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# EVIDENCE FOR A CYCLOTRON FEATURE IN THE SPECTRUM OF THE ANOMALOUS X-RAY PULSAR 1RXS J170849-400910

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) are characterized by spin periods in the range of 5-12 s, steady spin down ($`10^{11}ss^1`$), steep and soft X–ray spectra with luminosities exceding by several orders of magnitude their spin–down luminosities (Mereghetti & Stella 1995; van Paradijs, Taam & van den Heuvel 1995). All five confirmed AXPs lie in the “galactic” plane and two (or three), are associated with supernova remnants. AXPs show no evidence for a companion and are thus believed to be isolated neutron stars either having extremely strong magnetic dipole fields ($`10^{14}10^{15}G`$; “magnetars”; Duncan & Thompson 1992, Thompson & Duncan 1995) or accreting from a residual disk (Li 1999, Alpar 2001, Perna et al. 2000). Alternatively, they can accrete from a light companion. 1E 1048–5937 and 1E 2259+586, recently displayed short and intense X–ray bursts (Graviil, Kaspi, & Woods 2002; Kaspi & Graviil 2002), strengthening a possible connection between AXPs and Soft $`\gamma `$-Ray Repeaters (SGRs; Zhang 2002). For recent rewiews see Israel, Mereghetti & Stella 2002, Mereghetti et al. 2002, and references therein.

1RXS J170849$``$400910 was discovered with ROSAT (Voges et al. 1996); $``$ 11 s pulsations were found in its X–ray flux with ASCA (Sugizaki et al. 1997). Early measurements suggested that is a fairly stable rotator (Israel et al. 1999). In October 1999 a sudden spin–up event occurred, which was interpreted as a glitch (Kaspi et al. 2000). Searches for an optical counterpart ruled out the presence of a massive companion (Israel et al. 1999); an IR counterpart has been recently proposed (Israel et al. 2003). The diffuse ($`8^{}`$) radio emission at 1.4 GHz (Gaensler et al. 2001) is due to the supernova remnant G346.5–0.1, the association of which to the AXP is still under debate. There is no evidence of pulsed radio emission from the AXP with an upper limit of 70$`\mu `$Jy on the pulsation amplitude (Israel et al. 2002).

Here we report the results of a long BeppoSAX observation of the AXP that confirms significant spectral variations with pulse phase (Israel et al. 2001) and shows the presence of an absorption-like feature at $``$ 8.1 keV, probably due to cyclotron resonant scattering.

## 2 OBSERVATION

The source was observed by BeppoSAX on 2001 August 17–22 with the imaging Narrow Field Instruments (NFI): the Low Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (LECS: 0.1–10 keV; Parmar et al. 1997; 78.0 ks of effective exposure time) and the Medium Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (MECS: 1.3–11 keV; Boella et al. 1997; 200.0 ks exposure). We extracted the source photons in the MECS and LECS from a circular region of 6 arcmin radius around the position of the AXP. Photons extracted from a sourceless circular region of the same size were used for background subtraction. MECS and LECS photon arrival times were corrected to the barycenter of the Solar System.

## 3 RESULTS

### 3.1 Timing and Spectral Analysis

In order to obtain a precise estimate of the pulse period, we divided the MECS observation in nine time intervals and calculated the pulsation phase for each of them. Fitting these phases with a linear function gave a best period of $`11.000563\pm 0.000005s`$. The folded light curve shows an energy-dependent profile (Fig. 1). Specifically, the pulse minimum shifts from a phase of $``$ 0.0 in the lowest energy light curve (0.1–2 keV) to $``$ 0.3 in the 6–10 keV light curve. Correspondingly, the pulsed fraction decreases from $``$ 30 % to $``$ 17 %.

We restricted the analysis of the LECS and MECS spectra to the 0.4–4 keV and 1.65–10.8 keV energy range, respectively. The spectra were binned so as to have about two bins per spectral resolution element (FWHM). Futhermore, the data at the extremes of the spectral range given above were further rebinned so as to have at least 20 source events per bin (such that minimum chisquare techniques could be reliably used in spectral fitting).

The spectra were well fit with an absorbed blackbody plus a power law model (see Table 1). The best fit of the phase-average spectrum gave a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ of 0.95 for 298 degree of freedom (dof) for the following parameters: column density of $`N_H=(1.36\pm 0.06)\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2, a blackbody temperature of $`kT_{bb}=0.44\pm 0.01`$ keV (blackbody radius of $`R_{bb}=6.6\pm 0.4`$ km, assuming a distance of 5 kpc) and a photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.40\pm 0.06`$ (all error bars in the text are 90 % confidence). The unabsorbed flux in the 0.5–10 keV range was $`1.87\times 10^{10}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 corresponding to a luminosity of 5.6$`\times 10^{35}`$ erg s-1 (for a 5 kpc distance). In the 0.5–10 keV band the blackbody component accounts for $``$ 30 % of the total unabsorbed flux. We also tried other combinations of spectral models (cutoff power law plus blackbody or two blackbodies with different temperatures) but they all produced larger reduced $`\chi ^2`$ values.

### 3.2 Pulse Phase Spectroscopy

We adopt for zero phase the minimum of the pulse profile in the 0.2–3 keV folded light curve (see Fig. 1). In order to carry out pulse–phase spectroscopy we accumulated spectra in six different phase intervals. The boundaries of these (0.0, 0.26, 0.4, 0.58, 0.7, 0.84, 1.0) were designed so as to sample separately the minimum, rising, maximum, and decaying part of the pulse profile, while maintaining a sufficiently good statistics for a detailed spectral study (results in Tab. 1, Fig. 2, 3 and 4). A significant variation of the spectral parameters with pulse phase was clearly seen (especially for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`R_{bb}`$, see Fig. 2; see also Israel et al. 2001). In all intervals but one, an acceptable fit was obtained with the absorbed power–law plus black body model (reduced $`\chi ^2`$ in the 0.8–1.1 range); a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ of 1.2 was instead obtained in the 0.4–0.58 phase interval. Specifically, the data were systematically below the best fit model in the $``$ 7.8–8.4 keV range (see Fig. 4b). We tried to fit three different models: a Gaussian, an absorption edge and a cyclotron feature. While the inclusion of a Gaussian or an absorption edge did not lead to a significant improvement of the fit, the cyclotron model (CYCLABS in the XSPEC package, see Mihara et al. 1990 for details) led to a reduced chisquare of 1.1 for 86 dof, corresponding to an F-test probability of $`3\times 10^3`$ (3.1$`\sigma `$).

In order to improve the statistics we added in phase the spectra from the 1999 BeppoSAX observation of the source (Israel et al. 2001), increasing the total exposure time to $``$ 250 ks. For this we used the pulse period determination from the timing solution of a 4 year–long RXTE monitoring (Kaspi et al. 2000) 111Note that we could not use for the 2001 dataset the post–“glitch” timing (Gavriil & Kaspi 2002) since the period extrapolated from their parameters significantly differs from that derived here ($`\mathrm{\Delta }P1.5\times 10^3`$ s) . The determination of the zero phase was done again by using the pulse profile minimum in the 0.3–2 keV energy range (note that no significant shape difference was found with respect to the 2001 observation). We estimate that our procedure can introduce an uncertainty of up to 0.01 in the phasing of the two observations which is negligible for the aims of our study.

For each of the six phase intervals, a spectrum was summed together with the corrisponding spectrum from the 2001 observation. The spectral analysis was then repeated. In the MECS and LECS spectra from the 0.4–0.58 phase interval the inclusion of a Gaussian ($`E_g`$ = 8.3 keV, $`\sigma `$ = 0.4 keV and $`\chi ^2`$ = 1.1) and an absorption edge ($`E_e`$ = 7.7 keV, $`\tau `$ = 0.4 and $`\chi ^2`$ = 0.9) to fit the feature at $`8.1`$ keV resulted in an improvement of the chisquare, which converted to a single-trial F-test probability of 0.18 ($`1\sigma `$) and $`4\times 10^4(3.7\sigma `$), respectively. A much more significant improvement was obtained by adding instead a Resonant Cyclotron Feature (RCF) model; the F-test probability in this case was $`1.8\times 10^5`$ corresponding to a single trial significance of 4.5$`\sigma `$ or 4$`\sigma `$ after correction for the six spectra that we analysed (see Fig. 4 and Tab 1).

## 4 DISCUSSION

During a BeppoSAX study of 1RXS J170849$``$400910 we discovered an absorption-like feature at an energy of $``$ 8.1 keV in a pulse phase interval corresponding to the rising part of the $``$ 11 s pulse. This feature was best fit by a resonant cyclotron feature model with a centroid energy of $``$8.1 keV and an equivalent width of $``$460 eV.

The detection of an RCF in a specific pulse-phase interval and superposed to an X-ray continuum that varies with the pulse phase is reminiscent of the behaviour seen in standard accreting pulsars in X-ray binaries (see Wheaton et al. 1979, Santangelo et al. 1999). If interpreted as an electron resonant feature at the base of the accretion column, the feature at $``$ 8.1 keV implies a neutron star surface magnetic field of $`9.2\times 10^{11}`$ Gauss (using a gravitational redshift z=0.3) . This value is just slightly lower than that measured for electron RCFs in typical accreting X-ray pulsars (see Fig. 5); more interestingly it is close to that required by models for AXPs which involve residual disk accretion in the spin–down regime (Mereghetti & Stella 1995; Alpar 2001; Perna et al. 2001 ). In this context, one can solve the torque equation (see e.g. Eq. 11.35 in Henrichs 1983) by exploiting the measured value of $`\dot{P}`$ and range of accretion luminosity derived from plausible distances (5–10 kpc). The surface magnetic (dipole) field obtained in this way is 0.6–1.1$`\times 10^{12}`$ G (corrisponding to a fastness parameter range of $`\omega _s=0.570.54`$, a typical value for the spin-down accretion regime; see Ghosh & Lamb 1979 and Henrics 1983).

The agreement of this estimate with the magnetic field inferred from the electron RCF interpretation is intriguing, especially in consideration of the other analogies with the pulse-phase spectral dependence of conventional accreting X-ray pulsars. By contrast, if an electron RCF arose somehow at the polar caps of a rotation powered pulsar, a B–field strength of 9.2$`\times 10^{11}`$ G would be in the range of many radio pulsars and yet much lower than that required to spin–down at the observed rate through magnetic dipole radiation ($`5\times 10^{14}`$ G, indeed this was one of the motivations for magnetar model, see below).

Alternatively the RCF might be due to protons. For the magnetic field strengths forseen in the “magnetar” scenario, proton cyclotron features (if any) are expected to lie in the classical X–ray band (0.1–10 keV; Zane et al. 2001; Lai & Ho 2002). A proton RCF feature at $`8.1`$ keV would correspond to surface field of 1.6$`\times `$1015 G (z=0.3). The fact that this value is $`3`$ times higher than the surface field derived from the usual magnetic dipole spin down formula should not be of concern. According to the magnetar model, the magnetic field at the star surface and its vicinity is dominated by higher order multipole field components (Thompson & Duncan 1995). At large radii the dipole component, responsible for the secular spin–down, dominates. It is thus expected that a proton RCF feature, sampling the (total) surface magnetic field strength, provides a higher value than the mere dipole component.

There is a clear correlation between the width and centroid energy of the electron RCFs in accreting X–ray pulsars (see Fig. 5 extending the results of Orlandini & Dal Fiume 2001). The values from 1RXS J170849$``$400910 and SGR 1806–20 are in good agreement with such a relation. The modest range of width to centroid energy ratio implied by this indicates that magnetic field geometry effects at the neutron star surface likely dominate the RCF width (on the contrary temperature and particle mass would alter this ratio). This, in turn, suggests that similar (relative) ranges of surface magnetic field strength are “sampled” by RCFs in accreting X–ray pulsar and, by extension, RCFs in AXPs and SGRs.

Other interpretations of the feature at $`8.1`$ keV appear less likely. Firstly, fitting an edge or line due to photo-electric absorption provides a less pronounced improvement of the fit than the RCF model. Secondly, an edge by iron at a sufficiently large distance from the neutron star that energy shifts are negligible would require a high overabundance of this element and intermediate ionisation stages (such as C–like iron). Yet it has long been known that the photoionisation equilibrium of such a plasma is unstable (Krolik & Kallman 1984; Nagase 1989). The energy of an ion feature forming in the neutron star atmosphere would be drastically altered by magnetic field effects (see Mori & Hailey 2002 and references therein). In this and the above interpretations, however, it would also be difficult to explain why an ion feature is observed only over a restricted range of pulse phases. Exploring in detail these possibilities is beyond the scope of this letter.

In conclusion, we found an absorption-like feature in the BeppoSAX X–ray spectrum of 1RXS J170849$``$400910 taken during the rising phase of the $``$11 s pulse, which is best fit by a cyclotron resonant scattering model. If this interpretation is correct, the centroid energy translates into a magnetic field strength of $``$1.6$`\times `$1015 G and $``$9.2$`\times `$1011 G depending on whether protons or electrons, respectively, are responsible for the feature.

Nanda Rea acknowledges useful discussions with S. Dall’Osso. This work was partially supported through ASI and COFIN 2000 grants.


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# Application of the Separate Universe Approach to Preheating

## 1 Introduction

Rather recently, people realized that the process of reheating after inflation need not simply be described by the usual single particle decay of the inflaton field. If there are relevant scalar field degrees of freedom coupled to the inflaton field at the end of inflation, the coherent oscillation of the inflaton can excite those scalar fields by parametric resonance. This process was extensively investigated, in mast cases, neglecting metric perturbations, which typically will be a good approximation as long as we are interested in processes occurring within the Hubble horizon scale. Often the energy transfer due to parametric resonance is much more efficient than that due to the usual particle decay, and sometimes it is violent. It was then suspected that there might be significant effects on the large scale perturbations beyond the Hubble scale due to resonance. Some particle physics models may predict distinguishable signals in the cosmic microwave background, or formation of inconsistently large number of primordial black holes .

Here in this short contribution, we would like to propose another approach to discuss this issue of the generation of large scale perturbations at preheating. We make use of the separate universe approach . We stress that unphysical acausal energy transfer, which may not carefully prohibited in previous treatments, does not take place in this new approach.

## 2 Separate universe approach

Basic Idea : We consider the system composed of many scalar fields. The discussions in this paper is based on the following statement obtained in Ref. .
When we solve the background spatially homogeneous field equation, the $`e`$-folding number $`N\mathrm{log}a`$ until the expansion rate $`H`$ reaches a given value $`H_r`$ depends on the initial value of the fields $`𝚽`$ (and their time derivatives). Let’s denote this value of $`N`$ by $`N_{H_r}`$. Suppose that the initial value of $`𝚽`$ has spatial variation over super-Hubble scales. Then, the value of $`N_{H_r}`$ becomes a function of the spatial position $`𝐱`$. In this case, the newly generated curvature perturbations on the constant Hubble slice $``$ is simply given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_{H_r}`$, i.e., the fluctuations in $`N_{H_r}`$.

Mechanism of Generating Curvature Perturbations from Isocurvature Perturbations :

Let’s consider matter fields consisting of two components. We call them $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$. They are not necessarily scalar fields here. We assume that the rates of change of the energy density of $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ due to the expansion of the universe are different. Namely,

$$\frac{d\mathrm{log}\rho _\varphi }{dN}=3\left(1+w_\varphi \right),\frac{d\mathrm{log}\rho _\chi }{dN}=3\left(1+w_\chi \right),$$
(1)
For example, the energy density of $`\varphi `$ changes like dust matter, while $`\chi `$ behaves as a radiation fluid. In this case, we have $`w_\varphi =0`$ and $`w_\chi =1/3`$. Let us denote the fraction of the energy density of $`\chi `$ by $`f:=\rho _\chi /\rho `$. Then, we have

$$\frac{d\mathrm{log}\rho }{dN}=3\left(1+w_\varphi \right)+3\left(w_\varphi w_\chi \right)f.$$
(2)
From this expression, we notice that there are two factors necessary for generation of super-Hubble adiabatic perturbations. One is non-vanishing $`w_\varphi w_\chi `$, and the other is inhomogeneity of $`f`$.

## 3 Conformal two field model

Model :  We consider the model whose potential is given by

$$V=\frac{\lambda }{4}\varphi ^4+\frac{1}{2}g^2\varphi ^2\chi ^2.$$
(3)
When $`g^2=2\lambda `$, the longest wavelength mode of $`\chi `$ is the fastest growing mode, and the initial spectrum of $`\chi `$ is scale-invariant. This appears to lead to exponential growth of pre-existing entropy perturbations even when backreaction is taken into account . The equations of motion for the spatially homogeneous background are given by

$`\ddot{\mathrm{\Phi }}^i+3H\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}^i{\displaystyle \frac{dV}{d\mathrm{\Phi }^i}}=0,H^2={\displaystyle \frac{\kappa ^2}{3}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\dot{𝚽}^2+V\right).`$ (4)
Here we used the vector notation to represent the two component scalar fields, $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$, simultaneously. Namely, $`\mathrm{\Phi }^1=\varphi `$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }^2=\chi `$.

Simplified Analysis with Time Averaging :  We define the averaged energy in a unit comoving volume by $`=a^3\left(\frac{1}{2}\dot{𝚽}^2+V\right),`$ where $`\mathrm{}`$ represents time averaging. Let us assume that $`𝚽^2`$ is bounded and is oscillating. Then, we have many zeros of $`\dot{𝚽}𝚽`$. If we take the average between two zeros, we have

$$0=\frac{d}{dN}\left(a^3\dot{𝚽}𝚽\right)=\frac{a^3}{H}\left(\dot{𝚽}^2\lambda \varphi ^42g^2\chi ^2\varphi ^2\right).$$
(5)
Since $`H`$ is slowly changing, we obtain an approximate relation: $`a^3\left(\dot{𝚽}^2\lambda \varphi ^42g^2\chi ^2\varphi ^2\right)=0.`$ Therefore we have

$$\frac{d\mathrm{log}}{dN}=33\frac{a^3\dot{𝚽}^2}{}1.$$
(6)
From this fact, $`e^N`$ is deduced, and hence we have $`H^2\rho /a^3a^4.`$ Anyway, $`N_{H_r}`$ is basically independent of the initial value of the field. Therefore it seems that additional curvature perturbations are not generated when the wavelength of a mode is longer than the horizon scale. In the language of the preceding section, $`w_\varphi w_\chi `$ vanishes approximately in this model. Hence, amplification of fluctuations of $`O\left(1\right)`$ is hardly expected. Notice that $`H^2`$ is roughly proportional to $`\mathrm{\Phi }^4`$ but the mass squared is to $`\mathrm{\Phi }^2`$. Hence, as the amplitude of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ decays, the mass squared tends to be larger than $`H^2`$.

Detailed Analysis without Time Averaging :  We solve the above set of equations numerically varying the initial value of $`\chi `$. Then, we can evaluate the initial value dependence of $`N_{H_r}`$, the $`e`$-folding number until the total energy density reaches a certain specified value. However, the original model has the following shortcoming. As there are only two degrees of freedom corresponding to the homogeneous modes of $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$-fields, the exchange of energy between them continues for ever. Then, occasionally the value of $`\varphi `$ becomes exceptionally small. In this phase, the period between two neighboring zeros of $`𝚽\dot{𝚽}`$ becomes very long. If the specified target energy density is reached during this phase, $`\mathrm{\Delta }N`$ becomes largely dependent on the choice of the final value of the Hubble rate $`H_r`$. Then, interpretation of the results becomes difficult. In more realistic situations, the energy density carried by these long-wavelength modes will be redistributed to a large number of other degrees of freedom (shorter wavelength modes of these or other fields) sooner or later through rescattering.

Here we assume two radiation fluids, $`r_\varphi `$ and $`r_\chi `$. $`\mathrm{\Phi }^i`$ decays into the component $`r_i`$ with decay constant $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_i`$. The modified set of equations are given by

$`\ddot{\mathrm{\Phi }}^i+\left(3H+\mathrm{\Gamma }_i\right)\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}^i{\displaystyle \frac{dV}{d\mathrm{\Phi }^i}}=0,\dot{\rho }_{r_i}=4H\rho _{r_i}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_i\left(\mathrm{\Phi }^i\right)^2,H^2={\displaystyle \frac{\kappa ^2}{3}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\dot{𝚽}^2+V+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}}\rho _{r_i}\right),`$ (7)
where $`\rho _{r_i}`$ is the energy density of the $`i`$-th component of radiation fluids.

We consider the case with $`g^2=2\lambda =0.02`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\varphi =\mathrm{\Gamma }_\chi =10^5`$. We set the initial condition at $`\varphi =1`$ with $`\dot{\varphi }=\dot{\chi }=0`$. Using the convention $`\kappa ^2/3=1`$, the initial Hubble rate is $`H=0.05`$, where we assume a negligible contribution to the initial energy density from the $`\chi `$-field. We integrate Eqs. (7) until the Hubble rate goes down to $`10^6`$, at which point the energy is almost completely transferred to the radiation fluids. In Fig. 1, we give a plot of the $`e`$-folding number $`N`$ between $`H=0.05`$ and $`H=10^6`$ varying the initial value of $`\chi `$. We see small fluctuations of the $`e`$-folding number $`N`$ depending on the initial value of $`\chi `$. Each plot contains only 100 sampling points with equal horizontal spacing. The amplitude of fluctuation is not $`O\left(1\right)`$ but still it is significant compared to that observed in the cosmic microwave background. An interesting and important point is that the dependence on the initial value of $`\chi `$ of this fluctuation is almost random. Two panels in Fig. 1 are plots with different range of the initial value of $`\chi `$. Although the scale of the horizontal axis is very different, these two plots look quite similar.

Fig.1: Plots showing the initial value dependence of the $`e`$-folding number $`N`$. In each panel 100 discrete points are plotted. The scale of the horizontal axis is different, but these two plots look quite similar. This will mean that the distribution of $`N`$ is rather random.

Fig.2: Similar plots to Fig.1 but the vertical axis is the fraction of the radiation energy originating from the secondary field $`\chi `$. The panel (b) is a close-up view of the panel (a) for small initial value of $`\chi `$. We can see a trend that the fraction increases as the initial value of $`\chi `$ increases.

The origin of these fluctuations can be understood as follows. If the oscillation of fields is fast compared to the change rate of $`H`$, the approximation using the time averaging must be good. The error will be exponentially suppressed. As mentioned above, however, the period of oscillation occasionally becomes very long if the motion of the scalar fields is trapped by chance in the region where the amplitude of oscillation in the direction of $`\varphi `$-field is exceptionally small. In such situation, the approximation we made before is no longer valid. Since the motion of the two scalar fields are rather chaotic, the initially neighboring trajectories in the configuration space of $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ soon deviate. Thus, it is quite sensitive to the tiny difference in the initial condition whether this entrapment occurs or not. As a result the dependence on the initial condition is almost completely randomized.

Then, the question is whether this amplification of fluctuations can be a process that generates significant fluctuations at the super-Hubble scale during preheating? Since the amplitude of the generated curvature perturbation is so sensitive to $`\chi _i`$, the variance seen in Fig. 1 will basically represent the variance of random fluctuations incoherent beyond the Hubble scale. If the fluctuations are completely random beyond a certain cutoff scale $`k_c^1`$, we have $`n=4`$ spectrum for $`k<k_c`$ in general. (Here we use the notation that $`n=1`$ corresponds to the scale invariant spectrum.)

However, it is not certain whether a smoothing of $`N\left(\chi \right)`$, e.g., $`\stackrel{~}{N}\left(\chi _i\right):=𝑑\chi N\left(\chi \right)W\left(\chi \chi _i\right)`$ with an appropriate window function $`W`$ is tilted or not. Hence, the averaged value on very large scale may have an additional fluctuation other than the $`n=4`$ random component. The amplitude of this additional component is difficult to determine because we need to reduce the contamination of $`n=4`$ component. To do so, we need to compute the average over sufficiently large volume. This means that we need to calculate the value of $`N`$ for sufficiently large number of samples changing the initial value of $`\chi `$, which we have not done yet. Hence, we have not completely rejected the possibility of generating fluctuation coherent beyond the Hubble scale. However, the amplitude of this coherent fluctuation should be much more suppressed than the incoherent one.

Generation of Curvature Perturbations :

If the exact conformal invariance is broken by some reason, we can expect a curvature perturbation may be generated. The easiest way will be changing the decay process of the two fields. In the above calculation, we have introduced the decay terms by hand assuming that the both scalar fields decay into a radiation fluid with the same decay constant $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. We distinguished two components of the radiation fluids depending on which scalar field becomes the origin. Suppose, one radiation fluid is composed of massive fields, although the mass is negligible during the preheating epoch. Then, sooner or later, the mass of this radiation fluid becomes larger than the Hubble rate, and the energy density of this field starts to behave like $`e^{3N}`$, while the other continues to evolve as $`e^{4N}`$. Therefore the isocurvature perturbation imprinted as the ratio $`\xi :=\rho _{r_\chi }/\left(\rho _{r_\varphi }+\rho _{r_\chi }\right),`$ is transformed into the curvature perturbation at this stage.

Now let us look at the plot of this ratio as a function of the initial value of $`\chi `$. From Fig. (2a), it seems that the dependence on $`\chi _i`$ is just random fluctuations. However, if we close up the portion for small $`\left|\chi _i\right|`$ (Fig. (2b)), we can see clear dependence on $`\chi _i`$, which can be explained as follows. For small $`\chi _i`$, the decay to the radiation fluid becomes effective before the equi-partition between the homogeneous parts of the $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ fields is achieved by the parametric resonance. In this case, the decay to the radiation fluid is more efficiently through the $`\varphi `$ field. As a result, the ratio $`\xi `$ becomes small for small $`\left|\chi _i\right|`$. This mechanism to generate large scale fluctuations is very efficient because the fluctuation continues to be amplified until the matter radiation equality. Hence, this process will be a possible mechanism to create primordial black holes.

## 4 Discussion

In this paper, applying the separate universe approach, we discussed generation of metric perturbations at super-Hubble scale during preheating. As an example, we considered the conformal two scalar model whose potential is given by Eq. (3). Previously, it was argued that large amplitude of fluctuations can be generated during the reheating process, but we found that the separate universe approach suggests relatively suppressed amplitude of fluctuations.

We suspect that the origin of this discrepancy is in an overlooked point in previous analyses. Usually people decompose fields as (homogeneous background)+(perturbations), using the common homogeneous background for separated universes. Let’s consider two largely-separated homogeneous patches, universe $`A`$ and universe $`B`$. Suppose that the preheating is efficient in the universe $`A`$ but inefficient in the universe $`B`$. Then, we physically expect that the back reaction to the inflaton oscillation is also efficient in the universe $`A`$. However, as long as we use the common homogeneous background, the back reaction works in the same way both in the universe $`A`$ and in the universe $`B`$. This means that artificial and acausal energy transfer from the universe $`B`$ to $`A`$ easily takes place in the treatment using the homogeneous background.

However, the above criticism to the previous works does not apply to the numerical studies. For example, in Ref., it was argued that super-Hubble modes are enhanced even in a single field model. They considered $`\lambda \varphi ^4`$ model. When they simulate the case that only a single mode in the resonance band is excited, there was no enhancement in super-Hubble modes. On the other hand, when all the modes in the same lowest resonance band are excited, there was enhancement in super-Hubble modes. Their explanation is as follows. The gauge invariant perturbations at super-Hubble scale are generated by the quadratic product of smaller scale perturbations in the resonance band. Namely, $`\zeta _𝐤d^3k\chi \left(𝐤^{}\right)\chi \left(𝐤𝐤^{}\right).`$ This integral becomes approximately constant for small $`k`$ less than the width of the resonance band $`\mathrm{\Delta }k`$. For larger $`k`$, this integral is small because, when one of the arguments of $`\chi `$ is in the resonance band, the other is outside of it. So this enhancement mechanism does not apply for small scale modes. In this sense, the large scale modes are selectively enhanced.

However, since $`\zeta _𝐤k^{3/2}`$ for the scale invariant spectrum, constant value of $`\zeta _𝐤`$ does not mean enhancement of larger wavelength mode. Therefore the mechanism of the enhancement of super-Hubble modes works only when the cutoff scale $`a\mathrm{\Delta }k^1`$ is much larger than the Hubble radius. We can easily see that this condition is not satisfied in this model. For the redefined field $`\widehat{\varphi }=a\varphi `$, the field equation becomes $`\widehat{\varphi }{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }+\lambda \widehat{\varphi }{}_{}{}^{3}(a^{\prime \prime }/a)\widehat{\varphi }=0.`$ Here we used the conformal time coordinate $`\eta =a^1𝑑t`$, and a prime denotes differentiation with respect to $`\eta `$. Since the radiation dominant universe is a good approximation for this model, we use $`a=\left(t/t_0\right)^{1/2}`$. Then, $`\eta =2t_0a=1/=1/aH,`$ and therefore $`H=2t_0/\eta ^2`$. The amplitude of oscillation of $`\widehat{\varphi }`$ is constant. We can set the amplitude of $`\lambda \widehat{\varphi }^2`$ to unity without loss of generality. In fact, using the Friedmann equation, we have $`\lambda \widehat{\varphi }{}_{}{}^{2}(8\pi G/3a^2)\lambda \varphi _i^4=^2=1/\left(2t_0a\right)^2,`$ where we have used the fact that the initial value of $`\varphi `$, $`\varphi _i`$, is $`O\left(m_{pl}\right)`$. Choosing $`t_0`$ appropriately, we can set $`\eta _i=1`$. This also means that the comoving wave number corresponding to the initial Hubble horizon $``$ is 1.

The resonance effect becomes important after $`\mu \eta `$ becomes $`O\left(1\right)`$, where $`\mu `$ is the growth rate of the amplitude due to parametric resonance. Hence, $`\eta \mu ^1`$ when the parametric resonance becomes important. At this epoch, the comoving horizon scale is $`=\eta ^1\mu `$. Then, the condition for the enhancement of the super-Hubble modes will be $`\mu \mathrm{\Delta }k`$. In this model $`\mu <0.267`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }k0.2`$. Therefore the condition is not satisfied.

However, the plots in Ref. show steep increase of power for small $`k`$. The expected flat spectrum, which does not mean scale invariance, is not seen. This is no contradiction. When they plot the figures, they plot only discrete numbers of $`k`$ modes and the plots do not have resolution less than $`\mathrm{\Delta }k`$. This can be seen by looking at the shape of the resonance peak, which does not show the expected round shape. This means that the resolution is less than $`\mathrm{\Delta }k`$. Since the mode $`k\mathrm{\Delta }k`$ is inside the Hubble scale after the resonance becomes efficient, actually only one mode outside the horizon scale is plotted in those figures. Therefore it is not strange that the expected plateau is absent in their plots. As mentioned before, this $`n=4`$ spectrum is common in the situation that there are random fluctuations of a large amplitude on small scales and seems to refute the claims of .


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# The HRX-BL Lac sample - evolution of BL Lac objects

## 1 Introduction

BL Lac objects are a rare type of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), which are observationally distinguished mainly by the absence of strong emission lines. They have strong X-ray and radio emission, and they often show strong variability and optical polarization. Their observational properties are usually explained by a particular line of sight toward the galaxy nucleus, which in BL Lacs is thought to be parallel to a jet emerging from this nucleus.

Two search strategies are commonly used to find BL Lacs. The first is a search for strong X-ray sources with a high ratio of X-ray to optical flux, yielding X-ray selected BL Lacs (XBL). The second is to search among flat spectrum radio sources to find radio selected ones (RBL). As the radio and X-ray surveys got more and more sensitive, the properties of both groups started to overlap, raising the question of how they are related. Padovani & Giommi (emss (1995)) noticed that the spectral energy distribution (quantified by $`\mathrm{log}\nu L_\nu `$) of radio and X-ray selected BL Lacs shows peaks at different frequencies, and suggested that this is the basic difference between the two classes of BL Lacs. They introduced the notation of high-energy cutoff BL Lacs (HBLs) and low-energy cutoff BL Lacs (LBLs). Most, but not all, XBLs are HBLs, while the group of LBLs is preferentially selected in the radio region.

In general, BL Lacs are considered as part of a larger class of objects, the blazars, which have similar properties but show emission lines in addition, and for which this scenario applies as well. Ghisellini et al. (ghisellini2 (1998)) proposed that the range of peak frequencies observed is governed primarily by the efficiency of radiative cooling, and that the other physical parameters strongly depend on it. They found an inverse correlation between the energy of the Lorentz factor of particles emitting at the peaks of the SED ($`\gamma _{\mathrm{peak}}`$) and the energy density of the magnetic and radiation field of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{peak}}U^{0.6}`$. This correlation was extended later on for low power (high peaked) BL Lacs by taking into account the finite time for the injection of particles in the jet (Ghisellini et al. ghisellini02 (2002)). Combined modelling of the time-dependent electron injection and the self consistent radiation transport in jets of high peaked blazars lead to the conclusion that differences in the appearance can be explained by either self-synchrotron or external Compton dominated processes (Böttcher & Chiang ssc/ec (2002)). Other studies focussed on the importance of shock events in the blazar jets to explain variability on short timescales (e.g. Bicknell & Wagner bicknell (2002)). Based on these models the most important factor in the appearance of blazars seems nowadays the energy density of the jet. Maraschi & Tavecchio (diskjet (2002)) showed that this energy density is related to the accretion rate in the AGN disk and proposed that all blazar types have similar black hole masses but that the low power blazars exhibit lower accretion rates.

Unlike all other AGNs, and different from RBLs also, the space density or the luminosity of XBLs showed an increase with time (e.g. Rector et al. emssbllac (2000)). This is called negative evolution. Bade et al. (bade (1998)) probed this property with a new ROSAT selected XBL sample and confirmed the negative evolution only for extreme XBLs, e.g. HBLs with very high energy cutoffs ($`\mathrm{log}\nu _{\mathrm{peak}}>16.5`$). The result for less extreme XBLs, called intermediate-energy cutoff BL Lacs (IBLs) by Bade et al., was compatible with no evolution. This difference in evolutionary behaviour indicated the presence of a smooth transition between HBLs and LBLs. However, these findings were based on only 39 BL Lacs, prompting us to increase the size of this sample considerably. The results of this effort, the HRX-BL Lac sample presented here, comprises now 77 BL Lacs and is the largest complete XBL sample so far.

Recent models tried to explain the different evolutionary behaviour of HBLs and LBLs by assuming that BL Lacs start as LBLs and evolve into HBLs as they grow older (Georganopoulos & Marscher georganopoulos (1998), Cavaliere & D’Elia bms (2002)). As described by e.g. Padovani & Urry the spectral energy distributions (SED) of BL Lacs are characterized by two components, both consisting of beamed continuum emission from the plasma of the jets. The first component is synchrotron emission, peaking in the mm to far IR for LBLs. The second component is inverse Compton (IC) emission peaking at MeV energies. HBLs have SEDs peaking in the keV and in the GeV-TeV band respectively. A decrease of power of the jets during the BL Lac evolution would then be accompanied by an increase of the peak frequencies and accordingly a transformation of the LBLs into HBLs (Georganopoulos & Marscher georganopoulos (1998)). This model is in fact valid for the whole blazar class: BL Lacs in general show lower power and beaming factors than the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs), as revealed by e.g. Madau et al. (madau (1987)), Padovani (padovani (1992)), Ghisellini et al. (ghisellini3 (1993)). It naturally explains the different evolution, which is slightly negative for HBLs, slightly positive for LBLs, and clearly positive for the FSRQ/blazar class. This model explains the different types of BL Lac objects only by different global intrinsic power (Maraschi & Rovetti maraschi (1994)), and not by a different viewing angle. Nevertheless different orientation is probably important as secondary effect necessary to explain the large scatter of observed quantities.

The HRX-BL Lac sample contributes to the discussion with a large and complete sample of X-ray selected BL Lac objects. Previous studies (e.g. Fossati et al. fossati (1998)) used a compilation of different BL Lac surveys, like the X-ray selected EMSS (Stocke et al. EMSS (1991), Rector et al. emssbllac (2000)), the radio selected 1 Jy BL Lac sample (Stickel et al. stickel (1991), Rector & Stocke rector (2001)), and a FSRQ sample derived from the 2 Jy radio sample of Wall & Peacock (2Jy (1985)) to investigate the overall picture of the blazar class, ranging from the FSRQs to the BL Lac objects. In contrast to this the HRX-BL Lac survey is concentrating on a blazar subclass, the HBL and IBLs, and is homogeneous in having the same selection criteria for all objects, making it comparable with the REX-survey (Maccacaro et al. rex1 (1998), Caccianiga et al. rex2 (1999)), the DRXBS (Perlman et al. DXRBS (1998), Landt et al. landt (2002)), and the sedentary multifrequency BL Lac sample (Giommi, Menna, & Padovani sedentary (1999)).

We will describe our selection method of BL Lac candidates in Section 2 and the results of the identification process using literature data and own observations in Section 3. The spectral energy distribution of the HRX-BL Lac sample is analyzed in Section 4, where we demonstrate that for the HBL class the knowledge about the X-ray and optical flux is sufficient to determine the peak frequency of the synchrotron branch. The spatial distribution of the sample is described in Section 5. We conclude with a discussion of the compatibility of the results from the HRX BL Lac sample with recent studies.

Throughout the article a cosmology with $`H_0=50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{sec}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ and a deceleration parameter $`q_0=0.5`$, assuming a Friedmann universe with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, has been used.

## 2  BL Lac candidate selection

In the beginning the HRX-BL Lac sample originated from the Hamburg-RASS Bright X-ray AGN sample (HRX), which was created by identification of the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS) with the aid of objective prism plates of the Hamburg Quasar Survey (HQS; Hagen et al. HQS (1995)). The BL Lac subsample was selected on an area of $`1687\mathrm{deg}^2`$ with a count-rate limit of $`hcps0.075\mathrm{sec}^1`$ and on additional $`1150\mathrm{deg}^2`$ with a limit of $`hcps0.15\mathrm{sec}^1`$. This sample was analyzed by Bade et al. (bade (1998)) and is referred here as the HRX-BL Lac core sample. It consists of 39 BL Lacs, 34 of which are also part of the present sample.

The fraction of BL Lacs in the HRX was $`10\%`$. Therefore, an increase of the sample size based on optical identification alone is rather inefficient. This can be alleviated using radio information, as all BL Lacs from the core sample were detected as radio sources in the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS, Condon et al. NVSS (1998)). Also, to the authors knowledge, all known BL Lac objects do have radio counterparts down to the $`2.5`$ mJy level, which is similar to the detection limit of the NVSS. We concluded therefore that for the high X-ray count-rates used we can include radio detection in the NVSS as selection criterium without loosing BL Lac objects. As X-ray input we used the ROSAT Bright Source Catalog (RASS-BSC; Voges et al. RASSBSC (1999)) with a count-rate limit ($`0.52.0\mathrm{keV}`$) of $`hcps0.09\mathrm{sec}^1`$. We cross-correlated this catalogue with the NVSS adopting an error circle of 30″ around the X-ray position. We extended the sky area studied to $`4768\mathrm{deg}^2`$ encompassing the area of $`2837\mathrm{deg}^2`$ studied by Bade et al. (bade (1998)), and we applied a unique limit of $`hcps0.09\mathrm{sec}^1`$. The boundaries of the area are given in Table 1.

The cross-correlation yielded 223 matches between X-ray and radio sources. The complete list of these objects is given in Table 8 (page 8). The coordinates listed are the X-ray positions (J2000.0). More than $`99.9\%`$ of the sources have a positioning error $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ 25″ (Voges et al. RASSBSC (1999)). The column “Name” lists alternative names to the ROSAT designation, when available. Redshifts and classification are taken from the NED or SIMBAD database or were determined on the base of own follow-up observations. All objects, for which we obtained own data are marked.

The cross correlation might be incomplete for lobe-dominated radio sources, as in those cases the radio emission will consist of more than one component offset from the X-ray position. However, for none of the X-Ray BSC sources we found multiple radio sources within the search radius, and as BL Lacs are core-dominated radio sources no selection biases are expected.

## 3  Classification of BL Lac candidates

### 3.1 Results from NED and SIMBAD database queries

The 223 candidates were classified in a two-step process. First we searched for known optical counterparts in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)111The NED is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. and in the SIMBAD222The SIMBAD Astronomical Database is operated by the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. database. Special care was taken to avoid confusion of BL Bac objects with normal galaxies and other types of AGNs. A database entry of an object as “galaxy” without spectroscopic information was not accepted as an identification, because nearby BL Lac objects in elliptical galaxies might not have been recognized. For galaxies with redshift information and for objects with “AGN” or “QSO” identification but without additional information (e.g. redshift) the original literature was consulted before the object was dismissed as BL Lac.

In total 101 objects could be classified this way.333at the time of writing this paper, already 205 of the objects have a classification in the NED Of the remaining objects a few candidates were classifed as stars on the objective prism plates of the HQS, and another few as obvious clusters of galaxies based on direct plates and on the fact that these sources show extended X-ray emission. For all other candidates follow-up observations were obtained.

### 3.2 Observations of the remaining unclassified BL Lac candidates

Spectroscopic observations to classify the remaining BL Lac candidates and to determine their redshifts were made with the 3.5m telescope on Calar Alto equipped with the multiobject spectrograph MOSCA and with the 4.2m WHT on La Palma equipped with ISIS (Table 2). Most of the results from the 1997 observation runs have already been presented in Bade et al. (bade (1998)). For the classification with MOSCA, we used the G500 grism, which covers a wavelength range $`42508400`$ Å with a pixel-to-pixel resolution of 12 Å. If necessary, additional spectra were taken with the G1000 and R1000 grisms to determine redshifts. These spectra have a resolution of 6 Å and cover the ranges 4400–6600 Å and 5900–8000 Å respectively. The spectra were reduced in a standard way: bias subtraction, flat-field correction using morning and evening skyflats, and response determination of the detector using spectrophotometric standard stars. BL Lac objects by definition have no or very weak emission lines. Integration times of $`1000\mathrm{}2000\mathrm{sec}`$ were needed to detect the weak absorption lines of the host galaxy, which is often out-shined by the non-thermal continuum of the point-like central synchrotron source. Most observations were made under non-photometric conditions.

Optical photometry in the Johnson B band has been obtained for many of the optically faint BL Lacs with the Calar Alto 1.23m telescope (Beckmann 2000a ). Especially for several of the very faint objects ($`B>20\mathrm{mag}`$) no reliable photometry was available before. For these objects we have now optical magnitudes with an error of $`\mathrm{\Delta }B0.1\mathrm{mag}`$. For the other objects the acquisition frames of the spectroscopic runs have been used to determine a B magnitude, or values from the literature have been taken. For the brighter objects ($`B<18\mathrm{mag}`$) also the HQS calibrated objective prism plates have been used, which have an error of $`\mathrm{\Delta }B0.3\mathrm{mag}`$.

### 3.3 Results from follow-up observations

Follow-up observations were made of 117 objects, including the unidentified candidates from the BSC/NVSS correlation and additionally a number of objects, which were considered to be promising BL Lac candidates, but did not match the selection criteria described before (e.g. too low X-ray count rate). In total we discovered 53 BL Lac objects according to the classification criteria, which are discussed in Section 3.4. As a considerable number of the objects was discovered independently by other groups in the meantime, we are left over with 26 new BL Lacs: 11 from the BSC/NVSS correlation and 15 from the additionally observed objects.

#### 3.3.1 The complete HRX BL Lac sample

The 11 new BL Lac objects discovered among the objects from the BSC/NVSS correlation are marked in Table 8 and their spectra are included in Figure 8. Based on our spectra we could confirm or revise redshifts for several other BL Lac objects. Five objects from this correlation with other identifications than BL Lac and without NED or SIMBAD entry so far, are marked in Table 8 in addition.

Summarizing, the optical identification of the 223 BSC/NVSS objects leads to the following distribution of object classes within the radio/X-ray correlation (Table 3): 35% are BL Lac objects, 36% are other AGNs (QSO, Seyfert 1/2, FSRQs), 11% galaxies (including starburst galaxies and LINERs), 13% cluster of galaxies, and 4% stars (including 2 supernova remnants). Only a fraction of 1% of the 223 candidates is yet not identified.

The 77 BL Lacs from the BSC/NVSS correlation are called the complete HRX BL Lac sample. In comparison to the EMSS BL Lac sample, this sample probes a population of objects with lower $`\alpha _{RO}`$ and $`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}`$ values and contains therefore more radio quiet and stronger X-ray dominated objects. The HRX-BL Lac sample is the largest complete sample of X-ray selected BL Lac objects. Table 4 compares the HRX BL Lac sample with four other X-ray selected BL Lac Surveys: the EMSS based sample (Rector et al. emssbllac (2000)), the sample by Laurent-Muehleisen et al. (RGB (1999)) based on the correlation of the RASS with the Green Bank radio survey, the REX survey using the NVSS in combination with the sources found in the ROSAT pointed observations (Caccianiga et al. rex2 (1999)), and the DXRBS (Perlman et al. DXRBS (1998)), which uses the ROSAT data base WGACAT and PMN/NVSS radio data.

#### 3.3.2 The extended HRX BL Lac sample

Among the BL Lac candidates observed additionally we could confirm another 27 BL Lac objects, from which 15 did not appear in the literature so far. Together with the 77 BL Lacs from the complete sample they form the extended HRX BL Lac sample comprising 104 objects. The spectra of the 15 new BL Lacs are presented in Figure 8 together with the 12 new BL Lacs from the complete sample. The spectra of all other objects including those from objects not identified as BL Lacs will be accessible on the web444http://www.hs.uni-hamburg.de/bllac.html.

The properties of the 104 BL Lacs of the extended sample are presented in Table 9 (page 9). The BL Lacs discovered additionally are marked by an asterisk and the new BL Lacs are labeled by “new”. This Table lists the object names, the NVSS radio coordinates (J2000.0), redshifts, ROSAT PSPC (0.5 - 2.0 keV) X-ray fluxes in $`10^{12}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{sec}^1`$, 1.4 GHz radio fluxes in mJy from the NVSS radio catalogue, B magnitudes, K magnitudes, and the calcium break index. The radio positions have an error of less than 5″ (for the faintest objects) and are therefore considerably more accurate than the X-ray positions given in Table 8.

The RASS-BSC fluxes have been computed by using the count rate and a single-power law with free fitted absorption $`N_H`$. The spectral slope and $`N_H`$ are determined by the hardness ratios, a method described by Schartel (schartel (1994)). The hardness ratio is defined as $`HR=(HS)/(H+S)`$ with $`H`$ and $`S`$ being the number of counts in the hard and soft energy bands; typically two ratios are computed: $`HR1`$ with energy ranges $`S=0.10.4\mathrm{keV}`$ and $`H=0.52.0\mathrm{keV}`$, and $`HR2`$ with $`S=0.50.9\mathrm{keV}`$ and $`H=1.02.0\mathrm{keV}`$ (Voges et al. RASSBSC (1999)). The values for the hardness ratios range by definition from $`+1`$ for extremely hard to $`1`$ for very soft X-ray spectra. The error estimate for the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ and $`\alpha _\mathrm{X}`$ values is based on the hardness ratios only, not on the photon spectrum itself. Therefore this method does not give $`\chi ^2`$ values, but is able to determine $`68\%(1\sigma )`$ errors. This is done by exploring the hardness-ratio, spectral slope, and $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ parameter space, determining the $`1\sigma `$ region within it for a given set of parameter components.

The near infrared data are taken from the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS, Skrutskie et al. 2MASSa (1995), Stiening et al. 2MASSb (1995)). In Table 9 only the $`K`$-magnitude is listed, but for the analysis we also used $`J`$ and $`H`$ from the 2MASS.

The calcium break index (Ca-break) is defined as follows (Dressler & Shectman cabreak (1987)):

$$Cabreak[\%]=100\frac{f_{\mathrm{upper}}f_{\mathrm{lower}}}{f_{\mathrm{upper}}}$$
(1)
with $`f_{\mathrm{upper}}`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{lower}}`$ being the mean fluxes measured in the 3750 Å $`<\lambda <`$ 3950 Å and 4050 Å $`<\lambda <`$ 4250 Å objects rest frame band respectively. The measurement of the break was possible only if the redshift was known and if the break was within the spectral range covered by the observation. Therefore break values are available for 30 of the HRX-BL Lac only. In seven cases the break value is negative. This is in most cases due to a low signal to noise of the spectra. Only for one object (1RXS J111706.3+201410) the negative calcium break index is not consistent with a value of 0% and we assume that here the underlying power law of the jet emission outshines the host galaxy, so that the measured negative ’break value’ is in fact based on the synchrotron component.

Figure 1 shows the redshift distribution of the HRX-BL Lac extended and complete samples. The mean redshift for the complete and extended sample are $`\overline{z}=0.31`$ and $`\overline{z}=0.34`$, respectively. We note that in comparison to the core sample no new BL Lacs with $`z>0.7`$ were found, which contribute to the complete sample.

### 3.4  BL Lac classification criteria

The characterizing feature of BL Lac spectra in the optical is the presence of a non-thermal continuum which is well described by a single power law. A second component is the emission of the host galaxy, which contributes absorption features in addition to continuum emission. If the BL Lac itself shows no emission lines at all, redshift determination is only possible by identifying these absorption features. The host galaxies are in majority giant elliptical galaxies (e.g. Urry et al. urryhost (2000)), having strong absorption features caused by the stellar content.

Expected absorption features in the optical, which can be used for redshift determination, have already been discussed in detail by Bade et al. (bade (1998)). The most prominent feature in the spectra of elliptical galaxies is the so-called “calcium break” at 4000 Å. Its strength is given by the calcium break index, as defined before.

Most of the AGN with emission lines found in the radio/X-ray correlation are Seyfert type galaxies or LINER (see Table 3). These AGN do not show a calcium break. For the other objects the strength of the calcium break can be used to distinguish between normal elliptical galaxies and BL Lac objects. For the former, this contrast is $`40\%`$ with the higher flux to the red side of the break. Our criteria to classify BL Lac objects were defined by Bade et al. (bade (1998)) for the core sample and are spectroscopically similar to those applied to the Einstein Medium-Sensitivity Survey (EMSS; Stocke et al. EMSS (1991)). However, we relaxed the upper limit for the strength of the calcium break index from 25% to now 40% when other properties of the object were consistent with a BL Lac classification. This follows the findings of previous studies (Marchã et al. marcha (1996); Laurent-Muehleisen et al. RGB (1999); Rector et al. emssbllac (2000)) that there exist galaxies with strengths $`25\%<`$ Ca-break $`<40\%`$, which fulfill all other selection criteria for BL Lac objects. Explicitly the selection criteria are now:

* No emission lines with W$`{}_{\lambda }{}^{}>5`$ Å
* The contrast of the Ca II break from the host galaxy must be less than 40%.

With respect to the first criterium no misclassifications are expected as there were no objects found within the BSC/NVSS correlation with weak emission lines and equivalent widths of several 10 Å.

Borderline cases are more likely with respect to the calcium break index, because the transition between non-active elliptical galaxies and BL Lacs is smooth. This is clearly shown in Figure 2, in which our measured break strength is plotted vs. the optical luminosity LB, as derived in Section 4.2. Both quantities are correlated and almost evenly distributed up to Ca-break $``$40%.

The observed correlation might be affected by a varying fraction of host galaxy light included in the spectra. In nearby objects the BL Lac host galaxy might not have been fully covered by the slit and therefore the calcium break strength could have been underestimated. However, as the low-redshift objects are mainly the less luminous ones, this effect cannot explain the decreasing strength of the calcium break with increasing luminosities.

This correlation is not only seen in the optical domain, but is also present if we use radio, near infrared or X-ray luminosity instead. In all wavelength regions from the optical to the X-rays the correlation between emitted luminosity and break strength is significant. Therefore we would like to stress the point that the observed correlations are not due to observational selection effects.

Misclassifications might have been occurred also due to large errors for the measured break strengths in some of our spectra with low signal to noise ratio. However for all objects except three of the HRX-BL Lac complete sample the break strengths are $`<`$25%, making a misclassification unlikely. The three objects with a calcium break strength in the range $`25\%<Cabreak<40\%`$ are 1ES 0927+500, 1RXS 114754.9+220548, and 1RXS 151040.8+333515 (cf. Table 9) and they were included in the sample, because they fulfill other BL Lac properties, for example strong polarization ($`P>6\%`$) in the NVSS.

## 4  Spectral Energy Distribution

To study the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the HRX-BL Lac objects, overall spectral indices were calculated to derive general correlations within the sample. Throughout this Section the extended sample is analyzed. Ledden and O’Dell (indices (1985)) defined the overall spectral index between two frequencies:

$$\alpha _{1/2}=\frac{\mathrm{log}(f_1/f_2)}{\mathrm{log}(\nu _1/\nu _2)}$$
(2)
Here $`f_1`$ and $`f_2`$ are the fluxes at two frequencies $`\nu _1`$ and $`\nu _2`$. As reference frequencies we used 1.4 GHz in the radio ($`\lambda 21\mathrm{cm}`$), 4400 Å in the optical ($`B`$), and $`1\mathrm{keV}`$ ($`\lambda 12.4`$ Å) in the X-ray region to derive the optical-X-ray $`\alpha _{OX}`$, the radio-X-ray $`\alpha _{RX}`$, and the radio-optical $`\alpha _{RO}`$ spectral index.

To compare these indices with those from the literature, shifts due to the use of different reference energies have to be taken into account. It can be shown that these shifts are small as long as the spectral shape within each band can be approximated by a single power law and the spectrum is not curved. Because the radio spectra are flat ($`\alpha _R=0`$), the flux does not change when different reference frequencies are chosen in the radio domain. But by increasing the radio reference frequency, the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RX}}`$ and $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RO}}`$ indices steepen. For example, if the reference frequency is changed from 1.4 to 5 GHz the radio-X-ray index changes by 6%: $`\alpha _{RX}(5\mathrm{GHz},1\mathrm{keV})1.06\times \alpha _{RX}(1.4\mathrm{GHz},1\mathrm{keV})`$. If our spectral indices are compared with those using a larger X-ray reference energy, similar values for $`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}`$ and $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RX}}`$ are expected. Because of $`f_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$, the expected flux at a higher energy is lower and the flux ratios increase. At the same time however, the frequency interval increases by about the same factor, if we assume $`\alpha _E=1`$, which is a good approximation for the mean X-ray spectral energy index of BL Lac objects The same reasoning applies for the optical region, where $`\alpha _E<1`$, and larger changes of the relevant indices are not expected.

The HRX-BL Lac sample shows typical values for the mean overall spectral indices: $`<\alpha _{OX}>=0.94\pm 0.23`$, $`<\alpha _{RX}>=0.55\pm 0.08`$, $`<\alpha _{RO}>=0.37\pm 0.09`$, if compared to Wolter et al. (saxpap1 (1998)), Laurent-Muehleisen et al. (RGB (1999)), and Beckmann et al. (saxpap (2002)).

The region in the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}\alpha _{RO}`$ plane, which is covered by the HRX-BL Lac sample, is shown in Figure 3. The center of the area covered by this sample is similar to that of the EMSS BL Lacs (see Padovani & Giommi emss (1995)) though a larger range in $`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}`$ and $`\alpha _{RO}`$ is covered.

### 4.1 Peak frequency

In order to get a more physical description of the spectral energy distribution of the BL Lac objects, we used a simple model to fit the synchrotron branch of the BL Lac. This has the advantage of describing the SED with one parameter (the peak frequency) instead of a set of three parameters ($`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}`$, $`\alpha _{RO}`$, and $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RX}}`$). It has been shown by several authors that the synchrotron branch of the BL Lac SED is well approximated by a parabolic fit in the $`\mathrm{log}\nu \mathrm{log}\nu f_\nu `$ plane (cf. Landau et al. landau (1986), Comastri et al. pspcreduc (1995), Sambruna et al. sambruna (1996), Fossati et al. fossati (1998)). In this way the peak position ($`\nu _{\mathrm{peak}}`$), the total luminosity and the total flux of the synchrotron emission can be derived. We chose the parameterization using fluxes $`\mathrm{log}\nu f_\nu =a(\mathrm{log}\nu )^2+b\mathrm{log}\nu +c`$. Using luminosities instead of fluxes would change the absolute constant c only, leaving the position of the peak frequency unaffected.

If only three data points were given (one in the radio, optical, and X-ray band), the parabola was definite. When more than three data points were available (i.e. the $`K`$, $`H`$, and $`J`$ near infrared measurements from the 2MASS), a $`\chi ^2`$ minimization was used to determine best fit parameters. In principle, also the spectral slope in the X-ray band could be used to constrain the fit further. Because of the large uncertainties involved deriving these slopes from hardness ratio in the RASS, they were used mostly for consistency checks. Only in cases, where the parabolic fit resulted in peak frequencies above the highest energies observed, i.e. for objects with $`\mathrm{log}\nu _{\mathrm{peak}}`$ above 2 keV and steep X-ray spectra, the slopes were taken to account. An example for a parabolic fit is shown in Figure 4. $`\nu _{\mathrm{peak}}`$ is sensitive for the $`f_x/f_{opt}`$-relation, and is therefore strongly correlated with $`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}`$. This is shown in Figure 5.

The relation can be approximated by a polynomial of third degree. Using an F-test, parabolic fits of higher degree gave no improvements. Thus the peak frequency can also be determined, in the case no radio data is available by applying

$$\mathrm{log}\nu _{\mathrm{peak}}=3.0\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}^3+13.8\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}^223.3\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}+28.5(\pm 0.51)$$
(3)
The standard error ($`\sigma =0.51`$) is based on the deviation of the data points from the fit in Figure 5. This result is comparable to that found by Fossati et al. (fossati (1998)) when studying the dependency of $`\alpha _{RO}`$ and $`\alpha _{RX}`$ on the peak frequency.

### 4.2  Correlation of luminosities with the SED

A set of physical parameters which are correlated to the peak frequency are the luminosities in the different wavelength regions. To compute luminosities for all objects, the unknown redshifts were set to $`z=0.3`$ which is the mean value for the HRX-BL Lac sample. While the luminosities $`L_R`$ in the radio, $`L_K`$ in the near infrared, and $`L_B`$ in the optical region are decreasing with increasing peak frequency, the situation at X-ray energies is the other way round (as reported also by e.g. Mei, Zhang, & Jiang Mei (2002), Beckmann 1999a ).

The details about the correlation analysis are listed in Table 5, including the confidence level of the correlations.

The total luminosity Lsync within the synchrotron branch has been derived by integrating the spectral energy distribution between the radio and the X-ray band. This is a reasonable approximation as long as the peak frequency is below 1 keV ($`\mathrm{log}\nu =17.4`$), but systematically underestimates Lsync if the peak frequency is shifted beyond $`1\mathrm{keV}`$. The relation of peak frequency with the total luminosities does not show a clear correlation.

## 5  Distribution in space

### 5.1 $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$-test

Redshifts are available for 64 (83%) of the 77 BL Lac objects which form the complete sample. Therefore it is possible to determine a luminosity function for the HRX-BL Lacs and to study the evolution by application of an $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$-test. The direct images of the BL Lacs without redshift determination show point-like structure, and most of them have optical spectra consistent with high redshifts ($`z>0.5`$). The difficulty in determining redshifts for them indicate that these objects are highly core dominated with the host galaxy outshined by the BL Lac core. This implies that the optical luminosity of these objects should be quite high.

The $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$-test is a simple method developed by Avni & Bahcall (veva (1980)) based on the $`V/V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ test of Schmidt (schmidt (1968)). $`V_\mathrm{e}`$ stands for the volume, which is enclosed by the object, and $`V_\mathrm{a}`$ is the accessible volume, in which the object could have been found (e.g. due to a flux limit of a survey). Avni & Bahcall showed that different survey areas with different flux limits in various energy bands can be combined by the $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$-test. In the case of no evolution $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}=0.5`$ is expected and following Avni & Bahcall (veva (1980)) the error $`\sigma _m(n)`$ for a given mean value $`m=V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$ based on $`n`$ objects is:

$$\sigma _m(n)=\sqrt{\frac{1/3m+m^2}{n}}$$
(4)
We computed the accessible volume $`V_{a,i}`$ for each object by applying the survey limits. In most cases this volume is determined by the X-ray flux limit, only $`10\%`$ of the objects have a smaller $`V_{a,i}`$ for the radio data, due to the radio flux limit of $`2.5\mathrm{mJy}`$.

Applied to the complete sample the test yields $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}=0.42\pm 0.04`$. This result shows that HBLs have been less numerous and/or less luminous in the past, but the significance is only $`2\sigma `$. The negative evolution of X-ray selected BL Lac objects has been reported several times before. We also performed a K-S test in order to determine the probability of uniform $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$ distribution, which would mean no evolution. For the whole HRX-BL Lac sample the probability of no evolution is rather small ($`3.5\%`$).

Thanks to the large number of objects with known redshifts within the HRX-BL Lac sample it is possible to examine dependencies of the evolution on other parameters, like the overall spectral indices. A division into two groups (more and less X-ray dominated objects) according to $`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}`$ was already made by Bade et al. (bade (1998)) for the core sample and resulted in a lower $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$= $`0.34\pm 0.06`$ for the HBLs ($`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}<0.9`$) than for the IBLs within the sample. The $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$ = $`0.48\pm 0.08`$ for IBLs was even consistent with no evolution. Dividing the HRX-BL Lac sample accordingly we now get for the HBLs ($`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}<0.9`$) $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}=0.45\pm 0.05`$ (N=34) and for the IBLs $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}=0.40\pm 0.06`$ (N=30). The difference between the two groups has practically vanished, and we are thus not able to confirm the different types of evolution for the HBLs and the IBLs. But still there are 13 objects within the HRX-BL Lac sample without known redshift, and nearly all of them are IBLs. Including them into the $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$-test by assigning them either the mean redshift of our sample ($`z=0.3`$) or a high redshift ($`z=0.7`$) does not change the mean $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$ values significantly. The results of the different $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$-tests are shown in Table 6. Assigning even higher redshifts would increase the $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$ for the IBLs, but we consider this unlikely, as the luminosities would then become exceptionally high. For example in 0716+714, PG 1246+586, or PG 1437+398 the X-ray luminosities would exceed values of $`L_\mathrm{X}=10^{46}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ in the $`0.52.0\mathrm{keV}`$ range.

We conclude therefore that the HRX sample shows no difference in evolution for HBLs and IBLs. The results presented here are in good agreement with recent other investigations on the evolutionary behaviour of BL Lac objects, as shown in Table 6. Except the sedentary survey (Giommi, Menna, & Padovani sedentary (1999)) none of the studies could confirm the highly significant negative evolution found e.g. by Bade et al. (bade (1998) for the HRX-BL Lac core sample or by Wolter et al. (wolter94 (1994)) for the EMSS BL Lacs. The best sample to be compared with should be the REX survey, which also uses the combination of RASS and NVSS data, although going to lower X-ray flux limits while using only the are of the PSPC pointed observation. The REX has also a mean redshift of $`z=0.3`$ and the $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$ are within one sigma when compared to the HRX-BL Lac sample.

### 5.2 X-ray Luminosity functions

For the $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$-test the knowledge of the redshifts is of minor importance. However, the lumminosity function which defines the space density at a given object luminosity can only be derived when having a complete sample with known distances. Based on this function we wish to estimate the fraction of AGN which appear to be BL Lac objects. To determine the cumulative luminosity function (CLF), one has to count all objects within a complete sample above a given luminosity, and divide this number by the volume $`V_\mathrm{a}`$ which has been surveyed for these objects. We follow here the procedure described by Marshall (marshall (1985)) to derive the space density and the corresponding errors. The survey area of the HRX-BL Lac complete sample is $`4768\mathrm{deg}^2`$ (Table 1) . Because the fraction of objects without known redshift is 17% the effective area which is used to compute the luminosity function is decreased by this fraction to $`3959\mathrm{deg}^2`$. This implies that the redshift distribution of the missing objects is the same as for the rest. As discussed before, this assumption might be incorrect, as we expect many of them having rather high redshifts. The effect of different evolution for high and low redshift objects, described in the next paragraph, would be even stronger in this case.

The complete sample is large enough to divide it into a high redshift and a low redshift bin in order to examine possible differences in their CLF. The dividing value was set to the median of the HRX-BL Lac sample $`z_{median}=0.272`$. To derive high and low redshift CLFs the accessible volume $`V_{a,i}`$ for the objects with $`z<0.272`$ has been restricted to $`z=0.272`$ whenever $`z_{max,i}>0.272`$. For the high redshift objects the accessible volume was computed from $`z=0.272`$ up to $`z_{max,i}`$. The resulting two cumulative luminosity functions are shown in Figure 6.

There seem to be differences between the high and low redshift CLF. The slope of the low redshift CLF is flatter. A linear regression gives a slope of $`0.9`$ while for $`z>0.272`$ the slope is $`1.4`$. But in the overlapping regime at $`L_\mathrm{X}(0.52.0\mathrm{keV})10^{45}`$ the luminosity functions show similar slopes.

The left panel of Figure 7 shows the comparison of the HRX-BL Lac complete sample X-ray luminosity function with the results from the EMSS BL Lac sample (Wolter et al. wolter94 (1994), Padovani & Giommi emss (1995)). The expected luminosities of the HRX-BL Lacs within the EINSTEIN IPC energy band ($`0.33.5\mathrm{keV}`$) were calculated assuming a spectral slope of $`\alpha _X=1.0`$. Space densities are given as number of objects per $`\mathrm{Gpc}^3`$ and X-ray luminosity bin following Padovani & Giommi (emss (1995)). The data from the EMSS are consistent with those from the HRX-BL Lac complete sample within the $`1\sigma `$ error bars. The marginal differences can be due to systematic errors for the calculated luminosities in the IPC band because of differing spectral slopes, or resulting from differences in the calibration of the IPC and the PSPC detectors.

In the right panel of Figure 7 we compare the differential luminosity function of the complete sample with the corresponding function for AGNs at z$`<`$0.5. The AGN X-ray luminosity function was taken from the ROSAC sample (“A ROSAT based Search for AGN-Clusters”, Tesch tesch (2000)). This AGN sample was constructed similarly as the HRX-BL Lac sample and both samples match closely in brightnesses and redshifts. The ROSAC-AGN sample contains 182 RASS-AGNs with $`z<0.5`$ identified in an area of $`363\mathrm{deg}^2`$ in the constellation of Ursa Major. The AGN X-ray luminosities have been corrected for the different X-ray band ($`0.12.4\mathrm{keV}`$ instead $`0.52.0\mathrm{keV}`$) using the same spectral slopes used for the ROSAC sample.

We find that the space density of BL Lacs in the luminosity range $`44<\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}<46`$ is about 10% of the space density of AGNs. In case that all AGNs have jets and would be classified as BL Lacs when looking into their jet, an jet opening angle of $`50^{}`$ would follow. But as the jet emission is expected to be beamed, the BL Lacs appear to be brighter than they are. Following Urry & Shaefer (urryshaefer (1984)) the observed luminosity is $`L_{obs}=\delta ^pL_{emi}`$ with $`L_{emi}`$ being the emitted luminosity, and

$$\delta =\frac{1}{\gamma (1\frac{v}{c_0}\mathrm{cos}\theta )}$$
(5)
where $`\gamma `$ is the Lorentz factor of the jet emission. $`p`$ depends on the spectral slope and the jet flow model. For the simple case of a moving blob and continuous reacceleration (Lind & Blandford lind (1985)) which applies e.g. for the model of a wide X-ray jet (Celotti et al. celotti (1993)) the exponent is $`p=3+\alpha `$, where $`\alpha 1`$ is the spectral index. For a conical jet this exponent is $`p=2+\alpha `$ (Urry & Shaefer urryshaefer (1984)). Assuming an jet opening angle of $`\theta 30^{}`$ (Urry & Padovani urry (1995)) and a Lorentz factor $`\gamma 5`$ the amplification factor is $`\delta ^p50`$ (for the conical jet) and $`\delta ^p200`$ (for the wide X-ray jet). Correcting the luminosities accordingly yields a fraction of $`0.1\%`$ BL Lacs among all AGNs. A smaller opening angle and/or larger Lorentz factor would lead to an even lower BL Lac fraction among the AGN.

## 6 Discussion

The large number of objects included in the HRX-BL Lac sample enabled us to study in detail a number of BL Lac properties in different wavelength regions. In the following, we will discuss these properties with special emphasis on their compatibility with the most recent models trying to unify the HBL and LBL objects.

### 6.1 Strength of the calcium break and luminosities

We observed a clear anti-correlation between calcium break strength and the luminosity in the radio, near infrared, optical, and X-rays bands. We explain this with a wide range of luminosities for the non-thermal source, while the host galaxies seem to have approximately constant luminosity. The higher the luminosity of the central source, the more does the core outshine the hosting galaxy, leading to decreasing break strength with increasing luminosity.

The identification of several HRX-BL Lac with $`25\%<\mathrm{Ca}\mathrm{break}<40\%`$ and the smooth extension of the correlation between break strength and luminosities into this range, supports previous findings that BL Lacs can have $`\mathrm{Ca}\mathrm{break}>25\%`$ (Marchã et al. marcha (1996); Laurent-Muehleisen et al. RGB (1999); Rector et al. emssbllac (2000); Landt et al. landt (2002)) in contrast to earlier suggestions (Stocke et al. oldcabreak (1989)).

Landt et al. (landt (2002)) studied in detail the dependency of the Calcium break strength on the luminosity of the blazars inside the DXRBS sample (Padovani padovanidxrbs (2001)). They found the same correlation as described here for the HRX-BL Lac sample and show that the Calcium break values decrease with increasing jet power, and therefore with increasing luminosity. Based on this they conclude that the break value of BL Lac objects could be an indicator of the orientation. Nevertheless different luminosities of the core component (i.e. of the jet) will also play a major role in the effect, and it seems to be difficult to disentangle the influence from different orientation and from different jet luminosity. Thus though we find for the HRX-BL Lac sample the same correlation as described by Landt et al. landt (2002) we conclude here only that the break strength is an indicator of different apparent luminosity, either based on different orientation, or on different jet power, or on mixture of both effects.

### 6.2 HBL/LBL: evolutionary dichotomy?

Most of the results for the HRX-BL Lac core sample (Bade et al. bade (1998)) could be confirmed by the complete sample presented here. The most significant discrepancy are the different results of the $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$ test. We found negative evolution using the complete sample, but we did not find differences in evolution, if we divide the sample by $`\alpha _{OX}`$ (or peak frequency).

The results of Bade et al. (bade (1998)) could have been arisen from selection effects due to the “patchy” search area used. A Monte-Carlo simulation done on the HRX-BL Lac complete sample shows however, that this is not the case. By randomly selecting a subsample of 17 BL Lac objects (which is the number of objects for which Bade et al. found different types of evolution) out of the HBLs of the complete sample there is a chance of $`<1\%`$ only to find a $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}<0.35`$.

Another reason for the different results could be related to the different treatment of the radio properties. As radio detection was not a selection criterium in Bade et al., no radio flux limit was taken into account. Applying here the $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$-test to the complete sample (cf. Sect. 5), the accessible volume $`V_\mathrm{a}`$ was determined for $``$10% of the objects by the radio limit. The $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}`$ values are correspondingly increased compared to the case where only X-ray flux limit is taken into account, resulting in a less negative evolution. There remains the fact that no BL Lac objects were found yet, with $`f_\mathrm{R}<2\mathrm{mJy}`$ radio counterparts and the question is still open whether this is a selection effect or not. It could be that our decision to apply the radio detection as selection criterium weakens the negative evolution found in pure X-ray selected samples.

The result, that the evolution of BL Lac objects of the HBL and IBL type is consistent with no evolution is in good agreement with other recent studies. Neither REX or DXRBS, nor the HRX-BL Lac sample show a difference for the more or less X-ray dominated BL Lacs. On the contrary it seems that the evolution of the IBL might even be slightly more positive than that of the HBL class. This picture clearly differs from the EMSS BL Lac result of $`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}=0.36\pm 0.05`$, while the sendentary survey, presented by Giommi, Menna & Padovani sedentary (1999) seems not be complete enough up to now to draw a firm conclusion. Caccianiga et al. (rex3 (2002)) argue, that the REX might miss the negative evolution of the HBL is not visible simply because the sample is not deep enough, and this argumentation then would also apply for the HRX-BL Lac sample, which X-ray flux limit is about two times higher than that of the REX BL Lacs. Their simulation result in the conclusion that even a completion of the REX survey might not lead to a highly significant negative evolution ($`2\sigma `$ for the simulated sample).

Finally, the evolution found in the course of this work is in good agreement with that of FR-I galaxies ($`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}=0.40\pm 0.06`$) within the 3CR sample (Laing et al. 1984). This supports the assumption that the FR-I galaxies build the parent population of BL Lac objects (see e.g. Padovani & Urry padourry (1990)).

In contrast to HBLs, the LBLs show weak or positive evolution ($`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}=0.61\pm 0.05`$) as shown for the 1Jy sample by Rector & Stocke (rector (2001)). Following the sequence of blazars, also FSRQs exhibit significant positive evolution ($`V_\mathrm{e}/V_\mathrm{a}=0.58\pm 0.03`$ for the 119 FSRQs in the DXRBS sample; Padovani padovanidxrbs (2001)). Also FR-II radio galaxies and “normal” quasars seem to be more numerous and/or luminous at cosmological distances than in the neighborhood, leaving the question for the reasons of the HBL/LBL evolutionary dichotomy of relevance also in future.

### 6.3 A unifying model for LBL and HBL

The different evolutionary behaviour of HBLs and LBLs is a challenge for all theories to unify both BL Lac types into one class. However, the existence of transition objects and the numerous similar properties of LBLs and HBLs make it plausible that both classes belong to the same parent population.

As described by Böttcher & Dermer (boettcher (2002)) one way to unify both classes would be a transformation of LBLs into HBLs as the BL Lac objects grow older. In this model, BL Lac objects start as LBLs with jets of high energy densities. Strong cooling limits the electron energies leading to cutoff frequencies for the synchrotron component at optical wavelengths and for the IC component in the GeV energy range. As shown by Beckmann et al. (saxpap (2002)), this results in steep X-ray spectra with strong curvature. The core outshines the host galaxy leading to a low calcium break value (Landt et al. landt (2002)) as seen also for the HRX-BL Lac sample (cf. Fig. 2).

When by the time the source of the jet gets less powerful the energy density within the jet decreases (Tavecchio et al. tavecchio (1998)). The cooling efficiency decreases as well resulting in higher cutoff frequencies for HBLs. The shift of the cutoff frequencies to higher energies is therefore accompanied by decreasing bolometric luminosities, which is evident from the decrease of the luminosities in the radio, near IR and optical bands. Due to the increasing peak frequencies of the synchrotron branch more energy is released in the X-ray band and the X-ray luminosity increases quite in contrast to the luminosities at shorter frequencies (cf. Table 5). The X-ray spectra are correspondingly flatter and less curved than in the LBL state (Beckmann & Wolter bewo (2001)).

Objects which do not fit into this scenario are doubtlessly the extremely luminous HBLs, like 1ES 1517+656 (Beckmann et al. 1999b ). The scenario presented here assumes the HBLs to be on average less luminous than the LBLs. Apart from the exceptionally high X-ray luminosity, this object also shows an optical luminosity typical for a Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar (FSRQ). Padovani padovanidxrbs (2001) argues that those high state BL Lacs with high peak frequency might belong to the high energy peaked FSRQ class (HFSRQ), flat-spectrum radio quasars with synchrotron peak in the UV/X-ray band. In this case 1ES 1517+656 should show strong emission lines, e.g. stron $`H_\alpha `$ and $`H_\beta `$ which would be located in the near infrared for this high-redshift BL Lac ($`z=0.7`$) and would have been missed by previous observations.

The HRX-BL Lac sample could be the basis to study the extreme end of the HBL population, the ultra high frequency peaked BL Lac objects (UHBL). Sambruna et al. (sambruna (1996)) argued that objects with cutoff frequencies higher than $`10^{18}\mathrm{Hz}`$ would be detected only in hard X-ray surveys but should be faint at lower frequencies, which would make their discovery difficult.

Nevertheless HBLs have already been detected at TeV energies, as e.g. 1ES 1426+428 (Aharonian et al. 1426a (2002); Horan et al. 1426 (2002)) and 1ES1959+650 (Horns & Konopelko 1959 (2002)). Recently Costamante & Ghisellini (tevcandidates (2002)) showed that it is possible to select candidates for TeV BL Lacs on the basis of the knowledge of the SED, i.e. strong X-ray flux and a sufficiently strong radio-through-optical flux, which results in high peak frequencies of the synchrotron branch.

Also 13 HBLs within the HRX-BL Lac sample show peak frequencies $`\nu _{peak}>10^{18}\mathrm{Hz}`$ from the parabolic fit to the synchrotron branch and three objects even $`\nu _{peak}>10^{19}\mathrm{Hz}`$. 1RXS J121158.1+224236 might even be a UHBL with a peak frequency of the synchrotron branch at $`\nu _{peak}10^{22}\mathrm{Hz}`$ . To confirm the high peak frequencies, for this extreme source, observations with the BeppoSAX satellite have been performed and results will be presented in a forthcoming paper. Investigations in the gamma region ($`1\mathrm{MeV}`$) are needed to decide whether these energies are dominated by the synchrotron emission or if already the inverse Compton branch is rising. The SPI spectrograph on-board the INTEGRAL mission (see e.g. Winkler & Hermsen INTEGRAL (2000)), which has been successfully launched in October 2002, will allow to do spectroscopy in this energy region ($`20\mathrm{keV}8\mathrm{MeV}`$).

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank the anonymous referee for the valuable suggestions which helped us to improve the paper. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We acknowledge support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through grants Re 353/39-1 and En 176/23-1.

## 7 Appendix: Tables to the HRX-BL Lac sample