We report on the first millisecond timescale radio interferometric search for the new class of transient known as fast radio bursts (FRBs). We used the Very Large Array (VLA) for a 166-hour, millisecond imaging campaign to detect and precisely localize an FRB. We observed at 1.4 GHz and produced visibilities with 5 ms time resolution over 256 MHz of bandwidth. Dedispersed images were searched for transients with dispersion measures from 0 to 3000 pc/cm3. No transients were detected in observations of high Galactic latitude fields taken from September 2013 though October 2014. Observations of a known pulsar show that images typically had a thermal-noise limited sensitivity of 120 mJy/beam (8 sigma; Stokes I) in 5 ms and could detect and localize transients over a wide field of view. Our nondetection limits the FRB rate to less than 7e4/sky/day (95% confidence) above a fluence limit of 1.2 Jy-ms. Assuming a Euclidean flux distribution, the VLA rate limit is inconsistent with the published rate of Thornton et al. We recalculate previously published rates with a homogeneous consideration of the effects of primary beam attenuation, dispersion, pulse width, and sky brightness. This revises the FRB rate downward and shows that the VLA observations had a roughly 60% chance of detecting a typical FRB and that a 95% confidence constraint would require roughly 500 hours of similar VLA observing. Our survey also limits the repetition rate of an FRB to 2 times less than any known repeating millisecond radio transient.
We present the discovery of an extended ring of ultraviolet emission surrounding the AGB star U Hya in archival observations performed by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX). This is the third discovery of extended UV emission from a carbon AGB star and the first from an AGB star with a detached shell. From imaging and photometric analysis of the FUV and NUV images, we determined that the ultraviolet ring has a radius of $\sim 110^{\prime\prime}$, thus indicating that the emitting material is likely associated with the detached shell seen in the infrared. We find that scattering of the central point source of NUV and FUV emission by the dust shell is negligible. Moreover, we find that scattering of the interstellar radiation field by the dust shell can contribute at most $\sim10%$ of the FUV flux. Morphological and photometric evidence suggests that shocks caused by the star's motion through space and, possibly, shock-excited H$_2$ molecules are the most likely origins of the UV flux. In contrast to previous examples of extended UV emission from AGB stars, the extended UV emission from U Hya does not show a bow shock-like structure, which is consistent with a lower space velocity and lower interstellar medium density. This suggests the detached dust shell is the source of the UV emitting material and can be used to better understand the formation of detached shells.
We identify stars in the $\delta$ Sct instability strip that do not pulsate in p modes at the 50-$\mu$mag limit, using Kepler data. Spectral classification and abundance analyses from high-resolution spectroscopy allow us to identify chemically peculiar stars, in which the absence of pulsations is not surprising. The remaining stars are chemically normal, yet they are not $\delta$ Sct stars. Their lack of observed p modes cannot be explained through any known mechanism. However, they are mostly distributed around the edges of the $\delta$ Sct instability strip, which allows for the possibility that they actually lie outside the strip once the uncertainties are taken into account. We investigated the possibility that the non-pulsators inside the instability strip could be unresolved binary systems, having components that both lie outside the instability strip. If misinterpreted as single stars, we found that such binaries could generate temperature discrepancies of $\sim$300 K -- larger than the spectroscopic uncertainties, and fully consistent with the observations. After these considerations, there remains one chemically normal non-pulsator that lies in the middle of the instability strip. This star is a challenge to pulsation theory. However, its existence as the only known star of its kind indicates that such stars are rare. We conclude that the $\delta$ Sct instability strip is pure, unless pulsation is shut down by diffusion or another mechanism, which could be interaction with a binary companion.
Observations of the extragalactic radio background have uncovered a significant isotropic emission across multiple frequencies spanning from 22 MHz to 10 GHz. The intensity of this non-thermal emission component significantly exceeds the expected contribution from known astrophysical sources. Interestingly, models have indicated that the annihilation of dark matter particles may reproduce both the flux and spectrum of the excess. However, the lack of a measurable anisotropy in the residual emission remains challenging for both dark matter and standard astrophysical interpretations of the ARCADE-2 data. We calculate the expected synchrotron anisotropy from dark matter annihilation and show that these models can produce very small anisotropies, though this requires galaxy clusters to have large substructure contributions and strong magnetic fields. We show that this constraint can be significantly relaxed, however, in scenarios where electrons produced via dark matter annihilation can be efficiently reaccelerated by Alfv\'en waves in the intra-Cluster medium. Our analysis indicates that any source capable of explaining the intensity and isotropy of the extragalactic radio excess must have a spatial extension far larger than typical for baryons in galaxies, suggesting a novel physics interpretation.
The highly eccentric binary system Eta Carinae shows numerous time-variable emission and absorption features. These observational signatures are the result of interactions between the complex three-dimensional (3D) wind-wind collision regions and photoionization by the luminous stars. Specifically, helium presents several interesting spectral features that provide important clues on the geometry and physical properties of the system and the individual stars. We use the SimpleX algorithm to post-process 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation output of the interacting winds in Eta Car in order to obtain the fractions of ionized helium assuming three different primary star mass-loss rates. The resultant ionization maps constrain the regions where helium is singly- and doubly-ionized. We find that reducing the primary's mass-loss rate increases the volume of He+. Lowering the primary mass-loss rate produces large variations in the volume of He+ in the pre-shock primary wind on the periastron side of the system. Our results show that binary orientations in which apastron is on our side of the system are more consistent with available observations. We suggest that small variations in the primary's mass-loss rate might explain the observed increase in HeI absorption in recent decades, although numerous questions regarding this scenario remain open. We also propose that the absence of broad HeI lines in the spectra of Eta Car between its 1890's eruption and 1944 might be explained by the companion star's He0+ ionizing photons not being able to penetrate the wind-wind interaction region, due to a higher primary mass-loss rate at that time (by a factor >2, compared to the present value).
Sweeping beams of light can cast spots moving with superluminal speeds across scattering surfaces. Such faster-than-light speeds are well-known phenomena that do not violate special relativity. It is shown here that under certain circumstances, superluminal spot pair creation and annihilation events can occur that provide unique information to observers. These spot pair events are {\it not} particle pair events -- they are the sudden creation or annihilation of a pair of relatively illuminated spots on a scattering surface. Real spot pair illumination events occur unambiguously on the scattering surface when spot speeds diverge, while virtual spot pair events are observer dependent and perceived only when real spot radial speeds cross the speed of light. Specifically, a virtual spot pair creation event will be observed when a real spot's speed toward the observer drops below $c$, while a virtual spot pair annihilation event will be observed when a real spot's radial speed away from the observer rises above $c$. Superluminal spot pair events might be found angularly, photometrically, or polarimetrically, and might carry useful geometry or distance information. Two example scenarios are briefly considered. The first is a beam swept across a scattering spherical object, exemplified by spots of light moving across Earth's Moon and pulsar companions. The second is a beam swept across a scattering planar wall or linear filament, exemplified by spots of light moving across variable nebulae including Hubble's Variable Nebula. In local cases where the sweeping beam can be controlled and repeated, a three-dimensional map of a target object can be constructed. Used tomographically, this imaging technique is fundamentally different from lens photography, radar, and conventional lidar.
Future direct-imaging exoplanet missions such as WFIRST/AFTA, Exo-C, and Exo-S will measure the reflectivity of exoplanets at visible wavelengths. The exoplanets to be observed will be located further away from their parent stars than is Earth from the Sun. These "cold" exoplanets have atmospheric environments conducive for the formation of water and/or ammonia clouds, like Jupiter in the Solar System. We study the science return from direct-imaging exoplanet missions, focusing on the exoplanet atmospheric compositions. First, the study shows that a low-resolution (R=70) reflection spectrum of a giant exoplanet at 600 - 1000 nm, for a moderate signal-to-noise ratio of 20, will allow measurements of both the pressure of the uppermost cloud deck and the mixing ratio of methane, if the uppermost cloud deck is located at the pressure level of 0.6 - 1.5 bars. Further increasing the signal-to-noise ratio can improve the measurement range of the cloud deck pressure to 0.2 - 4 bars. The strong and the weak absorption bands of methane allow the simultaneous measurements of cloud and gas; when the uppermost cloud deck is located shallower than the pressure level of 0.2, the weak bands are muted, and the cloud deck pressure and the mixing ratio of methane are not distinguishable from a single reflection spectrum. Second, future direct-imaging exoplanet missions may detect the broadband reflectivity of a few super-Earth exoplanets. If having H2O-dominated atmospheres, directly imaged super Earths are likely to have water clouds located shallower than 1E-3 bars. The very high clouds on these planets would mute most gas absorption features except for H2O, and these planets would occupy a confined phase space in the color-color diagrams.
The elemental abundances of symbiotic giants are essential to address the role of chemical composition in the evolution of symbiotic binaries, to map their parent population, and to trace their mass transfer history. However,the number of symbiotic giants with fairly well determined photospheric composition is still insufficient for statistical analyses. This is the third in a series of papers on the chemical composition of symbiotic giants determined from high resolution (R 50000), near-IR spectra. We present results here for the giant star in the V694 Mon, CD-36 8436, WRAY 16-202, Hen 3-1213, V455 Sco, and Hen 2-247 systems. Spectrum synthesis employing standard local thermal equilibrium (LTE) analysis and atmosphere models were used to obtain photospheric abundances of CNO and elements around the iron peak (Sc, Ti, Fe, and Ni). Our analysis reveals metallicities from slightly super-solar for V455 Sco ([Fe/H] +0.3 dex), near solar for WRAY 16-202 and Hen 2-247, slightly sub-solar for V694 Mon and CD-36 8436 ([Fe/H] -0.4 dex), and significantly sub-solar for Hen 3-1213 ([Fe/H] -0.8 dex). The enrichment in 14N isotope, found in all these objects, indicates that the giants have experienced the first dredge-up. For three giants, V694 Mon, CD-36 8436, and WRAY 16-202, this was confirmed by the low 12C/13C isotopic ratios, 24, 8, and 11 respectively. We found that the relative abundance of [Ti/Fe] is large in all the objects studied so far. This appears to be an intrinsic characteristic of all symbiotic giants.
We present near-infrared spectroscopic and photometric observations of nova V5584 Sgr taken during the first 12 days following its discovery on Oct. 26.439 UT 2009. The evolution of the spectra is shown from the initial P Cygni phase to an emission line phase. The prominent carbon lines seen in the JHK spectra closely match those observed in a FeII class nova outburst. The spectra show first-overtone CO bands in emission between 2.29-2.40 micron. By examining WISE and other publicly available data, we show that the nova underwent a pronounced dust formation phase during February - April 2010.
On the basis of observations by Spitzer and Herschel, we present and analyse the correlations between various monochromatic infrared (IR) luminosities for star-forming galaxies, selected from two northern Spitzer Wide-area InfraRed Extragalactic Survey (SWIRE) fields. The 24- and 70 micron luminosities (L[24] and L[70]), which are dominated by the continuum of very small grains (VSGs) and warm dust in thermal equilibrium, respectively, correlate tightly with ongoing star formation. The contribution from cool dust excited by evolved stars also increases as the wavelength increases in the far-infrared (FIR) wavelength range. The spectral features of ionized polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) around rest-frame 8 micron are excited by the moderated radiation field related to evolved stars as well, rather than by the intensive radiation field related to young stars. Even though the carriers of PAHs could be treated as types of VSG with a smaller scale, the radiation condition between PAHs and classic VSGs seems to be significantly different. The formulae to calculate the total infrared luminosity L[TIR] using L[8(dust)] and L[24] are re-scaled and we find that the L[8(dust)] (L[24]) formula likely underestimates (overestimates) L[TIR] for galaxies with unusual current star formation activity.
The paper present correlation of radio signal with air shower parameters: shower energy E0 and depth of maximum Xmax. It is shown that from radio emission measurements of air showers one can obtain individual showers parameters and mass composition of cosmic rays. We also derived generalized formula for calculating energy of the air showers.
Radiolocation methods of probing minor celestial bodies (asteroids) by the nanosecond pulses can be used for monitoring of near-Earth space with the purpose of identification of hazardous cosmic objects able to impact the Earth. Development of the methods that allow to improve accuracy of determining the asteroids size (i.e. whether it measures tens or hundreds meters in diameter) is important for correctly estimating the degree of damage which they can cause (either regional or global catastrophes, respectively). In this paper we suggest a novel method of estimating the sizes of the passive cosmic objects using the radiolocation probing by ultra-high-resolution nanosecond signals to obtain radar signatures. The modulation envelope of the reflected signal, which is a radar portrait of the cosmic object, is subjected to time scale transformation to carrier Doppler frequency by means of radioimpulse strobing. The shift of a strobe within the probing period will be performed by radial motion of the object which will allow to forgo the special autoshift circuit used in the oscillographic technical equipment. The measured values of duration of radiolocation portrait can be used to estimate the mean radius of the object by using the average spatial length of the portrait. The method makes it possible to appraise the sizes of cosmic objects through their radiolocation portrait duration, with accuracy that is independent of the objects range.
Mid-infrared photometry of R Coronae Borealis stars obtained from various satellites from IRAS to WISE has been utilized in studying the variations of the circumstellar dust's contributions to the spectral energy distribution of these stars. The variation of the fractional coverage (R) of dust clouds and their blackbody temperatures (T$_d$) have been used in trying to understand the dust cloud evolution over the three decades spanned by the satellite observations. In particular, it is shown that a prediction R $ \propto T_d^4$ developed in this paper is satisfied, especially by those stars for which a single collection of cloud dominates the IR fluxes. Correlations of R with photospheric abundance and luminosity of the stars are explored.
We present the results of wide-band (720-2400 MHz) study of PSR B1821-24A (J1824-2452A, M28A), an energetic millisecond pulsar visible in radio, X-rays and gamma-rays. In radio, the pulsar has a complex average profile which spans >85% of the spin period and exhibits strong evolution with observing frequency. For the first time we measure phase-resolved polarization properties and spectral indices of radio emission throughout almost all of the on-pulse window. We combine this knowledge with the high-energy information to compare M28A to other known gamma-ray millisecond pulsars and to speculate that M28A's radio emission originates in multiple regions within its magnetosphere (i.e. both in the slot or outer gaps near the light cylinder and at lower altitudes above the polar cap). M28A is one of the handful of pulsars which are known to emit Giant Pulses (GPs) -- short, bright radio pulses of unknown nature. We report a drop in the linear polarization of the average profile in both windows of GP generation and also a `W'-shaped absorption feature (resembling a double notch), partly overlapping with one of the GP windows. The GPs themselves have broadband spectra consisting of multiple polarized patches with fractional spectral width ($\Delta\nu/\nu$) of about 0.07 and the orientation of polarization randomly changing from patch to patch. Although our time resolution was not sufficient to resolve the GP structure on the microsecond scale, we argue that GPs from this pulsar most closely resemble the GPs from the main pulse of the Crab pulsar, which consist of a series of highly polarized nanoshots.
It has been shown that the gamma-ray flux observed by HESS from the J1745-290 Galactic Center source is well fitted as the secondary gamma-rays photons generated from Dark Matter annihilating into Standard Model particles in combination with a simple power law background. The neutrino flux expected from such Dark Matter source has been also analyzed. The main results of such analyses for 50 TeV Dark Matter annihilating into W+W- gauge boson and preliminary results for antiprotons are presented.
Dynamics of charged particles in the vicinity of a rotating black hole embedded in the external large-scale magnetic field is numerically investigated. In particular, we consider a non-axisymmetric model in which the asymptotically uniform magnetic field is inclined with respect to the axis of rotation. We study the effect of inclination onto the prevailing dynamic regime of particle motion, i.e. we ask whether the inclined field allows regular trajectories or if instead, the deterministic chaos dominates the motion. In this contribution we further discuss the role of initial condition, particularly, the initial azimuthal angle. To characterize the measure of chaoticness we compute maximal Lyapunov exponents and employ the method of Recurrence Quantification Analysis.
Using a state-of-the-art semi analytic model (SAM) for galaxy formation, we have investigated the statistical effects of assuming two different mechanisms for triggering AGN activity on the properties of AGN host galaxies. We have considered a first accretion mode where AGN activity is triggered by disk instabilities (DI) in isolated galaxies, and a second feeding mode where such an activity is triggered by galaxy mergers and fly-by events (interactions, IT). We obtained the following results:i) for hosts with $M_* \lesssim 10^{11} M_{\bigodot}$, both DI and IT modes are able to account for the observed AGN hosts stellar mass function; for more massive hosts, the DI scenario predicts a lower space density than the IT model, lying below the observational estimates for z>0.8.ii) The analysis of the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of AGN hosts for redshift z < 1.5 can provide a good observational test to effectively discriminate between the DI and IT mode, since DIs are expected to yield AGN host galaxy colors skewed towards bluer colors, while in the IT scenario the majority of hosts are expected to reside in the red sequence.iii) While both IT and DI scenarios can account for AGN triggered in main sequence or starburst galaxies, DIs fail in triggering AGN activity in passive galaxies.iv) The two modes are characterized by a different duration of the AGN phase, with DIs lasting even on time scales $\sim $ Gyr, much longer with respect to the IT scenario.v) The scatter of the $SFR-L_{bol}$ relation could represent another crucial diagnostics to discriminate between the two triggering modes, since the DI scenario predicts an appreciably lower scatter of the relation than the IT scenario. vi) Disk instabilities are not able to account for the observed fraction of AGN in groups for z < 1 and clusters for z < 0.7, while the IT scenario provides a good match to observational data.
Resolved UBVRI photometry of RW Aur binary was performed on November 13/14, 2014 during the deep dimming of RW Aur with a newly installed 2.5 meter telescope of the Caucasus observatory of Lomonosov Moscow State University at the mount Shatzhatmaz. At that moment RW Aur A was $\simeq 3^m$ fainter than in November 1994 in all spectral bands. We explain the current RW Aur A dimming as a result of eclipse of the star by dust particles with size $>1 \mu m.$ We found that RW Aur B is also a variable star: it was brighter than 20 years ago at $0.7^m$ in each of UBVRI band (gray brightening).
Aims: We summarize the current observational picture of the outbursts of
black-hole X-ray transients (BHTs), based on the evolution traced in a
hardness-luminosity diagram (HLD), and we offer a physical interpretation.
Methods: The basic ingredient in our interpretation is the Poynting-Robertson
Cosmic Battery (PRCB, Contopoulos & Kazanas 1998), which provides locally the
poloidal magnetic field needed for the ejection of the jet. In addition, we
make two assumptions, easily justifiable. The first is that the mass-accretion
rate to the black hole in a BHT outburst has a generic bell-shaped form. This
is guaranteed by the observational fact that all BHTs start their outburst and
end it at the quiescent state. The second assumption is that at low accretion
rates the accretion flow is geometrically thick, ADAF-like, while at high
accretion rates it is geometrically thin.
Results: Both, at the beginning and the end of an outburst, the PRCB
establishes a strong poloidal magnetic field in the ADAF-like part of the
accretion flow, and this explains naturally why a jet is always present in the
right part of the HLD. In the left part of the HLD, the accretion flow is in
the form of a thin disk, and such a disk cannot sustain a strong poloidal
magnetic filed. Thus, no jet is expected in this part of the HLD. The
counterclockwise traversal of the HLD is explained as follows: the poloidal
magnetic field in the ADAF forces the flow to remain ADAF and the source to
move upwards in the HLD rather than to turn left. Thus, the history of the
system determines the counterclockwise traversal of the HLD. As a result, no
BHT is expected to ever traverse the entire HLD curve in the clockwise
direction.
Conclusions: We offer a physical interpretation of accretion and ejection in
BHTs with only one parameter, the mass transfer rate.
The paper describes the modelling of the structure and spectra of the hot accretion spots on the surface of young stars with taking into account departures from LTE for hydrogen and helium. It has been found that the existence of the ram pressure of the in-falling gas at the outer boundary of the hot spot leads to the Stark broadening of the hydrogen line profiles up to FWHM of about 1000 km/s at the considered accretion parameters. It is shown that taking into account departures from LTE for atoms and ions of carbon and oxygen does not lead to noticeable changes in the structure of the hot spot.
Gravitational lensing events provide unique opportunities to discover and study planetary systems and binaries. Here we build on previous work to explore the role that orbital motion can play in both identifying and learning more about multiple-mass systems that serve as gravitational lenses. We find that a significant fraction of planet-lens and binary-lens light curves are influenced by orbital motion. Furthermore, the effects of orbital motion extend the range of binaries for which lens multiplicity can be discovered and studied. Orbital motion will play an increasingly important role as observations with sensitive photometry, such as those made by the space missions Kepler, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, (TESS), and WFIRST discover gravitational lensing events. Similarly, the excellent astrometric measurements made possible by GAIA will allow it to study the effects of orbital motion. Frequent observations, such as those made possible with the Korean Microlensing Telescope Network, KMTNet, will also facilitate the study of orbital motion during gravitational lensing events. Finally, orbital motion will typically play a significant role in the characteristics of lensing events in which the passage of a specific nearby star in front of a background star can be predicted.
The classic accepted view of the heliosphere is a quiescent, comet-like shape aligned in the direction of the Sun's travel through the interstellar medium (ISM) extending for 1000's of AUs (AU: astronomical unit). Here we show, based on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations, that the twisted magnetic field of the sun confines the solar wind plasma and drives jets to the North and South very much like astrophysical jets. These jets are deflected into the tail region by the motion of the Sun through the ISM similar to bent galactic jets moving through the intergalactic medium. The interstellar wind blows the two jets into the tail but is not strong enough to force the lobes into a single comet-like tail, as happens to some astrophysical jets (Morsony et al. 2013). Instead, the interstellar wind flows around the heliosphere and into equatorial region between the two jets. While relativistic jets may be stable, non-relativistic astrophysical jets are kink unstable (Porth et al. 2014) and we show here that the heliospheric jets are turbulent (due to large-scale MHD instabilities and reconnection) and strongly mix the solar wind with the ISM beyond 400AU. The resulting turbulence has important implications for particle acceleration in the heliosphere. The two-lobe structure is consistent with the energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) images of the heliotail from IBEX (McComas et al. 2013) where two lobes are visible in the North and South and the suggestion from the CASSINI (Krimigis et al. 2009, Dialynas et al. 2013) ENAs that the heliosphere is "tailless'".
The Bullet Cluster ($1\mathrm{E}0657\mathrm{-}56 $) is well-known as providing visual evidence of dark matter but it is potentially inconsistent with the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology due to the high relative velocity of the two colliding clusters. Previous studies have focussed on the probability of such a high relative velocity amongst selected candidate systems. This notion of `probability' is however difficult to interpret and can lead to paradoxical results. Instead, we consider the expected number of Bullet-like systems on the sky up to a specified redshift, which allows for direct comparison with observations. Using a Hubble volume N-body simulation with high resolution we investigate how the number of such systems depends on the masses of the halo pairs, their separation, and collisional angle. This enables us to extract an approximate formula for the expected number of halo-halo collisions given specific collisional parameters. We use extreme value statistics to analyse the tail of the pairwise velocity distribution and demonstrate that it is fatter than the previously assumed Gaussian form. We estimate that the number of dark matter halo pairs as or more extreme than $1\mathrm{E}0657\mathrm{-}56 $ is $1.3^{+2.0}_{-0.6}$ up to redshift $z=0.3$. The discovery of more such systems would thus be a challenge to the standard cosmology.
We present a comparison of major methodologies of fast generating mock halo or galaxy catalogues. The comparison is done for two-point and the three-point clustering statistics. The reference catalogues are drawn from the BigMultiDark N-body simulation. Both friend-of-friends (including distinct halos only) and spherical overdensity (including distinct halos and subhalos) catalogs have been used with the typical number density of a large-volume galaxy surveys. We demonstrate that a proper biasing model is essential for reproducing the power spectrum at quasilinear and even smaller scales. With respect to various clustering statistics a methodology based on perturbation theory and a realistic biasing model leads to very good agreement with N-body simulations. However, for the quadrupole of the correlation function or the power spectrum, only the method based on semi-N-body simulation could reach high accuracy (1% level) at small scales, i.e., r<25 Mpc/h or k>0.15 h/Mpc. For those methods that only produce distinct haloes, a halo occupation distribution (HOD) scheme is applied to generate substructures. We find however, that it is not trivial to reproduce the clustering properties of the reference SO catalogue that include both distinct haloes and subhaloes with high accuracy. Full N-body solutions will remain indispensable to produce reference catalogues. Nevertheless, we have demonstrated that the far more efficient approximate solvers can reach a few percent accuracy in terms of clustering statistics at the scales interesting for the large-scale structure analysis after calibration with a few reference N-body calculations. This makes them useful for massive production aimed at covariance studies, to scan large parameter spaces, and to estimate uncertainties in data analysis techniques, such as baryon acoustic oscillation reconstruction, redshift distortion measurements, etc.
We extend previous studies of the tidal truncation of coplanar disks in binary systems to the more general case of noncoplanar disks. As in the prograde coplanar case, Lindblad resonances play a key role in tidal truncation. We analyze the tidal torque acting on a misaligned nearly circular disk in a circular orbit binary system. We concentrate on the 2:1 inner Lindblad resonance associated with the m=2 tidal forcing (for azimuthal wavenumber m) that plays a major role in the usual coplanar case. We determine the inclination dependence of this torque, which is approximately cos^8(i/2) for misalignment angle i. Compared to the prograde coplanar case (i=0), this torque decreases by a factor of about 2 for i = pi/6 and by a factor of about 20 for i=pi/2. The Lindblad torque decreases to zero for a tilt angle of pi (counter-rotation), consistent with previous investigations. The effects of higher order resonances associated with m>2 tidal forcing may contribute somewhat, but are much more limited than in the i=0 case. These results suggest that misaligned disks in binary systems can be significantly extended compared to their coplanar counterparts. In cases where a disk is sufficiently inclined and viscous, it can overrun all Lindblad resonances and overflow the Roche lobe of the disk central object.
Sediment transport along the surface drives geophysical phenomena as diverse as wind erosion and dune formation. The main length-scale controlling the dynamics of sediment erosion and deposition is the saturation length $L_\mathrm{s}$, which characterizes the flux response to a change in transport conditions. Here we derive, for the first time, an expression predicting $L_\mathrm{s}$ as a function of the average sediment velocity under different physical environments. Our expression accounts for both the characteristics of sediment entrainment and the saturation of particle and fluid velocities, and has only two physical parameters which can be estimated directly from independent experiments. We show that our expression is consistent with measurements of $L_\mathrm{s}$ in both aeolian and subaqueous transport regimes over at least five orders of magnitude in the ratio of fluid and particle density, including on Mars.
We study chromo-natural inflation in the axiverse. More precisely, we investigate natural inflation with two axions coupled with a SU(2) gauge field. Assuming a hierarchy between the coupling constants, we find that for certain initial conditions, conventional natural inflation commences and continues for tens of e-foldings, and subsequently chromo-natural inflation takes over from natural inflation. For these solutions, we expect that the predictions are in agreement with observations on CMB scales. Moreover, since chromo-natural inflation occurs in the latter part of the inflationary stage, chiral primordial gravitational waves are produced in the interesting frequency range higher than $10^{-10}$Hz, which might be detectable by future gravitational wave observations.
Mindful of the anomalous perihelion precession of Mercury discovered by U. Le Verrier in the second half of the nineteenth century and its successful explanation by A. Einstein with his General Theory of Relativity in the early years of the twentieth century, discrepancies among observed effects in our Solar system and their theoretical predictions on the basis of the currently accepted laws of gravitation applied to known bodies have the potential of paving the way for remarkable advances in fundamental physics. This is particularly important now more than ever, given that most of the Universe seems to be made of unknown substances dubbed Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Should this not be directly the case, Solar system's anomalies could anyhow lead to advancements in cumulative science, as shown to us by the discovery of Neptune in the first half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, investigations in one of such directions can serendipitously enrich the other one as well. The current status of some alleged gravitational anomalies in the Solar system is critically reviewed. They are: a) Possible anomalous advances of planetary perihelia; b) Unexplained orbital residuals of a recently discovered moon of Uranus (Mab); c) The lingering unexplained secular increase of the eccentricity of the orbit of the Moon; d) The so-called Faint Young Sun Paradox; e) The secular decrease of the mass parameter of the Sun; f) The Flyby Anomaly; g) The Pioneer Anomaly; and h) The anomalous secular increase of the astronomical unit
We show that a neutral scalar field, \sigma, of two Higgs doublet extensions of the Standard Model incorporating the seesaw mechanism for neutrino masses can be identified as a consistent {\it warm} dark matter candidate with a mass of order keV. The relic density of $\sigma$ is correctly reproduced by virtue of the late decay of a right-handed neutrino N participating in the seesaw mechanism. Constraints from cosmology determine the mass and lifetime of N to be M_N = 25 GeV - 20 TeV and \tau_N = (10^{-4} - 1) sec. These models can also explain the 3.5 keV X-ray anomaly in the extra-galactic spectrum that has been recently reported in terms of the decay \sigma \to \gamma \gamma. Future tests of these models at colliders and in astrophysical settings are outlined.
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We report Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) absorption spectroscopy in four methanol (CH$_3$OH) lines in the $z = 0.88582$ gravitational lens towards PKS1830-211. Three of the four lines have very different sensitivity coefficients $K_\mu$ to changes in the proton-electron mass ratio $\mu$; a comparison between the line redshifts thus allows us to test for temporal evolution in $\mu$. We obtain a stringent statistical constraint on changes in $\mu$ by comparing the redshifted 12.179 GHz and 60.531 GHz lines, $[\Delta mu/\mu] \leq 1.1 \times 10^{-7}$ ($2\sigma$) over $0 < z \leq 0.88582$, a factor of $\approx 2.5$ more sensitive than the best earlier results. However, the higher signal-to-noise ratio (by a factor of $\approx 2$) of the VLA spectrum in the 12.179 GHz transition also indicates that this line has a different shape from that of the other three CH$_3$OH lines (at $> 4\sigma$ significance). The sensitivity of the above result, and that of all earlier CH$_3$OH studies, is thus likely to be limited by unknown systematic errors, probably arising due to the frequency-dependent structure of PKS1830-211. A robust result is obtained by combining the three lines at similar frequencies, 48.372, 48.377 and 60.531 GHz, whose line profiles are found to be in good agreement. This yields the $2\sigma$ constraint $[\Delta \mu/\mu] \lesssim 4 \times 10^{-7}$, the most stringent current constraint on changes in $\mu$. We thus find no evidence for changes in the proton-electron mass ratio over a lookback time of $\approx 7.5$ Gyrs.
The observed rapid cooling of the Cassiopeia A neutron star can be interpreted as being caused by neutron and proton transitions from normal to superfluid and superconducting states in the stellar core. Here we present two new Chandra ACIS-S Graded observations of this neutron star and measurements of the neutron star mass M and radius R found from consistent fitting of both the X-ray spectra and cooling behavior. This comparison is only possible for individual nuclear equations of state. We test phenomenological superfluid and superconducting gap models which mimic many of the known theoretical models against the cooling behavior. Our best-fit solution to the Cassiopeia A data is one in which the (M,R) = (1.43 Msun,12.6 km) neutron star is built with the BSk21 equation of state, strong proton superconductor and moderate neutron triplet superfluid gap models, and a pure iron envelope or a thin carbon layer on top of an iron envelope, although there are still large observational and theoretical uncertainties.
We report the discovery of the transiting hot Jupiter exoplanet WASP-85Ab. Using a combined analysis of spectroscopic and photometric data, we determine that the planet orbits its host star every 2.66 days, and has a mass of 1.09+/-0.03 M_Jup and a radius of 1.44+/-0.02 R_Jup. The host star is of G5 spectral type, with magnitude V=11.2, and lies 125+/-80 pc distant. We find stellar parameters of T_eff=5685+/-65 K, super-solar metallicity ([Fe/H]=0.08+/-0.10), M_star=1.04+/-0.07 M_sun and R_star=0.96+/-0.13 R_sun. The system has a K-dwarf binary companion, WASP-85B, at a separation of approximately 1.5". The close proximity of this companion leads to contamination of our photometry, decreasing the apparent transit depth that we account for during our analysis. Without this correction, we find the depth to be 50 percent smaller, the stellar density to be 32 percent smaller, and the planet radius to be 18 percent smaller than the true value. Many of our radial velocity observations are also contaminated; these are disregarded when analysing the system in favour of the uncontaminated HARPS observations, as they have reduced semi-amplitudes that lead to underestimated planetary masses. We find a long-term trend in the binary position angle, indicating a misalignment between the binary and orbital planes. WASP observations of the system show variability with a period of 14.64 days, indicative of rotational modulation caused by stellar activity. Analysis of the Ca ii H+K lines shows strong emission that implies that both binary components are strongly active. We find that the system is likely to be less than a few Gyr old. WASP-85 lies in the field of view of K2 Campaign 1. Long cadence observations of the planet clearly show the planetary transits, along with the signature of stellar variability. Analysis of the K2 data, both long and short cadence, is ongoing.
SARAS is a correlation spectrometer connected to a frequency independent antenna that is purpose-designed for precision measurements of the radio background at long wavelengths. The design, calibration and observing strategies admit solutions for the internal additive contributions to the radiometer response, and hence a separation of these contaminants from the antenna temperature. We present here a wideband measurement of the radio sky spectrum by SARAS that provides an accurate measurement of the absolute brightness and spectral index between 110 and 175 MHz. Accuracy in the measurement of absolute sky brightness is limited by systematic errors of magnitude 1.2%; errors in calibration and in the joint estimation of sky and system model parameters are relatively smaller. We use this wide-angle measurement of the sky brightness using the precision wide-band dipole antenna to provide an improved absolute calibration for the 150-MHz all-sky map of Landecker & Wielebinski (1970):subtracting an offset of 21.4 K and scaling by factor 1.05 will reduce the overall offset error to 8 K (from 50 K) and scale error to 0.8% (from 5%). The SARAS measurement of the temperature spectral index is in the range -2.3 to -2.45 in the 110 to 175 MHz band and indicates that the region towards the Galactic bulge has a relatively flatter index.
We report the results of the first study of the multi-stream environment of dark matter halos in cosmological N-body simulations in the Lambda-CDM cosmology. The full dynamical state of dark matter can be described as a three-dimensional submanifold in six-dimensional phase space - the dark matter sheet. In our study we use a Lagrangian submanifold x = x (q,t) (where x and q are comoving Eulerian and Lagrangian coordinates respectively), which is dynamically equivalent to the dark matter sheet but is more convenient for numerical analysis. Its convenience is two-fold. Firstly, x is a single-valued function of q at any stage including highly non-linear stages while the phase space sheet in any set of three of six phase space axes is not. And secondly, storing the Lagrangian submanifold does not require additional space for Lagrangian coordinates if the uniform state of the simulation is represented by a uniform three-dimensional mesh. Our major results can be summarized as follows: At the resolution of the simulation i.e. without additional smoothing the cosmic web represents a hierarchical structure: each halo is embedded in the filamentary framework of the web at the filament crossings, and each filament is embedded in the wall like fabric of the web at the wall crossings. Locally, the halos are the regions of highest number of streams, the number of streams in the neighboring filaments is higher than in the neighboring walls, and walls are regions where number of streams is greater or equal to three. Voids are uniquely defined by the local condition requiring to be a single-stream flow region. The shells of streams around halos are quite thin and the closest void region is typically within roughly one and a half of FOF radii of the halo.
Calibration of a PMT matrix is crucial for the treatment of the data obtained with Cherenkov tracking detector. Furthermore, due to high variability of the aerosol abundance in the atmosphere depending on season, weather etc. A constant monitoring of the atmospheric transparency is required during the measurements. For this purpose, besides traditional methods, a station for laser atmospheric probing is used.
We analyze the results of recent measurements of Galactic cosmic ray (GCRs) energy spectra and the spectra of nonthermal emission from supernova remnants (SNRs) in order to determine their consistency with GCR origin in SNRs. It is shown that the measured primary and secondary CR nuclei energy spectra as well as the observed positron-to-electron ratio are consistent with the origin of GCRs up to the energy 10^17 eV in SNRs. Existing SNR emission data provide evidences for efficient CR production in SNRs accompanied by significant magnetic field amplification. In some cases the nature of the detected gamma-ray emission is difficult to determine because key SNR parameters are not known or poorly constrained.
V4332 Sgr is a red transient (red nova) whose eruption was observed in 1994. The remnant of the eruption shows a unique optical spectrum: strong emission lines of atomes and molecules superimposed on a M-type stellar spectrum. The stellar-like remnant is presumably embedded in a disc-like dusty envelope orientated almost face-on. The observed optical spectrum is supposed to result from interactions of the central-star radiation with dust and gas in the disc and outflows initiated in 1994. We have reduced and measured a high-resolution (R ~ 40000) spectrum of V4332 Sgr obtained with VLT/UVES in April/May 2005. The spectrum comes from the ESO archives and is the best quality spectrum of the object ever obtained. We have identified and measured over 200 emission features belonging to 11 elements and 6 molecules. The continuous, stellar-like component can be classified as ~M3. The radial velocity of the object, as derived from narrow atomic emission line, is -75 km/s. The interstellar reddening was estimated as being 0.35 < E(B-V) < 0.75. From radial velocities of interstellar absorption features in the NaI D lines we have estimated a lower limit of ~5.5 kpc to the distance of V4332 Sgr. When compared to spectroscopic observations done in 2009, the spectrum of V4332 Sgr considerably evolved between 2005 and 2009. The object significantly faded in the optical (by ~2 mag. in the V band), which resulted from the main remnant cooled by 300-350 K corresponding to its spectral type changed from M3 to M5-6. The object however increased in luminosity by ~50%, implying a significant expansion of its dimensions. Most of the emission features seen in 2005 significantly faded or even disappeared from the spectrum of V4332 Sgr in 2009.
We study the stellar, Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) and intracluster medium
(ICM) masses of 14 South Pole Telescope (SPT) selected galaxy clusters with
median redshift $z=0.9$ and median mass $M_{500}=6\times10^{14}M_{\odot}$. We
estimate stellar masses for each cluster and BCG using six photometric bands
spanning the range from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared observed with the
VLT, HST and Spitzer. The ICM masses are derived from Chandra and XMM-Newton
X-ray observations, and the virial masses are derived from the SPT
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect signature.
At $z=0.9$ the BCG mass $M_{\star}^{\textrm{BCG}}$ constitutes $0.12\pm0.01$%
of the halo mass for a $6\times10^{14}M_{\odot}$ cluster, and this fraction
falls as $M_{500}^{-0.58\pm0.07}$. The cluster stellar mass function has a
characteristic mass $M_{0}=10^{11.0\pm0.1}M_{\odot}$, and the number of
galaxies per unit mass in clusters is larger than in the field by a factor
$1.65\pm0.2$. Both results are consistent with measurements on group scales and
at lower redshift. We combine our SPT sample with previously published samples
at low redshift that we correct to a common initial mass function and for
systematic differences in virial masses. We then explore mass and redshift
trends in the stellar fraction (fstar), the ICM fraction (fICM), the cold
baryon fraction (fc) and the baryon fraction (fb). At a pivot mass of
$6\times10^{14}M_{\odot}$ and redshift $z=0.9$, the characteristic values are
fstar=$1.1\pm0.1$%, fICM=$9.6\pm0.5$%, fc=$10.4\pm1.2$% and fb=$10.7\pm0.6$%.
These fractions all vary with cluster mass at high significance, indicating
that higher mass clusters have lower fstar and fc and higher fICM and fb. When
accounting for a 15% systematic virial mass uncertainty, there is no
statistically significant redshift trend at fixed mass in these baryon
fractions.
(abridged)
Although the radio emission from most quasars appears to be associated with star forming activity in the host galaxy, about ten percent of optically selected quasars have very luminous relativistic jets apparently powered by a SMBH which is located at the base of the jet. When these jets are pointed close to the line of sight their apparent luminosity is enhanced by Doppler boosting and appears highly variable. High resolution radio interferometry shows directly the outflow of relativistic plasma jets from the SMBH. Apparent transverse velocities in these so called blazars are typically about 7c but reach as much as 50c indicating true velocities within one percent of the speed of light. The jets appear to be collimated and accelerated in regions as much as a hundred parsecs downstream from the SMBH. Measurements made with Earth to space interferometers indicate apparent brightness temperatures of about 10E14 K or more. This is well in excess of the limits imposed by inverse Compton cooling. The modest Doppler factors deduced from the observed ejection speeds appear to be inadequate to explain the high observed brightness temperatures in terms of relativistic boosting.
Although the extragalactic nature of 3C 48 and other quasi stellar radio sources was discussed as early as 1960 by John Bolton and others, it was rejected largely because of preconceived ideas about what appeared to be unrealistically high radio and optical luminosities. Not until the 1962 occultations of the strong radio source 3C 273 at Parkes, which led Maarten Schmidt to identify 3C 273 with an apparent stellar object at a redshift of 0.16, was the true nature understood. Successive radio and optical measurements quickly led to the identification of other quasars with increasingly large redshifts and the general, although for some decades not universal, acceptance of quasars as the very luminous nuclei of galaxies. Curiously, 3C 273, which is one of the strongest extragalactic sources in the sky, was first cataloged in 1959 and the magnitude 13 optical counterpart was observed at least as early as 1887. Since 1960, much fainter optical counterparts were being routinely identified using accurate radio interferometer positions which were measured primarily at the Caltech Owens Valley Radio Observatory. However, 3C 273 eluded identification until the series of lunar occultation observations led by Cyril Hazard. Although an accurate radio position had been obtained earlier with the OVRO interferometer, inexplicably 3C 273 was initially misidentified with a faint galaxy located about an arc minute away from the true quasar position.
The paper presents long-term observations of the atmosphere in Yakutsk region. Analysis of the data for 40 year period indicates a gradual strengthening of cyclonic activity in the region and hence the increase of the average winter temperature, increase variations of the rest atmosphere, which greatly softens the continental climate of Central Yakutia.
The mean density of a star transited by a planet, brown dwarf or low mass star can be accurately measured from its light curve. This measurement can be combined with other observations to estimate its mass and age by comparison with stellar models. Our aim is to calculate the posterior probability distributions for the mass and age of a star given its density, effective temperature, metallicity and luminosity. We computed a large grid of stellar models that densely sample the appropriate mass and metallicity range. The posterior probability distributions are calculated using a Markov-chain Monte-Carlo method. The method has been validated by comparison to the results of other stellar models and by applying the method to stars in eclipsing binary systems with accurately measured masses and radii. We have explored the sensitivity of our results to the assumed values of the mixing-length parameter, $\alpha_{\rm MLT}$, and initial helium mass fraction, Y. For a star with a mass of 0.9 solar masses and an age of 4 Gyr our method recovers the mass of the star with a precision of 2% and the age to within 25% based on the density, effective temperature and metallicity predicted by a range of different stellar models. The masses of stars in eclipsing binaries are recovered to within the calculated uncertainties (typically 5%) in about 90% of cases. There is a tendency for the masses to be underestimated by about 0.1 solar masses for some stars with rotation periods P$_{\rm rot}< 7$d. Our method makes it straightforward to determine accurately the joint posterior probability distribution for the mass and age of a star eclipsed by a planet or other dark body based on its observed properties and a state-of-the art set of stellar models.
We present a multifrequency radio continuum study of seven giant low surface brightness (GLSB) galaxies using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). GLSB galaxies are optically faint, dark-matter dominated systems that are poorly evolved and have large HI gas disks. Our sample consists of GLSB galaxies that show signatures of nuclear activity in their optical spectra. We detect radio emission from the nuclei of all the seven galaxies. Five galaxies have nuclear spectral indices that range from 0.12 to -0.44 and appear to be core-dominated; the two galaxies have a steeper spectrum. Two of the galaxies, UGC 2936 and UGC 4422 show significant radio emission from their disks. In our 610 MHz observations of UGC 6614, we detect radio lobes associated with the radio-loud active galactic nucleus (AGN). The lobes have a spectral index of -1.06+/-0.12. The star formation rates estimated from the radio emission, for the entire sample range from 0.15 to 3.6 M{solar} yr^{-1} . We compare the radio images with the near-ultraviolet (NUV) images from GALEX and near-infrared (NIR) images from 2MASS. The galaxies present a diversity of relative NUV, NIR and radio emission, supporting an episodic star formation scenario for these galaxies. Four galaxies are classified members of groups and one is classified as isolated. Our multiwavlength study of this sample suggests that the environment plays an important role in the evolution of these galaxies.
Hinode observations have revealed intermittent recurrent plasma ejections/jets in the chromosphere. These are interpreted as a result of non-perfectly anti-parallel magnetic reconnection, i.e. component reconnection, between a twisted magnetic flux tube and the pre-existing coronal/chromospheric magnetic field, though the fundamental physics of component reconnection is unrevealed. In this paper, we experimentally reproduced the magnetic configuration and investigated the dynamics of plasma ejections, heating and wave generation triggered by component reconnection in the chromosphere. We set plasma parameters as in the chromosphere (density 10^14 cm^-3, temperature 5-10 eV, i.e. (5-10)x10^4 K, and reconnection magnetic field 200 G) using argon plasma. Our experiment shows bi-directional outflows with the speed of 5 km/s at maximum, ion heating in the downstream area over 30 eV and magnetic fluctuations mainly at 5-10 us period. We succeeded in qualitatively reproducing chromospheric jets, but quantitatively we still have some differences between observations and experiments such as jet velocity, total energy and wave frequency. Some of them can be explained by the scale gap between solar and laboratory plasma, while the others probably by the difference of microscopy and macroscopy, collisionality and the degree of ionization, which have not been achieved in our experiment.
We report observations of slowly drifting pulsating structures (DPS) in the 0.8-4.5 GHz frequency range of the RT4 and RT5 radio spectrographs at Ondrejov observatory, between 2002 and 2012. We found 106 events of drifting pulsating structures, which we classified into 4 cases: (I) single events with a constant frequency drift [12 events], (II) multiple events occurring in the same flare with constant frequency drifts [11 events], (III) single or multiple events with increasing or decreasing frequency drift rates [52 events], and (IV) complex events containing multiple events occurring at the same time in the different frequency range [31 events]. Many DPSs are associated with hard X-ray bursts (15-25 keV) and soft X-ray gradient peaks, as they typically occurred at the beginning of the hard X-ray peaks. This indicates that DPS events are related to the processes of fast energy release and particle acceleration. Furthermore, interpreting DPSs as signatures of plasmoids, we measured their ejection velocity, their width and their height from the DPS spectra, from which we also estimated the reconnection rate and the plasma beta. In this interpretation, constant frequency drift indicates a constant velocity of a plasmoid, and an increasing/decreasing frequency drift indicates a deceleration/acceleration of a plasmoid ejection. The reconnection rate shows a good positive correlation with the plasmoid velocity. Finally we confirmed that some DPS events show plasmoid counterparts in AIA/SDO images.
We utilize the CLASH (Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble) observations of 25 clusters to search for extreme emission-line galaxies (EELGs). The selections are carried out in two central bands: F105W (Y105) and F125W (J125), as the flux of the central bands could be enhanced by the presence of [O III] 4959, 5007 at redshift of about 0.93-1.14 and 1.57-1.79, respectively. The multi-band observations help to constrain the equivalent widths of emission lines. Thanks to cluster lensing, we are able to identify 52 candidates down to an intrinsic limiting magnitude of 28.5 and to a rest-frame [O III] 4959,5007 equivalent width of about 3737 angstrom. Our samples include a number of EELGs at lower luminosities that are missed in other surveys, and the extremely high equivalent width can be only found in such faint galaxies. These EELGs can mimic the dropout feature similar to that of high redshift galaxies and contaminate the color-color selection of high redshift galaxies when the S/N ratio is limited or the band coverage is incomplete. We predict that the fraction of EELGs in the future high redshift galaxy selections cannot be neglected.
We report parallaxes and proper motions of three water maser sources in high-mass star-forming regions in the Outer Spiral Arm of the Milky Way. The observations were conducted with the Very Long Baseline Array as part of Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy Survey and double the number of such measurements in the literature. The Outer Arm has a pitch angle of 14.9 +/- 2.7 deg and a Galactocentric distance of 14.1 +/- 0.6 kpc toward the Galactic anticenter. The average motion of these sources toward the Galactic center is 10.7 +/- 2.1 km/s and we see no sign of a significant fall in the rotation curve out to 15 kpc from the Galactic center. The three-dimensional locations of these star-forming regions are consistent with a Galactic warp of several hundred parsecs from the plane.
In this paper we calculate the escape fraction ($f_{\rm esc}$) of ionizing photons from starburst galaxies. Using 2-D axisymmetric hydrodynamic simulations, we study superbubbles created by overlapping supernovae in OB associations. We calculate the escape fraction of ionizing photons from the center of the disk along different angles through the superbubble and the gas disk. After convolving with the luminosity function of OB associations, we show that the ionizing photons escape within a cone of $\sim 40 ^\circ$, consistent with observations of nearby galaxies. The evolution of the escape fraction with time shows that it falls initially as cold gas is accumulated in a dense shell. After the shell crosses a few scale heights and fragments, the escape fraction through the polar regions rises again. The angle-averaged escape fraction cannot exceed $\sim [1- \cos (1 \, {\rm radian})] = 0.5$ from geometrical considerations (using the emission cone opening angle). We calculate the dependence of the time- and angle-averaged escape fraction on the mid-plane disk gas density (in the range $n_0=0.15-50$ cm $^{-3}$) and the disk scale height (between $z_0=10-600$ pc). We find that the escape fraction is related to the disk parameters (the mid-plane disk density and scale height) roughly so that $f_{\rm esc}^\alpha n_0^2 z_0^3$ (with $\alpha\approx 2.2$) is a constant. For disks with a given WNM temperature, massive disks have lower escape fraction than low mass galaxies. For Milky Way ISM parameters, we find $f_{\rm esc}\sim 5\%$, and it increases to $\approx 10\%$ for a galaxy ten times less massive. We discuss the possible effects of clumpiness of the ISM on the estimate of the escape fraction and the implications of our results for the reionization of the universe.
The delayed cosmology [JCAP 02(2012)046] assumes that the evolution of geometries is delayed relative to that of matter and/or energies. This idea allows inflation to occur without inflaton fields or vacuum energies of any kind as drivings. We considered the production and evolution of primordial perturbations in this model. The result indicate that, with delaying, we could get a nearly scale-free power spectrum of perturbations starting from a radiation dominated early universe.
We look for very low-mass members in open clusters with different ages placed at different distances. The main goal is to produce a reliable census of low-mass stars for each of the clusters and derive the Initial Mass Function. To achieve this, we combine deep optical and infrared photometry from our own observing runs and from different public databases. We also characterise the individual stellar parameters of our targets.
We have developed a model to calculate the emission intensities of various vibrational transitions of N$_2$ triplet band and Lyman-Birge-Hopfield (LBH) band emissions in the dayglow of Pluto for solar minimum, moderate, and maximum conditions. The calculated overhead intensities of Vegard-Kaplan ($ A^3\Sigma_u^+ - X^1\Sigma^+_g $), First Positive ($ B^3\Pi_g - A^3\Sigma^+_u $), Second Positive ($ C^3\Pi_u - B^3\Pi_g $), Wu-Benesch ($W^3\Delta_u - B^3\Pi_g$), Reverse First Positive, and LBH ($a^1\Pi_g$-- $X^1\Sigma^+_g$) bands of N$_2$ are 17 (74), 14.8 (64), 2.4 (10.8), 2.9 (12.7), 2.9 (12.5), and 2.3 (10) R, respectively, for solar minimum (maximum) condition. We have predicted the overhead and limb intensities of VK (150-190 nm) and LBH (120-190 nm) bands of N$_2$ on Pluto for the New Horizons (NH) flyby condition that can be observed by Alice: the ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also know as P-Alice. The predicted limb intensities of VK and LBH bands peak at radial distance of $ \sim$2000 km with the value of about 5 (13) and 9.5 (22) R for solar zenith angle 60$ ^\circ $ (0$ ^\circ $), respectively. We have also calculated overhead and limp intensities of few prominent transition of CO Fourth Positive bands for NH flyby condition.
FS CMa stars are low-luminosity objects showing the B[e] phenomenon whose evolutionary state remains a puzzle. These stars are surrounded by compact disks of warm dust of unknown origin. Hitherto, membership of FS CMa stars to coeval populations has never been confirmed. The discovery of low-luminosity line emitters in the young massive clusters Mercer 20 and Mercer 70 prompts us to investigate the nature of such objects. We intend to confirm membership to coeval populations in order to characterize these emission-line stars through the cluster properties. Based on ISAAC/VLT medium-resolution spectroscopy and NICMOS/HST photometry of massive cluster members, new characterizations of Mercer 20 and Mercer 70 are performed. Coevality of each cluster and membership of the newly-discovered B[e] objects are investigated using our observations as well as literature data of the surroundings. Infrared excess and narrow-band photometric properties of the B[e] stars are also studied. We confirm and classify 22 new cluster members, including Wolf-Rayet stars and blue hypergiants. Spectral types (O9-B1.5 V) and radial velocities of B[e] objects are compatible with the remaining cluster members, while emission features of Mg II, Fe II], and [Fe II] are identified in their spectra. The ages of these stars are 4.5 and 6 Myr, and they show mild infrared excesses. We confirm the presence of FS CMa stars in the coeval populations of Mercer 20 and Mercer 70. We discuss the nature and evolutionary state of FS CMa stars, discarding a post-AGB nature and introducing a new hypothesis about mergers. A new search method for FS CMa candidates in young massive clusters based on narrow-band Paschen-alpha photometry is proposed and tested in photometric data of other clusters, yielding three new candidates.
Using a method to discover and classify supernovae (SNe) in galaxy spectra, we detect 91 Type Ia SNe (SNe Ia) and 16 Type II SNe (SNe II) among ~740,000 galaxies of all types and ~215,000 star-forming galaxies without active galactic nuclei, respectively, in Data Release 9 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Of these SNe, 22 SNe Ia and 8 SNe II are new discoveries reported here for the first time. We use our SN samples to measure SN rates per unit mass as a function of galaxy stellar mass, star-formation rate (SFR), and specific SFR (sSFR), as derived by the MPA-JHU Galspec pipeline. We confirm the rate-mass correlations, first discovered by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search, for both SNe Ia and SNe II at median redshifts of ~0.1 and ~0.075, respectively. The mass-normalized SN Ia and SN II rates, averaged over all masses and redshifts in their respective galaxy samples, are 0.10 +/- 0.01 (stat) +/- 0.01 (sys) X 10^-12 Msol^-1 yr^-1 and 0.52 +0.16 -0.13 (stat) +0.02 -0.05 (sys) X 10^-12 Msol^-1 yr^-1, respectively. We convert the latter into a volumetric SN II rate at z=0.075 of 0.621 +0.197 -0.154 (stat) +0.024 -0.063 (sys) X 10^-4 yr^-1 Mpc^-3. Assuming that SNe IIP and IIL account for 60 per cent of all CC SNe, the volumetric CC SN rate is 1.04 +0.33 -0.26 (stat) +0.04 -0.11 (sys) X 10^-4 yr^-1 Mpc^-3. The mass-normalized SN rates also follow "rate-SFR" and "rate-sSFR" correlations. We show that the correlations between SN Ia and SN II rates per unit mass and stellar mass, SFR, and sSFR can be explained by a combination of the respective SN delay-time distributions, the ages of the surveyed galaxies, the redshifts at which they are observed, and their star-formation histories. This model was first suggested by Kistler et al. for the SN Ia rate-mass correlation, but is expanded here to SNe II and to correlations with galaxy SFR and sSFR (abridged).
Simulation results are presented from a new general circulation model (GCM) of Titan, the Titan Atmospheric Model (TAM), which couples the Flexible Modeling System (FMS) spectral dynamical core to a suite of external/sub-grid-scale physics. These include a new non-gray radiative transfer module that takes advantage of recent data from Cassini-Huygens, large-scale condensation and quasi-equilibrium moist convection schemes, a surface model with "bucket" hydrology, and boundary layer turbulent diffusion. The model produces a realistic temperature structure from the surface to the lower mesosphere, including a stratopause, as well as satisfactory superrotation. The latter is shown to depend on the dynamical core's ability to build up angular momentum from surface torques. Simulated latitudinal temperature contrasts are adequate, compared to observations, and polar temperature anomalies agree with observations. In the lower atmosphere, the insolation distribution is shown to strongly impact turbulent fluxes, and surface heating is maximum at mid-latitudes. Surface liquids are unstable at mid- and low-latitudes, and quickly migrate poleward. The simulated humidity profile and distribution of surface temperatures, compared to observations, corroborate the prevalence of dry conditions at low latitudes. Polar cloud activity is well represented, though the observed mid-latitude clouds remain somewhat puzzling, and some formation alternatives are suggested.
We investigate the effects of varying Saturn's orbit on the atmospheric circulation and surface methane distribution of Titan. Using a new general circulation model of Titan's atmosphere, we simulate its climate under four characteristic configurations of orbital parameters that correspond to snapshots over the past 42 kyr, capturing the amplitude range of long-period cyclic variations in eccentricity and longitude of perihelion. The model, which covers pressures from the surface to 0.5 mbar, reproduces the present-day temperature profile and tropospheric superrotation. In all four simulations, the atmosphere efficiently transports methane poleward, drying out the low- and mid-latitudes, indicating that these regions have been desert-like for at least tens of thousands of years. Though circulation patterns are not significantly different, the amount of surface methane that builds up over either pole strongly depends on the insolation distribution; in the present-day, methane builds up preferentially in the north, in agreement with observations, where summer is milder but longer. The same is true, to a lesser extent, for the configuration 14 kyr ago, while the south pole gains more methane in the case for 28 kyr ago, and the system is almost symmetric 42 kyr ago. This confirms the hypothesis that orbital forcing influences the distribution of surface liquids, and that the current observed asymmetry could have been partially or fully reversed in the past. The evolution of the orbital forcing implies that the surface reservoir is transported on timescales of $\sim$30 kyr, in which case the asymmetry reverses with a period of $\sim$125 kyr. Otherwise, the orbital forcing does not produce a net asymmetry over longer timescales, and is not a likely mechanism for generating the observed dichotomy.
We investigated the role of photospheric plasma motions in the formation and evolution of polar magnetic patches using time-sequence observations with high spatial resolution. The observations were obtained with the spectropolarimeter on board the Hinode satellite. From the statistical analysis using 75 magnetic patches, we found that they are surrounded by strong converging, supergranulation associated flows during their apparent life time and that the converging flow around the patch boundary is better observed in the Doppler velocity profile in the deeper photosphere. Based on our analysis we suggest that the like-polarity magnetic fragments in the polar region are advected and clustered by photospheric converging flows thereby resulting in the formation of polar magnetic patches. Our observations show that, in addition to direct cancellation magnetic patches decay by fragmentation followed by unipolar disappearance or unipolar disappearance without fragmentation. It is possible that the magnetic patches of existing polarity fragment or diffuse away into smaller elements and eventually cancel out with opposite polarity fragments that reach the polar region around solar cycle maximum. This could be one of the possible mechanisms by which the existing polarity decay during the reversal of the polar magnetic field.
Our goal is to perform global simulations of thin accretion discs around compact bodies like neutron stars with dipolar magnetic profile and black holes by exploiting the facilities provided by state-of-the-art grid-based, high resolution shock capturing (HRSC) and finite volume codes. We have used the Godunov-type code PLUTO to simulate a thin disc around a compact object prescribed with a pseudo-Newtonian potential in a purely hydrodynamical (HD) regime, with numerical viscosity as a first step towards achieving our goal as mentioned above.
Her~X-1 is one of the most remarkable members of the class of binary X-ray
pulsars. It does not only show a large number of observable features, but has
repeatedly been the first object for which fundamental discoveries were made:
it was the first to show a super-orbital modulation, the first to reveal a
cyclotron line in its spectrum and the first in which systematic variations of
the cyclotron line energy were detected, namely variations with pulse phase (by
$\sim$ 25\%) and a positive correlation with X-ray luminosity ($\sim$ 5\%
increase for a factor of two increase in luminosity). Now we have found another
'first': a long-term decrease of the pulse phase averaged cyclotron line energy
E$_{\rm cyc}$ by $\sim$ 5\,keV in 20 years. At the time of the discovery of the
cyclotron line in 1976, its energy was $\sim$ 35\,keV, remeasured around a
similar energy by various instruments until 1990. Between 1990 and 1994 a jump
upwards beyond 41\,keV occurred, we are now back at $\sim$ 37\,keV
With respect to the physical cause of the discovered effect, we suggest it to
be connected to a geometric displacement of the cyclotron resonant scattering
region in the polar magnetic field or due to to a true physical change in the
field configuration at the accretion mound or column by the continued
accretion. The variation with time might be due to a non-perfect equilibrium
between the rate at which material is accreted and the rate at which material
is lost at the base of the accretion mound, allowing for a variation of the
configuration of the accretion mound (height, total mass, field distribution).
We do believe that we see the signature of a local change in the field
configuration, rather than a decay of the global magnetic field, since the
observed timescale of a few decades is very short.
Impacts that leave the Earth-Moon system with a large excess in angular momentum have recently been advocated as a means of generating a protolunar disc with a composition that is nearly identical to that of the Earth's mantle. We here investigate the accretion of the Moon from discs generated by such "non-canonical" impacts, which are typically more compact than discs produced by canonical impacts and have a higher fraction of their mass initially located inside the Roche limit. Our model predicts a similar overall accretional history for both canonical and non-canonical discs, with the Moon forming in three consecutive steps over hundreds of years. However, we find that, to yield a lunar-mass Moon, the more compact non-canonical discs must initially be more massive than implied by prior estimates, and only a few of the discs produced by impact simulations to date appear to meet this condition. Non-canonical impacts require that capture of the Moon into the evection resonance with the Sun reduced the Earth-Moon angular momentum by a factor of 2 or more. We find that the Moon's semimajor axis at the end of its accretion is approximately $7R_\oplus$, which is comparable to the location of the evection resonance for a post-impact Earth with a 2.5 h rotation period in the absence of a disc. Thus, the dynamics of the Moon's assembly may directly affect its ability to be captured into the resonance.
Planets in their formative years can migrate due to the influence of gravitational torques in the protoplanetary disk they inhabit. For low-mass planets in an isothermal disk, it is known that there is a strong negative torque on the planet due to its linear perturbation to the disk, causing fast inward migration. The current investigation demonstrates that in these same isothermal disks, for intermediate-mass planets, there is a strong positive nonlinear corotation torque due to the effects of gas being pulled through a gap on horseshoe orbits. For intermediate-mass planets, this positive torque can partially or completely cancel the linear (Type I) torque, leading to slower or outward migration, even in an isothermal disk. The effect is most significant for Super-Earth and Sub-Jovian planets, during the transition from a low-mass linear perturber to a non-linear gap-opening planet, when the planet has opened a so-called 'partial gap'. In this study, numerical calculations of planet-disk interactions calculate these torques explicitly, and scalings are empirically constructed for migration rates in this weakly nonlinear regime. These results find outward migration is possible for planets with masses in the 20 - 100 Earth Mass range.
We report on a new method for tracking the phases of the orbital modulations in very short-period, near-contact, and contact binary systems systems in order to follow starspots. We apply this technique to Kepler light curves for 414 binary systems that were identified as having anticorrelated O-C curves for the midtimes of the primary and secondary eclipses, or in the case of non-eclipsing systems, their light-curve minima. This phase tracking approach extracts more information about starspot and binary system behavior than may be easily obtained from the O-C curves. We confirm the hypothesis of Tran et al. (2013) that we can successfully follow the rotational motions of spots on the surfaces of the stars in these binaries. In ~34% of the systems, the spot rotation is retrograde as viewed in the frame rotating with the orbital motion, while ~13% show significant prograde spot rotation. The remaining systems show either little spot rotation or erratic behavior, or sometimes include intervals of both types of behavior. We discuss the possibility that the relative motions of spots are related to differential rotation of the stars. It is clear from this study that the motions of the starspots in at least 50% of these short-period binaries are not exactly synchronized with the orbits.
New severe constraints on the variation of the fine structure constant have been obtained from reactor Oklo analysis in our previous work. We investigate here how these constraints confine the parameter of BSBM model of varying $\alpha$. Integrating the coupled system of equations from the Big Bang up to the present time and taking into account the Oklo limits we have obtained the following margin on the combination of the parameters of BSBM model: $$ |\zeta_m (\frac{l}{l_{pl}})^2|<6\cdot 10^{-7}, $$ where $l_{pl}=(\frac{G\hbar}{c^3})^{\frac{1}{2}} \approx 1.6 \cdot 10^{-33}$ cm is a Plank length and $l$ is the characteristic length of the BSBM model. The natural value of the parameter $\zeta_m$ - the fraction of electromagnetic energy in matter - is about $10^{-4}$. As a result it is followed from our analysis that the characteristic length $l$ of BSBM theory should be considerably smaller than the Plank length to fulfill the Oklo constraints on $\alpha$ variation.
X-rays are a valuable diagnostic tool for the study of high energy accelerated electrons. Bremsstrahlung X-rays produced by, and directly related to, high energy electrons accelerated during a flare, provide a powerful diagnostic tool for determining both the properties of the accelerated electron distribution, and of the flaring coronal and chromospheric plasmas. This thesis is specifically concerned with the study of spatial, spectral and polarization properties of solar flare X-ray sources via both modelling and X-ray observations using the Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). Firstly, a new model is presented, accounting for finite temperature, pitch angle scattering and initial pitch angle injection. This is developed to accurately infer the properties of the acceleration region from the observations of dense coronal X-ray sources. Moreover, examining how the spatial properties of dense coronal X-ray sources change in time, interesting trends in length, width, position, number density and thermal pressure are found and the possible causes for such changes are discussed. Further analysis of data in combination with the modelling of X-ray transport in the photosphere, allows changes in X-ray source positions and sizes due to the X-ray albedo effect to be deduced. Finally, it is shown, for the first time, how the presence of a photospheric X-ray albedo component produces a spatially resolvable polarization pattern across a hard X-ray (HXR) source. It is demonstrated how changes in the degree and direction of polarization across a single HXR source can be used to determine the anisotropy of the radiating electron distribution.
Context. Several binary systems hosting massive stars present gamma-ray emission. In most of these systems, despite detailed observational information is available, the nature and the structure of the emitter are still poorly known. Aims. We investigate the validity of the so-called one-zone approximation for the high-energy emitter in binary systems hosting a massive star. In particular, the case of LS 5039 is considered. Methods. Assuming a point-like emitter at rest, the presence of a nearby massive star, and taking as a reference the observed MeV and GeV fluxes, a non-thermal leptonic model is systematically applied for di?erent locations, magnetic fields, and non-radiative losses. This allows the identification of both the emitter configurations most compatible with observations and inconsistencies between model predictions and the available data. Results. In the case of LS 5039, the best parameter combination is fast non-radiative cooling and a low magnetic field. However, discrepancies appear when comparing the model results at the MeV and GeV energy ranges with the observed fluxes. Predictions fail when the orbital motion is included in the analysis, because too large emitters and energy budgets are required. Too high X-ray and TeV fluxes are predicted in such a case, along half of the orbit. Conclusions. We show that the radiation in LS 5039 is hardly coming from only one electron population, and the emitter is likely extended and inhomogeneous, with a low magnetic field. We suggest that the emitter moves at relativistic velocities, with Doppler boosting playing a significant role. Key words. Stars: high-mass, X-rays: binaries, gamma-rays: binaries
Context. Many large stellar surveys have been and are still being carried out, providing huge amounts of data, for which stellar physical parameters will be derived. Solar twins and analogues provide a means to test the calibration of these stellar catalogues because the Sun is the best-studied star and provides precise fundamental parameters. Solar twins should be centred on the solar values. Aims. This spectroscopic study of solar analogues selected from the Geneva-Copenhagen Survey (GCS) at a resolution of 48,000 provides effective temperatures and metallicities for these stars. We test whether our spectroscopic parameters, as well as the previous photometric calibrations, are properly centred on the Sun. In addition, we search for more solar twins in our sample. Methods. The methods used in this work are based on literature methods for solar twin searches and on methods we developed in previous work to distinguish the metallicity-temperature degeneracies in the differential comparison of spectra of solar analogues versus a reference solar reflection spectrum. Results. We derive spectroscopic parameters for 148 solar analogues (about 70 are new entries to the literature) and verify with a-posteriori differential tests that our values are well-centred on the solar values. We use our dataset to assess the two alternative calibrations of the GCS parameters; our methods favour the latest revision. We show that the choice of spectral line list or the choice of asteroid or time of observation does not affect the results. We also identify seven solar twins in our sample, three of which are published here for the first time. Conclusions. Our methods provide an independent means to differentially test the calibration of stellar catalogues around the values of a well-known benchmark star, which makes our work interesting for calibration tests of upcoming Galactic surveys.
The Nan\c{c}ay Radioheliograph (NRH) routinely produces snapshot images of the full sun at frequencies between 150 and 450 MHz, with typical resolution 3 arcmin and time cadence 0.2 s. Combining visibilities from the NRH and from the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) allows us to produce images of the sun at 236 or 327 MHz, with a large FOV, high resolution and time cadence. We seek to investigate the structure of noise storms (the most common non-thermal solar radio emission). We focus on the relation of position and altitude of noise storms with the observing frequency and on the lower limit of their sizes. We present results for noise storms on four days. The results consist of an extended halo and of one or several compact cores with relative intensity changing over a few seconds. We found that core sizes can be almost stable over one hour, with a minimum in the range 31-35 arcsec (less than previously reported) and can be stable over one hour. The heliocentric distances of noise storms are $\sim 1.20$ and 1.35 $R_{\odot}$ at 432 and 150 MHz, respectively. Regions where storms originate are thus much denser than the ambient corona and their vertical extent is found to be less than expected from hydrostatic equilibrium. The smallest observed sizes impose upper limits on broadening effects due to scattering on density inhomogeneities in the low and medium corona and constrain the level of density turbulence in the solar corona. It is possible that scatter broadening has been overestimated in the past, and that the observed sizes cannot only be attributed to scattering. The vertical structure of the noise storms is difficult to reconcile with the classical columnar model.
We consider applications of general relativistic uniformly-rotating white dwarfs to several astrophysical phenomena related to the spin-up and the spin-down epochs and to delayed type Ia supernova explosions of super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs, where we estimate the "spinning down" lifetime due to magnetic-dipole braking. In addition, we describe the physical properties of Soft Gamma Repeaters and Anomalous X-Ray Pulsars as massive rapidly-rotating highly-magnetized white dwarfs. Particularly we consider one of the so-called low-magnetic-field magnetars SGR 0418+5729 as a massive rapidly-rotating highly-magnetized white dwarf and give bounds for the mass, radius, moment of inertia, and magnetic field by requiring the general relativistic uniformly-rotating configurations to be stable.
In light of the relativistic precession model, we present here detailed analyses, extending the ones performed in the Schwarzschild and Kerr spacetimes. We consider the kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillations in the Hartle-Thorne spacetime, which describes the gravitational field of a rotating and deformed object. We derive the analytic formulas for the epicyclic frequencies in the Hartel-Thorne spacetime and by means of these frequencies we interpret the kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillations of low-mass X-ray binaries of the atoll and Z - sources, on the basis of the relativistic precession model. Particularly we perform analyzes for Z -source: GX 5-1. We show that the quasi-periodic oscillations data can provide information on the parameters, namely, the mass, angular momentum and quadrupole moment of the compact objects in the low-mass X-ray binaries.
Next-generation space telescopes will allow us to characterize terrestrial exoplanets. To do so effectively it will be crucial to make use of all available data. We investigate which atmospheric properties can, and cannot, be inferred from the broadband thermal phase curve of a dry and tidally locked terrestrial planet. First, we use dimensional analysis to show that phase curves are controlled by six nondimensional parameters. Second, we use an idealized general circulation model (GCM) to explore the relative sensitivity of phase curves to these parameters. We find that the feature of phase curves most sensitive to atmospheric parameters is the peak-to-trough amplitude. Moreover, except for hot and rapidly rotating planets, the phase amplitude is primarily sensitive to only two nondimensional parameters: 1) the ratio of dynamical to radiative timescales, and 2) the longwave optical depth at the surface. As an application of this technique, we show how phase curve measurements can be combined with transit or emission spectroscopy to yield a new constraint for the surface pressure and atmospheric mass of terrestrial planets. We estimate that a single broadband phase curve, measured over half an orbit with the James Webb Space Telescope, could meaningfully constrain the atmospheric mass of a nearby super-Earth. Such constraints will be important for studying the atmospheric evolution of terrestrial exoplanets as well as characterizing the surface conditions on potentially habitable planets.
We use observed optical to near infrared spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 266 galaxies in the COSMOS survey to derive the wavelength dependence of the dust attenuation at high redshift. All of the galaxies have spectroscopic redshifts in the range z = 2 to 6.5. The presence of the CIV absorption feature, indicating that the rest-frame UV-optical SED is dominated by OB stars, is used to select objects for which the intrinsic, unattenuated spectrum has a well-established shape. Comparison of this intrinsic spectrum with the observed broadband photometric SED then permits derivation of the wavelength dependence of the dust attenuation. The derived dust attenuation curve is similar in overall shape to the Calzetti curve for local starburst galaxies. We also see the 2175 \AA~bump feature which is present in the Milky Way and LMC extinction curves but not seen in the Calzetti curve. The bump feature is commonly attributed to graphite or PAHs. No significant dependence is seen with redshift between sub-samples at z = 2 - 4 and z = 4 - 6.5. The 'extinction' curve obtained here provides a firm basis for color and extinction corrections of high redshift galaxy photometry.
We suggest a new Bayesian analysis using disjunct mass and radius constraints for extracting probability measures for cold, dense nuclear matter equations of state. One of the key issues of such an analysis is the question of a deconfinement transition in compact stars and whether it proceeds as a crossover or rather as a first order transition. The latter question is relevant for the possible existence of a critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram under scrutiny in present and upcoming heavy-ion collision experiments.
We conducted high dispersion spectroscopic observations of 50 superflare stars with Subaru/HDS, and measured the stellar parameters of them. These 50 targets were selected from the solar-type (G-type main sequence) superflare stars that we had discovered from the Kepler photometric data. As a result of these spectroscopic observations, we found that more than half (34 stars) of our 50 targets have no evidence of binary system. We then estimated effective temperature ($T_{\rm{eff}}$), surface gravity ($\log g$), metallicity ([Fe/H]), and projected rotational velocity ($v\sin i$) of these 34 superflare stars on the basis of our spectroscopic data. The accuracy of our estimations is higher than that of Kepler Input Catalog (KIC) values, and the differences between our values and KIC values ($(\Delta T_{\rm{eff}})_{\rm{rms}} \sim 219$K, $(\Delta \log g)_{\rm{rms}} \sim 0.37$ dex, and $(\Delta\rm{[Fe/H]})_{\rm{rms}} \sim 0.46$ dex) are comparable to the large uncertainties and systematic differences of KIC values reported by the previous researches. We confirmed that the estimated $T_{\rm{eff}}$ and $\log g$ values of the 34 superflare stars are roughly in the range of solar-type stars. In particular, these parameters and the brightness variation period ($P_{0}$) of 9 stars are in the range of "Sun-like" stars ($5600\leq T_{\rm{eff}}\leq 6000$K, $\log g\geq$4.0, and $P_{0}>$10 days). Five of the 34 target stars are fast rotators ($v \sin i \geq 10$km s$^{-1}$), while 22 stars have relatively low $v \sin i$ values ($v \sin i<5$km s$^{-1}$). These results suggest that stars whose spectroscopic properties similar to the Sun can have superflares, and this supports the hypothesis that the Sun might cause a superflare.
We conducted high dispersion spectroscopic observations of 50 superflare stars with Subaru/HDS. These 50 stars were selected from the solar-type superflare stars that we had discovered from the Kepler data. More than half (34 stars) of these 50 target superflare stars show no evidence of binarity, and we estimated stellar parameters of these 34 stars in our previous study (Notsu et al. 2015, hereafter called Paper I). According to our previous studies using Kepler data, superflare stars show quasi-periodic brightness variations whose amplitude (0.1-10\%) is much larger than that of the solar brightness variations (0.01-0.1\%) caused by the existence of sunspots on the rotating solar surface. In this study, we investigated whether these quasi-periodic brightness variations of superflare stars are explained by the rotation of a star with fairly large starspots, by using stellar parameters derived in Paper I. First, we confirmed that the value of the projected rotational velocity $v \sin i$ is consistent with the rotational velocity estimated from the period of the brightness variation. Next, we measured the intensity of Ca II infrared triplet lines and H$\alpha$ line, good indicators of the stellar chromospheric activity, and compared them with other stellar properties. The intensity of Ca II infrared triplet lines indicates that the mean magnetic field strength ($\langle fB\rangle$) of the target superflare stars can be higher than that of the Sun. A correlation between the amplitude of the brightness variation and the intensity of Ca II triplet line was found. All the targets expected to have large starspots because of their large amplitude of the brightness variation show high chromospheric activities compared to the Sun. These results support that the brightness variation of superflare stars is due to the rotation with large starspots.
Earlier Bassett et al [Phys Rev D 63 (2001) 023506] investigated the amplification of large scale magnetic fields during preheating and inflation in several different models. They argued that in the presence of conductivity resonance effect is weakened. From a dynamo equation in spacetimes endowed with torsion recently derived by Garcia de Andrade [Phys Lett B 711: 143 (2012)] it is shown that a in a universe with pure torsion in Minkowski spacetime the cosmological magnetic field is enhanced by ohmic or non-conductivity effect, which shows that the metric-torsion effects is worth while of being studied. In this paper we investigated the metric-torsion preheating perturbation, which leads to the seed cosmological magnetic field in the universe with torsion is of the order of $B_{seed}\sim{10^{-37}Gauss}$ which is several orders of magnitude weaker than the decoupling value obtained from pure metric preheating of $10^{-15}Gauss$. Despite of the weakness of the magnetic field this seed field may seed the galactic dynamo.
Simultaneous time monitoring observations of H$_{2}$O $6_{16}-5_{23}$, SiO $J$ = 1--0, 2--1, 3--2, and $^{29}$SiO $v$ = 0, $J$ = 1--0 lines were carried out in the direction of the Mira variable star TX Cam with the Korean VLBI Network single dish radio telescopes. For the first time, the H$_{2}$O maser emission from TX Cam was detected near the stellar velocity at five epochs from April 10, 2013 ($\phi$ = 3.13) to June 4, 2014 ($\phi$ = 3.89) including minimum optical phases. The intensities of H$_{2}$O masers are very weak compared to SiO masers. The variation of peak antenna temperature ratios among SiO $v$ = 1, $J$ = 1--0, $J$ = 2--1, and $J$ = 3--2 masers is investigated according to their phases. The shift of peak velocities of H$_{2}$O and SiO masers with respect to the stellar velocity is also investigated according to observed optical phases. The H$_{2}$O maser emission occurs around the stellar velocity during our monitoring interval. On the other hand, the peak velocities of SiO masers show a spread compared to the stellar velocity. The peak velocities of SiO $J$ = 2--1, and $J$ = 3--2 masers show a smaller spread with respect to the stellar velocity than those of SiO $J$ = 1--0 masers. These simultaneous observations of multi-frequencies will provide a good constraint for maser pumping models and a good probe for investigating the stellar atmosphere and envelope according to their different excitation conditions.
We consider whether Broad Absorption Line Quasars (BAL QSOs) and Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s) are similar, as suggested by Brandt & Gallagher (2000) and Boroson (2002). For this purpose we constructed a sample of 11 BAL QSOs from existing Chandra and Swift observations. We found that BAL QSOs and NLS1s both operate at high Eddington ratios L/Ledd, although BAL QSOs have slightly lower L/Ledd. BAL QSOs and NLS1s in general have high FeII/H$\beta$ and low [OIII]/H$\beta$ ratios following the classic 'Boroson \& Green' eigenvector 1 relation. We also found that the mass accretion rates $\dot{M}$ of BAL QSOs and NLS1s are more similar than previously thought, although some BAL QSOs exhibit extreme mass accretion rates of more than 10 \msun/year. These extreme mass accretion rates may suggest that the black holes in BAL QSOs are relativistically spinning. Black hole masses in BAL QSOs are a factor of 100 larger than NLS1s. From their location on a M-$\sigma$ plot, we find that BAL QSOs contain fully developed black holes. Applying a principal component analysis to our sample we find eigenvector 1 to correspond to the Eddington ratio L/Ledd, and eigenvector 2 to black hole mass.
In this paper we study the timing and spectral properties of Be/X-ray binary pulsar EXO 2030+375 using a $Suzaku$ observation on 2012 May 23, during a less intense Type I outburst. Pulsations were clearly detected in the X-ray light curves at a barycentric period of 41.2852 s which suggests that the pulsar is spinning-up. The pulse profiles were found to be peculiar e.g. unlike that obtained from the earlier Suzaku observation on 2007 May 14. A single-peaked narrow profile at soft X-rays (0.5-10 keV range) changed to a double-peaked broad profile in 12-55 keV energy range and again reverted back to a smooth single-peaked profile at hard X-rays (55-70 keV range). The 1.0-100.0 keV broad-band spectrum of the pulsar was found to be well described by three continuum models such as (i) a partial covering high energy cut-off power-law model, (ii) a partially absorbed power-law with high-energy exponential rolloff and (iii) a partial covering Negative and Positive power law with EXponential (NPEX) continuum model. Unlike earlier Suzaku observation during which several low energy emission lines were detected, a weak and narrow Iron K_alpha emission line at 6.4 keV was only present in the pulsar spectrum during the 2012 May outburst. Non-detection of any absorption like feature in 1-100 keV energy range supports the claim of absence of cyclotron resonance scattering feature in EXO 2030+375 from earlier Suzaku observation. Pulse-phase resolved spectroscopy revealed the presence of additional dense matter causing the absence of second peak from the soft X-ray pulse profiles. The details of the results are described in the paper.
We fit the energy distribution of the IceCube starting events by a model which involves four parameters in the neutrino spectrum, namely three normalizations $n_e,n_\mu,n_\tau$ and a common power-law index $\gamma$, with a fixed background simulated by IceCube. The fit by the democratic composition $n_e = n_\mu = n_\tau$ is as marginally acceptable ($p \simeq 0.14$) as the independent $n_\alpha$ case ($p \simeq 0.12$), with the best fit index $\gamma \simeq 2.7$. While for the fixed index $\gamma = 2.0$, both fits by the democratic and the generic composition are unacceptably poor. In the both cases of $\gamma = 2.0$ and $2.7$, the best configuration is $n_e:n_\mu:n_\tau \simeq 1:0.1:0$, which is unlikely under the standard physics.
The higher charge states found in slow ($<$400km s$^{-1}$) solar wind streams compared to fast streams have supported the hypothesis that the slow wind originates in closed coronal loops, and released intermittently through reconnection. Here we examine whether a highly ionized slow wind can also form along steady and open magnetic field lines. We model the steady-state solar atmosphere using AWSoM, a global magnetohydrodynamic model driven by Alfv{\'e}n waves, and apply an ionization code to calculate the charge state evolution along modeled open field lines. This constitutes the first charge states calculation covering all latitudes in a realistic magnetic field. The ratios $O^{+7}/O^{+6}$ and $C^{+6}/C^{+5}$ are compared to in-situ Ulysses observations, and are found to be higher in the slow wind, as observed; however, they are under-predicted in both wind types. The modeled ion fractions of S, Si, and Fe are used to calculate line-of-sight intensities, which are compared to EIS observations above a coronal hole. The agreement is partial, and suggests that all ionization rates are under-predicted. Assuming the presence of suprathermal electrons improved the agreement with both EIS and Ulysses observations; importantly, the trend of higher ionization in the slow wind was maintained. The results suggest there can be a sub-class of slow wind that is steady and highly ionized. Further analysis shows it originates from coronal hole boundaries (CHB), where the modeled electron density and temperature are higher than inside the hole, leading to faster ionization. This property of CHBs is global, and observationally supported by EUV tomography.
The field of the globular cluster NGC 6362 was monitored between 1995 and 2009 in a search for variable stars. BV light curves were obtained for 69 periodic variables including 34 known RR Lyr stars, 10 known objects of other types and 25 newly detected variables. Among the latter we identified 18 proper-motion members of the cluster: seven detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs), six SX Phe stars, two W UMa binaries, two spotted red giants, and a very interesting eclipsing binary composed of two red giants - the first example of such a system found in a globular cluster. Five of the DEBs are located at the turnoff region, and the remaining two are redward of the lower main sequence. Eighty-four objects from the central 9x9 arcmin^2 of the cluster were found in the region of cluster blue stragglers. Of these 70 are proper motion (PM) members of NGC 6362 (including all SX Phe and two W UMa stars), and five are field stars. The remaining nine objects lacking PM information are located at the very core of the cluster, and as such they are likely genuine blue stragglers.
Context: One aspect of understanding the dynamics of the quiet Sun is to quantify the evolution of the flux within small-scale magnetic features. These features are routinely observed in the quiet photosphere and were given various names, such as pores, knots, magnetic patches. Aims: This work presents a new algorithm for tracking the evolution of the broad variety of small-scale magnetic features in the photosphere, with a precision equal to the instrumental resolution. Methods: We have developed a new technique to track the evolution of the individual magnetic features from magnetograms, called "magnetic balltracking". It quantifies the flux of the tracked features, and it can track the footpoints of magnetic field lines inferred from magnetic field extrapolation. The algorithm can detect and quantify flux emergence, as well as flux cancellation. Results: The capabilities of magnetic balltracking are demonstrated with the detection and the tracking of two cases of magnetic flux emergence that lead to the brightening of X-ray loops. The maximum emerged flux ranges from 10^{18} Mx to 10^{19} Mx (unsigned flux) when the X-ray loops are observed.
An essential quantity required to understand the physics of the early Universe, in particular the inflationary epoch, is the primordial scalar potential $\Phi$ and its statistics. We present for the first time an all-sky reconstruction of $\Phi$ with corresponding $1\sigma$-uncertainty from WMAP's cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature data - a map of the very early Universe right after the inflationary epoch. This has been achieved by applying a Bayesian inference method that separates the whole inverse problem of the reconstruction into many independent ones, each of them solved by an optimal linear filter (Wiener filter). In this way, the three-dimensional potential $\Phi$ gets reconstructed slice by slice resulting in a thick shell of nested spheres around the comoving distance to the last scattering surface. Each slice represents the primordial scalar potential $\Phi$ projected onto a sphere with corresponding distance. Furthermore, we present an advanced method for inferring $\Phi$ and its power spectrum simultaneously from data, but argue that applying it requires polarization data with high signal-to-noise levels not available yet. Future CMB data should improve results significantly, as polarization data will fill the present $\ell-$blind gaps of the reconstruction.
The formation of complex organic molecules (COMs) in protostellar environments is a hotly debated topic. In particular, the relative importance of the gas phase processes as compared to a direct formation of COMs on the dust grain surfaces is so far unknown. We report here the first high-resolution images of acetaldehyde (CH$_3$CHO) emission towards the chemically rich protostellar shock L1157-B1, obtained at 2 mm with the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer. Six blueshifted CH$_3$CHO lines with $E_{\rm u}$ = 26-35 K have been detected. The acetaldehyde spatial distribution follows the young ($\sim$ 2000 yr) outflow cavity produced by the impact of the jet with the ambient medium, indicating that this COM is closely associated with the region enriched by iced species evaporated from dust mantles and released into the gas phase. A high CH$_3$CHO relative abundance, 2-3 $\times$ 10$^{-8}$, is inferred, similarly to what found in hot-corinos. Astrochemical modelling indicates that gas phase reactions can produce the observed quantity of acetaldehyde only if a large fraction of carbon, of the order of 0.1%, is locked into iced hydrocarbons.
We present a study of the magneto-ionic medium in the Whirlpool galaxy (M51) using new wide-band multi-configuration polarization data at L band (1-2 GHz) obtained at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. By fitting the observed diffuse complex polarization $Q$+$iU$ as a function of wavelength directly to various depolarization models, we find that polarized emission from M51 at 1-2 GHz originates from the top of the synchrotron disk and then experiences Faraday rotation in the near-side thermal halo of the galaxy. Thus, the scale height of the thermal gas must exceed that of the synchrotron emitting gas at L band. The observed Faraday depth distribution at L band is consistent with a halo field that comprises of a plane-parallel bisymmetric component and a vertical component which produces a Faraday rotation of $\sim$ $-$9 rad m$^{-2}$. The derived rotation measure structure functions indicate a characteristic scale of rotation measure fluctuations of less than 560 pc in the disk and approximately 1 kpc in the halo. The outer scale of turbulence of 1 kpc found in the halo of M51 is consistent with superbubbles and the Parker instability being the main energy injection mechanisms in galactic halos.
We present photometric and spectroscopic observations of the cataclysmic variable MASTER OT J132104.04+560957.8 which strongly indicate that it is a polar with an orbital period of 91 minutes. The optical light curve shows two maxima and two minima per orbital cycle, with considerable variation in the strength of the secondary maximum and in the morphology and depth of the minima.
Star-forming galaxies, due to their high star-formation rates and hence large number of supernova remnants therein, are huge reservoirs of cosmic rays (CRs). These CRs collide with the gas in the galaxy and produce high-energy neutrinos through $pp$ collisions. In this paper, we calculate the neutrino production efficiency in star-forming galaxies by considering realistic galaxy properties, such as the gas density and galactic wind properties in star-forming galaxies. To calculate the accumulated neutrino flux, we use the infrared luminosity functions of star-forming galaxies obtained by Herschel PEP/HerMES survey recently. The intensity of CRs producing PeV neutrinos in star-forming galaxies is normalized with the observed CR flux at EeV, assuming that supernovae remnants or hypernova remnants in star-forming galaxies can accelerate protons to EeV energies. Our calculations show that the accumulated neutrino emission produced by CRs in star-forming galaxies can account for the flux and spectrum of the sub-PeV/PeV neutrinos under reasonable assumption about the CR confinement time in these galaxies.
We discuss the universality and self-similarity of void density profiles, for voids in realistic mock luminous red galaxy (LRG) catalogues from the Jubilee simulation, as well as in void catalogues constructed from the SDSS LRG and Main Galaxy samples. Voids are identified using a modified version of the ZOBOV watershed transform algorithm, with additional selection cuts. We find that voids in simulation are self-similar, meaning that their average rescaled profile does not depend on the void size, or -- within the range of the simulated catalogue -- on the redshift. Comparison of the profiles obtained from simulated and real voids shows an excellent match. The profiles of real voids also show a universal behaviour over a wide range of galaxy luminosities, number densities and redshifts. This points to a fundamental property of the voids found by the watershed algorithm, which can be exploited in future studies of voids.
The compressible flow around a blunt object has diverse applications, but present analytic treatments are inaccurate and limited to narrow parameter regimes. We show that the flow in front of an axisymmetric body can be accurately derived analytically by parameterizing the perpendicular gradients in terms of the parallel velocity. This reproduces both subsonic and supersonic flows measured and simulated around a sphere, including the transonic regime and the bow shock properties.
The capabilities of a high (~ 10^-9 resel^-1) contrast, narrow-field, coronagraphic instrument (CGI) on a space-based AFTA-C or probe-class EXO-C/S mission, conceived to study the diversity of exoplanets now known to exist into stellar habitable zones, are particularly and importantly germane to symbiotic studies of the systems of circumstellar (CS) material from which planets have emerged and interact with throughout their lifetimes. The small particle populations in "disks" of co-orbiting materials can trace the presence of planets through dynamical interactions that perturb the spatial distribution of the light-scattering debris, detectable at optical wavelengths and resolvable with an AFTA-C or EXO-S/C CGI. Herein we: (1) present the science case to study the formation, evolution, architectures, diversity, and properties of the material in the planet-hosting regions of nearby stars, (2) discuss how a CGI under current conception can uniquely inform and contribute to those investigations, (3) consider the applicability of CGI anticipated performance for CS debris system (CDS) studies, (4) investigate, through AFTA CGI image simulations, the anticipated interpretive fidelity and metrical results from specific, representative, zodiacal debris disk observations, (5) comment on specific observational modes and methods germane to, and augmenting, CDS observations, (6) present, in detail, the case for augmenting the currently conceived CGI two-band Nyquist sampled (or better) imaging capability with a full linear-Stokes imaging polarimeter of great benefit in characterizing the material properties of CS dust (and exoplanet atmospheres, discussed in other studies).
This article looks at the combined constraints from a photometric and spectroscopic survey. These surveys will measure cosmology using weak lensing (WL), galaxy cluster- ing, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and redshift space distortions (RSD). We find, contrary to some findings in the recent literature, that overlapping surveys can give important benefits when measuring dark energy. We therefore try to clarify the status of this issue with a full forecast of two stage-IV surveys using a new approach to prop- erly account for covariance between the different probes in the overlapping samples. The benefit of the overlapping survey can be traced back to two factors: additional observables and sample variance cancellation. Both needs to be taken into account and contribute equally when combining 3D power spectrum and 2D correlations for lensing. With an analytic example we also illustrate that for optimal constraints, one should minimize the (Pearson) correlation coefficient between cosmological and nui- sance parameters and maximize the one among nuisance parameters (e.g. galaxy bias) in the two samples. This can be achieved by increasing the overlap between the spec- troscopic and photometric surveys. We show how BAO, WL and RSD contribute to this benefit also look at some other survey designs, such as photometric redshift errors and spectroscopic density.
The search for a theory of the origin of cosmic rays that may be considered as a standard, agreeable model is still ongoing. On one hand, much circumstantial evidence exists of the fact that supernovae in our Galaxy play a crucial role in producing the bulk of cosmic rays observed on Earth. On the other hand, important questions about their ability to accelerate particles up to the knee remain unanswered. The common interpretation of the knee as a feature coinciding with the maximum energy of the light component of cosmic rays and a transition to a gradually heavier mass composition is mainly based on KASCADE results. Some recent data appear to question this finding: YAC1 - Tibet Array and ARGO-YBJ find a flux reduction in the light component at $\sim 700$ TeV, appreciably below the knee. Whether the maximum energy of light nuclei is as high as $3000$ TeV or rather as low as a few hundred TeV has very important consequences on the supernova remnant paradigm for the origin of cosmic rays, as well on the crucial issue of the transition from Galactic to extragalactic cosmic rays. In such a complex phenomenological situation, it is important to have a clear picture of what is really known and what is not. Here I will discuss some solid and less solid aspects of the theory (or theories) for the origin of cosmic rays and the implications for future searches in this field.
We explored two aspects of the problem of characterizing cool extrasolar giant planets in scattered optical light with a space based coronagraph. First, for a number of the known radial velocity (RV) giants we computed traditional forward models of their atmospheric structure and clouds, given various input assumptions, and computed model albedo spectra. Such models have been computed before, but mostly for generic planets. Our new models demonstrate that there is likely interesting spectral diversity among those planets that are most favorable for direct detection. Second, we applied a powerful Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) retrieval technique to synthetic noisy data of cool giants to better understand how well various atmospheric parameters--particularly molecular abundances and cloud properties--could be constrained. This is the first time such techniques have been applied to this problem. The process is time consuming, so only a dozen or so cases could be completed in the limited time available. Nevertheless the results clearly show that even at S/N ~ 5, scientifically interesting and valuable conclusions can be drawn about the properties of giant planet atmospheres from noisy spectra. We find that atmospheric abundances are best constrained when the planet gravity is bounded. Thus direct imaging observations of known radial velocity planets are extremely valuable as limits on a target planet's gravity can be obtained from astrometric imaging and reflectivity and mass-radius relationship arguments (for mass and radius, respectively). Further retrieval studies are clearly warranted and would be valuable to help guide instrument design decisions.
The angular momenta of rarefied preplanetesimals needed for formation of small-body binaries can be obtained at collisions of preplanetesimals. Trans-Neptunian objects, including trans-Neptunian binaries, could be formed from contracting rarefied preplanetesimals.
The angular momentum of the present Earth-Moon system could be acquired at the collision of two identical rarefied condensations with sizes of Hill spheres which total mass was about 0.1 of the mass of the Earth. Solid embryos of the Earth and the Moon could be originated as a result of contraction of the condensation formed at the collision. Depending on eccentricities of planetesimals that collided with solid embryos of the Earth and the Moon, the Moon could acquire 0.04-0.3 of its mass at the stage of accumulation of solid bodies while the mass of the growing Earth increased by a factor of ten.
Groups and clusters of galaxies show a universal, nearly linear entropy radial profile $K(r)$. Using deprojected 13 clusters and 9 groups from the literature, we find that $K(r)\propto r^{0.97\pm0.01}$, consistent with the mean power-law index $\sim(0.9-1.1)$ of previous studies. An equally good fit to the data is given by a $(t_{cool}/t_{ff})\propto r^{0.73\pm0.01}$ ratio between cooling and free-fall times. Both profiles slightly flatten at small radii, as $(t_{cool}/t_{ff})$ becomes of order unity. The entropy profile is usually attributed to the primordial gas crossing the virial shock, to non-standard heat conduction, or to turbulent heating. We argue that a dynamical mechanism is needed to sustain such a simple profile, oblivious to the temperature peak at the edge of the core and to the virial shock at the outskirts, and robust to the presence of ongoing cooling, merger, and AGN activity. In particular, we show that such a profile is naturally obtained in a spiral flow, which is likely to exist in most galaxy aggregates according to the ubiquitous spiral patterns and cold fronts observed. A generalized Schwarzschild criterion shows that the spiral structure observed must involve a convective layer, which may regulate the universal profile. A generalized two-phase model of a spiral flow extending out to the virial radius is presented.
At low redshifts, deviations of the measured luminosity distance from the background FRW universe can be attributed to peculiar velocities of galaxies. Via observing the cosmic standard candles, this is one of the conventional ways to estimate peculiar velocities. However, at intermediate redshifts ($z > 0.5$), deviations from the background FRW model are not uniquely governed by peculiar velocities. Luminosity distances are modified by gravitational lensing which affects the light trajectories. Hence using the conventional peculiar velocity method will result in an overestimate of the measured peculiar velocities at intermediate redshifts. Here we quantify this effect and show that although present data are still incapable of extracting any lensing effect on distance measurement and peculiar velocity estimation, this effect will however be significant for future large-scale structure surveys.
Recently it has been found that a certain class of hybrid star equations of state with a large latent heat (strong first order phase transition obtained by a Maxwell construction) between stiff hadronic hadronic and stiff quark matter phases allows for the appearance of a third family of compact stars (including "twins") at high mass of $\sim 2 M_\odot$. We investigate how robust this high-mass twin phenomenon is against a smoothing of the transition which would occur, e.g., due to pasta structures in the mixed phase. To this end we propose a simple construction of a pasta-like equation of state with a parameter that quantifies the degree of smoothing of the transition and could eventually be related to the surface tension of the pasta structures. It is interesting to note that the range of energy densities for the transition as well as the pressure at the onset of the transition of this class of hybrid star matter at zero temperature corresponds well to values of the same quantities found in finite temperature lattice QCD simulations for the 1 $\sigma$ region at the pseudocritical temperature $T_c=154 \pm 9$ MeV. The pattern of the speed of sound as a function of energy density is very different.
Laser and maser interferometry have proven to be extremely sensitive techniques in searches for exotic new physics, including searches for the aether, tests of Lorentz symmetry and gravitational wave detection. We propose several new uses of laser and maser interferometry for investigating fundamental physics. Any slight variations in the fundamental constants of Nature, which may be induced by dark matter or some yet-to-be-discovered cosmic field, would characteristically alter the phase of a light beam inside an interferometer, which can be measured extremely precisely. Laser and maser interferometry may be applied to searches for the linear-in-time drift of the fundamental constants, detection of topological defect dark matter through transient-in-time effects and for a relic, coherently oscillating condensate, which consists of scalar dark matter fields, through oscillating effects. Our proposed experiments offer sensitivity to variation of the fundamental constants at the fractional level $\sim 10^{-21}$, based on already existing technology.
The mechanism of thermal inflation, a relatively short period of accelerated expansion after primordial inflation, is a desirable ingredient for a certain class of particle physics models if they are not to be in contention with the cosmology of the early Universe. Though thermal inflation is most simply described in terms of a thermal effective potential, a thermal environment also gives rise to thermal fluctuations that must be taken into account. We numerically study the effects of these thermal fluctuations using lattice simulations. We conclude that though they do not ruin the thermal inflation scenario, the phase transition at the end of thermal inflation proceeds through phase mixing and is therefore not accompanied by the formations of bubbles nor appreciable amplitude of gravitational waves.
Axions are one of the most promising candidates of dark matter. The axions have been shown to form miniclusters with masses $\sim 10^{-12}M_{\odot}$ and to become dominant component of dark matter. These axion miniclusters condense to form axion stars. We show a possible origin of fast radio bursts ( FRBs ) by assuming the axion stars being dark matter: FRBs arise from the collisions between the axion stars and neutron stars. The FRBs are caused by the rapid conversion of the axions into electromagnetic fields under strong magnetic fields. Electric fields are induced on the axion stars under strong magnetic fields of neutron stars. The electric fields parallel to the magnetic fields oscillate with a frequency and make electrons in atmospheres of neutron stars coherently oscillate. Thus, the coherent radiations are emitted. The observed frequencies ( $\sim 1.4$GHz ) of the bursts are given by the axion mass $m_a$ such as $m_a/2\pi\simeq 2.3\,\mbox{GHz}\,\big(m_a/10^{-5}\mbox{eV}\big)$. The frequency is affected by cosmological and gravitational red shifts. Owing to the change of relative velocities in the course of neutron stars going through the axion stars, the observed frequencies have finite bandwidth $\simeq 0.16 m_a/2\pi$. It is remarkable that the masses $\sim 10^{-12}M_{\odot}$ of the axion stars obtained by the comparison of theoretical with observed event rates $\sim 10^{-3}$ per year in a galaxy is coincident with the masses estimated previously as those of the axion miniclusters. Using these values we can explain observed short durations ( $\sim $ms ) and large amount of the energies ( $\sim 10^{43}$GeV ) of the bursts. Our production mechanism predicts that circular polarizations are contained in FRBs.
The subsonic expansion of bubbles in a strongly first-order electroweak phase transition is a convenient scenario for electroweak baryogenesis. For most extensions of the Standard Model, stationary subsonic solutions (i.e., deflagrations) exist for the propagation of phase transition fronts. However, deflagrations are known to be hydrodynamically unstable for wall velocities below a certain critical value. We calculate this critical velocity for several extensions of the Standard Model and compare with an estimation of the wall velocity. In general, we find a region in parameter space which gives stable deflagrations as well as favorable conditions for electroweak baryogenesis.
The gravitational waveforms in the ghost-free bi-gravity theory exhibit deviations from those in general relativity. The main difference is caused by graviton oscillations in the bi-gravity theory. We investigate the prospects for the detection of the corrections to gravitational waveforms from coalescing compact binaries due to graviton oscillations and for constraining bi-gravity parameters with the gravitational wave observations. We consider the bi-gravity model discussed by the De Felice-Nakamura-Tanaka subset of the bi-gravity model, and the phenomenological model in which the bi-gravity parameters are treated as independent variables. In both models, the bi-gravity waveform shows strong amplitude modulation, and there can be a characteristic frequency of the largest peak of the amplitude, which depends on the bi-gravity parameters. We show that there is a detectable region of the bi-gravity parameters for the advanced ground-based laser interferometers, such as Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA. This region corresponds to the effective graviton mass of mu>10^{-17} cm^{-1} for tilde{c}-1>10^{-19} in the phenomenological model, while mu>10^{-16.5} cm^{-1} for kappa xi_c^2 > 10^{0.5} in the De Felice-Nakamura-Tanaka subset of the bi-gravity model, respectively, where tilde{c} is the propagation speed of the massive graviton and kappa xi_c^2 corresponds to the corrections to the gravitational constant in general relativity. These regions are not excluded by existing solar system tests. We also show that, in the case of 1.4M_{sun}-1.4M_{sun} binaries at the distance of 200Mpc, log(mu^2) is determined with an accuracy of O(0.1)% at the 1sigma level for a fiducial model with mu^2=10^{-33} cm}^{-2} in the case of the phenomenological model.
We show that a positive cosmological constant is incompatible with the quantum-corpuscular resolution of de Sitter metric in form of a coherent state. The reason is very general and is due to the quantum self-destruction of the coherent state because of the scattering of constituent graviton quanta. This process creates an irreversible quantum clock, which precludes eternal de Sitter. It also eliminates the possibility of Boltzmann brains and Poincare recurrences. This effect is expected to be part of any microscopic theory that takes into account the quantum corpuscular structure of the cosmological background. This observation puts the cosmological constant problem in a very different light, promoting it, from a naturalness problem, into a question of quantum consistency. We are learning that quantum gravity cannot tolerate exceedingly-classical sources.
Using the reconstruction technique with an auxiliary field, we investigate which $F(R)$ gravities can produce the matter bounce cosmological solutions. Owing to the specific functional form of the matter bounce Hubble parameter, the reconstruction technique leads, after some simplifications, to the same Hubble parameter as in the matter bounce scenario. Focusing the study to the large and small cosmic time $t$ limits, we were able to find which $F(R)$ gravities can generate the matter bounce Hubble parameter. In the case of small cosmic time limit, which corresponds to large curvature values, the $F(R)$ gravity is $F(R)\sim R+\alpha R^2$, which is an inflation generating gravity, and at small curvature, or equivalently, large cosmic time, the $F(R)$ gravity generating the corresponding limit of the matter bounce Hubble parameter, is $F(R)\sim \frac{1}{R}$, a gravity known to produce late-time acceleration. Thus we have the physically appealing picture in which a Jordan frame $F(R)$ gravity that imitates the matter bounce solution at large and small curvatures, can generate Starobinsky inflation and late-time acceleration. Moreover, the scale factor corresponding to the reconstruction technique coincides almost completely to the matter bounce scenario scale factor, when considered in the aforementioned limiting curvature cases. This is scrutinized in detail, in order to examine the validity of the reconstruction method in these limiting cases, and according to our analysis, exact agreement is achieved.
We propose a new solution to the problem of dark matter directional detection based on large parallel arrays of carbon nanotubes. The phenomenon of ion channeling in single wall nanotubes is simulated to calculate the expected number of recoiling carbon ions, due to the hypothetical scattering with dark matter particles, subsequently being driven along their longitudinal extension. As shown by explicit calculation, the relative orientation of the carbon nanotube array with respect to the direction of motion of the Sun has an appreciable effect on the channeling probability of the struck ion and this provides the required detector anisotropic response.
There is a great need for accurate and autonomous spectral classification methods in astrophysics. This thesis is about training a convolutional neural network (ConvNet) to recognize an object class (quasar, star or galaxy) from one-dimension spectra only. Author developed several scripts and C programs for datasets preparation, preprocessing and postprocessing of the data. EBLearn library (developed by Pierre Sermanet and Yann LeCun) was used to create ConvNets. Application on dataset of more than 60000 spectra yielded success rate of nearly 95%. This thesis conclusively proved great potential of convolutional neural networks and deep learning methods in astrophysics.
In this paper we introduce a LTB-Bianchi I (plane symmetric) model of Universe. We study and solve Einstein field equations. We investigate the effects of such model of Universe in particular these results are important in understanding the effect of the combined presence of an inhomogeneous and anisotropic Universe. The observational magnitude-redshift data deviated from UNION 2 catalog has been analyzed in the framework of this LTB-anisotropic Universe and the fit has been achieved without the inclusion of any dark energy.
The LISA Pathfinder mission will demonstrate the technology of drag-free test masses for use as inertial references in future space-based gravitational wave detectors. To accomplish this, the Pathfinder spacecraft will perform drag-free flight about a test mass while measuring the acceleration of this primary test mass relative to a second reference test mass. Because the reference test mass is contained within the same spacecraft, it is necessary to apply forces on it to maintain its position and attitude relative to the spacecraft. These forces are a potential source of acceleration noise in the LISA Pathfinder system that are not present in the full LISA configuration. While LISA Pathfinder has been designed to meet it's primary mission requirements in the presence of this noise, recent estimates suggest that the on-orbit performance may be limited by this `suspension noise'. The drift-mode or free-flight experiments provide an opportunity to mitigate this noise source and further characterize the underlying disturbances that are of interest to the designers of LISA-like instruments. This article provides a high-level overview of these experiments and the methods under development to analyze the resulting data.
We examine the relation between the dynamics of Lema\^{\i}tre-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) dust models (with and without $\Lambda$) and the dynamics of dust perturbations in two of the more familiar formalisms used in cosmology: the metric based Cosmological Perturbation Theory (CPT) and the Covariant Gauge Invariant (GIC) perturbations. For this purpose we recast the evolution of LTB models in terms of a covariant and gauge invariant formalism of local and non-local "exact fluctuations " on a Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) background defined by suitable averages of covariant scalars. We examine the properties of these fluctuations, which can be defined for a confined comoving domain or for an asymptotic domain extending to whole time slices. In particular, the non-local density fluctuation provides a covariant and precise definition for the notion of the "density contrast ". We show that in their linear regime these LTB exact fluctuations (local and non-local) are fully equivalent to the conventional cosmological perturbations in the synchronous-comoving gauge of CPT and to GIC perturbations. As an immediate consequence, we show the time-invariance of the spatial curvature perturbation in a simple form. The present work may provide important theoretical connections between the exact and perturbative (linear or no-linear) approach to the dynamics of dust sources in General Relativity.
We investigate the pairing properties at finite temperature of the Wigner-Seitz cells in the inner crust of a neutron star obtained with the recent Brussels-Montreal Skyrme functional BSk21. In particular we analyze the phenomena of persistence and reentrance of pairing correlations and their impact on the specific heat in the low-density region of the inner crust.
We examine the prospects for detecting supernova $\nu_e$ in JUNO, RENO-50, LENA, or other approved or proposed large liquid scintillator detectors. The main detection channels for supernova $\nu_e$ in a liquid scintillator are its elastic scattering with electrons and its charged-current interaction with the $^{12}$C nucleus. In existing scintillator detectors, the numbers of events from these interactions are too small to be very useful. However, at the 20-kton scale planned for the new detectors, these channels become powerful tools for probing the $\nu_e$ emission. We find that the $\nu_e$ spectrum can be well measured, to better than $\sim 40\%$ precision for the total energy and better than $\sim 25\%$ precision for the average energy. This is adequate to distinguish even close average energies, e.g., 11 MeV and 14 MeV, which will test the predictions of supernova models. In addition, it will help set constraints on neutrino mixing effects in supernovae by testing non-thermal spectra. Without such large liquid scintillator detectors (or Super-Kamiokande with added gadolinium, which has similar capabilities), supernova $\nu_e$ will be measured poorly, holding back progress on understanding supernovae, neutrinos, and possible new physics.
In light of the recent measurements of the CMB anisotropy by the WMAP and Planck satellite experiments and the observation of CMB $B$-mode polarization announced by the BICEP2 collaboration, we study simple inflationary models in the context of the Gauss-Bonnet brane-world cosmology. The brane-world cosmological effect modifies the power spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations generated by inflation and causes a dramatic change for the inflationary predictions of the spectral index ($n_s$) and the tensor-to-scalar ratio ($r$) from those obtained in the standard cosmology. In particular, the power spectrum of tensor perturbation is suppressed due to the Gauss-Bonnet brane-world cosmological effect, which is in sharp contrast with inflationary scenario in the Randall-Sundrum brane-world cosmology where the power spectrum is enhanced. Hence, these two brane-world cosmological scenarios are distinguishable. With the dramatic change of the inflationary predictions, the inflationary scenario in the Gauss-Bonnet brane-world cosmology can be tested by more precise measurements of $n_s$ and future observations of the CMB $B$-mode polarization.
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We present a detailed investigation of the cluster stellar mass-to-light (M*/L) ratio and cumulative stellar masses, derived on a galaxy-by-galaxy basis, for 12 massive (M500 ~ 10^14 - 10^15 Msun), nearby clusters with available optical imaging data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10 and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Our method involves a statistical cluster membership using both photometric and spectroscopic redshifts when available to maximize completeness whilst minimizing contamination effects. We show that different methods of estimating the stellar mass-to-light ratio from observed photometry result in systematic discrepancies in the total stellar masses and average mass-to-light ratios of cluster galaxies. Nonetheless, all conversion methodologies point to a lack of correlation between M*/Li and total cluster mass, even though low-mass groups contain relatively more blue galaxies. We also find no statistically significant correlation between M*/Li and the fraction of blue galaxies. For the mass range covered by our sample, the assumption of a Chabrier IMF yields an integrated M*/Li = 1.7 +/- 0.2 Msun/Lsun, a lower value than used in most similar studies, though consistent with the study of low-mass galaxy groups by Leauthaud et al. (2012). A light (diet) Salpeter IMF would imply a ~60% increase in M*/Li.
The reported positions of 964 suspected nova eruptions in M31 recorded through the end of calendar year 2013 have been compared in order to identify recurrent nova candidates. To pass the initial screen and qualify as a recurrent nova candidate two or more eruptions were required to be coincident within 0.1', although this criterion was relaxed to 0.15' for novae discovered on early photographic patrols. A total of 118 eruptions from 51 potential recurrent nova systems satisfied the screening criterion. To determine what fraction of these novae are indeed recurrent the original plates and published images of the relevant eruptions have been carefully compared. This procedure has resulted in the elimination of 27 of the 51 progenitor candidates (61 eruptions) from further consideration as recurrent novae, with another 8 systems (17 eruptions) deemed unlikely to be recurrent. Of the remaining 16 systems, 12 candidates (32 eruptions) were judged to be recurrent novae, with an additional 4 systems (8 eruptions) being possibly recurrent. It is estimated that ~4% of the nova eruptions seen in M31 over the past century are associated with recurrent novae. A Monte Carlo analysis shows that the discovery efficiency for recurrent novae may be as low as 10% that for novae in general, suggesting that as many as one in three nova eruptions observed in M31 arise from progenitor systems having recurrence times <~100 yr. For plausible system parameters, it appears unlikely that recurrent novae can provide a significant channel for the production of Type Ia supernovae.
This work explores a Pulsationally Driven Orbital Mass Ejection (PDOME) model for the launching of Classical Be star disks. Under this model, a combination of rapid rotation and non-radial pulsation modes contribute to placing material into the circumstellar environment. Several varieties of non-radial pulsation modes, characterized by their propagation direction and the relative phase of their velocity and density perturbations, are considered. As well, the orbital stability of material launched by such a mechanism is investigated.
The study of star clusters has advanced our understanding of stellar evolution, Galactic chemical evolution and nucleosynthesis. Here we investigate the composition of turn-off stars in the intriguing open cluster, NGC 6791, which is old, but super-metal-rich with high-resolution (46,000) Keck/HIRES spectra. We find [Fe/H] = +0.30 +/-0.02 from measurements of some 40 unblended, unsaturated lines of both Fe I and Fe II in eight turn-off stars. Our O abundances come from the O I triplet near 7774 A and we do a differential analysis relative to the Sun from our Lunar spectrum also obtained with Keck/HIRES. The O results are corrected for small nLTE effects. We find consistent ratios of [O/Fe]n with a mean of $-$0.06 +/-0.02. This continues the trend of decreasing [O/Fe] with increasing [Fe/H] found in field stars that are also both old and metal-rich. The small range in our oxygen abundances is consistent with a single population of stars. Our results for the alpha elements [Mg/Fe], [Si/Fe], [Ca/Fe], and [Ti/Fe] are near solar and compare well with those of the old, metal-rich field stars. The two Fe-peak elements, Cr and Ni, are consistent with Fe. These turn-off-star abundances provide benchmark abundances to investigate changes in the giants that might arise from nuclear-burning and dredge-up processes. Determinations of upper limits were found for Li by spectrum synthesis and these results support the prediction from standard theory that higher-metallicity stars deplete more Li. Probably no stars in NGC 6791 have retained their initial Li.
We present a framework for calculating super-horizon curvature perturbation from the dynamics of preheating, which gives a reasonable match to the lattice results. Hubble patches with different initial background field values evolve differently. From the bifurcation of their evolution trajectories we find curvature perturbation using Lyapunov theorem and $\delta N$ formulation. In this way we have established a connection between the finer dynamics of preheating and the curvature perturbation produced in this era. From the calculated analytical form of the curvature perturbation we have derived the effective super-horizon curvature perturbation smoothed out on large scales of CMB. The order of the amount of local form non-gaussianity generated in this process has been calculated and problems regarding the precise determination of it have been pointed out.
Recently ACTPol has measured the cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode and E-mode polarizations and obtained TE, EE, BB, TB and EB power spectra in the multipole range 225-8725, detecting six peaks and six troughs of acoustic oscillation in both the TE and EE correlation power spectrum giving independent empirical support to the {\Lambda}CDM cosmology. In our previous paper (di Serego Alighieri, Ni and Pan, Ap. J. 792 (2014) 35 [Paper I]), we have analyzed jointly the results of three experiments on the CMB B-mode polarization -- SPTpol, POLARBEAR and BICEP2 to include in the model, in addition to the gravitational lensing and the inflationary gravitational waves components, also the fluctuation effects induced by the cosmic polarization rotation (CPR), if it exists within the upper limits at the time. In this paper, we fit both the mean CPR angle <{\alpha}> and its fluctuation <{\delta}{\alpha}^2> from the ACTPol data, and update our fitting of CPR fluctuations using BICEP2 data taking the Planck dust measurement results into consideration. We follow the method of Paper I. Mean CPR angle is constrained from the EB correlation power spectra to |<{\alpha}>| < 14 mrad (0.8{\deg}) and the fluctuation (rms) is constrained from the BB correlation power spectra to <{\delta}{\alpha}^2>^(1/2) < 29.3 mrad (1.68{\deg}). Assuming that the polarization angle of Tau A does not change from 89.2 to 146 GHz, the ACTPol data give <{\alpha}> = 1.0 {\pm} 0.63{\deg}. These results suggest that the inclusion of the present ACTPol data is consistent with no CPR detection. With the PLANCK dust measurement, we update our fits of the BICEP2 CPR constraint to be 32.8 mrad (1.88{\deg}). The joint ACTpol-BICEP2-POLARBEAR CPR constraint is 23.7 mrad (1.36{\deg}).
In 1914, Planck introduced the concept of a white body. In nature, no true white bodies are known. We assume that the universe after last-scattering is an ideal white body that contains a tremendously large number of thermal photons and is at an extremely high temperature. Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in an ideal white body is investigated within the framework of quantum statistical mechanism. The computation shows that the transition temperature $T_c$ is a monotonically increasing function of the number density $n$ of photons. At finite temperature, we find that the condensate fraction $N_0(T)/N$ decreases continuously from unity to zero as the temperature increases from zero to the transition temperature $T_c$. Further, we study the radiation properties of an ideal white body. It is found that in the condensation region of $T<T_c$, the spectral intensity $I(\omega,T)$ of white body radiation is identical with Planck's law for blackbody radiation.
In this paper, we explore the effects of neutrino flavor oscillations on supernova nucleosynthesis and on the neutrino signals. Our study is based on detailed information about the neutrino spectra and their time evolution from a spherically-symmetric supernova model for an 18 M progenitor. We find that collective neutrino oscillations are not only sensitive to the detailed neutrino energy and angular distributions at emission, but also to the time evolution of both the neutrino spectra and the electron density profile. We apply the results of neutrino oscillations to study the impact on supernova nucleosynthesis and on the neutrino signals from a Galactic supernova. We show that in our supernova model, collective neutrino oscillations enhance the production of rare isotopes 138La and 180Ta but have little impact on the nu p-process nucleosynthesis. In addition, the adiabatic MSW flavor transformation, which occurs in the C/O and He shells of the supernova, may affect the production of light nuclei such as 7Li and 11B. For the neutrino signals, we calculate the rate of neutrino events in the Super-Kamiokande detector and in a hypothetical liquid argon detector. Our results suggest the possibility of using the time profiles of the events in both detectors, along with the spectral information of the detected neutrinos, to infer the neutrino mass hierarchy.
The standard model of cosmic ray propagation has been very successful in explaining all kinds of the Galactic cosmic ray spectra. However, high precision measurement recently revealed the appreciable discrepancy between data and model expectation, from spectrum observations of $\gamma$-rays, $e^+/e^-$ and probably the $B/C$ ratio starting from $\sim$10 GeV energy. In this work, we propose that the fresh cosmic rays, which are supplied by the young accelerators and detained by local magnetic field, can contribute additional secondary particles interacting with local materials. As this early cosmic ray has a hard spectrum, the model calculation results in a two-component $\gamma$-ray spectrum, which agree very well with the observation. Simultaneously, the expected neutrino number from the galactic plane could contribute $\sim60\%$ of IceCube observation neutrino number below a few hundreds of TeV. The same pp-collision process can account for a significant amount of the positron excesses. Under this model, it is expected that the excesses in $\overline p/p$ and $B/C$ ratio will show up when energy is above $\sim$10 GeV. We look forward that the model will be tested in the near future by new observations from AMS02, IceCube, AS$\gamma$, HAWC and future experiments such as LHASSO, HiSCORE and CTA.
Bent-tailed (BT) radio sources have long been known to trace over densities in the Universe up to z ~ 1 and there is increasing evidence this association persists out to redshifts of 2. The morphology of the jets in BT galaxies is primarily a function of the environment that they have resided in and so BTs provide invaluable clues as to their local conditions. Thus, not only can samples of BT galaxies be used as signposts of large-scale structure, but are also valuable for obtaining a statistical measurement of properties of the intra-cluster medium including the presence of cluster accretion shocks & winds, and as historical anemometers, preserving the dynamical history of their surroundings in their jets. We discuss the use of BTs to unveil large-scale structure and provide an example in which a BT was used to unlock the dynamical history of its host cluster. In addition to their use as density and dynamical indicators, BTs are useful probes of the magnetic field on their environment on scales which are inaccessible to other methods. Here we discuss a novel way in which a particular sub-class of BTs, the so-called `corkscrew' galaxies might further elucidate the coherence lengths of the magnetic fields in their vicinity. Given that BTs are estimated to make up a large population in next generation surveys we posit that the use of jets in this way could provide a unique source of environmental information for clusters and groups up to z = 2.
We address the problem of the difference of line widths of neutrals and ions observed from molecular clouds and explore whether this difference can arise from the effects of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence acting on partially ionized gas. We focus on the Alfvenic component of MHD turbulence and consider the damping of this component taking into account both neutral-ion collisions and neutral viscosity. We consider different regimes of turbulence corresponding to different media magnetizations and turbulent drivings. We find that for some turbulence regimes the linewidth difference does not depend on the magnetic field strength, while for others, the dependence is present. For instance, the velocity dispersion difference in strong sub-Alfvenic turbulence allows evaluation of magnetic field. We discuss earlier findings on the neutral-ion linewidth differences in the literature and compare the expressions for magnetic field we obtain with those published earlier.
Molecular complexity builds up at each step of the Sun-like star formation
process, starting from simple molecules and ending up in large polyatomic
species. Complex organic molecules (COMs; such as methyl formate, HCOOCH$_3$,
dymethyl ether, CH$_3$OCH$_3$, formamide, NH$_2$CHO, or glycoaldehyde,
HCOCH$_2$OH) are formed in all the components of the star formation recipe
(e.g. pre-stellar cores, hot-corinos, circumstellar disks, shocks induced by
fast jets), due to ice grain mantle sublimation or sputtering as well as
gas-phase reactions. Understanding in great detail the involved processes is
likely the only way to predict the ultimate molecular complexity reached in the
ISM, as the detection of large molecules is increasingly more difficult with
the increase of the number of atoms constituting them.
Thanks to the recent spectacular progress of astronomical observations, due
to the Herschel (sub-mm and IR), IRAM and SMA (mm and sub-mm), and NRAO (cm)
telescopes, an enormous activity is being developed in the field of
Astrochemistry, extending from astronomical observatories to chemical
laboratories. We are involved in several observational projects providing
unbiased spectral surveys (in the 80-300 and 500-2000 GHz ranges) with
unprecedented sensitivity of templates of dense cores and protostars. Forests
of COM lines have been detected. In this chapter we will focus on the chemistry
of both cold prestellar cores and hot shocked regions, (i) reviewing results
and open questions provided by mm-FIR observations, and (ii) showing the need
of carrying on the observations of COMs at lower frequencies, where SKA will
operate. We will also emphasize the importance of analysing the spectra by the
light of the experimental studies performed by our team, who is investigating
the chemical effects induced by ionising radiation bombarding astrophysically
relevant ices.
In X-ray spectra of several active galactic nuclei and Galactic black hole
binaries a broad relativistically smeared iron line is observed. This feature
arises by fluorescence when the accretion disc is illuminated by hot corona
above it. Due to central location of the corona the illumination and thus also
the line emission decrease with radius. It was reported in the literature that
this decrease is very steep in some of the sources, suggesting a highly compact
corona.
We revisit the lamp-post setup in which the corona is positioned on the axis
above the rotating black hole and investigate to what extent the steep
emissivity can be explained by this scenario. We show the contributions of the
relativistic effects to the disc illumination by the primary source - energy
shift, light bending and aberration. The lamp-post radial illumination pattern
is compared to the widely used radial broken power-law emissivity profile. We
find that very steep emissivities require the primary illuminating source to be
positioned very near the black hole horizon and/or the spectral power-law index
of the primary emission to be very high. The broken power-law approximation of
the illumination can be safely used when the primary source is located at
larger heights. However, for low heights the lamp-post illumination
considerably differs from this approximation.
We also show the variations of the iron line local flux over the disc due to
the flux dependence on incident and emission angles. The former depends mainly
on the height of the primary source while the latter depends on the inclination
angle of the observer. Thus the strength of the line varies substantially
across the disc. This effect may contribute to the observed steeper emissivity.
We present results based on the systematic analysis of high resolution 95\,ks \textit{Chandra} observations of the strong cool core cluster Abell 2390 at the redshift of z = 0.228, which hosts an energetic radio AGN. This analysis has enabled us to investigate five X-ray deficient cavities in the hot atmosphere of Abell 2390 within central 30\arcsec, three of which are newly detected. Presence of these cavities have been confirmed through a various image processing techniques like, the surface brightness profiles, unsharp masked image, as well as 2D elliptical model subtracted residual map. Temperature profile as well as 2D temperature map revealed structures in the distribution of ICM, in the sense that ICM in NW direction is relatively cooler than that on the SE direction. Two temperature jumps, one from 6\,keV to 9.25\,keV at 72 kpc on the north direction, and the other from 6\,keV to 10.27\,keV at 108 kpc in the east direction have been observed. These temperature jumps are associated with the shocks with Mach numbers 1.54$\pm$0.08 and 1.69$\pm$ 0.09, respectively. Unsharp masked image for A2390 reveals an X-ray edge at $\sim$74\arcsec (268\,kpc), which is found to coincide with the complex radio edge due to weak radio sources. The entropy profile at the core reveals a floor at 12.20$\pm$2.54 keV cm$^2$ and hence confirms intermittent heating by AGN. The diffuse radio emission mapped using the 1.4\,GHz VLA L-band data fills in all the X-ray cavities, and exhibit highly irregular morphology with an elongation along the cool ICM region. The mechanical power injected by the AGN in the form of X-ray cavities is found to be 3.3$\times$10$^{46}$ erg\,s$^{-1}$ and is roughly two orders of magnitude higher than that lost by the ICM in the form of X-ray emission, confirming that AGN feedback is capable enough to quench cooling flow in this cluster.
We report the discovery of a pair of extremely reddened classical Cepheid variable stars located in the Galactic plane behind the bulge, using near-infrared time-series photometry from the VVV Survey. This is the first time that such objects have ever been found in the opposite side of the Galactic plane. The Cepheids have almost identical periods, apparent brightnesses and colors. From the near-infrared Leavitt law, we determine their distances with ~1.5% precision and ~8% accuracy. We find that they have a same total extinction of A(V)~32 mag, and are located at the same heliocentric distance of <d>=11.4+/-0.9 kpc, and less than 1 pc from the true Galactic plane. Their similar periods indicate that the Cepheids are also coeval, with an age of ~48+/-3 Myr, according to theoretical models. They are separated by an angular distance of only 18.3", corresponding to a projected separation of ~1 pc. Their position coincides with the expected location of the Far 3 kpc Arm behind the bulge. Such a tight pair of similar classical Cepheids indicates the presence of an underlying young open cluster, that is both hidden behind heavy extinction and disguised by the dense stellar field of the bulge. All our attempts to directly detect this "invisible cluster" have failed, and deeper observations are needed.
In this paper, we study the issue of correlation between broad-line and radio variations under a spherical broad-line region (BLR), and attempt to locate the position of radio (and gamma-ray) emitting region in jet of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Considering the radial profiles of the radius and number density of clouds in the spherical BLR, we have deduced new formulae connecting the radio emitting position $R_{\rm{jet}}$ to the time lags $\tau_{\rm{ob}}$ between broad-line and radio variations, and the BLR inner and outer radii. The new formulae are applied to broad-line radio-loud Fermi-LAT AGNs, 3C 273 and 3C 120. For 3C 273, a common feature of negative time lags is found in the cross-correlation functions between light curves of radio emission and the Balmer lines, and as well Ly$\alpha$ $\lambda 1216$ and C IV $\lambda 1549$ lines. $R_{\rm{jet}}=$ 1.0--2.6 parsec (pc) are obtained from the time lags of the Balmer lines. For 3C 120, positive lags of about 0.3 yr are found between the 15 GHz emission and the H$\beta$, H$\gamma$ and He II $\lambda 4686$ lines, indicating the line variations lead the 15 GHz variations by about 0.3 yr. We have $R_{\rm{jet}}=$1.1--1.5 pc for 3C 120. The estimated $R_{\rm{jet}}$ are comparable for 3C 120 and 3C 273, and the gamma-ray emitting positions could be within $\sim$ 1--3 pc from the central engines. The cloud number density and radius radial distributions and the BLR structures have negligible effects on $R_{\rm{jet}}$.
High resolution spectroscopy with the Subaru High Dispersion Spectrograph, and Swift ultraviolet photometry are presented for the pulsating extreme helium star V652\,Her. Swift provides the best relative ultraviolet photometry obtained to date, but shows no direct evidence for a shock at ultraviolet or X-ray wavelengths. Subaru has provided high spectral and high temporal resolution spectroscopy over 6 pulsation cycles (and eight radius minima). These data have enabled a line-by-line analysis of the entire pulsation cycle and provided a description of the pulsating photosphere as a function of optical depth. They show that the photosphere is compressed radially by a factor of at least two at minimum radius, that the phase of radius minimum is a function of optical depth and the pulse speed through the photosphere is between 141 and 239 km/s (depending how measured) and at least ten times the local sound speed. The strong acceleration at minimum radius is demonstrated in individual line profiles; those formed deepest in the photosphere show a jump discontinuity of over 70 km/s on a timescale of 150 s. The pulse speed and line profile jumps imply a shock is present at minimum radius. These empirical results provide input for hydrodynamical modelling of the pulsation and hydrodynamical plus radiative transfer modelling of the dynamical spectra.
This paper reviews the studies of solar photospheric magnetic field evolution in active regions and its relationship to solar flares. It is divided into two topics, the magnetic structure and evolution leading to solar eruptions and the rapid changes of photospheric magnetic field associated with eruptions. For the first topic, we describe the magnetic complexity, new flux emergence, flux cancellation, shear motions, sunspot rotation, and magnetic helicity injection, which may all contribute to the storage and buildup of energy and triggering of solar eruptions. For the second topic, we concentrate on the observations of rapid and irreversible changes of photospheric magnetic field associated with flares, and the implication on the restructuring of three-dimensional magnetic field. In particular, we emphasize the recent advances in observations of photospheric magnetic field, as state-of-the-art observing facilities (such as Hinode and Solar Dynamic Observatory) become available. The linkage between observations and theories and future prospectives in this research area are also discussed.
Kepler-93b is a 1.478 +/- 0.019 Earth radius planet with a 4.7 day period around a bright (V=10.2), astroseismically-characterized host star with a mass of 0.911+/-0.033 solar masses and a radius of 0.919+/-0.011 solar radii. Based on 86 radial velocity observations obtained with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and 32 archival Keck/HIRES observations, we present a precise mass estimate of 4.02+/-0.68 Earth masses. The corresponding high density of 6.88+/-1.18 g/cc is consistent with a rocky composition of primarily iron and magnesium silicate. We compare Kepler-93b to other dense planets with well-constrained parameters and find that between 1-6 Earth masses, all dense planets including the Earth and Venus are well-described by the same fixed ratio of iron to magnesium silicate. There are as of yet no examples of such planets with masses > 6 Earth masses: All known planets in this mass regime have lower densities requiring significant fractions of volatiles or H/He gas. We also constrain the mass and period of the outer companion in the Kepler-93 system from the long-term radial velocity trend and archival adaptive optics images. As the sample of dense planets with well-constrained masses and radii continues to grow, we will be able to test whether the fixed compositional model found for the seven dense planets considered in this paper extends to the full population of 1-6 Earth mass planets.
We have been searching for surviving companions of progenitors of Galactic Type-Ia supernovae, in particular SN 1572 and SN 1006. These companion stars are expected to show peculiarities: (i) to be probably more luminous than the Sun, (ii) to have high radial velocity and proper motion, (iii) to be possibly enriched in metals from the SNIa ejecta, and (iv) to be located at the distance of the SNIa remnant. We have been characterizing possible candidate stars using high-resolution spectroscopic data taken at 10m-Keck and 8.2m-VLT facilities. We have identified a very promising candidate companion (Tycho G) for SN 1572, but we have not found any candidate companion for SN 1006, suggesting that SN event occurred in 1006 could have been the result of the merging of two white dwarfs. Adding these results to the evidence from the other direct searches, the clear minority of cases (20\% or less) seem to disfavour the single-degenerate channel or that preferentially the single-degenerate escenario would involve main-sequence companions less massive than the Sun. Therefore, it appears to be very important to continue investigating these and other Galactic Type-Ia SNe such as the Johannes Kepler SN 1604.
Photoionization of neutral atomic sulfur in the ground and metastable states was studied experimentally at a photon energy resolution of 44 meV FWHM. Relative cross section measurements were recorded by using tunable vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation in the energy range 9 -- 30 eV obtained from a laser-produced plasma and the atomic species were generated by photolysis of molecular precursors. Photoionization of this atom is characterized by multiple Rydberg series of autoionizing resonances superimposed on a direct photoionization continuum. A wealth of resonance features observed in the experimental spectra are spectroscopically assigned and their energies and quantum defects tabulated. The cross-section measurements are compared with state-of-the-art theoretical cross-section calculations obtained from the Dirac Coulomb R-matrix method. Resonances series in the spectra are identified and compared indicating similar features in both the theoretical and experimental spectra.
We present results of analysis of the dark matter (DM) pairwise velocity statistics in different Cosmic Web environments. We use the DM velocity and density field from the Millennium 2 simulation together with the NEXUS+ algorithm to segment the simulation volume into voxels uniquely identifying one of the four possible environments: nodes, filaments, walls or cosmic voids. We show that the PDFs of the mean infall velocities $v_{12}$ as well as its spatial dependence together with the perpendicular and parallel velocity dispersions bear a significant signal of the large-scale structure environment in which DM particle pairs are embedded. The pairwise flows are notably colder and have smaller mean magnitude in wall and voids, when compared to much denser environments of filaments and nodes. We discuss on our results, indicating that they are consistent with a simple theoretical predictions for pairwise motions as induced by gravitational instability mechanism. Our results indicate that the Cosmic Web elements are coherent dynamical entities rather than just temporal geometrical associations. In addition it should be possible to observationally test various Cosmic Web finding algorithms by segmenting available peculiar velocity data and studying resulting pairwise velocity statistics
The magneto-ionic structures of the interstellar medium of the Milky Way and the intergalactic medium are still poorly understood, especially at distances larger than a few kiloparsecs from the Sun. The three-dimensional (3D) structure of the Galactic magnetic field and electron density distribution may be probed through observations of radio pulsars, primarily owing to their compact nature, high velocities, and highly-polarized short-duration radio pulses. Phase 1 of the SKA, i.e. SKA1, will increase the known pulsar population by an order of magnitude, and the full SKA, i.e. SKA2, will discover pulsars in the most distant regions of our Galaxy. SKA1-VLBI will produce model-independent distances to a large number of pulsars, and wide-band polarization observations by SKA1-LOW and SKA1-MID will yield high precision dispersion measure, scattering measure, and rotation measure estimates along thousands of lines of sight. When combined, these observations will enable detailed tomography of the large-scale magneto-ionic structure of both the Galactic disk and the Galactic halo. Turbulence in the interstellar medium can be studied through the variations of these observables and the dynamic spectra of pulsar flux densities. SKA1-LOW and SKA1-MID will monitor interstellar weather and produce sensitive dynamic and secondary spectra of pulsar scintillation, which can be used to make speckle images of the ISM, study turbulence on scales between ~10^8 and ~10^13 m, and probe pulsar emission regions on scales down to $\sim$10 km. In addition, extragalactic pulsars or fast radio bursts to be discovered by SKA1 and SKA2 can be used to probe the electron density distribution and magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium beyond the Milky Way.
Context. The first release of astrometric data from Gaia will contain the
mean stellar positions and magnitudes from the first year of observations, and
proper motions from the combination of Gaia data with Hipparcos prior
information (HTPM).
Aims. We study the potential of using the positions from the Tycho-2
Catalogue as additional information for a joint solution with early Gaia data.
We call this the Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS).
Methods. We adapt Gaia's Astrometric Global Iterative Solution (AGIS) to
incorporate Tycho information, and use simulated Gaia observations to
demonstrate the feasibility of TGAS and to estimate its performance.
Results. Using six to twelve months of Gaia data, TGAS could deliver
positions, parallaxes and annual proper motions for the 2.5 million Tycho-2
stars, with sub-milliarcsecond accuracy. TGAS overcomes some of the limitations
of the HTPM project and allows its execution half a year earlier. Furthermore,
if the parallaxes from Hipparcos are not incorporated in the solution, they can
be used as a consistency check of the TGAS/HTPM solution.
Background: Exotic non-spherical nuclear pasta shapes are expected in nuclear matter at just below saturation density because of competition between short range nuclear attraction and long range Coulomb repulsion. Purpose: We explore the impact of nuclear pasta on nucleosynthesis, during neutron star mergers, as cold dense nuclear matter is ejected and decompressed. Methods: We perform classical molecular dynamics simulations with 51200 and 409600 nucleons, that are run on GPUs. We expand our simulation region to decompress systems from an initial density of 0.080 fm^{-3} down to 0.00125 fm^{-3}. We study proton fractions of Y_P=0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.30, and 0.40 at T =0.5, 0.75, and 1.0 MeV. We calculate the composition of the resulting systems using a cluster algorithm. Results: We find final compositions that are in good agreement with nuclear statistical equilibrium models for temperatures of 0.75 and 1 MeV. However, for proton fractions greater than Y_P=0.2 at a temperature of T = 0.5 MeV, the MD simulations produce non-equilibrium results with large rod-like nuclei. Conclusions: Our MD model is valid at higher densities than simple nuclear statistical equilibrium models and may help determine the initial temperatures and proton fractions of matter ejected in mergers.
A new air shower experiment of the Alborz Observatory, Alborz-I, located at the Sharif University of Technology, Iran, will be constructed in near future. An area of about 30$\times$40 m$^{2}$ will be covered by 20 plastic scintillation detectors (each with an area of 50$\times$50 cm$^{2}$). A series of experiments have been performed to optimize the height of light enclosures of the detectors for this array and the results have been compared to an extended code simulation of these detectors. Operational parameters of the detector obtained by this code are cross checked by Geant4 simulation. There is a good agreement between extended-code and Geant4 simulations. We also present further discussions on the detector characteristics, which can be applicable for all scintillation detectors with a similar configuration.
The linear perturbation of a Kerr black hole induced by a rotating massive circular ring is discussed by using the formalism by Teukolsky, Chrzanowski, Cohen and Kegeles. In these formalism, the perturbed Weyl scalars, $\psi_0$ and $\psi_4$, are first obtained from the Teukolsky equation. The perturbed metric is obtained in a radiation gauge via the Hertz potential. The computation can be done in the same way as in our previous paper, in which we considered the perturbation of a Schwarzschild black hole induced by a rotating ring. By adding lower multipole modes such as mass and angular momentum perturbation which are not computed by the Teukolsky equation, and by appropriately setting the parameters which are related to the gauge freedom, we obtain the perturbed gravitational field which is smooth except on the equatorial plane outside the ring.
This is the second lecture of `RAGtime' series on electrodynamical effects near black holes. We will summarize the basic equations of relativistic electrodynamics in terms of spin-coefficient (Newman-Penrose) formalism. The aim of the lecture is to present important relations that hold for exact electro-vacuum solutions and to exhibit, in a pedagogical manner, some illustrative solutions and useful approximation approaches. First, we concentrate on weak electromagnetic fields and we illustrate their structure by constructing the magnetic and electric lines of force. Gravitational field of the black hole assumes axial symmetry, whereas the electromagnetic field may or may not share the same symmetry. With these solutions we can investigate the frame-dragging effects acting on electromagnetic fields near a rotating black hole. These fields develop magnetic null points and current sheets. Their structure suggests that magnetic reconnection takes place near the rotating black hole horizon. Finally, the last section will be devoted to the transition from test-field solution to exact solutions of coupled Einstein-Maxwell equations. New effects emerge within the framework of exact solutions: the expulsion of the magnetic flux out of the black-hole horizon depends on the intensity of the imposed magnetic field.
This is a write-up of a talk given at the Opava RAGtime meeting in 2011, but it has been updated to include some subsequent related developments. The talk focused on discussion of some aspects of black hole and cosmological horizons under rather general circumstances, and on two different topics related to formation of cosmological structures at different epochs of the universe: virialization of cold dark matter during standard structure formation in the matter-dominated era, and primordial black hole formation during the radiative era.
We systematically compute the annihilation rate for neutral winos into the final state gamma + X, including all leading radiative corrections. This includes both the Sommerfeld enhancement (in the decoupling limit for the Higgsino) and the resummation of the leading electroweak double logarithms. Adopting an analysis of the HESS experiment, we place constraints on the mass as a function of the wino fraction of the dark matter and the shape of the dark matter profile. We also determine how much coring is needed in the dark matter halo to make the wino a viable candidate as a function of its mass. Additionally, as part of our effective field theory formalism, we show that in the pure-Standard Model sector of our theory, emissions of soft Higgses are power-suppressed and that collinear Higgs emission does not contribute to leading double logs.
A set of pupil apodization functions for use with a vortex coronagraph on telescopes with obscured apertures is presented. We show analytically that pupil amplitudes given by real-valued Zernike polynomials offer ideal on-axis starlight cancellation when applied to unobscured circular apertures. The charge of the vortex phase element must be a nonzero even integer, greater than the sum of the degree and the absolute value of its azimuthal order of the Zernike polynomial. Zero-valued lines and points of Zernike polynomials, or linear combinations thereof, can be matched to obstructions in the pupils of ground-based telescopes to improve the contrast achieved by a vortex coronagraph. This approach works well in the presence of a central obscuration and radial support structures. We analyze the contrast, off-axis throughput, and post-coronagraph point spread functions of an apodized vortex coronagraph designed for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This technique offers very good performance on apertures with large obscuring support structures similar to those on future 30-40m class ground-based telescopes.
We provide an invariant characterization of the physical properties of the Kerr spacetime. We introduce two dimensionless invariants, constructed out of some known curvature invariants, that act as detectors for the event horizons and ergosurfaces of the Kerr black hole. We also show that the mass and angular momentum can be extracted from local measurements of the curvature invariants. Finally, we introduce a dimensionless invariant that gives a local measure of the "Kerrness" of the spacetime.
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We present a detailed investigation of the cluster stellar mass-to-light (M*/L) ratio and cumulative stellar masses, derived on a galaxy-by-galaxy basis, for 12 massive (M500 ~ 10^14 - 10^15 Msun), nearby clusters with available optical imaging data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10 and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Our method involves a statistical cluster membership using both photometric and spectroscopic redshifts when available to maximize completeness whilst minimizing contamination effects. We show that different methods of estimating the stellar mass-to-light ratio from observed photometry result in systematic discrepancies in the total stellar masses and average mass-to-light ratios of cluster galaxies. Nonetheless, all conversion methodologies point to a lack of correlation between M*/Li and total cluster mass, even though low-mass groups contain relatively more blue galaxies. We also find no statistically significant correlation between M*/Li and the fraction of blue galaxies. For the mass range covered by our sample, the assumption of a Chabrier IMF yields an integrated M*/Li = 1.7 +/- 0.2 Msun/Lsun, a lower value than used in most similar studies, though consistent with the study of low-mass galaxy groups by Leauthaud et al. (2012). A light (diet) Salpeter IMF would imply a ~60% increase in M*/Li.
The reported positions of 964 suspected nova eruptions in M31 recorded through the end of calendar year 2013 have been compared in order to identify recurrent nova candidates. To pass the initial screen and qualify as a recurrent nova candidate two or more eruptions were required to be coincident within 0.1', although this criterion was relaxed to 0.15' for novae discovered on early photographic patrols. A total of 118 eruptions from 51 potential recurrent nova systems satisfied the screening criterion. To determine what fraction of these novae are indeed recurrent the original plates and published images of the relevant eruptions have been carefully compared. This procedure has resulted in the elimination of 27 of the 51 progenitor candidates (61 eruptions) from further consideration as recurrent novae, with another 8 systems (17 eruptions) deemed unlikely to be recurrent. Of the remaining 16 systems, 12 candidates (32 eruptions) were judged to be recurrent novae, with an additional 4 systems (8 eruptions) being possibly recurrent. It is estimated that ~4% of the nova eruptions seen in M31 over the past century are associated with recurrent novae. A Monte Carlo analysis shows that the discovery efficiency for recurrent novae may be as low as 10% that for novae in general, suggesting that as many as one in three nova eruptions observed in M31 arise from progenitor systems having recurrence times <~100 yr. For plausible system parameters, it appears unlikely that recurrent novae can provide a significant channel for the production of Type Ia supernovae.
This work explores a Pulsationally Driven Orbital Mass Ejection (PDOME) model for the launching of Classical Be star disks. Under this model, a combination of rapid rotation and non-radial pulsation modes contribute to placing material into the circumstellar environment. Several varieties of non-radial pulsation modes, characterized by their propagation direction and the relative phase of their velocity and density perturbations, are considered. As well, the orbital stability of material launched by such a mechanism is investigated.
The study of star clusters has advanced our understanding of stellar evolution, Galactic chemical evolution and nucleosynthesis. Here we investigate the composition of turn-off stars in the intriguing open cluster, NGC 6791, which is old, but super-metal-rich with high-resolution (46,000) Keck/HIRES spectra. We find [Fe/H] = +0.30 +/-0.02 from measurements of some 40 unblended, unsaturated lines of both Fe I and Fe II in eight turn-off stars. Our O abundances come from the O I triplet near 7774 A and we do a differential analysis relative to the Sun from our Lunar spectrum also obtained with Keck/HIRES. The O results are corrected for small nLTE effects. We find consistent ratios of [O/Fe]n with a mean of $-$0.06 +/-0.02. This continues the trend of decreasing [O/Fe] with increasing [Fe/H] found in field stars that are also both old and metal-rich. The small range in our oxygen abundances is consistent with a single population of stars. Our results for the alpha elements [Mg/Fe], [Si/Fe], [Ca/Fe], and [Ti/Fe] are near solar and compare well with those of the old, metal-rich field stars. The two Fe-peak elements, Cr and Ni, are consistent with Fe. These turn-off-star abundances provide benchmark abundances to investigate changes in the giants that might arise from nuclear-burning and dredge-up processes. Determinations of upper limits were found for Li by spectrum synthesis and these results support the prediction from standard theory that higher-metallicity stars deplete more Li. Probably no stars in NGC 6791 have retained their initial Li.
We present a framework for calculating super-horizon curvature perturbation from the dynamics of preheating, which gives a reasonable match to the lattice results. Hubble patches with different initial background field values evolve differently. From the bifurcation of their evolution trajectories we find curvature perturbation using Lyapunov theorem and $\delta N$ formulation. In this way we have established a connection between the finer dynamics of preheating and the curvature perturbation produced in this era. From the calculated analytical form of the curvature perturbation we have derived the effective super-horizon curvature perturbation smoothed out on large scales of CMB. The order of the amount of local form non-gaussianity generated in this process has been calculated and problems regarding the precise determination of it have been pointed out.
Recently ACTPol has measured the cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode and E-mode polarizations and obtained TE, EE, BB, TB and EB power spectra in the multipole range 225-8725, detecting six peaks and six troughs of acoustic oscillation in both the TE and EE correlation power spectrum giving independent empirical support to the {\Lambda}CDM cosmology. In our previous paper (di Serego Alighieri, Ni and Pan, Ap. J. 792 (2014) 35 [Paper I]), we have analyzed jointly the results of three experiments on the CMB B-mode polarization -- SPTpol, POLARBEAR and BICEP2 to include in the model, in addition to the gravitational lensing and the inflationary gravitational waves components, also the fluctuation effects induced by the cosmic polarization rotation (CPR), if it exists within the upper limits at the time. In this paper, we fit both the mean CPR angle <{\alpha}> and its fluctuation <{\delta}{\alpha}^2> from the ACTPol data, and update our fitting of CPR fluctuations using BICEP2 data taking the Planck dust measurement results into consideration. We follow the method of Paper I. Mean CPR angle is constrained from the EB correlation power spectra to |<{\alpha}>| < 14 mrad (0.8{\deg}) and the fluctuation (rms) is constrained from the BB correlation power spectra to <{\delta}{\alpha}^2>^(1/2) < 29.3 mrad (1.68{\deg}). Assuming that the polarization angle of Tau A does not change from 89.2 to 146 GHz, the ACTPol data give <{\alpha}> = 1.0 {\pm} 0.63{\deg}. These results suggest that the inclusion of the present ACTPol data is consistent with no CPR detection. With the PLANCK dust measurement, we update our fits of the BICEP2 CPR constraint to be 32.8 mrad (1.88{\deg}). The joint ACTpol-BICEP2-POLARBEAR CPR constraint is 23.7 mrad (1.36{\deg}).
In 1914, Planck introduced the concept of a white body. In nature, no true white bodies are known. We assume that the universe after last-scattering is an ideal white body that contains a tremendously large number of thermal photons and is at an extremely high temperature. Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in an ideal white body is investigated within the framework of quantum statistical mechanism. The computation shows that the transition temperature $T_c$ is a monotonically increasing function of the number density $n$ of photons. At finite temperature, we find that the condensate fraction $N_0(T)/N$ decreases continuously from unity to zero as the temperature increases from zero to the transition temperature $T_c$. Further, we study the radiation properties of an ideal white body. It is found that in the condensation region of $T<T_c$, the spectral intensity $I(\omega,T)$ of white body radiation is identical with Planck's law for blackbody radiation.
In this paper, we explore the effects of neutrino flavor oscillations on supernova nucleosynthesis and on the neutrino signals. Our study is based on detailed information about the neutrino spectra and their time evolution from a spherically-symmetric supernova model for an 18 M progenitor. We find that collective neutrino oscillations are not only sensitive to the detailed neutrino energy and angular distributions at emission, but also to the time evolution of both the neutrino spectra and the electron density profile. We apply the results of neutrino oscillations to study the impact on supernova nucleosynthesis and on the neutrino signals from a Galactic supernova. We show that in our supernova model, collective neutrino oscillations enhance the production of rare isotopes 138La and 180Ta but have little impact on the nu p-process nucleosynthesis. In addition, the adiabatic MSW flavor transformation, which occurs in the C/O and He shells of the supernova, may affect the production of light nuclei such as 7Li and 11B. For the neutrino signals, we calculate the rate of neutrino events in the Super-Kamiokande detector and in a hypothetical liquid argon detector. Our results suggest the possibility of using the time profiles of the events in both detectors, along with the spectral information of the detected neutrinos, to infer the neutrino mass hierarchy.
The standard model of cosmic ray propagation has been very successful in explaining all kinds of the Galactic cosmic ray spectra. However, high precision measurement recently revealed the appreciable discrepancy between data and model expectation, from spectrum observations of $\gamma$-rays, $e^+/e^-$ and probably the $B/C$ ratio starting from $\sim$10 GeV energy. In this work, we propose that the fresh cosmic rays, which are supplied by the young accelerators and detained by local magnetic field, can contribute additional secondary particles interacting with local materials. As this early cosmic ray has a hard spectrum, the model calculation results in a two-component $\gamma$-ray spectrum, which agree very well with the observation. Simultaneously, the expected neutrino number from the galactic plane could contribute $\sim60\%$ of IceCube observation neutrino number below a few hundreds of TeV. The same pp-collision process can account for a significant amount of the positron excesses. Under this model, it is expected that the excesses in $\overline p/p$ and $B/C$ ratio will show up when energy is above $\sim$10 GeV. We look forward that the model will be tested in the near future by new observations from AMS02, IceCube, AS$\gamma$, HAWC and future experiments such as LHASSO, HiSCORE and CTA.
Bent-tailed (BT) radio sources have long been known to trace over densities in the Universe up to z ~ 1 and there is increasing evidence this association persists out to redshifts of 2. The morphology of the jets in BT galaxies is primarily a function of the environment that they have resided in and so BTs provide invaluable clues as to their local conditions. Thus, not only can samples of BT galaxies be used as signposts of large-scale structure, but are also valuable for obtaining a statistical measurement of properties of the intra-cluster medium including the presence of cluster accretion shocks & winds, and as historical anemometers, preserving the dynamical history of their surroundings in their jets. We discuss the use of BTs to unveil large-scale structure and provide an example in which a BT was used to unlock the dynamical history of its host cluster. In addition to their use as density and dynamical indicators, BTs are useful probes of the magnetic field on their environment on scales which are inaccessible to other methods. Here we discuss a novel way in which a particular sub-class of BTs, the so-called `corkscrew' galaxies might further elucidate the coherence lengths of the magnetic fields in their vicinity. Given that BTs are estimated to make up a large population in next generation surveys we posit that the use of jets in this way could provide a unique source of environmental information for clusters and groups up to z = 2.
We address the problem of the difference of line widths of neutrals and ions observed from molecular clouds and explore whether this difference can arise from the effects of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence acting on partially ionized gas. We focus on the Alfvenic component of MHD turbulence and consider the damping of this component taking into account both neutral-ion collisions and neutral viscosity. We consider different regimes of turbulence corresponding to different media magnetizations and turbulent drivings. We find that for some turbulence regimes the linewidth difference does not depend on the magnetic field strength, while for others, the dependence is present. For instance, the velocity dispersion difference in strong sub-Alfvenic turbulence allows evaluation of magnetic field. We discuss earlier findings on the neutral-ion linewidth differences in the literature and compare the expressions for magnetic field we obtain with those published earlier.
Molecular complexity builds up at each step of the Sun-like star formation
process, starting from simple molecules and ending up in large polyatomic
species. Complex organic molecules (COMs; such as methyl formate, HCOOCH$_3$,
dymethyl ether, CH$_3$OCH$_3$, formamide, NH$_2$CHO, or glycoaldehyde,
HCOCH$_2$OH) are formed in all the components of the star formation recipe
(e.g. pre-stellar cores, hot-corinos, circumstellar disks, shocks induced by
fast jets), due to ice grain mantle sublimation or sputtering as well as
gas-phase reactions. Understanding in great detail the involved processes is
likely the only way to predict the ultimate molecular complexity reached in the
ISM, as the detection of large molecules is increasingly more difficult with
the increase of the number of atoms constituting them.
Thanks to the recent spectacular progress of astronomical observations, due
to the Herschel (sub-mm and IR), IRAM and SMA (mm and sub-mm), and NRAO (cm)
telescopes, an enormous activity is being developed in the field of
Astrochemistry, extending from astronomical observatories to chemical
laboratories. We are involved in several observational projects providing
unbiased spectral surveys (in the 80-300 and 500-2000 GHz ranges) with
unprecedented sensitivity of templates of dense cores and protostars. Forests
of COM lines have been detected. In this chapter we will focus on the chemistry
of both cold prestellar cores and hot shocked regions, (i) reviewing results
and open questions provided by mm-FIR observations, and (ii) showing the need
of carrying on the observations of COMs at lower frequencies, where SKA will
operate. We will also emphasize the importance of analysing the spectra by the
light of the experimental studies performed by our team, who is investigating
the chemical effects induced by ionising radiation bombarding astrophysically
relevant ices.
In X-ray spectra of several active galactic nuclei and Galactic black hole
binaries a broad relativistically smeared iron line is observed. This feature
arises by fluorescence when the accretion disc is illuminated by hot corona
above it. Due to central location of the corona the illumination and thus also
the line emission decrease with radius. It was reported in the literature that
this decrease is very steep in some of the sources, suggesting a highly compact
corona.
We revisit the lamp-post setup in which the corona is positioned on the axis
above the rotating black hole and investigate to what extent the steep
emissivity can be explained by this scenario. We show the contributions of the
relativistic effects to the disc illumination by the primary source - energy
shift, light bending and aberration. The lamp-post radial illumination pattern
is compared to the widely used radial broken power-law emissivity profile. We
find that very steep emissivities require the primary illuminating source to be
positioned very near the black hole horizon and/or the spectral power-law index
of the primary emission to be very high. The broken power-law approximation of
the illumination can be safely used when the primary source is located at
larger heights. However, for low heights the lamp-post illumination
considerably differs from this approximation.
We also show the variations of the iron line local flux over the disc due to
the flux dependence on incident and emission angles. The former depends mainly
on the height of the primary source while the latter depends on the inclination
angle of the observer. Thus the strength of the line varies substantially
across the disc. This effect may contribute to the observed steeper emissivity.
We present results based on the systematic analysis of high resolution 95\,ks \textit{Chandra} observations of the strong cool core cluster Abell 2390 at the redshift of z = 0.228, which hosts an energetic radio AGN. This analysis has enabled us to investigate five X-ray deficient cavities in the hot atmosphere of Abell 2390 within central 30\arcsec, three of which are newly detected. Presence of these cavities have been confirmed through a various image processing techniques like, the surface brightness profiles, unsharp masked image, as well as 2D elliptical model subtracted residual map. Temperature profile as well as 2D temperature map revealed structures in the distribution of ICM, in the sense that ICM in NW direction is relatively cooler than that on the SE direction. Two temperature jumps, one from 6\,keV to 9.25\,keV at 72 kpc on the north direction, and the other from 6\,keV to 10.27\,keV at 108 kpc in the east direction have been observed. These temperature jumps are associated with the shocks with Mach numbers 1.54$\pm$0.08 and 1.69$\pm$ 0.09, respectively. Unsharp masked image for A2390 reveals an X-ray edge at $\sim$74\arcsec (268\,kpc), which is found to coincide with the complex radio edge due to weak radio sources. The entropy profile at the core reveals a floor at 12.20$\pm$2.54 keV cm$^2$ and hence confirms intermittent heating by AGN. The diffuse radio emission mapped using the 1.4\,GHz VLA L-band data fills in all the X-ray cavities, and exhibit highly irregular morphology with an elongation along the cool ICM region. The mechanical power injected by the AGN in the form of X-ray cavities is found to be 3.3$\times$10$^{46}$ erg\,s$^{-1}$ and is roughly two orders of magnitude higher than that lost by the ICM in the form of X-ray emission, confirming that AGN feedback is capable enough to quench cooling flow in this cluster.
We report the discovery of a pair of extremely reddened classical Cepheid variable stars located in the Galactic plane behind the bulge, using near-infrared time-series photometry from the VVV Survey. This is the first time that such objects have ever been found in the opposite side of the Galactic plane. The Cepheids have almost identical periods, apparent brightnesses and colors. From the near-infrared Leavitt law, we determine their distances with ~1.5% precision and ~8% accuracy. We find that they have a same total extinction of A(V)~32 mag, and are located at the same heliocentric distance of <d>=11.4+/-0.9 kpc, and less than 1 pc from the true Galactic plane. Their similar periods indicate that the Cepheids are also coeval, with an age of ~48+/-3 Myr, according to theoretical models. They are separated by an angular distance of only 18.3", corresponding to a projected separation of ~1 pc. Their position coincides with the expected location of the Far 3 kpc Arm behind the bulge. Such a tight pair of similar classical Cepheids indicates the presence of an underlying young open cluster, that is both hidden behind heavy extinction and disguised by the dense stellar field of the bulge. All our attempts to directly detect this "invisible cluster" have failed, and deeper observations are needed.
In this paper, we study the issue of correlation between broad-line and radio variations under a spherical broad-line region (BLR), and attempt to locate the position of radio (and gamma-ray) emitting region in jet of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Considering the radial profiles of the radius and number density of clouds in the spherical BLR, we have deduced new formulae connecting the radio emitting position $R_{\rm{jet}}$ to the time lags $\tau_{\rm{ob}}$ between broad-line and radio variations, and the BLR inner and outer radii. The new formulae are applied to broad-line radio-loud Fermi-LAT AGNs, 3C 273 and 3C 120. For 3C 273, a common feature of negative time lags is found in the cross-correlation functions between light curves of radio emission and the Balmer lines, and as well Ly$\alpha$ $\lambda 1216$ and C IV $\lambda 1549$ lines. $R_{\rm{jet}}=$ 1.0--2.6 parsec (pc) are obtained from the time lags of the Balmer lines. For 3C 120, positive lags of about 0.3 yr are found between the 15 GHz emission and the H$\beta$, H$\gamma$ and He II $\lambda 4686$ lines, indicating the line variations lead the 15 GHz variations by about 0.3 yr. We have $R_{\rm{jet}}=$1.1--1.5 pc for 3C 120. The estimated $R_{\rm{jet}}$ are comparable for 3C 120 and 3C 273, and the gamma-ray emitting positions could be within $\sim$ 1--3 pc from the central engines. The cloud number density and radius radial distributions and the BLR structures have negligible effects on $R_{\rm{jet}}$.
High resolution spectroscopy with the Subaru High Dispersion Spectrograph, and Swift ultraviolet photometry are presented for the pulsating extreme helium star V652\,Her. Swift provides the best relative ultraviolet photometry obtained to date, but shows no direct evidence for a shock at ultraviolet or X-ray wavelengths. Subaru has provided high spectral and high temporal resolution spectroscopy over 6 pulsation cycles (and eight radius minima). These data have enabled a line-by-line analysis of the entire pulsation cycle and provided a description of the pulsating photosphere as a function of optical depth. They show that the photosphere is compressed radially by a factor of at least two at minimum radius, that the phase of radius minimum is a function of optical depth and the pulse speed through the photosphere is between 141 and 239 km/s (depending how measured) and at least ten times the local sound speed. The strong acceleration at minimum radius is demonstrated in individual line profiles; those formed deepest in the photosphere show a jump discontinuity of over 70 km/s on a timescale of 150 s. The pulse speed and line profile jumps imply a shock is present at minimum radius. These empirical results provide input for hydrodynamical modelling of the pulsation and hydrodynamical plus radiative transfer modelling of the dynamical spectra.
This paper reviews the studies of solar photospheric magnetic field evolution in active regions and its relationship to solar flares. It is divided into two topics, the magnetic structure and evolution leading to solar eruptions and the rapid changes of photospheric magnetic field associated with eruptions. For the first topic, we describe the magnetic complexity, new flux emergence, flux cancellation, shear motions, sunspot rotation, and magnetic helicity injection, which may all contribute to the storage and buildup of energy and triggering of solar eruptions. For the second topic, we concentrate on the observations of rapid and irreversible changes of photospheric magnetic field associated with flares, and the implication on the restructuring of three-dimensional magnetic field. In particular, we emphasize the recent advances in observations of photospheric magnetic field, as state-of-the-art observing facilities (such as Hinode and Solar Dynamic Observatory) become available. The linkage between observations and theories and future prospectives in this research area are also discussed.
Kepler-93b is a 1.478 +/- 0.019 Earth radius planet with a 4.7 day period around a bright (V=10.2), astroseismically-characterized host star with a mass of 0.911+/-0.033 solar masses and a radius of 0.919+/-0.011 solar radii. Based on 86 radial velocity observations obtained with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and 32 archival Keck/HIRES observations, we present a precise mass estimate of 4.02+/-0.68 Earth masses. The corresponding high density of 6.88+/-1.18 g/cc is consistent with a rocky composition of primarily iron and magnesium silicate. We compare Kepler-93b to other dense planets with well-constrained parameters and find that between 1-6 Earth masses, all dense planets including the Earth and Venus are well-described by the same fixed ratio of iron to magnesium silicate. There are as of yet no examples of such planets with masses > 6 Earth masses: All known planets in this mass regime have lower densities requiring significant fractions of volatiles or H/He gas. We also constrain the mass and period of the outer companion in the Kepler-93 system from the long-term radial velocity trend and archival adaptive optics images. As the sample of dense planets with well-constrained masses and radii continues to grow, we will be able to test whether the fixed compositional model found for the seven dense planets considered in this paper extends to the full population of 1-6 Earth mass planets.
We have been searching for surviving companions of progenitors of Galactic Type-Ia supernovae, in particular SN 1572 and SN 1006. These companion stars are expected to show peculiarities: (i) to be probably more luminous than the Sun, (ii) to have high radial velocity and proper motion, (iii) to be possibly enriched in metals from the SNIa ejecta, and (iv) to be located at the distance of the SNIa remnant. We have been characterizing possible candidate stars using high-resolution spectroscopic data taken at 10m-Keck and 8.2m-VLT facilities. We have identified a very promising candidate companion (Tycho G) for SN 1572, but we have not found any candidate companion for SN 1006, suggesting that SN event occurred in 1006 could have been the result of the merging of two white dwarfs. Adding these results to the evidence from the other direct searches, the clear minority of cases (20\% or less) seem to disfavour the single-degenerate channel or that preferentially the single-degenerate escenario would involve main-sequence companions less massive than the Sun. Therefore, it appears to be very important to continue investigating these and other Galactic Type-Ia SNe such as the Johannes Kepler SN 1604.
Photoionization of neutral atomic sulfur in the ground and metastable states was studied experimentally at a photon energy resolution of 44 meV FWHM. Relative cross section measurements were recorded by using tunable vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation in the energy range 9 -- 30 eV obtained from a laser-produced plasma and the atomic species were generated by photolysis of molecular precursors. Photoionization of this atom is characterized by multiple Rydberg series of autoionizing resonances superimposed on a direct photoionization continuum. A wealth of resonance features observed in the experimental spectra are spectroscopically assigned and their energies and quantum defects tabulated. The cross-section measurements are compared with state-of-the-art theoretical cross-section calculations obtained from the Dirac Coulomb R-matrix method. Resonances series in the spectra are identified and compared indicating similar features in both the theoretical and experimental spectra.
We present results of analysis of the dark matter (DM) pairwise velocity statistics in different Cosmic Web environments. We use the DM velocity and density field from the Millennium 2 simulation together with the NEXUS+ algorithm to segment the simulation volume into voxels uniquely identifying one of the four possible environments: nodes, filaments, walls or cosmic voids. We show that the PDFs of the mean infall velocities $v_{12}$ as well as its spatial dependence together with the perpendicular and parallel velocity dispersions bear a significant signal of the large-scale structure environment in which DM particle pairs are embedded. The pairwise flows are notably colder and have smaller mean magnitude in wall and voids, when compared to much denser environments of filaments and nodes. We discuss on our results, indicating that they are consistent with a simple theoretical predictions for pairwise motions as induced by gravitational instability mechanism. Our results indicate that the Cosmic Web elements are coherent dynamical entities rather than just temporal geometrical associations. In addition it should be possible to observationally test various Cosmic Web finding algorithms by segmenting available peculiar velocity data and studying resulting pairwise velocity statistics
The magneto-ionic structures of the interstellar medium of the Milky Way and the intergalactic medium are still poorly understood, especially at distances larger than a few kiloparsecs from the Sun. The three-dimensional (3D) structure of the Galactic magnetic field and electron density distribution may be probed through observations of radio pulsars, primarily owing to their compact nature, high velocities, and highly-polarized short-duration radio pulses. Phase 1 of the SKA, i.e. SKA1, will increase the known pulsar population by an order of magnitude, and the full SKA, i.e. SKA2, will discover pulsars in the most distant regions of our Galaxy. SKA1-VLBI will produce model-independent distances to a large number of pulsars, and wide-band polarization observations by SKA1-LOW and SKA1-MID will yield high precision dispersion measure, scattering measure, and rotation measure estimates along thousands of lines of sight. When combined, these observations will enable detailed tomography of the large-scale magneto-ionic structure of both the Galactic disk and the Galactic halo. Turbulence in the interstellar medium can be studied through the variations of these observables and the dynamic spectra of pulsar flux densities. SKA1-LOW and SKA1-MID will monitor interstellar weather and produce sensitive dynamic and secondary spectra of pulsar scintillation, which can be used to make speckle images of the ISM, study turbulence on scales between ~10^8 and ~10^13 m, and probe pulsar emission regions on scales down to $\sim$10 km. In addition, extragalactic pulsars or fast radio bursts to be discovered by SKA1 and SKA2 can be used to probe the electron density distribution and magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium beyond the Milky Way.
Context. The first release of astrometric data from Gaia will contain the
mean stellar positions and magnitudes from the first year of observations, and
proper motions from the combination of Gaia data with Hipparcos prior
information (HTPM).
Aims. We study the potential of using the positions from the Tycho-2
Catalogue as additional information for a joint solution with early Gaia data.
We call this the Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS).
Methods. We adapt Gaia's Astrometric Global Iterative Solution (AGIS) to
incorporate Tycho information, and use simulated Gaia observations to
demonstrate the feasibility of TGAS and to estimate its performance.
Results. Using six to twelve months of Gaia data, TGAS could deliver
positions, parallaxes and annual proper motions for the 2.5 million Tycho-2
stars, with sub-milliarcsecond accuracy. TGAS overcomes some of the limitations
of the HTPM project and allows its execution half a year earlier. Furthermore,
if the parallaxes from Hipparcos are not incorporated in the solution, they can
be used as a consistency check of the TGAS/HTPM solution.
Background: Exotic non-spherical nuclear pasta shapes are expected in nuclear matter at just below saturation density because of competition between short range nuclear attraction and long range Coulomb repulsion. Purpose: We explore the impact of nuclear pasta on nucleosynthesis, during neutron star mergers, as cold dense nuclear matter is ejected and decompressed. Methods: We perform classical molecular dynamics simulations with 51200 and 409600 nucleons, that are run on GPUs. We expand our simulation region to decompress systems from an initial density of 0.080 fm^{-3} down to 0.00125 fm^{-3}. We study proton fractions of Y_P=0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.30, and 0.40 at T =0.5, 0.75, and 1.0 MeV. We calculate the composition of the resulting systems using a cluster algorithm. Results: We find final compositions that are in good agreement with nuclear statistical equilibrium models for temperatures of 0.75 and 1 MeV. However, for proton fractions greater than Y_P=0.2 at a temperature of T = 0.5 MeV, the MD simulations produce non-equilibrium results with large rod-like nuclei. Conclusions: Our MD model is valid at higher densities than simple nuclear statistical equilibrium models and may help determine the initial temperatures and proton fractions of matter ejected in mergers.
A new air shower experiment of the Alborz Observatory, Alborz-I, located at the Sharif University of Technology, Iran, will be constructed in near future. An area of about 30$\times$40 m$^{2}$ will be covered by 20 plastic scintillation detectors (each with an area of 50$\times$50 cm$^{2}$). A series of experiments have been performed to optimize the height of light enclosures of the detectors for this array and the results have been compared to an extended code simulation of these detectors. Operational parameters of the detector obtained by this code are cross checked by Geant4 simulation. There is a good agreement between extended-code and Geant4 simulations. We also present further discussions on the detector characteristics, which can be applicable for all scintillation detectors with a similar configuration.
The linear perturbation of a Kerr black hole induced by a rotating massive circular ring is discussed by using the formalism by Teukolsky, Chrzanowski, Cohen and Kegeles. In these formalism, the perturbed Weyl scalars, $\psi_0$ and $\psi_4$, are first obtained from the Teukolsky equation. The perturbed metric is obtained in a radiation gauge via the Hertz potential. The computation can be done in the same way as in our previous paper, in which we considered the perturbation of a Schwarzschild black hole induced by a rotating ring. By adding lower multipole modes such as mass and angular momentum perturbation which are not computed by the Teukolsky equation, and by appropriately setting the parameters which are related to the gauge freedom, we obtain the perturbed gravitational field which is smooth except on the equatorial plane outside the ring.
This is the second lecture of `RAGtime' series on electrodynamical effects near black holes. We will summarize the basic equations of relativistic electrodynamics in terms of spin-coefficient (Newman-Penrose) formalism. The aim of the lecture is to present important relations that hold for exact electro-vacuum solutions and to exhibit, in a pedagogical manner, some illustrative solutions and useful approximation approaches. First, we concentrate on weak electromagnetic fields and we illustrate their structure by constructing the magnetic and electric lines of force. Gravitational field of the black hole assumes axial symmetry, whereas the electromagnetic field may or may not share the same symmetry. With these solutions we can investigate the frame-dragging effects acting on electromagnetic fields near a rotating black hole. These fields develop magnetic null points and current sheets. Their structure suggests that magnetic reconnection takes place near the rotating black hole horizon. Finally, the last section will be devoted to the transition from test-field solution to exact solutions of coupled Einstein-Maxwell equations. New effects emerge within the framework of exact solutions: the expulsion of the magnetic flux out of the black-hole horizon depends on the intensity of the imposed magnetic field.
This is a write-up of a talk given at the Opava RAGtime meeting in 2011, but it has been updated to include some subsequent related developments. The talk focused on discussion of some aspects of black hole and cosmological horizons under rather general circumstances, and on two different topics related to formation of cosmological structures at different epochs of the universe: virialization of cold dark matter during standard structure formation in the matter-dominated era, and primordial black hole formation during the radiative era.
We systematically compute the annihilation rate for neutral winos into the final state gamma + X, including all leading radiative corrections. This includes both the Sommerfeld enhancement (in the decoupling limit for the Higgsino) and the resummation of the leading electroweak double logarithms. Adopting an analysis of the HESS experiment, we place constraints on the mass as a function of the wino fraction of the dark matter and the shape of the dark matter profile. We also determine how much coring is needed in the dark matter halo to make the wino a viable candidate as a function of its mass. Additionally, as part of our effective field theory formalism, we show that in the pure-Standard Model sector of our theory, emissions of soft Higgses are power-suppressed and that collinear Higgs emission does not contribute to leading double logs.
A set of pupil apodization functions for use with a vortex coronagraph on telescopes with obscured apertures is presented. We show analytically that pupil amplitudes given by real-valued Zernike polynomials offer ideal on-axis starlight cancellation when applied to unobscured circular apertures. The charge of the vortex phase element must be a nonzero even integer, greater than the sum of the degree and the absolute value of its azimuthal order of the Zernike polynomial. Zero-valued lines and points of Zernike polynomials, or linear combinations thereof, can be matched to obstructions in the pupils of ground-based telescopes to improve the contrast achieved by a vortex coronagraph. This approach works well in the presence of a central obscuration and radial support structures. We analyze the contrast, off-axis throughput, and post-coronagraph point spread functions of an apodized vortex coronagraph designed for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This technique offers very good performance on apertures with large obscuring support structures similar to those on future 30-40m class ground-based telescopes.
We provide an invariant characterization of the physical properties of the Kerr spacetime. We introduce two dimensionless invariants, constructed out of some known curvature invariants, that act as detectors for the event horizons and ergosurfaces of the Kerr black hole. We also show that the mass and angular momentum can be extracted from local measurements of the curvature invariants. Finally, we introduce a dimensionless invariant that gives a local measure of the "Kerrness" of the spacetime.
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We present a detailed investigation of the cluster stellar mass-to-light (M*/L) ratio and cumulative stellar masses, derived on a galaxy-by-galaxy basis, for 12 massive (M500 ~ 10^14 - 10^15 Msun), nearby clusters with available optical imaging data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10 and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Our method involves a statistical cluster membership using both photometric and spectroscopic redshifts when available to maximize completeness whilst minimizing contamination effects. We show that different methods of estimating the stellar mass-to-light ratio from observed photometry result in systematic discrepancies in the total stellar masses and average mass-to-light ratios of cluster galaxies. Nonetheless, all conversion methodologies point to a lack of correlation between M*/Li and total cluster mass, even though low-mass groups contain relatively more blue galaxies. We also find no statistically significant correlation between M*/Li and the fraction of blue galaxies. For the mass range covered by our sample, the assumption of a Chabrier IMF yields an integrated M*/Li = 1.7 +/- 0.2 Msun/Lsun, a lower value than used in most similar studies, though consistent with the study of low-mass galaxy groups by Leauthaud et al. (2012). A light (diet) Salpeter IMF would imply a ~60% increase in M*/Li.
The reported positions of 964 suspected nova eruptions in M31 recorded through the end of calendar year 2013 have been compared in order to identify recurrent nova candidates. To pass the initial screen and qualify as a recurrent nova candidate two or more eruptions were required to be coincident within 0.1', although this criterion was relaxed to 0.15' for novae discovered on early photographic patrols. A total of 118 eruptions from 51 potential recurrent nova systems satisfied the screening criterion. To determine what fraction of these novae are indeed recurrent the original plates and published images of the relevant eruptions have been carefully compared. This procedure has resulted in the elimination of 27 of the 51 progenitor candidates (61 eruptions) from further consideration as recurrent novae, with another 8 systems (17 eruptions) deemed unlikely to be recurrent. Of the remaining 16 systems, 12 candidates (32 eruptions) were judged to be recurrent novae, with an additional 4 systems (8 eruptions) being possibly recurrent. It is estimated that ~4% of the nova eruptions seen in M31 over the past century are associated with recurrent novae. A Monte Carlo analysis shows that the discovery efficiency for recurrent novae may be as low as 10% that for novae in general, suggesting that as many as one in three nova eruptions observed in M31 arise from progenitor systems having recurrence times <~100 yr. For plausible system parameters, it appears unlikely that recurrent novae can provide a significant channel for the production of Type Ia supernovae.
This work explores a Pulsationally Driven Orbital Mass Ejection (PDOME) model for the launching of Classical Be star disks. Under this model, a combination of rapid rotation and non-radial pulsation modes contribute to placing material into the circumstellar environment. Several varieties of non-radial pulsation modes, characterized by their propagation direction and the relative phase of their velocity and density perturbations, are considered. As well, the orbital stability of material launched by such a mechanism is investigated.
The study of star clusters has advanced our understanding of stellar evolution, Galactic chemical evolution and nucleosynthesis. Here we investigate the composition of turn-off stars in the intriguing open cluster, NGC 6791, which is old, but super-metal-rich with high-resolution (46,000) Keck/HIRES spectra. We find [Fe/H] = +0.30 +/-0.02 from measurements of some 40 unblended, unsaturated lines of both Fe I and Fe II in eight turn-off stars. Our O abundances come from the O I triplet near 7774 A and we do a differential analysis relative to the Sun from our Lunar spectrum also obtained with Keck/HIRES. The O results are corrected for small nLTE effects. We find consistent ratios of [O/Fe]n with a mean of $-$0.06 +/-0.02. This continues the trend of decreasing [O/Fe] with increasing [Fe/H] found in field stars that are also both old and metal-rich. The small range in our oxygen abundances is consistent with a single population of stars. Our results for the alpha elements [Mg/Fe], [Si/Fe], [Ca/Fe], and [Ti/Fe] are near solar and compare well with those of the old, metal-rich field stars. The two Fe-peak elements, Cr and Ni, are consistent with Fe. These turn-off-star abundances provide benchmark abundances to investigate changes in the giants that might arise from nuclear-burning and dredge-up processes. Determinations of upper limits were found for Li by spectrum synthesis and these results support the prediction from standard theory that higher-metallicity stars deplete more Li. Probably no stars in NGC 6791 have retained their initial Li.
We present a framework for calculating super-horizon curvature perturbation from the dynamics of preheating, which gives a reasonable match to the lattice results. Hubble patches with different initial background field values evolve differently. From the bifurcation of their evolution trajectories we find curvature perturbation using Lyapunov theorem and $\delta N$ formulation. In this way we have established a connection between the finer dynamics of preheating and the curvature perturbation produced in this era. From the calculated analytical form of the curvature perturbation we have derived the effective super-horizon curvature perturbation smoothed out on large scales of CMB. The order of the amount of local form non-gaussianity generated in this process has been calculated and problems regarding the precise determination of it have been pointed out.
Recently ACTPol has measured the cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode and E-mode polarizations and obtained TE, EE, BB, TB and EB power spectra in the multipole range 225-8725, detecting six peaks and six troughs of acoustic oscillation in both the TE and EE correlation power spectrum giving independent empirical support to the {\Lambda}CDM cosmology. In our previous paper (di Serego Alighieri, Ni and Pan, Ap. J. 792 (2014) 35 [Paper I]), we have analyzed jointly the results of three experiments on the CMB B-mode polarization -- SPTpol, POLARBEAR and BICEP2 to include in the model, in addition to the gravitational lensing and the inflationary gravitational waves components, also the fluctuation effects induced by the cosmic polarization rotation (CPR), if it exists within the upper limits at the time. In this paper, we fit both the mean CPR angle <{\alpha}> and its fluctuation <{\delta}{\alpha}^2> from the ACTPol data, and update our fitting of CPR fluctuations using BICEP2 data taking the Planck dust measurement results into consideration. We follow the method of Paper I. Mean CPR angle is constrained from the EB correlation power spectra to |<{\alpha}>| < 14 mrad (0.8{\deg}) and the fluctuation (rms) is constrained from the BB correlation power spectra to <{\delta}{\alpha}^2>^(1/2) < 29.3 mrad (1.68{\deg}). Assuming that the polarization angle of Tau A does not change from 89.2 to 146 GHz, the ACTPol data give <{\alpha}> = 1.0 {\pm} 0.63{\deg}. These results suggest that the inclusion of the present ACTPol data is consistent with no CPR detection. With the PLANCK dust measurement, we update our fits of the BICEP2 CPR constraint to be 32.8 mrad (1.88{\deg}). The joint ACTpol-BICEP2-POLARBEAR CPR constraint is 23.7 mrad (1.36{\deg}).
In 1914, Planck introduced the concept of a white body. In nature, no true white bodies are known. We assume that the universe after last-scattering is an ideal white body that contains a tremendously large number of thermal photons and is at an extremely high temperature. Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in an ideal white body is investigated within the framework of quantum statistical mechanism. The computation shows that the transition temperature $T_c$ is a monotonically increasing function of the number density $n$ of photons. At finite temperature, we find that the condensate fraction $N_0(T)/N$ decreases continuously from unity to zero as the temperature increases from zero to the transition temperature $T_c$. Further, we study the radiation properties of an ideal white body. It is found that in the condensation region of $T<T_c$, the spectral intensity $I(\omega,T)$ of white body radiation is identical with Planck's law for blackbody radiation.
In this paper, we explore the effects of neutrino flavor oscillations on supernova nucleosynthesis and on the neutrino signals. Our study is based on detailed information about the neutrino spectra and their time evolution from a spherically-symmetric supernova model for an 18 M progenitor. We find that collective neutrino oscillations are not only sensitive to the detailed neutrino energy and angular distributions at emission, but also to the time evolution of both the neutrino spectra and the electron density profile. We apply the results of neutrino oscillations to study the impact on supernova nucleosynthesis and on the neutrino signals from a Galactic supernova. We show that in our supernova model, collective neutrino oscillations enhance the production of rare isotopes 138La and 180Ta but have little impact on the nu p-process nucleosynthesis. In addition, the adiabatic MSW flavor transformation, which occurs in the C/O and He shells of the supernova, may affect the production of light nuclei such as 7Li and 11B. For the neutrino signals, we calculate the rate of neutrino events in the Super-Kamiokande detector and in a hypothetical liquid argon detector. Our results suggest the possibility of using the time profiles of the events in both detectors, along with the spectral information of the detected neutrinos, to infer the neutrino mass hierarchy.
The standard model of cosmic ray propagation has been very successful in explaining all kinds of the Galactic cosmic ray spectra. However, high precision measurement recently revealed the appreciable discrepancy between data and model expectation, from spectrum observations of $\gamma$-rays, $e^+/e^-$ and probably the $B/C$ ratio starting from $\sim$10 GeV energy. In this work, we propose that the fresh cosmic rays, which are supplied by the young accelerators and detained by local magnetic field, can contribute additional secondary particles interacting with local materials. As this early cosmic ray has a hard spectrum, the model calculation results in a two-component $\gamma$-ray spectrum, which agree very well with the observation. Simultaneously, the expected neutrino number from the galactic plane could contribute $\sim60\%$ of IceCube observation neutrino number below a few hundreds of TeV. The same pp-collision process can account for a significant amount of the positron excesses. Under this model, it is expected that the excesses in $\overline p/p$ and $B/C$ ratio will show up when energy is above $\sim$10 GeV. We look forward that the model will be tested in the near future by new observations from AMS02, IceCube, AS$\gamma$, HAWC and future experiments such as LHASSO, HiSCORE and CTA.
Bent-tailed (BT) radio sources have long been known to trace over densities in the Universe up to z ~ 1 and there is increasing evidence this association persists out to redshifts of 2. The morphology of the jets in BT galaxies is primarily a function of the environment that they have resided in and so BTs provide invaluable clues as to their local conditions. Thus, not only can samples of BT galaxies be used as signposts of large-scale structure, but are also valuable for obtaining a statistical measurement of properties of the intra-cluster medium including the presence of cluster accretion shocks & winds, and as historical anemometers, preserving the dynamical history of their surroundings in their jets. We discuss the use of BTs to unveil large-scale structure and provide an example in which a BT was used to unlock the dynamical history of its host cluster. In addition to their use as density and dynamical indicators, BTs are useful probes of the magnetic field on their environment on scales which are inaccessible to other methods. Here we discuss a novel way in which a particular sub-class of BTs, the so-called `corkscrew' galaxies might further elucidate the coherence lengths of the magnetic fields in their vicinity. Given that BTs are estimated to make up a large population in next generation surveys we posit that the use of jets in this way could provide a unique source of environmental information for clusters and groups up to z = 2.
We address the problem of the difference of line widths of neutrals and ions observed from molecular clouds and explore whether this difference can arise from the effects of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence acting on partially ionized gas. We focus on the Alfvenic component of MHD turbulence and consider the damping of this component taking into account both neutral-ion collisions and neutral viscosity. We consider different regimes of turbulence corresponding to different media magnetizations and turbulent drivings. We find that for some turbulence regimes the linewidth difference does not depend on the magnetic field strength, while for others, the dependence is present. For instance, the velocity dispersion difference in strong sub-Alfvenic turbulence allows evaluation of magnetic field. We discuss earlier findings on the neutral-ion linewidth differences in the literature and compare the expressions for magnetic field we obtain with those published earlier.
Molecular complexity builds up at each step of the Sun-like star formation
process, starting from simple molecules and ending up in large polyatomic
species. Complex organic molecules (COMs; such as methyl formate, HCOOCH$_3$,
dymethyl ether, CH$_3$OCH$_3$, formamide, NH$_2$CHO, or glycoaldehyde,
HCOCH$_2$OH) are formed in all the components of the star formation recipe
(e.g. pre-stellar cores, hot-corinos, circumstellar disks, shocks induced by
fast jets), due to ice grain mantle sublimation or sputtering as well as
gas-phase reactions. Understanding in great detail the involved processes is
likely the only way to predict the ultimate molecular complexity reached in the
ISM, as the detection of large molecules is increasingly more difficult with
the increase of the number of atoms constituting them.
Thanks to the recent spectacular progress of astronomical observations, due
to the Herschel (sub-mm and IR), IRAM and SMA (mm and sub-mm), and NRAO (cm)
telescopes, an enormous activity is being developed in the field of
Astrochemistry, extending from astronomical observatories to chemical
laboratories. We are involved in several observational projects providing
unbiased spectral surveys (in the 80-300 and 500-2000 GHz ranges) with
unprecedented sensitivity of templates of dense cores and protostars. Forests
of COM lines have been detected. In this chapter we will focus on the chemistry
of both cold prestellar cores and hot shocked regions, (i) reviewing results
and open questions provided by mm-FIR observations, and (ii) showing the need
of carrying on the observations of COMs at lower frequencies, where SKA will
operate. We will also emphasize the importance of analysing the spectra by the
light of the experimental studies performed by our team, who is investigating
the chemical effects induced by ionising radiation bombarding astrophysically
relevant ices.
In X-ray spectra of several active galactic nuclei and Galactic black hole
binaries a broad relativistically smeared iron line is observed. This feature
arises by fluorescence when the accretion disc is illuminated by hot corona
above it. Due to central location of the corona the illumination and thus also
the line emission decrease with radius. It was reported in the literature that
this decrease is very steep in some of the sources, suggesting a highly compact
corona.
We revisit the lamp-post setup in which the corona is positioned on the axis
above the rotating black hole and investigate to what extent the steep
emissivity can be explained by this scenario. We show the contributions of the
relativistic effects to the disc illumination by the primary source - energy
shift, light bending and aberration. The lamp-post radial illumination pattern
is compared to the widely used radial broken power-law emissivity profile. We
find that very steep emissivities require the primary illuminating source to be
positioned very near the black hole horizon and/or the spectral power-law index
of the primary emission to be very high. The broken power-law approximation of
the illumination can be safely used when the primary source is located at
larger heights. However, for low heights the lamp-post illumination
considerably differs from this approximation.
We also show the variations of the iron line local flux over the disc due to
the flux dependence on incident and emission angles. The former depends mainly
on the height of the primary source while the latter depends on the inclination
angle of the observer. Thus the strength of the line varies substantially
across the disc. This effect may contribute to the observed steeper emissivity.
We present results based on the systematic analysis of high resolution 95\,ks \textit{Chandra} observations of the strong cool core cluster Abell 2390 at the redshift of z = 0.228, which hosts an energetic radio AGN. This analysis has enabled us to investigate five X-ray deficient cavities in the hot atmosphere of Abell 2390 within central 30\arcsec, three of which are newly detected. Presence of these cavities have been confirmed through a various image processing techniques like, the surface brightness profiles, unsharp masked image, as well as 2D elliptical model subtracted residual map. Temperature profile as well as 2D temperature map revealed structures in the distribution of ICM, in the sense that ICM in NW direction is relatively cooler than that on the SE direction. Two temperature jumps, one from 6\,keV to 9.25\,keV at 72 kpc on the north direction, and the other from 6\,keV to 10.27\,keV at 108 kpc in the east direction have been observed. These temperature jumps are associated with the shocks with Mach numbers 1.54$\pm$0.08 and 1.69$\pm$ 0.09, respectively. Unsharp masked image for A2390 reveals an X-ray edge at $\sim$74\arcsec (268\,kpc), which is found to coincide with the complex radio edge due to weak radio sources. The entropy profile at the core reveals a floor at 12.20$\pm$2.54 keV cm$^2$ and hence confirms intermittent heating by AGN. The diffuse radio emission mapped using the 1.4\,GHz VLA L-band data fills in all the X-ray cavities, and exhibit highly irregular morphology with an elongation along the cool ICM region. The mechanical power injected by the AGN in the form of X-ray cavities is found to be 3.3$\times$10$^{46}$ erg\,s$^{-1}$ and is roughly two orders of magnitude higher than that lost by the ICM in the form of X-ray emission, confirming that AGN feedback is capable enough to quench cooling flow in this cluster.
We report the discovery of a pair of extremely reddened classical Cepheid variable stars located in the Galactic plane behind the bulge, using near-infrared time-series photometry from the VVV Survey. This is the first time that such objects have ever been found in the opposite side of the Galactic plane. The Cepheids have almost identical periods, apparent brightnesses and colors. From the near-infrared Leavitt law, we determine their distances with ~1.5% precision and ~8% accuracy. We find that they have a same total extinction of A(V)~32 mag, and are located at the same heliocentric distance of <d>=11.4+/-0.9 kpc, and less than 1 pc from the true Galactic plane. Their similar periods indicate that the Cepheids are also coeval, with an age of ~48+/-3 Myr, according to theoretical models. They are separated by an angular distance of only 18.3", corresponding to a projected separation of ~1 pc. Their position coincides with the expected location of the Far 3 kpc Arm behind the bulge. Such a tight pair of similar classical Cepheids indicates the presence of an underlying young open cluster, that is both hidden behind heavy extinction and disguised by the dense stellar field of the bulge. All our attempts to directly detect this "invisible cluster" have failed, and deeper observations are needed.
In this paper, we study the issue of correlation between broad-line and radio variations under a spherical broad-line region (BLR), and attempt to locate the position of radio (and gamma-ray) emitting region in jet of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Considering the radial profiles of the radius and number density of clouds in the spherical BLR, we have deduced new formulae connecting the radio emitting position $R_{\rm{jet}}$ to the time lags $\tau_{\rm{ob}}$ between broad-line and radio variations, and the BLR inner and outer radii. The new formulae are applied to broad-line radio-loud Fermi-LAT AGNs, 3C 273 and 3C 120. For 3C 273, a common feature of negative time lags is found in the cross-correlation functions between light curves of radio emission and the Balmer lines, and as well Ly$\alpha$ $\lambda 1216$ and C IV $\lambda 1549$ lines. $R_{\rm{jet}}=$ 1.0--2.6 parsec (pc) are obtained from the time lags of the Balmer lines. For 3C 120, positive lags of about 0.3 yr are found between the 15 GHz emission and the H$\beta$, H$\gamma$ and He II $\lambda 4686$ lines, indicating the line variations lead the 15 GHz variations by about 0.3 yr. We have $R_{\rm{jet}}=$1.1--1.5 pc for 3C 120. The estimated $R_{\rm{jet}}$ are comparable for 3C 120 and 3C 273, and the gamma-ray emitting positions could be within $\sim$ 1--3 pc from the central engines. The cloud number density and radius radial distributions and the BLR structures have negligible effects on $R_{\rm{jet}}$.
High resolution spectroscopy with the Subaru High Dispersion Spectrograph, and Swift ultraviolet photometry are presented for the pulsating extreme helium star V652\,Her. Swift provides the best relative ultraviolet photometry obtained to date, but shows no direct evidence for a shock at ultraviolet or X-ray wavelengths. Subaru has provided high spectral and high temporal resolution spectroscopy over 6 pulsation cycles (and eight radius minima). These data have enabled a line-by-line analysis of the entire pulsation cycle and provided a description of the pulsating photosphere as a function of optical depth. They show that the photosphere is compressed radially by a factor of at least two at minimum radius, that the phase of radius minimum is a function of optical depth and the pulse speed through the photosphere is between 141 and 239 km/s (depending how measured) and at least ten times the local sound speed. The strong acceleration at minimum radius is demonstrated in individual line profiles; those formed deepest in the photosphere show a jump discontinuity of over 70 km/s on a timescale of 150 s. The pulse speed and line profile jumps imply a shock is present at minimum radius. These empirical results provide input for hydrodynamical modelling of the pulsation and hydrodynamical plus radiative transfer modelling of the dynamical spectra.
This paper reviews the studies of solar photospheric magnetic field evolution in active regions and its relationship to solar flares. It is divided into two topics, the magnetic structure and evolution leading to solar eruptions and the rapid changes of photospheric magnetic field associated with eruptions. For the first topic, we describe the magnetic complexity, new flux emergence, flux cancellation, shear motions, sunspot rotation, and magnetic helicity injection, which may all contribute to the storage and buildup of energy and triggering of solar eruptions. For the second topic, we concentrate on the observations of rapid and irreversible changes of photospheric magnetic field associated with flares, and the implication on the restructuring of three-dimensional magnetic field. In particular, we emphasize the recent advances in observations of photospheric magnetic field, as state-of-the-art observing facilities (such as Hinode and Solar Dynamic Observatory) become available. The linkage between observations and theories and future prospectives in this research area are also discussed.
Kepler-93b is a 1.478 +/- 0.019 Earth radius planet with a 4.7 day period around a bright (V=10.2), astroseismically-characterized host star with a mass of 0.911+/-0.033 solar masses and a radius of 0.919+/-0.011 solar radii. Based on 86 radial velocity observations obtained with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and 32 archival Keck/HIRES observations, we present a precise mass estimate of 4.02+/-0.68 Earth masses. The corresponding high density of 6.88+/-1.18 g/cc is consistent with a rocky composition of primarily iron and magnesium silicate. We compare Kepler-93b to other dense planets with well-constrained parameters and find that between 1-6 Earth masses, all dense planets including the Earth and Venus are well-described by the same fixed ratio of iron to magnesium silicate. There are as of yet no examples of such planets with masses > 6 Earth masses: All known planets in this mass regime have lower densities requiring significant fractions of volatiles or H/He gas. We also constrain the mass and period of the outer companion in the Kepler-93 system from the long-term radial velocity trend and archival adaptive optics images. As the sample of dense planets with well-constrained masses and radii continues to grow, we will be able to test whether the fixed compositional model found for the seven dense planets considered in this paper extends to the full population of 1-6 Earth mass planets.
We have been searching for surviving companions of progenitors of Galactic Type-Ia supernovae, in particular SN 1572 and SN 1006. These companion stars are expected to show peculiarities: (i) to be probably more luminous than the Sun, (ii) to have high radial velocity and proper motion, (iii) to be possibly enriched in metals from the SNIa ejecta, and (iv) to be located at the distance of the SNIa remnant. We have been characterizing possible candidate stars using high-resolution spectroscopic data taken at 10m-Keck and 8.2m-VLT facilities. We have identified a very promising candidate companion (Tycho G) for SN 1572, but we have not found any candidate companion for SN 1006, suggesting that SN event occurred in 1006 could have been the result of the merging of two white dwarfs. Adding these results to the evidence from the other direct searches, the clear minority of cases (20\% or less) seem to disfavour the single-degenerate channel or that preferentially the single-degenerate escenario would involve main-sequence companions less massive than the Sun. Therefore, it appears to be very important to continue investigating these and other Galactic Type-Ia SNe such as the Johannes Kepler SN 1604.
Photoionization of neutral atomic sulfur in the ground and metastable states was studied experimentally at a photon energy resolution of 44 meV FWHM. Relative cross section measurements were recorded by using tunable vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation in the energy range 9 -- 30 eV obtained from a laser-produced plasma and the atomic species were generated by photolysis of molecular precursors. Photoionization of this atom is characterized by multiple Rydberg series of autoionizing resonances superimposed on a direct photoionization continuum. A wealth of resonance features observed in the experimental spectra are spectroscopically assigned and their energies and quantum defects tabulated. The cross-section measurements are compared with state-of-the-art theoretical cross-section calculations obtained from the Dirac Coulomb R-matrix method. Resonances series in the spectra are identified and compared indicating similar features in both the theoretical and experimental spectra.
We present results of analysis of the dark matter (DM) pairwise velocity statistics in different Cosmic Web environments. We use the DM velocity and density field from the Millennium 2 simulation together with the NEXUS+ algorithm to segment the simulation volume into voxels uniquely identifying one of the four possible environments: nodes, filaments, walls or cosmic voids. We show that the PDFs of the mean infall velocities $v_{12}$ as well as its spatial dependence together with the perpendicular and parallel velocity dispersions bear a significant signal of the large-scale structure environment in which DM particle pairs are embedded. The pairwise flows are notably colder and have smaller mean magnitude in wall and voids, when compared to much denser environments of filaments and nodes. We discuss on our results, indicating that they are consistent with a simple theoretical predictions for pairwise motions as induced by gravitational instability mechanism. Our results indicate that the Cosmic Web elements are coherent dynamical entities rather than just temporal geometrical associations. In addition it should be possible to observationally test various Cosmic Web finding algorithms by segmenting available peculiar velocity data and studying resulting pairwise velocity statistics
The magneto-ionic structures of the interstellar medium of the Milky Way and the intergalactic medium are still poorly understood, especially at distances larger than a few kiloparsecs from the Sun. The three-dimensional (3D) structure of the Galactic magnetic field and electron density distribution may be probed through observations of radio pulsars, primarily owing to their compact nature, high velocities, and highly-polarized short-duration radio pulses. Phase 1 of the SKA, i.e. SKA1, will increase the known pulsar population by an order of magnitude, and the full SKA, i.e. SKA2, will discover pulsars in the most distant regions of our Galaxy. SKA1-VLBI will produce model-independent distances to a large number of pulsars, and wide-band polarization observations by SKA1-LOW and SKA1-MID will yield high precision dispersion measure, scattering measure, and rotation measure estimates along thousands of lines of sight. When combined, these observations will enable detailed tomography of the large-scale magneto-ionic structure of both the Galactic disk and the Galactic halo. Turbulence in the interstellar medium can be studied through the variations of these observables and the dynamic spectra of pulsar flux densities. SKA1-LOW and SKA1-MID will monitor interstellar weather and produce sensitive dynamic and secondary spectra of pulsar scintillation, which can be used to make speckle images of the ISM, study turbulence on scales between ~10^8 and ~10^13 m, and probe pulsar emission regions on scales down to $\sim$10 km. In addition, extragalactic pulsars or fast radio bursts to be discovered by SKA1 and SKA2 can be used to probe the electron density distribution and magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium beyond the Milky Way.
Context. The first release of astrometric data from Gaia will contain the
mean stellar positions and magnitudes from the first year of observations, and
proper motions from the combination of Gaia data with Hipparcos prior
information (HTPM).
Aims. We study the potential of using the positions from the Tycho-2
Catalogue as additional information for a joint solution with early Gaia data.
We call this the Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS).
Methods. We adapt Gaia's Astrometric Global Iterative Solution (AGIS) to
incorporate Tycho information, and use simulated Gaia observations to
demonstrate the feasibility of TGAS and to estimate its performance.
Results. Using six to twelve months of Gaia data, TGAS could deliver
positions, parallaxes and annual proper motions for the 2.5 million Tycho-2
stars, with sub-milliarcsecond accuracy. TGAS overcomes some of the limitations
of the HTPM project and allows its execution half a year earlier. Furthermore,
if the parallaxes from Hipparcos are not incorporated in the solution, they can
be used as a consistency check of the TGAS/HTPM solution.
Background: Exotic non-spherical nuclear pasta shapes are expected in nuclear matter at just below saturation density because of competition between short range nuclear attraction and long range Coulomb repulsion. Purpose: We explore the impact of nuclear pasta on nucleosynthesis, during neutron star mergers, as cold dense nuclear matter is ejected and decompressed. Methods: We perform classical molecular dynamics simulations with 51200 and 409600 nucleons, that are run on GPUs. We expand our simulation region to decompress systems from an initial density of 0.080 fm^{-3} down to 0.00125 fm^{-3}. We study proton fractions of Y_P=0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.30, and 0.40 at T =0.5, 0.75, and 1.0 MeV. We calculate the composition of the resulting systems using a cluster algorithm. Results: We find final compositions that are in good agreement with nuclear statistical equilibrium models for temperatures of 0.75 and 1 MeV. However, for proton fractions greater than Y_P=0.2 at a temperature of T = 0.5 MeV, the MD simulations produce non-equilibrium results with large rod-like nuclei. Conclusions: Our MD model is valid at higher densities than simple nuclear statistical equilibrium models and may help determine the initial temperatures and proton fractions of matter ejected in mergers.
A new air shower experiment of the Alborz Observatory, Alborz-I, located at the Sharif University of Technology, Iran, will be constructed in near future. An area of about 30$\times$40 m$^{2}$ will be covered by 20 plastic scintillation detectors (each with an area of 50$\times$50 cm$^{2}$). A series of experiments have been performed to optimize the height of light enclosures of the detectors for this array and the results have been compared to an extended code simulation of these detectors. Operational parameters of the detector obtained by this code are cross checked by Geant4 simulation. There is a good agreement between extended-code and Geant4 simulations. We also present further discussions on the detector characteristics, which can be applicable for all scintillation detectors with a similar configuration.
The linear perturbation of a Kerr black hole induced by a rotating massive circular ring is discussed by using the formalism by Teukolsky, Chrzanowski, Cohen and Kegeles. In these formalism, the perturbed Weyl scalars, $\psi_0$ and $\psi_4$, are first obtained from the Teukolsky equation. The perturbed metric is obtained in a radiation gauge via the Hertz potential. The computation can be done in the same way as in our previous paper, in which we considered the perturbation of a Schwarzschild black hole induced by a rotating ring. By adding lower multipole modes such as mass and angular momentum perturbation which are not computed by the Teukolsky equation, and by appropriately setting the parameters which are related to the gauge freedom, we obtain the perturbed gravitational field which is smooth except on the equatorial plane outside the ring.
This is the second lecture of `RAGtime' series on electrodynamical effects near black holes. We will summarize the basic equations of relativistic electrodynamics in terms of spin-coefficient (Newman-Penrose) formalism. The aim of the lecture is to present important relations that hold for exact electro-vacuum solutions and to exhibit, in a pedagogical manner, some illustrative solutions and useful approximation approaches. First, we concentrate on weak electromagnetic fields and we illustrate their structure by constructing the magnetic and electric lines of force. Gravitational field of the black hole assumes axial symmetry, whereas the electromagnetic field may or may not share the same symmetry. With these solutions we can investigate the frame-dragging effects acting on electromagnetic fields near a rotating black hole. These fields develop magnetic null points and current sheets. Their structure suggests that magnetic reconnection takes place near the rotating black hole horizon. Finally, the last section will be devoted to the transition from test-field solution to exact solutions of coupled Einstein-Maxwell equations. New effects emerge within the framework of exact solutions: the expulsion of the magnetic flux out of the black-hole horizon depends on the intensity of the imposed magnetic field.
This is a write-up of a talk given at the Opava RAGtime meeting in 2011, but it has been updated to include some subsequent related developments. The talk focused on discussion of some aspects of black hole and cosmological horizons under rather general circumstances, and on two different topics related to formation of cosmological structures at different epochs of the universe: virialization of cold dark matter during standard structure formation in the matter-dominated era, and primordial black hole formation during the radiative era.
We systematically compute the annihilation rate for neutral winos into the final state gamma + X, including all leading radiative corrections. This includes both the Sommerfeld enhancement (in the decoupling limit for the Higgsino) and the resummation of the leading electroweak double logarithms. Adopting an analysis of the HESS experiment, we place constraints on the mass as a function of the wino fraction of the dark matter and the shape of the dark matter profile. We also determine how much coring is needed in the dark matter halo to make the wino a viable candidate as a function of its mass. Additionally, as part of our effective field theory formalism, we show that in the pure-Standard Model sector of our theory, emissions of soft Higgses are power-suppressed and that collinear Higgs emission does not contribute to leading double logs.
A set of pupil apodization functions for use with a vortex coronagraph on telescopes with obscured apertures is presented. We show analytically that pupil amplitudes given by real-valued Zernike polynomials offer ideal on-axis starlight cancellation when applied to unobscured circular apertures. The charge of the vortex phase element must be a nonzero even integer, greater than the sum of the degree and the absolute value of its azimuthal order of the Zernike polynomial. Zero-valued lines and points of Zernike polynomials, or linear combinations thereof, can be matched to obstructions in the pupils of ground-based telescopes to improve the contrast achieved by a vortex coronagraph. This approach works well in the presence of a central obscuration and radial support structures. We analyze the contrast, off-axis throughput, and post-coronagraph point spread functions of an apodized vortex coronagraph designed for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This technique offers very good performance on apertures with large obscuring support structures similar to those on future 30-40m class ground-based telescopes.
We provide an invariant characterization of the physical properties of the Kerr spacetime. We introduce two dimensionless invariants, constructed out of some known curvature invariants, that act as detectors for the event horizons and ergosurfaces of the Kerr black hole. We also show that the mass and angular momentum can be extracted from local measurements of the curvature invariants. Finally, we introduce a dimensionless invariant that gives a local measure of the "Kerrness" of the spacetime.
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