},\mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}`$, when the $`Z`$ boson exchange is only presented in the Lagrangian (3).

We omit the details of calculations which can be found e.g. in our paper , and present here the result for the probability in a form of the single integral containing the Airy function:

$`w(\nu \nu \mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}^+)={\displaystyle \frac{G_F^2(g_V^2+g_A^2)m_{\mathrm{}}^6\chi _{\mathrm{}}^2}{27\pi ^4E_\nu }}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}}u^2duz\mathrm{\Phi }(z)\{{\displaystyle \frac{4}{1u^2}}(2L(u){\displaystyle \frac{29}{24}})`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{15}{2}}L(u){\displaystyle \frac{47}{48}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}\left(1+(1u^2)L(u)\right)\left(33{\displaystyle \frac{47}{4}}(1u^2)\right)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{9}{16}}{\displaystyle \frac{g_A^2}{g_V^2+g_A^2}}[48L(u)+2(1+(1u^2)L(u))(283(1u^2))]\}.`$ (4)
Here $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}`$ is the dynamical parameter of the lepton with the mass $`m_{\mathrm{}}`$,

$`\chi _{\mathrm{}}=e(p_\alpha F_{\alpha \beta }F_{\beta \sigma }p_\sigma )^{1/2}/m_{\mathrm{}}^3`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }(z)`$ is the Airy function

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(z)=\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}𝑑t\mathrm{cos}\left(zt+\frac{t^3}{3}\right),z=\left(\frac{4}{\chi _{\mathrm{}}(1u^2)}\right)^{2/3},L(u)=\frac{1}{2u}\mathrm{ln}\frac{1+u}{1u}.$$
(5)
In the case when $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}1`$, one immediately obtains from Eq. (4) the formula for the probability containing the well-known exponential suppression:

$$w(\chi _{\mathrm{}}1)=\frac{3\sqrt{6}G_F^2m_{\mathrm{}}^6}{(16\pi )^3E_\nu }(3g_V^2+13g_A^2)\chi _{\mathrm{}}^4\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{8}{3\chi _{\mathrm{}}}\right),$$
(6)
which agrees with corresponding formula of Ref. .

In the case when $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}1`$, it is easy to obtain from Eq. (4) the formula (1), where $`K=1,\mathrm{\Delta }=29/24`$, in agreement with the result of Ref. . It is not difficult also to find from our Eq. (4) the next term of expansion over the inverse powers of the dynamical parameter $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}`$. One obtains:

$`w(\chi _{\mathrm{}}1)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_F^2(g_V^2+g_A^2)m_{\mathrm{}}^6\chi _{\mathrm{}}^2}{27\pi ^3E_\nu }}\{\mathrm{ln}\chi _{\mathrm{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ln3\gamma _E{\displaystyle \frac{29}{24}}`$ (7)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\chi _{\mathrm{}}^{2/3}}}{\displaystyle \frac{9}{56}}{\displaystyle \frac{3^{1/3}\pi ^2}{\left[\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{2}{3}\right)\right]^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{19g_V^263g_A^2}{g_V^2+g_A^2}}\},`$
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(x)`$ is the gamma function.

It is seen from Eq. (7) that the correction term $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}^{2/3}`$ is not universal. It is relatively small and negative in the case when the neutrino flavor coinsides with the charged lepton flavor $`(\nu _e\nu _ee^{}e^+,\nu _\mu \nu _\mu \mu ^{}\mu ^+)`$. When the flavors of the neutrino and of the charged lepton are different $`(\nu _\mu \nu _\mu e^{}e^+,\nu _e\nu _e\mu ^{}\mu ^+)`$, the correction term is positive and relatively large.

The dependence of the probability of the process $`\nu \nu \mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}^+`$ on the dynamical parameter $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}`$ in the region where its value is moderately large, is represented in Figs. 1 and 2. One can see that the correction term $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}^{2/3}`$ is more likely to worsen than to improve the presentation of the probability in this region. As the analysis shows, this term has a sense just of the correction for the values $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}10^5`$ only.

Therefore, our exact formula (4) should be used in a detailed analysis of the probability of the lepton pair production by a neutrino propagating in an external electromagnetic field, when the value of the dynamical parameter $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}`$ is moderately large.

Acknowledgements

We thank A.V. Borisov for useful discussion which stimulated this research.

The work is supported in part by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under the Grant N 98-02-16694.

Figure captions

Fig. 1

The dependence of the probability of the process $`\nu \nu \mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}^+`$ on the moderately large dynamical parameter $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}`$ in the case when the neutrino flavor coinsides with the charged lepton flavor $`(\nu _e\nu _ee^{}e^+,\mathrm{})`$: a) from the exact formula (4); b) from the approximate formula (1); c) from the formula (7) with the ’correction’ $`\chi _{\mathrm{}}^{2/3}`$.

Fig. 2

The same as in Fig. 1, in the case when the flavors of the neutrino and of the charged lepton are different $`(\nu _\mu \nu _\mu e^{}e^+,\mathrm{})`$.


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# Abstract

## Abstract

We observed comets 122P/1995 S1 (deVico) and C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) with high spectral resolving power in order to determine the ratio of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ in their comae. While we clearly detected the CO+ in both of these comets, no N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ was detected in either comet. From these spectra, we derive sensitive upper limits for N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+. These upper limits are substantially below other reported detections of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ in other comets. We discuss the prior N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ detections and compare them with our observations. The abundance of N2 in comets is important to our understanding of the condensation of ices in the solar nebula. In addition, N2 is a tracer of Ar so study of N2 allows an understanding of the role of comets for delivering volatiles to the terrestrial planets. It appears that many, if not most, comets are depleted in N2 and it will be necessary to search for a mechanism for depleting this molecule in order to be consistent with current models of the solar nebula.

### Introduction

Nitrogen is one of the more abundant elements in the universe and is therefore assumed to be an important constituent of the solar nebula and of the comets. Nitrogen probably exists in comets in the form of N2 and other nitrogen-bearing molecules, including NH3. Indeed, the ratio N2/NH3 is a sensitive indicator of conditions in the solar nebula. Lewis and Prinn (1980) point out that at high temperatures and low pressures the dominant equilibrium species of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen would be N2, CO, and H2O. Only as temperature and pressure regimes change will CH4 and NH3 be produced and N2 and CO be depleted. They conclude that the conversion of N2 to NH3 and CO to CH4 would be sufficiently slow relative to radial mixing in the primitive solar nebula so that only small amounts of NH3 and CH4 should be present. Conditions in the circumplanetary nebulae would be sufficiently different so that jovian planets might have increased NH3 and CH4 abundances (Prinn and Fegley 1981).

Comets delivered some of the volatiles that we see today in the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets, but it is not certain how important a source of volatiles the comets represent. Owen and Bar-Nun (1995a,b) have pointed out that N2 is an important guide to the volatile abundances of comets because it is trapped and released by amorphous ice in a manner which is similar to argon (Bar-Nun et al. 1988). Using N2 as a guide to the argon, one can determine the extent to which comets enriched the volatile and noble gas components of the terrestrial planets. Ices formed at low temperatures will trap gas from the surrounding nebula, fractionating the original mixture as a function of the local temperature. Thus, they suggest that comets which formed near Uranus and Neptune, at temperatures around 50 K, would be the source of noble gases for Earth and Mars, while the higher quantities of neon and argon in the atmosphere of Venus, compared with Earth, would require comets formed at colder temperatures, such as in the Kuiper belt, to be the deliverers of some of the volatiles.

We detect such species as NH, NH2 and CN in every comet, so evidence of nitrogen carriers is easily available. Most of these species and their parents are chemically reactive in the comae of comets. Molecular nitrogen should be less reactive than species such as NH3 or HCN. While spacecraft have flown past comet Halley with mass spectrometers onboard, measurement of N2 is difficult with mass spectrometry since both N2 and CO occupy the mass 28 bin of these instruments (cf. Everhardt et al. 1987 for a discussion of CO and N2 from Giotto observations of Halley). Thus, disentangling the quantity of N2 from the CO is very model dependent.

This leaves the field of ground-based spectroscopy for determining the quantity of molecular nitrogen. Ground-based studies of molecular nitrogen are very difficult, however, because of the N2 abundance of the Earth’s atmosphere. To circumvent the difficulty in observing N2, past observations have concentrated on the N2 ion, primarily through observations of the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ (0,0) band at 3914Å. This band is extremely weak and is expected to be seen only in the tails of comets. Care must be taken when observing this band since N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ emission is also excited in the atmosphere of the Earth, especially near dusk and dawn, when comets are often observed. Auroral activity will also excite this band in the terrestrial atmosphere. Additionally, this weak feature can easily be confused with other, nearby, cometary emissions. Thus, accurate measurement of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ in cometary spectra requires both good spatial and spectral resolution to separate the features from that of the Earth and other cometary features.

### Observations

We observed comets deVico and Hale-Bopp with the 2DCoude spectrograph (Tull et al. 1995) on the 2.7-m Harlan J. Smith telescope of McDonald Observatory. The 2DCoude has two operating modes. The “lower” resolution mode has a resolving power, R=60,000. In this mode, spectral coverage is complete from around 3800-5800Å and coverage continues to 1 $`\mu `$m with increasing interorder gaps. Typically, 60–65 spectral orders are observed. Therefore, in the blue, many molecular bands can be observed simultaneously, regardless of the exact grating setting. In the “high” resolution mode, R=200,000, but the coverage is much less complete than the lower resolution mode. Typically, high resolution covers 10–15 orders of approximately 15Å each. Thus, care must be taken to center key features on a spectral order and many features remain unobserved.

For this project, we observed comet Hale-Bopp in the high resolution mode, carefully centering the portion of the order containing the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ band on the CCD, while also observing the CO+ (2,0) and (3,0) bands on two other orders. Since the CH+ (0,0) band occurs at a wavelength coincident with the CO+ (2,0) band, this ion was also observed. Comet deVico was observed in the lower resolution mode and the same three ions were observed. Table I gives the circumstances of the observations. For all observations, the slit was 8.2 arcsec long. For the Hale-Bopp observations, the slit was 0.34 arcsec wide, while it was 1.2 arcsec wide for deVico. Each slit width projects to two pixels on the CCD for the resolving power of the observations. Different positions within the coma were observed by moving the telescope around the sky under accurate computer control.

The data were reduced using the echelle package of iraf. Incandescent lamp observations were used to determine the flat field; ThAr lamp observations were used for calculating the dispersion curve. The rms errors of our fits for the dispersion curve are 0.24 mÅ for the Hale-Bopp spectra and 2.5 mÅ for the lower resolution deVico spectra. The solar spectrum was observed with an identical instrumental setup to that used for the comets by imaging the Sun through a diffuser on the roof of the spectrograph slit room and projecting this image through the slit in the same manner as objects observed through the telescope. Thus, we used an observed solar spectrum in our reductions.

Care was taken to preserve the relative flux levels of the spectra. The spectral orders were extracted by first tracing the order along the chip and carefully setting the edges of the apertures. Since the continua of the cometary spectra were rarely of high enough signal/noise to define well the aperture boundaries, it was assumed that the flat lamp boundaries were appropriate for the comet and only the position on the chip of the center of the order was computed for the cometary spectra. Extraction was done using variance weighting. We used a 1D fit for stars and solar spectra, while a 2D fit was used for cometary spectra (because of the emission line nature of the cometary spectra). At the end of the routine reduction, we had files containing $`n`$ spectra for each initial spectral image, where $`n`$ is the number of extracted orders in the image (60 for deVico and 13 for Hale-Bopp).

The solar spectrum observations were used to remove the underlying continuum from the cometary spectra. Comet deVico has very little solar continuum, but the continuum of Hale-Bopp was quite strong. We corrected the comet and the solar spectrum for the geocentric and heliocentric Doppler shifts so that both were on a common rest frame. Then, the solar spectrum was carefully weighted to match the continuum level of the comet in regions away from cometary emissions. Some scattered light might still remain, but the amount is minimal and was removed when the line intensities were calculated.

Figure 1 shows the spectral order of the CO+ (2,0) and the CH+ (0,0) bands in the spectrum obtained 100 arcsec tailward of the optocenter of Hale-Bopp. For both these ions, the predicted molecular transitions in the spectrum are marked. Inspection of this figure shows that only very low $`J`$levels are observed for CH+, while slightly higher $`J`$levels are observed for CO+. However, even for CO+, $`J`$levels above 10 or 11 are not seen.

Figure 2 shows the same spectral region for observations 100 arcsec tailward of the optocenter of comet deVico. The spectral coverage of an order is longer at the lower resolving power of the deVico observations. Even with this larger coverage, only one of the CO+ (2,0) ladders is seen in these observations. Both CH+ and CO+ are again present, though the ratio of CH+/CO+ may be slightly different in these two comets.

Figure 3 shows the Hale-Bopp spectrum obtained 10 arcsec tailward of the optocenter in the spectral order which should contain the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ (0,0) band. The N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ transition is a B $`{}_{}{}^{2}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$–X $`{}_{}{}^{2}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ transition and therefore does not have a Q-branch. The P- and R-branch line positions marked are from Dick et al. (1978) and have an accuracy of 0.01 cm$`{}_{}{}^{1}=2`$ mÅ. Although the solar-subtracted spectrum is somewhat noisy, there are no believable features. There might be a spike at 3909Å and a broader spike at 3913.5Å. Neither of these is coincident with any of the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ line positions. The errors in the wavelengths of our spectra, coupled with the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ laboratory errors would lead us to expect coincidence to 2 mÅ. The most believable feature is the broad feature starting at 3914.5Å and degrading redward. The positions of the C3 (0,2,0)-(0,0,0) band transitions are marked underneath the spectrum. The feature seems to match well the R-branch bandhead of this C3 band. Thus, we conclude that if the feature is real, it is some residual C3 emission. Since this spectrum was obtained only 10,000 km from the optocenter, this does not seem an unlikely species to observe. Inspection of the spectrum obtained 100 arcsec tailward of the optocenter shows even less evidence for features. We therefore conclude that we did not detect any N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ in the spectrum of Hale-Bopp.

Figure 4 shows the comparable spectral region for comet deVico, 100 arcsec from the optocenter. There appears to an upward fluctuation between 3913.5 and 3915.1Å, with spikes at 3913.9 and 3914.9Å. However, at R=60,000, it is impossible to tell if this feature is a molecular band and, if so, which way it degrades, or to differentiate whether it is C3 or N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$. The N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ P-branch bandhead occurs at 3914.3Å and distinct lines of the P-branch should be visible. We do not detect lines at the expected wavelengths, within the 3 mÅ wavelength uncertainties. On the strength of the Hale-Bopp observation, this feature could be C3. With the larger spectral coverage of the R=60,000 orders, the blue end of this order contains the CN (0,0) bandhead (not shown in Fig. 4). Thus, we were able to use the high signal/noise CN emission lines to confirm that there were no errors in our wavelength solution or in our Doppler shift corrections. The centers of the CN lines fell at the correct wavelengths, verifying that any spikes in the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ region would also have to be at predicted wavelengths.

For the deVico observations, our only spectrum off the optocenter was obtained more than 70,000 km into the tail. Thus, it is reasonable to ask about the likelihood that we observed C3 this far from the optocenter. Figure 5 shows the optocenter spectrum from the same night. We show more of the order to illustrate the abundance of molecular emissions observed. The CH B–X (0,0) band is clearly detected along with several C3 bands. Indeed, inspection of this plot shows there are several broad, unidentified features whose structure seems similar to the identified C3 bands. Thus, it is likely that this order is riddled with C3. However, comparison of the strength of the strongest C3 band, the (0,0,0) – (0,0,0) band, in the optocenter and tail spectra makes it unlikely that we detected the much weaker (0,2,0) – (0,0,0) R-branch bandhead in the tail spectrum. Thus, it is most likely we detected only noise in the deVico spectrum.

In summary, we do not believe that any N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ was detected in the spectra of comets Hale-Bopp or deVico. The CO+ and CH+ were clearly detected in both comet’s spectra. We are therefore able to place limits on the important ratio of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ in these two comets.

### Limits on N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+

For both comets Hale-Bopp and deVico, the CO+ (2,0) band was clearly detected. Thus, we can derive an abundance of CO+ from these data for comparison with other comets. However, coudé data can not be easily calibrated into absolute fluxes, so we must work with band intensities in detector counts. In addition, typical lower resolving power observations observe all branches of the CO+ band, while we only observe the $`{}_{}{}^{2}\mathrm{\Pi }_{1/2}^{}`$(F2) branches. We took the simple approach of “integrating” the band by fitting a continuum and summing the counts in the band above the continuum. We limited our bandpass to just the region of the detected lines. These values are given in Table II. While a larger bandpass would be more comparable to prior low-resolution observations of comets, it is inappropriate for high resolution observations since larger bandpasses would increase the noise with no increase in signal. Typical low-resolution observations do not return to continuum in between the lines of different bands.

We do not believe that we have detected the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ in either comet. We computed upper limits by computing how much of a band could be hidden within the noise. We did this by computing the rms in a bandpass. Then, the upper limit is just $`1/2\times \mathrm{rms}\times \mathrm{bandpass}`$, in appropriate units. These are $`2\sigma `$ upper limits. For the same rms, more signal can be hidden in a large bandpass than a small bandpass. Since we do not know exactly how many lines would be likely to be detected, we cannot easily define the bandpass. We assumed a bandpass which would include the complete P-branch of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$. The derived counts, which are $`2\sigma `$ upper limits for what could be hidden in the noise, are listed in Table II, column 3.

With the use of a few assumptions and simplifications, we can use our values to derive N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ for these two comets. Examination of the solar spectra in these two regions, in comparison with the published atlas of Kurucz et al. (1984), shows that the sensitivity of the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ order is lower than that of the CO+ order. To match their sensitivity, we would need to multiply the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ upper limits by a factor of 1.7. However, the calibration of the solar spectrum depends on details such as activity, so this factor is uncertain. We do have observations of $`\alpha `$ Lyr with the same instrumental setup as for deVico, but since the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ band occurs in the Balmer decrement, where the $`\alpha `$ Lyr flux changes rapidly with wavelength, the $`\alpha `$ Lyr flux is not calibrated in this region. Assuming a smooth decrease through the Balmer decrement, we confirm that a correction factor of 1.5–1.7 for the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ counts would be appropriate. We therefore adopt a factor of 1.6.

Once the band intensity is known, the column density can be computed using

$$N=L/g_{\nu ^{}\nu ^{\prime \prime }}$$

where N is the column density, L is the integrated band intensity and $`g_{\nu ^{}\nu ^{\prime \prime }}`$ is the excitation factor. We used excitation factors of $`7.0\times 10^2`$ photons sec-1 mol-1 for the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ (0,0) band (Lutz et al. 1993) and $`3.55\times 10^3`$ photons sec-1 mol-1 for the CO+ (2,0) band (the average value from Figure 2 of Magnani and A’Hearn 1986). Then,

$$\frac{\mathrm{N}_2^+}{\mathrm{CO}^+}=\frac{g_{\mathrm{CO}^+}}{g_{\mathrm{N}_2^+}}\frac{\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{N}_2^+}}{\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{CO}^+}}$$

For CO+, we observed only one of the two ladders. If we assume the two ladders are equal strength, we should multiply our CO+ intensity by two for the calculation. We likewise need to multiply the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ upper limits by a factor of two since we have only measured the P-branch and the R-branch should have a similar intensity. In Table II, column 4, we list our upper limits for N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+, including using a factor of 1.6 to correct for the sensitivity difference of the two orders.

It would be impossible to hide much N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ in our spectra. Figure 6 (upper panel) shows one of the Hale-Bopp spectra, as observed, and, in the lower panel, the same spectrum with a feature added which has enough integrated counts to yield the Halley N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ ratio (Wyckoff and Theobald 1989 – discussed below). We do not claim that this synthetic band is the exact shape that would be present, nor are the “lines” at exactly the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ wavelengths, but it gives an idea of the ease with which we would detect such a feature. Clearly, no feature this distinctive could be missed in our observations.

### Previous Observations of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$

Most comets are not bright enough to be observed with the high spectral resolving powers that we used for deVico and Hale-Bopp. This was especially true in the past, when detectors, such as photographic plates, had much lower quantum efficiency than our current CCD detectors. Therefore, prior observations which have detected N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ in cometary spectra have been obtained with lower resolution, often on photographic plates.

The N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ feature is generally weak and is overwhelmed by other molecular emissions near the optocenter. In addition, since N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ is an ion, it is entrained in the solar wind magnetic field and rapidly accelerated into the tail. Thus, spectra of the tail region are necessary for its definitive detection, yet tail spectra are generally of lower signal/noise than near-optocenter spectra since the cometary brightness falls with increasing cometocentric distance. Despite these difficulties, observations of comets exist which show the detection of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ in the tails of comets.

Only two of the prior reported observations are digitally measured spectra; the rest are estimates from digital spectra or are photographic spectra. Wyckoff and Theobald (1989) report a detection of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ in the tail of comet Halley at a cometocentric distance of $`3\times 10^5`$ km tailward. These observations were at much lower resolution than our observations. They detected a weak emission in the region from 3885–3950Å which they concluded was composed of contributions from the CO+ (5,1), CO$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ (unassigned), N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ (0,0) bands and an unidentified band. By modeling the combined feature, they were able to estimate the contribution of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ to the mixture. Using this estimate and the average for the CO+ (2,0), (3,0) and (4,0) column densities, they derived a value of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO$`{}_{}{}^{+}=0.004`$. However, the excitation factor which Wyckoff and Theobald used for N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ was not accurate and Wyckoff et al. (1991b) revised the value of the column density of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ using the excitation factors of Lutz (1989–a personal communication). This excitation factor is the same as that given in Lutz et al. (1993). If we apply the value from Lutz et al., then N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO$`{}_{}{}^{+}=0.002`$. If only the (2,0) band column density of CO+ is used, then N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO$`{}_{}{}^{+}=0.003`$.

Lutz et al. (1993) reported observations of the tails of two comets obtained at low resolution ($`10`$Å). For comet Halley, they obtained spectra at $`2\times 10^4`$ and $`2\times 10^5`$ km from the optocenter in the tailward direction. They claim to have detected no N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ emissions in the Halley tail spectra. However, they also did not detect the CO+ emissions in several Halley spectra. Their derived upper limits for N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ when CO+ was detected were higher than the Wyckoff and Theobald detection.

In addition to observations of Halley, Lutz et al. also observed comet C/1987 P1 (Bradfield=1987 XXIX). For this comet, spectra were obtained at $`2\times 10^4`$ and $`6\times 10^4`$ km from the optocenter. CO+ was detected in both spectra, but N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ was only detected at the larger cometocentric distance. At their resolution, the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ feature is on the wing of the CN (0,0) band. No mention is made of the possible contamination of this feature by the CO+ (5,1) band. Assuming all of their measured band was N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$, Lutz et al. derive a value of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO$`{}_{}{}^{+}=0.02`$.

The vast majority of observations of cometary tails were photographic. Not only were they at lower resolving powers than our observations of deVico and Hale-Bopp, but photographic plates are even more difficult to calibrate! Non-uniformity in response and vignetting of the spectrograph slit cause difficulty interpreting these spectra. Still, there are many fine examples of photographic spectra and these can be used to determine the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ ratio for some comets. The largest published collection of photographic spectra is that of Swings and Haser (1956). Examination of the plates in this atlas shows some comets for which CO+ and N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ are both apparent, while other comets show evidence of tails (i.e. CO+) but no N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$. Arpigny examined these and other photographic and digital spectra at his disposal and estimated the intensity ratio for the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+, where the CO+ band used was the (4,0) band because of its proximity to the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ emission (1999, personal communication). Table III lists the 12 comets which he determined had both N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ and CO+ in these spectra, along with his estimate of the ratio of the intensity of the two bands (column 2). In order to compare his intensity ratios with other observer’s column density ratios, it is necessary to multiply by the ratio of the excitation factors, as before. Since the (2,0) CO+ was used in our work and in other published ratios, we converted the intensity ratios in Table III by using the relationship $`I(4,0)=0.6\times I(2,0)`$, where $`I(4,0)`$ is the intensity of the (4,0) band, $`I(2,0)`$ is the intensity of the (2,0) band, and the factor is taken from Table 4 of Magnani and A’Hearn (1986). The resultant column density ratios are given in column 3 of Table III. Arpigny’s estimates of the intensity ratios are consistent with the published numbers for comet Bester (Swings and Page 1950) and comet Humason (Greenstein 1962). It should be noted that Warner and Harding (1963) also observed comet Humason at a comparable heliocentric distance (however they only discuss CO+, not N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$). However, it is clear from Arpigny’s compilation that N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ has been observed in previous spectra of some comets.

In addition, Arpigny reported four comets which had good spectra but for which no, or only very faint, evidence of a plasma tail existed. These comets are C/1948 V1 (Eclipse), C/1963 A1 (Ikeya), C/1968 N1 (Honda), and C/1975 N1 (Kobayashi-Berger-Milon). Arpigny points out that N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ emission is always very weak, so we should not expect to see it when the CO+ is weak or non-existent.

Our own examination of the atlas of Swings and Haser (1956) found five comets for which there was evidence of a tail but no evidence for N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$. The Big Comet of 1910 (1910 I) showed only continuum in the tail, so this was presumably a dust tail. Comets Halley (1910 II), Brooks (1911 V), Gale (1912 II), and Jurlof-Achmarof-Hassel (1939 III) showed evidence of weak CO+ emission but no N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ emission (Arpigny notes that N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ was observed by Bobrovnikoff in spectra of Halley obtained in 1910, but these spectra are not included in the Swings and Haser Atlas). These would be similar to Hale-Bopp and deVico in the absence of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ while other ions are present. However, with the weakness of the CO+ emissions in these four photographically observed comets, the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ emission is most probably below the plate sensitivity.

### Implications

In this paper, we have presented high resolution observations of two comets with which we were able to study the relative abundances of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ and CO+. These two ions are proxies for understanding the quantity of N2 and CO, two of the least chemically reactive cometary coma species. Conversion from the quantity of the ions to the quantity of the neutrals is dependent on an understanding of the photodestruction branching ratios which are not well understood (Wyckoff and Theobald argue you must multiply the ion ratio by a factor of 2, while Lutz et al. find no factor necessary), so we will continue to discuss these species in terms of their ions. For both Hale-Bopp and deVico, CO+ was easily detected but N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ appears to be missing from the spectra. Thus, we have put very low upper limits on the ratio of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+. We note, however, that there are previous observations of comets which show CO+ but not N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ for which sensitive upper limits cannot be derived.

The quantity of N2 and CO expected in a comet depends on several factors including the temperature at which the ice was deposited, when in the history of the formation of the solar system the gases were trapped in the ice and the orbital history of the comet itself. Current models of the solar nebula have comets which now reside in the Oort cloud forming in the Uranus-Neptune region (cf. Weissman 1991; Duncan, Quinn and Tremaine 1987). The temperature in this region was probably about $`50\pm 20`$ K (Boss et al. 1989). Thus, a first guess to the deposition temperature of cometary ices is 50K. This is consistent with laboratory experiments described by Owen and Bar-Nun (1995b).

The first direct measure of a deposition temperature for ice came with observations of deuterium in comet Hale-Bopp. Meier et al. (1998b) reported the detection of HDO in Hale-Bopp and determined a ratio of D/H=$`(3.3\pm 0.8)\times 10^4`$ in H2O. In addition, Meier et al. (1998a) detected DCN for the first time and derived a ratio of D/H=$`(2.3\pm 0.4)\times 10^3`$ in HCN. Note that the D/H ratio is different for these two species, with D/H measured from HCN 7 times higher than from H2O. Since the D/H enrichment for different molecules is a strong function of temperature, Meier et al. (1998a) were able to derive a temperature for the cloud fragment in which this comet formed of no colder than $`30\pm 10`$ K.

Bar-Nun et al. (1988) performed laboratory experiments on deposition of various gases along with H2O ice and showed that CO is trapped 20 times more efficiently than N2 in amorphous ice which formed at 50 K, when these two gases are present in equal abundances with CH4 and Ar. This ratio changes slightly when only CO and N2 are present in the gas (Notesco and Bar-Nun 1996, Table I) but generally shows enrichment factors of 15–30. From these laboratory experiments, Owen and Bar-Nun (1995a) concluded that icy planetesimals formed in the solar nebula at around 50 K, the temperature at which the studied comets should have formed, would have N2/CO$`0.06`$ in the gases trapped in the ice if N2/CO$`1`$ in the nebula. The predicted cometary ratio of N2/CO is much higher than our upper limits for deVico and Hale-Bopp and is higher even than the detections of Wyckoff and Theobald (1989) and Lutz et al. (1993), though some of the estimates might show ratios this high.

Several factors might mitigate this discrepancy. Prialnik and Bar-Nun (1990) point out that the gas/water vapor ratio is not necessarily representative of the ratio of ices in the nucleus. However, the laboratory experiments of Bar-Nun et al. (1988) have demonstrated that CO and N2 should be released simultaneously in the same proportion as they exist in the ices. There is evidence for a source of CO at around 10,000 km from the nucleus (Eberhardt et al. 1987) which may be attributable to grains. In addition, Krankowsky (1991) points out that H2CO is probably an additional parent for CO. Thus, there may be additional mechanisms for the production of CO which do not exist for N2. While these factors might change the predicted ratio for N2/CO, Owen and Bar-Nun (1995a) go on to make the specific prediction that “future observations of dynamically new comets will show values of N2/CO systematically higher than those in well-established short-period comets”. They point out that as comets are continuously exposed to solar radiation in the inner solar system, they would be expected to lose any N2 in their outer layers in a brief period of time.

Figure 7 shows all of the values and limits discussed in this paper, plotted as a function of 1/ao, the original semimajor axis \[four of the values for the estimates are the oscullating 1/a, as noted in Table III; for C/1987 P1 (Bradfield) 1/ao= 0.006380 (Marsden and Williams 1995); for Hale-Bopp 1/ao=0.00535 and for deVico 1/aosc=0.057 (Marsden personal communications 1999)\]. For the Wyckoff and Theobald Halley observation, we include the range of derived values.

If one ignores the Hale-Bopp upper limit, there would seem to be an increase of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ with decreasing 1/ao, as was predicted by Owen and Bar-Nun. However, the trend is based mostly on Arpigny’s estimates, which are approximate. In addition, the Hale-Bopp upper limit can not be discarded since it is clear from inspection of the spectrum in Figure 6 that even as much N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ as would be needed to equal the Halley N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ cannot be hidden in this spectrum. Conversely, while the values for the ratio can be questioned for the estimates, inspection of the atlas of Swings and Haser (1956) and spectra such as the Humason spectrum of Greenstein (1962) clearly show an emission which is coincident with the location of the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ feature. Thus, at least some comets have some N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ in their spectra. However, at lower spectral resolution, blending of features may lead to spurious detections of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ and wrong estimates of the strength of this band. The potential for blending, coupled with the weakness of the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ feature even when it exists, point to a need for caution in interpretation.

Thus, at this point, we have contradictory evidence for the ratio of N2/CO. At least in the active outer regions of Hale-Bopp and deVico, these comets appear to be very depleted in N2 relative to CO. The observations of Halley by Wyckoff and Theobald (1989) also pointed to a depletion of N2 for Halley. Indeed, Wyckoff et al. (1991a) derived a nitrogen depletion for comet Halley of a factor of $`6`$ relative to the Sun. Owen and Bar-Nun (1995) have pointed out the strong temperature dependence of trapping of N2 and CO. Comets for which the deposition temperature was greater than 50K could trap progressively less CO and N2. However, H2CO will continue to be trapped in comparable quantities to ices deposited at 50K. Thus, there would continue to be a source of CO, but the N2 will be depleted relative to the CO.

Perhaps the solution to the quandary of depleted nitrogen is that our assumption that the solar nebula preferentially condenses nitrogen into N2 instead of NH3 is incorrect. However, observations of dense molecular clouds (Womack et al. 1992) have shown that N$`{}_{2}{}^{}>>`$ NH3 for these potential star-forming sites. Another possibility is that the comets formed with much more molecular nitrogen but that it was depleted post-formation. It is certainly true that comets will deplete volatile gases in their outer layers as they pass close to the Sun, but this cannot be used as an explanation when comparing comets with similar orbital histories, such as Halley and deVico or Hale-Bopp and Bennett and C/1987P1 (Bradfield), which show discrepant ratios of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+. Indeed, Engel et al. (1990) conclude that there might be some post-formational processing of Halley, but not to any large extent because of the low internal temperatures which are derived from the spin temperature of H2O (Mumma et al. 1993). They point out, however, that gas can be trapped in water ice efficiently, but only if the ice is amorphous, such as it is in the various laboratory experiments. They conclude that codeposition into amorphous ice is unlikely to be a favorable mechanism in forming cometary ices since the water ice condenses, for most solar nebula models, at 140–160 K, at temperatures where the ice is likely to be crystalline and to not adsorp volatiles readily. However, the D/H ratios of H2O and HCN suggest that cometary deposition temperatures were not as warm as Engel et al. posit.

In summary, in this paper we presented evidence of two comets for which no N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ was detected, along with stringent upper limits, which would indicate that these comets are depleted in N2 relative to CO. These observations are at odds with our understanding of the formation processes of ices in the solar nebula. Either a mechanism must be found to deplete the N2 ice once formed or we must understand how a gaseous cloud with N$`{}_{2}{}^{}>>`$ NH3 formed ices which do not contain much molecular nitrogen. Since we believe that N2 will be deposited into H2O ice in a manner which is similar to Ar, understanding this process has important implications for understanding the role of comets for delivery of noble gases to the terrestrial planets. It is therefore important that more unambiguous observations of the ion tails of comets be obtained, when possible, to determine the intrinsic values of N2/CO in comets.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by NASA Grant NAG5 4208. We thank Walter Huebner for encouraging the Hale-Bopp observations and Toby Owen for stimulating our examination of the data. We especially thank Claude Arpigny for graciously allowing us to use his estimates of earlier observations and for many helpful discussions.

### Figure Captions

Figure 1: The spectral region of the CO+ (2,0) and CH+ (0,0) bands for Hale-Bopp. The positions of lines within this bandpass are marked, though not all marked lines are present. The pattern of detected vs. non-detected lines can be explained by the excitation levels of these molecules.

Figure 2: The spectral region of the CO+ (2,0) and CH+ (0,0) bands for deVico. The spectral orders are longer for the R=60,000 mode so more CH+ lines were detected. Note that CH+ is stronger relative to CO+ in deVico than in Hale-Bopp.

Figure 3: The spectral region of the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ (0,0) band for Hale-Bopp. In addition, the C3 (0,2,0)–(0,0,0) band is in this spectral region. The expected positions of lines for both of these bands are marked. There appears to be a feature at 3914.5Å, which we tentatively attribute to C3, not N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$.

Figure 4: The spectral region of the N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ (0,0) band for deVico. As with Hale-Bopp, there appears to be a feature at 3914.5Å. However, we believe this feature is just noise.

Figure 5: An optocenter spectrum of deVico, including the region of the (0,0) band of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$. Several C3 bands and the CH B–X (0,0) band are identified. Additional, unidentified, C3 bands are probably present. We show this spectrum to show the abundance of C3 in this comet.

Figure 6: Simulated N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ data. The upper panel shows an actual spectrum of Hale-Bopp. The positions of the potential N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ lines are marked beneath it. The lower panel shows this same spectrum but with a “fake” band replacing the data between 3913 and 3914Å. The fake band would have enough counts so that the ratio of N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ would equal the value detected for Halley. In the real data, there are some upward excursions which do not correspond to any N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ lines. Even integrating just these upward excursions yields only 1/4 the necessary counts.

Figure 7: Values for N$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$/CO+ as a function of 1/ao. The various ratios and limits are plotted in order to examine whether a trend exists with dynamical age of the comets. The prediction for this ratio of Owen and Bar-Nun (1985a) is shown as a dotted line. The open symbols are values derived from estimates of features in photographic and digital spectra, while the closed symbols represent measured digital spectra. See text for a discussion.


text:
# The European Large Area ISO Survey I: Goals, Definition and Observations

## 1 Introduction

The Infrared Space Observatory  was the natural successor to the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), and has primarily been used to undertake detailed studies of individual objects and regions. However, ISO also provided an opportunity to perform survey work at sensitivities beyond the reach of IRAS. The IRAS survey was of profound significance for cosmology, extragalactic astrophysics and for the study of stars, star-forming regions and the interstellar medium in the Galaxy. The mapping of large-scale structure  in the galaxy distribution, the discovery of ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (see the review by Sanders & Mirabel ) and of hyper-luminous infrared galaxies like IRAS F10214+4724 \[1991a\], and the detection of proto-planetary discs around fairly evolved stars, were all unexpected discoveries of the IRAS survey. The $`z=2.3`$ galaxy F10214+4724, was at the limit of detectability by IRAS ($`S_{60}\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{_>}{^{}}0.2`$Jy). Several other $`z>1`$ galaxies and quasars have now been found from follow-up of faint IRAS samples. Recent sub-mm surveys, in particular with SCUBA on the JCMT, (e.g. Smail et al.  Hughes et al. Barger et al.  Eales et al.  Blain et al.  ) are detecting sources which are probably very high redshift counterparts to these IRAS sources. Pointed observations of high redshift quasars and radio galaxies produce detections at sub-millimetre wavelengths in continuum and line emission, but mostly lie below the limit of the IRAS survey at far infrared wavelengths.

While designed as an observatory instrument, the huge improvement in sensitivity provided by ISO offered the opportunity to probe the galaxy population to higher redshift than IRAS and to make progress in understanding the obscured star formation history of the Universe. A significant fraction of the mission time was thus spent on field surveys. In this paper we describe the “European Large Area ISO Survey” (ELAIS) which represents the largest non-serendipitous survey conducted with ISO. This survey provides a link between the IRAS survey, the deeper ISO surveys and the sub-mm surveys.

ELAIS is a collaboration involving 25 European institutes, led from Imperial College. This project surveyed around 12 square degrees of the sky at 15$`\mu `$m and 90$`\mu `$m nearly 6 square degrees at 6.7$`\mu `$m together with a further one square degree at 175$`\mu `$m. The survey used the ISO Camera  at the two shorter wavelengths and the ISO Photometer  at the longer wavelengths. ELAIS was the largest open time project undertaken by ISO: a total of 375 hours of scientifically validated data have been produced. We have detected over 1000 extra-galactic objects and a similar number of Galactic sources. Around 200 of these objects have been re-observed with ISO to provide detailed mid/far infrared photometry.

This paper outlines the broad scientific objectives of this project and describes the selection of the observing modes and survey fields. It also details the execution of the ISO observations and briefly outlines the data reduction and data products. Finally we show how this survey complements other ISO surveys and summarise the extensive multi-wavelength programmes taking place in the ELAIS fields.

## 2 Key Scientific Goals

### 2.1 The Star Formation History of the Universe

The main extra-galactic population detected by IRAS was galaxies with high rates of star formation. These objects are now known to evolve with a strength comparable to Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) (e.g. Oliver et al. ). The distance to which these objects were visible to IRAS was, however, insufficient to determine the nature of their evolution. The sensitivity of ISO allows us to detect these objects at much higher redshifts and thus obtain greater understanding of the cosmological history of star formation. The infrared luminosity provides a better estimate of the total star formation rate than optical and UV estimators (e.g. Madau et al.) as these monitor star formation only from regions with low obscuration and require large corrections for extinction . Another important star formation indicator for galaxies is the radio luminosity (e.g. Condon ). For galaxies obeying the well known far infrared radio correlation , the depth of the survey described here is well matched to that of sub-mJy radio surveys (e.g. Condon & Mitchell , Windhorst , Windhorst et al. , Hopkins et al. , Gruppioni, Mignoli & Zamorani ). Comparison of the global star formation rate determined in the infrared with other determinations from the optical and UV luminosity densities, $`H\alpha `$ luminosity density, radio luminosity density, etc. will give a direct estimate of the importance of dust obscuration, vitally important for models of cosmic evolution, as well as providing us with a reliable estimate for the total star formation rate. The ELAIS follow-up surveys (see section 7) will allow us to go a stage further and apply a number of these complementary star formation tracers to the same volume and in many cases on the same objects, thereby addressing the impact of dust extinction independently of any peculiarities to any particular survey volume.

Figures 1-3, show the predicted redshift distribution of star-forming galaxies in the ELAIS survey selected at 15$`\mu `$m, 90$`\mu `$m and 175$`\mu `$m. The predictions come from three different evolutionary models; the first model is that of Pearson & Rowan-Robinson , the second and third are models ‘A’ and ‘E’ from Guiderdoni et al. . All three models are extrapolations from IRAS data. The total number of objects of various different types predicted by two of these models and a third from Franceschini et al. , are also tabulated in Table 1. While the source counts from ELAIS alone may not be able to distinguish between such models, spectroscopic identifications, source classifications and the redshift distributions will.

### 2.2 Ultra-luminous Infrared Galaxies at High $`z`$

IRAS uncovered a population with enormous far infrared luminosities, $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ $`>10^{12}L_{}`$ (see the review by Sanders & Mirabel 1996). While somewhere between 20 and 50 per cent of these objects appear to have an AGN (Veilleux et al. , Sanders et al. , Veilleux et al. , Lawrence et al. ) it is still a source of controversy as to whether the illumination of the dust arises principally from an AGN or a star-burst. ISO spectra of samples of ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (Genzel et al. , Lutz et al. , Lutz, Veilleux & Genzel, Rigopoulou et al. ) appear to demonstrate that while some do require the photoionization energies typical for AGN to explain the obscured lines, most are consistent with star-burst models. Interestingly, most of these objects appear to be in interacting systems, suggesting a mechanism that could trigger either an AGN, a star-burst, or indeed both (e.g., Sanders et al. , Lawrence et al. , Leech et al. , Clements et al. ).

The area of this survey is small compared to that of IRAS so we would not expect to detect large numbers of these objects. The Pearson & Rowan-Robinson (1996) model would predict that we would detect between 40 and 80 of these objects, though models such as that of Guiderdoni et al. (1998), which takes into account the increase in temperature of the dust with increasing luminosity would predict more. Nevertheless such objects will be visible at greater distances than they were in IRAS and even a few examples at higher redshift would be interesting. Assuming a star-burst SED  an object of $`L_{60}=10^{12}L_{}`$ ($`H_0=50,q_0=1/2`$) would be visible ($`S_{15}>3\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$) in the ELAIS survey to $`z=0.5`$ where it is only visible to $`z=0.26`$ in the IRAS Faint Source Catalog ($`S_{60}>0.2\mathrm{Jy}`$) and to $`z=0.15`$ in the IRAS Point Source Catalog ($`S_{60}>0.6\mathrm{Jy}`$). ELAIS thus allows us to study samples of these controversial objects at higher redshift where both AGN and star formation are known to be enhanced. Figure 4 shows the minimum 60$`\mu `$m lluminosity of a source which could be detected in both the ELAIS survey and the IRAS survey as a function of redshift.

### 2.3 Emission from Dusty Tori around AGN

The orientation-based unified models of AGN involve a central engine surrounded by an optically and geometrically thick torus (Antonucci & Miller , Scheuer , Barthel , Antonucci ). In this model the optical properties of the central regions are dependent on the inclination angle of the torus, with type 2 objects defined as those with the central nucleus obscured by the torus, and type 1 objects (such as quasars) as those with an unobscured view of the nucleus. Objects with radio jets have the jets aligned approximately with the torus symmetry axis. The scheme is very attractive in providing a single conceptual framework for what would otherwise appear to be extremely diverse populations, and the models have survived many observational tests and predictions. It is now widely accepted that the unified models are broadly correct at least to “first order” (e.g. Antonucci 1993) and that many if not most type 2 AGN contain obscured type 1 nuclei.

An important corollary of the unified models is the expectation that populations of obscured (i.e. type 2) AGN will be present all redshifts. These predicted populations are in general extremely difficult to identify observationally (e.g. Halpern & Moran ) except locally in low-luminosity AGN, and at high redshift ($`0<z\stackrel{<}{_{}}5`$) in the radio-loud AGN minority. Nevertheless, the strength and shape of the X-ray background has been taken as evidence of the existence of a large population of obscured quasars, outnumbering normal quasars by a factor of several (e.g. Comastri et al. ). Such a large population of obscured quasars may also explain the unexpectedly large population of local remnant black holes (Fabian & Iwasawa , Lawrence ). Even hard X-ray samples may miss the very heavily obscured objects, so an infrared-selected sample is the only reliable way to obtain a complete census of AGN. For example, it will be possible with ELAIS to make quantitative constraints on the dust distribution and torus column densities, as well as on the evolution of obscured quasar activity.

### 2.4 Dust in Normal Galaxies to Cosmological Distances

At the longer ISO wavelengths (90 and 175 $`\mu `$m) emission from the cool interstellar ‘cirrus’ dust in normal galaxies will be detectable in our survey in fainter and cooler objects than were accessible to IRAS. This will allow us to examine the temperature distribution functions and in particular look for unusually cool galaxies. Quantifying the distributions of such cool sources will be important for deep sub-mm surveys as there is considerable degeneracy between cool, low redshift and warm high redshift objects in this wavelength regime.

### 2.5 Circumstellar Dust Emission from Galactic Halo Stars

We expect to detect hundreds of stars at 6.7 and 15 microns and it will be of interest to check whether any show evidence of an infrared excess due to the presence of a circumstellar dust shell. Such shells are expected from late type stars due to mass-loss while on the red giant branch, from cometary clouds or from proto-planetary discs. At the high galactic latitudes of our survey, late type stars with circumstellar dust shells should be rare (e.g. Rowan-Robinson & Harris, ), so any detections of such shells could be especially interesting.

### 2.6 New classes of Galactic and Extra-Galactic Objects

F10214+4724 \[1991a\] was at the limit of IRAS sensitivity and new classes of objects may well be discovered at the limit of the ELAIS sensitivity. The lensing phenomenon which made F10214+4724 detectable by IRAS may become more prevalent at fainter fluxes, increasing the proportion of interesting objects.

### 2.7 The Extra-Galactic Background

The discovery of the $`140850`$$`\mu `$m far infrared background (Puget et al. , Fixsen et al. , Hauser et al. , Lagache et al ) from COBE data has shown that most of the light produced by extra-galactic objects has been reprocessed by dust and re-emitted in the far infrared and sub-mm. This discovery provides further strong motivation for studying the dust emission from objects at all redshifts and all far infrared wavelengths. It is possible to explain this far infrared background radiation with a number of evolution models that are consistent with the IRAS data. The constraints provided by ISO surveys such as ELAIS are expected to be able to rule out some of these a priori models. The motivation behind our 175$`\mu `$m survey was specifically to start to resolve this far infrared background into its constituent galaxies.

## 3 Survey Definition

### 3.1 Selection of survey wavelengths and area

In order to detect as many sources as efficiently as possible we restricted ourselves to two primary ISO broad band filters and aimed to cover as large an area as possible. We selected filters with central wavelengths at: 15$`\mu `$m  which is particularly sensitive to AGN emission and 90$`\mu `$m  which is sensitive to emission from star formation regions. At 90$`\mu `$m we aimed to reach the confusion limit and pre-flight sensitivity estimates led us to conclude that this could be achieved with an on-sky integration time of 20s. We decided to map the same area of sky at 15$`\mu `$m using a similar total observation time and this required on-sky integration times of 40s. In both cases these integration times were close to the minimum practical. A survey area of order 10 square degrees was chosen to produce a statistically meaningful sample of galaxies. This area and depth was ideal to complement the deep ISO-CAM surveys (Cesarsky et al. (1996), Elbaz et al. , Taniguchi et al. \[1997a\]) as discussed in Section 6.

A further justification for a large area survey is that many of the sources will be at relatively low redshift (e.g. an ultra-luminous star-burst would be detectable at $`z=0.5`$ as discussed in Section 2.2). Thus, unless our survey is of a sufficient area, the volume will be such that cosmic variance can be a significant problem, i.e. large-scale clustering means that the mean density within a survey volume may not be representative of the universal mean. To estimate this effect we use the galaxy power spectrum as compiled by Peacock & Dodds . From this we can estimate the variance in a survey of any given volume (we assume a cubical geometry, which means we will underestimate the variance). Figure 5 illustrates the area required to study populations out to a given redshift allowing for different amounts of cosmic variance. From this we can see that a survey of around 10 square degrees is required to measure the mean density of populations visible to $`z=0.5`$ with negligible errors ($`<10`$ per cent) due to large-scale structure. A survey with the area of ELAIS can also measure the mean density of populations $`z=0.25`$ with 20 per cent accuracy. Populations below $`z=0.15`$ would only have mean densities known to around 50 per cent. Figure 6 shows what fractional errors we would expect in mean quantities derived from ELAIS for populations that are visible to different depths.

During the mission we introduced two additional filters. The first of these was designed to provide constraints on the infrared spectral energy distribution of ELAIS sources from fields (around six square degrees) that would not have been observed in time for pointed ISO follow-up. For this aspect of the survey we selected the 6.7$`\mu `$m filter, which was the most sensitive for sources detected at 15$`\mu `$m. Naturally as well as providing improved spectral coverage of other ELAIS sources this also produced an independent source list which was sensitive to emission from normal galaxies. The second filter, centred at 175$`\mu `$m, was introduced specifically to explore the populations making up the far infrared background as discussed in Section 2.7.

A more detailed description of the survey parameters is given Section 3.4.

### 3.2 Time Awarded

Over the course of the ISO mission the ELAIS programme was awarded a total of 377 hours. This allocation was used not only to perform the basic blank field survey observations, discussed in Section 3.1, but also a number of other related programmes.

Principal among these was an ISO photometry programme to investigate around 200 sources that had been detected by ELAIS in the early parts of the mission. These observations were designed to provide constraints on the spectral energy distributions of the ELAIS sources but would also provide a serendipitous, though biased, survey in their own right. In addition we were awarded time to observe a number of sub-fields repeatedly to help quantify our reliability and completeness. We also performed eight ISO-PHOT calibration measurements on three known stars and three ELAIS sources, independently of the instrument team.

The amount of time actually spent and AOTs used on both the survey proper and the photometry programmes are summarised in Table 2.

### 3.3 Field Selection

The allocated observing time was sufficient to observed around 12 square degrees. The choice of where to distribute the ELAIS rasters on the sky was governed by a number of factors. Firstly, we decided not to group these all in a single contiguous region of the sky; this further reduces the impact of cosmic variance on the survey (see Section 3.1). Distributing the survey areas across the sky also has advantages for scheduling follow-up work. Cirrus confusion is a particular problem, so we selected regions with low IRAS 100$`\mu `$m intensities ($`I_{100}<1.5`$MJy/sr), using the maps of Rowan-Robinson et al. \[1991b\]. In recognition of the large amount of time required we decided to minimise scheduling conflict with other ISO observations by further restricting ourselves to regions of high visibility ($`>25`$ per cent) over the mission lifetime, while to reduce the impact of the Zodiacal background we only selected regions with high Ecliptic latitudes ($`|\beta |>40^{}`$). Finally, it was essential to avoid saturation of the ISO-CAM detectors, so we had to avoid any bright IRAS 12$`\mu `$m sources ($`S_{12}>0.6`$Jy). These requirements led us to selecting the four main fields detailed in the upper portion of Table 3. The location of all ELAIS fields are indicated in Figure 7 showing the Galactic Cirrus distribution, while in Figures 8-11 we show the nominal boundaries of each of the main survey fields overlayed on a Cirrus map.

Towards the end of the mission an additional field (S2) was selected with similar criteria, this field was multiply observed to provide reliability and completeness estimates.

A further 6 fields were selected as being of particular interest to warrant a single small ($`24{}_{}{}^{}\times 24^{}`$) raster. These were chosen either because of existing survey data or because the field contained a high redshift object and were thus more likely to contain high redshift ISO sources.

1. Phoenix: This field was the target of a deep radio survey  and has been extensively followed up from the ground with imaging and spectroscopy.
2. Lockman 3: This was one of the deep ROSAT survey fields .
3. Sculptor: This field has been the subject of an extensive ground based optical survey programme (e.g. Galaz & De Lapparent ).
4. VLA 8: This field is centred on a $`z=2.394`$ radio galaxy  and has been the target a deep Hubble Space Telescope observations .
5. TX0211-122: This object is at $`z=2.34`$  and was discovered in the Texas radio survey .
6. TX1436+157: This object is at $`z=2.538`$  and was discovered in the Texas radio survey . The ISO field centre is offset from the radio object as the B1950 equinox coordinates were entered rather than the J2000 coordinates.

These 6 regions are also described in the lower portion of Table 3.

### 3.4 Observation Parameters

Table 4 summarises the instrument parameters specified in the majority of our survey AOTs. Most are self explanatory.

For ISO-CAM the $`Gain`$ was set to 2 which was the standard used for most ISO-CAM observations. $`TINT`$ was the integration time per readout and $`NEXP`$ was the number of readouts per pointings (i.e. the total integration time per pointing is $`NEXP\times TINT`$). $`NSTAB`$ was the additional number of readouts for the first pointing of a raster added to allow the detector to stabilise.

With ISO-PHOT, $`TINT`$ was the total integration time per pointing.

The parameters related to the raster geometry ($`PFOV`$, $`NPIX`$, $`M,N`$, $`dM,dN`$) have the same meaning for each instrument. $`PFOV`$ is the nominal pixel field of view on the sky. $`NPIX`$ is the number of pixels along each axis of the detector array. $`M,N`$ are the number of steps in a raster while $`dM,dN`$ are the step sizes.

The ISO-CAM rasters were designed such that each sky position was observed twice in successive pointings to improve reliability. To reduce overheads we selected a very large raster size, $`40{}_{}{}^{}\times 40^{}`$. With the exception of small rasters and one test raster, the ISO-CAM parameters remained unchanged throughout the survey.

Since the ISO-PHOT internal calibration measurements were only performed at the beginning and end of a raster we chose these to be half the size of the ISO-CAM rasters ($`20{}_{}{}^{}\times 40^{}`$). We originally used ISO-PHOT with a non-overlapping raster pattern and switched to an overlapping mode during the mission, with most N1 and S1 observations performed in the non-overlapping mode.

The observation parameters for all survey observations are tabulated in Appendix A.

## 4 ISO Observations

The ISO observations for the ELAIS programme were executed from 12th March 1996 (revolution 116), 37 days after the beginning of routine operations (4th February 1996, revolution 79) until 17:44 on 8th April 1998 (revolution 875), 10 hours 44 minutes after the first signs of boil off had been detected and 5 hours 23 minutes before the last observations were performed.

In general the execution of the planned observations was very successful. Only three observations were reported as “failed”. Three observations were flagged as “aborted”, all three of these had been concatenated to “failed” observations but appear to have been successfully executed despite this.

The only significant problem in the execution of the survey observations occurred in N3. It transpired that there was a paucity of guide stars in this region and the mission planning team were unable to schedule many of the observations near the original dates requested. To accommodate this problem the sizes of the rasters were reduced and restrictions on the possible observation dates relaxed. However, in the last available observing window for N3 other ISO mission priorities, together with remaining guide star acquisition problems, interfered with the scheduling. The net result is that the coverage of the N3 region is patchy.

It may be that this guide star problems noticed in N3 may be related to an apparent offset of around 6” between the reference frame of the DSS and e.g. the APM catalogue in this field. The APM catalogue agrees very well with the Guide Star Catalogue v1.2 (`http://www-gsss.stsci.edu/gsc/gsc12/gsc12_form.html`).

### 4.1 Main Survey Observations

Table 5 indicates the area that has been surveyed at least once in any band in all of our fields. For the four large fields the separation of the raster pointings (40) is used to compute the area, i.e. 0.44 square degrees per raster. For the small fields which are not mosaiced the actual size of the raster is used.

The coverage, in terms of integration time per sky pixel, of the four main survey fields (N1-3 and S1) in each of the bands are shown in Figures 12, 13,14,15.

### 4.2 Duplicate Survey Observations

A number of sub-fields have been repeated on one or more occasions. This repetition will considerably aid in assessing the reliability and completeness of the survey. In addition this data will provide deeper survey regions which are good targets for more focussed follow-up campaigns and other exploitation.

Table 6 lists all the fields that have repeated observations together with the level of redundancy.

### 4.3 Photometry Programme

In addition to the survey observations, we also undertook a photometry programme to observe objects detected early on in the survey programme at other ISO wavelengths.

These objects were selected from the S1 and N1 survey regions which had been observed at an early stage in the campaign. 180 objects which had been detected at 15 $`\mu `$m were selected to be observed with ISO-CAM at 4.5, 6.7, 9, and 11 $`\mu `$m using the filters LW-1,LW-2,LW-4 and LW-7. 80 Objects were selected to be observed by ISO-PHOT at 60 and 175 $`\mu `$m, using the C60, and C160 filters.

The ISO-CAM observations were performed in concatenated chains of 10 pointings. At each pointing a $`2\times 1`$ raster was performed to ensure accurate photometry and reliable detections. The chains were arranged such that each of the 10 sources was located in a different position on the array (separated by around 18<sup>′′</sup>), this was to allow accurate sky flat-fielding over the course of the concatenated chain. The 120 ISO-CAM pointings in S1, and the 80 pointings in N1 were ordered to minimize the total path length, ensuring that sequential observations were as close to each other as possible, both spatially and temporally, improving the flat-fielding.

The ISO-PHOT observations were performed in chains of 15 pointings. On average the 15 pointings contained 5 source positions and 10 background positions. Like the ISO-CAM photometry observations, the ISO-PHOT source positions were ordered to minimize the total path length. The background pointings were chosen to be spaced along this path at reasonably regular intervals, while ensuring that there was at least one background position between every source position.

Other parameters from the AOTs for the photometry programme are summarised in Table 7.

## 5 Data Processing and Products

In order to provide targets early on in the campaign to allow follow-up programmes, both from the ground and with ISO, it was decided to perform an initial “Preliminary Analysis”. This was started long before the end of the mission, while the understanding of the behaviour of the instruments was naturally less than it is currently and will be superseded with a “Final Analysis” incorporating the best available knowledge post mission.

The Preliminary Analysis was conducted with the intention of producing reliable source lists at $`6.7,15`$ and $`90\mu `$m. The processing of the ISO-CAM survey observations is described in detail by Serjeant et al.  and the reduction of the ISO-PHOT 90$`\mu `$m survey data will be discussed by Efstathiou et al. (1999, in preparation).

The Final Analysis is currently being undertaken. This is expected to produce better calibrated and fainter source lists than the Preliminary Analysis. The Final Analysis will also produce maps which can be used to determine fluxes or upper-limits for known sources. This analysis will not, however, be completed until early 2000.

The ELAIS products will comprise source catalogues at all wavelengths, 4.5, 6.7, 9, 11, 15, 60, 90, 175, together with maps from all the survey observations. Highly reliable sub-sets of the “Preliminary Analysis” catalogues were released to the community, via our WWW site (`http://athena.ph.ic.ac.uk/`), concurrent with the expiration of the propriety period on 10th August 1999.

### 5.1 Data Quality

The quality of the 15 $`\mu `$m ISO-CAM data is moderately uniform. Some rasters are more affected by cosmic rays than others but the total amount of data seriously affected by cosmic rays is small. The noise levels are within a factor of a few of those expected; a typical noise level is 0.2 ADU/sec/pixel per pointing.

The ISO-PHOT data is seriously affected by cosmic rays and detector drifts. We have used the fluctuations in the time sequence of each pixel as an estimate of the average noise level. The fluctuations per pointing were typically 3 per cent of the background level, though 3 of the 9 pixels were noisier with fluctuations typically 4 per cent of the background. A few observations showed higher noise due to increased cosmic ray hits. Our original AOTs employed an integration time of 20s. We subsequently decreased this to 12s to allow for an overlapping raster giving a factor of two redundancy with similar observation time. Importantly there does not appear to be a significant difference in noise levels per pointing despite the factor of two reduction in integration time, indicating that non-white noise in the pixel histories is dominant. The redundancy introduced by this new strategy could improve the signal to noise ratio for sources by as much as $`\sqrt{2}`$.

### 5.2 Preliminary Data Analysis

The processing for the ISO-PHOT and ISO-CAM data proceeds in a similar fashion. All data reduction used a combination of standard routines from the PHOT Interactive Analysis  <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1PIA is a joint development by the ESA Astrophysics Division and the ISO-PHOT consortium) software and the CAM Interactive Analysis  together with purpose-built IDL routines. The frequency of glitches and other transient phenomena led to non-Gaussian and non-white-noise behaviour.

A number of data reduction techniques were tested at ICSTM, CEA/SACLAY, IAS and MPIA. Parallel pipeline processes for reducing the ISO-PHOT data were run at both ICSTM and MPIA. Data reduction techniques suitable for ISO-CAM data with multiple redundancy, such as the observations of the Hubble Deep Field , e.g. the Pattern REcognition Technique for ISO-CAM data  were unsuccessful in processing this data. The most reliable approach for source extraction was found to be looking for source profiles in the time histories of individual pixels rather than by constructing sky maps.

For both instruments the data stream from each detector pixel was treated as an independent scan of the sky. These data streams were filtered to remove glitches and transients and averaged to produce a single measurement at each pointing position. Significant outliers remaining in the data streams were flagged as potential sources. For the ISO-CAM observations the redundancy of the pointings was used to provide confirmation of candidate sources. The data stream surrounding all remaining candidates was then examined independently by at least two observers to remove spurious detections. Sources that were acceptable to two or more observers were classified as good ($`REL=2`$) and those acceptable to only one observer were classified as marginal $`(REL=3)`$.

The fraction of spurious detections was high due to the non-Gaussian nature of the noise and relatively low thresholds applied. More than 13 thousand ISO-PHOT source candidates were examined as were just over 15 thousand ISO-CAM 15 $`\mu `$m candidates. At 6.7 $`\mu `$m the rejected fraction was lower and the candidate list was only 3 thousand. The final numbers of objects in the Preliminary Catalogue Version 1.3 are tabulated in Table 8

The “eye-balling” technique while laborious ensured that the resulting catalogues are highly reliable, as discussed in greater detail in Serjeant et al.  and Efstathiou et al. (1999., in preparation). The sub-sets of the Preliminary Catalogues that were released to the community were those ISO-PHOT sources that had been confirmed by four observers, and those ISO-CAM sources that had been confirmed by two observers with fluxes above 4mJy, these sub-sets are exceptionally reliable.

A “Final Analysis” process has been developed which uses the transient correction techniques of Lari (1999, in preparation). These techniques have been shown to be excellent for reducing ISO-CAM data. While this is almost certainly the best procedure for reducing the ELAIS data, it is labour intensive and time consuming and we do not expect the “Final Analysis” to be finished until early 2000, hence the release of our “Preliminary” products.

### 5.3 Source Calibration

For the ISO-CAM observations we have of order 10 stars per raster and these provide a very good calibration. A preliminary analysis of the star fluxes (Crockett et al. 1999 in preparation, see also Serjeant et al. 1999) suggests that our raw instrumental units (ADU/g/s) need to be multiplied by a factor of 1.75 to give fluxes in mJy. This implies a $`50`$ per cent completeness limit of approximately $`3`$ mJy at $`15\mu `$m. The flux calibration is still uncertain at $`6.7\mu `$m, due largely to the uncertain aperture corrections to the under-sampled observations and the single-pixel detection algorithm, though PSF models and pre-flight sensitivity estimates suggest a $`50`$ per cent completeness level at less than $`1`$mJy. (See Serjeant et al.  for more details.)

For the 90 $`\mu `$m survey the calibration proceeded as follows. The expected background was estimated using COBE and IRAS data and Zodiacal light models. These predictions were compared to the measurements of the background calibrated using the internal calibration device (FCS) allowing the predicted backgrounds to be corrected from an extended source to a point source calibration. These predictions were then used to scale the measured fluctuations above the background. Single pixel detections (“Point sources”) were then calibrated using the expected fraction of flux falling on a single pixel for a source placed arbitrarily with respect to the pixel centre. The fluxes of “extended sources” were calculated in a more complicated fashion and have great associated uncertainties. The fluxes were found to be in good agreement with model stellar fluxes in our own dedicated calibration measurements and with the fluxes of IRAS sources in the fields. This suggests a 5$`\sigma `$ noise level of 100mJy. This ISO-PHOT calibration, completeness and reliability estimates is discussed in detail by Efstathiou et al. (1999, in preparation) and Surace et al. (1999, in preparation).

## 6 Comparison with Other ISO Surveys

ISO carried out a variety of complementary surveys exploring the available parameter space of depth and area. Table 9 summaries the main extra-galactic blank-field surveys. With the exception of the two main serendipity surveys ELAIS covers the largest area and has produced the largest number of ISO sources. Figure 16 illustrates how deeper smaller area surveys are complemented by shallower wider area surveys.

## 7 Follow-up

An extensive follow-up programme is being undertaken, including observations in many bands from X-ray to radio. This programme will provide essential information for identifying the types of objects detected in the infrared, their luminosities, energy budgets and other detailed properties. As well as studying the properties of the objects detected by ISO a number of the follow-up surveys will provide independent source lists which will be extremely valuable in their own right, e.g. to investigate the differences between infrared and non infrared emitting objects.

### 7.1 Surveys

A number of follow-up programmes are in fact independent surveys at other wavelengths, carried out within the ELAIS survey area. These include:

1. Optical: $`R`$-band CCD surveys are essential to provide optical identifications for spectroscopic and related follow-up with improved astrometry, photometric accuracy and to fainter levels than those provided by the Second Sky Survey. Our principal southern field (S1) has been completely covered with the ESO/Danish 1.5m telescope to a depth of $`R23.5`$ (La Franca et al. 1999, in preparation), while all our northern fields N1-3 have been completed to a similar depth using the INT Wide Field Camera (Verma et al. 1999, in preparation). Other optical bands allow object classification and other more detailed investigations. Four square degrees within our northern fields have been observed to a depth of $`U22`$ (Verma et al. 1999, in preparation). In June 1999, we observed the central 1.2 square degrees of S1 in $`U`$ and 3 square degrees in $`I`$ using the ESO Wide Field Imager (Héraudeau et al. 1999, in preparation) with these we expect to reach $`U23,I23`$. McMahon et al. (`http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~rgm/int_sur/`) have covered around 9 square degrees of N1 to $`u23.3,g24.2,r23.5,i22.7,z21.1`$ and 2 square degrees in N2 to similar depths in $`g,r,i,z`$ as part of the ING wide field survey. The $`U`$-band surveys will be especially interesting as they will allow us to compute the $`U`$-band luminosity density (and hence star formation rate) in the same volume as we calculate the infrared luminosity density, providing a direct comparison between obscured and unobscured star formation estimators.
2. Near Infrared: A substantial area has been surveyed in the near infrared. In the $`H`$-band around 0.85 square degrees in N1 and N2 was surveyed using CIRSI on the INT (Gonzalez-Solares et al. 1999, in preparation). Approximately 0.5 square degree has been surveyed in both N1 and N2 in $`K^{}`$ using Omega Prime on the Calar Alto 3.5m (Rigopoulou et al. 1999, in preparation). The smaller, multiply repeated southern field S2 has been covered in $`K`$ with SOFI on the NTT (Héraudeau et al., 1999, in preparation).
3. Radio: 21cm radio data at sub-mJy level will allow identification of some of the most interesting objects which are expected to be very faint in the optical but would have detectable radio fluxes if they obey the usual radio to far infrared correlation. These surveys will also allow an independent estimate of the star formation rate within the same volume. The southern field S1 is completely covered to a depth of 0.3 mJy , the 6 square degrees in the northern fields has been covered to a depth of 0.2 mJy . A deeper survey in the south has been conducted on the smaller, multiply repeated field S2 (Gruppioni et al. 1999, in preparation).
4. X-ray: Almaini et al. have been awarded 150ks to do two deep Chandra pointings one in N1 and one in N2. La Franca et al. have also been awarded 200 ks on BeppoSAX to make 5 pointings covering around 2 square degrees in S1.
5. Sub-mm: The UK SCUBA Survey consortium (Rowan-Robinson et al., independent of ELAIS) are performing part of their shallow (8mJy) 850$`\mu `$msurvey in N1 and N2 and are aiming to cover 200 square arc minutes in each.

Additional multi-wavelength surveys of these fields are expected in the near future.

### 7.2 Photometry & Spectroscopy

We intend to obtain spectroscopic identifications for all (or the vast majority) of optical candidates for all ELAIS sources. This involves a two-pronged attack using multi-object spectroscopy for the brightest objects and single object spectroscopy using 4m class telescopes on the fainter objects. This will be principally to obtain the redshifts and thus luminosity but also for classification and to assess star formation rates. Some preliminary multi-fibre spectroscopy has been carried out with FLAIR on the UK Schmidt Telescope. This been supplemented by single object spectroscopy from the ESO/Danish 1.5m telescope to provide spectroscopy on a complete sample of 90$`\mu `$m selected sources (Linden-Vørnle et al. 1999, in preparation). A further 100 sources have been identified spectroscopically in a largely weathered-out run on the 2dF in September 1998 (Gruppioni et al. 1999, in preparation) and an additional night on the 2dF in August 1999 was also seriously hampered by weather (Oliver et al. 1999, in preparation). 40 spectra for fainter sources have already been taken with EMMI on the NTT and EFOSC2 on the ESO 3.6m Telescope (La Franca et al. 1999, in preparation).

Until now the ELAIS northern fields have been only moderately surveyed spectroscopically. We have used the Calar Alto 2.2m telescope and the Calar Alto Faint Object Spectrograph (CAFOS) for the sources brighter than 17 (Gonzalez-Solares et al. 1999, in preparation) and the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope and the Multi Object Spectrograph (MOSCA) for the fainter sources (Surace et al., 1999, in preparation). 29 ELAIS objects have been observed during the period May-July 1998 (of which 14 had $`m>19`$). These observations have been completed with 29 field galaxies chosen in the same region for comparison purpose. From these northern samples most sources show strong star-burst signatures up to $`z=0.5`$ though two AGNs and one $`z=1.2`$ QSO have been detected, these samples will be discussed in a forthcoming paper.

A number of programmes have been instigated to obtain more specific photometric and spectroscopic data of the infrared selected sources over a wider wavelength range. Some examples are detailed below:

1. We have observed (Héraudeau, Kotilainen, Surace et al., in preparation) about 150 sources in pointing observations in the S1 field using IRAC2 on the ESO/MPG 2.2m telescope October 1997, June 1998 and SOFI on the NTT October 1998
2. Near-infrared H+K band spectroscopy of a small subset of sources with SOFI on the NTT (Alexander et al., in preparation).

## 8 Conclusions

In this paper we have described the motivation behind ELAIS, the largest non-serendipitous survey performed by ISO. Our primary goals in conducting the survey were to determine the relative importance and recent evolution of the dust–obscured mode of star formation in galaxies, and to constrain AGN unification models, and we detailed above how these influenced our selection of survey fields and observational parameters. The fields that have been covered by ISO are also being extensively mapped from radio to X–ray wavelengths as part of a concerted ground–based follow–up programme, whose multi–wavelength coverage will make the ELAIS regions fertile ground for undertaking future astrophysical investigations extending well beyond our initial survey aims.

Subsequent papers in this series will discuss in detail the scientific results from the ELAIS “Preliminary Analysis” and “Final Analysis”. The first of these papers will include: discussions of the extra-galactic counts from the “Preliminary Analysis” at 7 and 15 $`\mu `$m(Serjeant et al. 1999), and at 90$`\mu `$m (Efstathiou et al., 1999, in preparation); discussion of the stellar calibration and counts (Crockett et al., in preparation); and a discussion of sources detected in the multiply–repeated areas (Oliver et al., in preparation). Preliminary ELAIS data products were released through our WWW page (`http://athena.ph.ic.ac.uk/`), which also contains further details on the programme and the follow-up campaign.

## Acknowledgments

This paper is based on observations with ISO, an ESA project, with instruments funded by ESA Member States (especially the PI countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) and with participation of ISAS and NASA.

The ISO-CAM data presented in this paper was analysed using “CIA”, a joint development by the ESA Astrophysics Division and the ISO-CAM Consortium. The ISO-CAM Consortium is led by the ISO-CAM PI, C. Cesarsky, Direction des Sciences de la Matiere, C.E.A., France.

PIA is a joint development by the ESA Astrophysics Division and the ISOPHOT Consortium. The ISO-PHOT Consortium is led by the Max-Planck-Institut fuër Astronomie (MPIA), Heidelberg, Germany. Contributing ISO-PHOT Consortium institutes to the PIA development are: DIAS (Dublin Institute for advanced studies, Ireland) MPIK (Max-Planck-Institut fuër Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany), RAL (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, UK), AIP (Astronomisches Institut Potsdam, Germany), and MPIA.

This work in part was supported by PPARC (grant number GR/K98728) and by the EC TMR Network programme (FMRX-CT96-0068).

We would like to thank all the ISO staff at Vilspa both on the science team and on the Instrument Development Teams for their eternal patience in dealing with the wide variety of problems that a large programme like this presented.

## Appendix A Log of the ISO Observations

In Table A1 we present a list of all the observations performed by ISO as part of the ELAIS raster observations. We do not include the observations performed as part of the ISO photometric follow-up of ELAIS sources which are available on our WWW pages `http://athena.ph.ic.ac.uk/`. Table 14 details those observations which have had some instrument or telemetry problems as flagged at Vilspa or for which we have noted peculiarities.