An Observational Determination of the Proton to Electron Mass Ratio in the Early Universe

In an effort to resolve the discrepancy between two measurements of the fundamental constant mu, the proton to electron mass ratio, at early times in the universe we reanalyze the same data used in the earlier studies. Our analysis of the molecular hydrogen absorption lines in archival VLT/UVES spectra of the damped Lyman alpha systems in the QSOs Q0347-383 and Q0405-443 yields a combined measurement of a (Delta mu)/mu value of (-7 +/- 8) x 10^{-6}, consistent with no change in the value of mu over a time span of 11.5 gigayears. Here we define (Delta mu) as (mu_z - mu_0) where mu_z is the value of mu at a redshift of z and mu_0 is the present day value. Our null result is consistent with the recent measurements of King et al. 2009, (Delta mu)/u = (2.6 +/- 3.0) x 10^{-6}, and inconsistent with the positive detection of a change in mu by Reinhold et al. 2006. Both of the previous studies and this study are based on the same data but with differing analysis methods. Improvements in the wavelength calibration over the UVES pipeline calibration is a key element in both of the null results. This leads to the conclusion that the fundamental constant mu is unchanged to an accuracy of 10^{-5} over the last 80% of the age of the universe, well into the matter dominated epoch. This limit provides constraints on models of dark energy that invoke rolling scalar fields and also limits the parameter space of Super Symmetric or string theory models of physics. New instruments, both planned and under construction, will provide opportunities to greatly improve the accuracy of these measurements.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Traffic sign detection based on simple XOR and discriminative features

Traffic Sign Detection (TSD) is an important application in computer vision. It plays a crucial role in driver assistance systems, and provides drivers with safety and precaution information. In this paper, in addition to detecting Traffic Signs (TSs), the proposed technique also recognizes the shape of the TS. The proposed technique consist of two stages. The first stage is an image segmentation technique that is based on Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ), which divides the image into six different color regions. The second stage is based on discriminative features (area, color, and aspect ratio) and the exclusive OR logical operator (XOR). The output is the location and shape of the TS. The proposed technique is applied on the German Traffic Sign Detection Benchmark (GTSDB), and achieves overall detection and shape matching of around 97% and 100% respectively. The testing speed is around 0.8 seconds per image on a mainstream PC, and the technique is coded using the Matlab toolbox

Prospects of constraining the dense matter equation of state from the timing analysis of pulsars in double neutron star binaries: the cases of PSR J0737-3039A and PSR J1757-1854

The Lense-Thirring effect from spinning neutron stars in double neutron star binaries contribute to the periastron advance of the orbit. This extra term involves the moment of inertia of the neutron stars. Moment of inertia, on the other hand, depends on the mass and spin of the neutron star as well as the equation of state of the matter. If at least one member of the double neutron star binary (better the faster one) is a radio pulsar, then accurate timing analysis might lead to the estimation of the contribution of the Lense-Thirring effect to the periastron advance, which will lead to the measurement of the moment of inertia of the pulsar. Combination of the knowledge on the values of the moment of inertia, the mass, and the spin of the pulsar, will give a new constraint on the equation of state. Pulsars in double neutron star binaries are the best for this purpose as short orbits and moderately high eccentricities make the Lense-Thirring effect substantial, whereas tidal effects are negligible (unlike pulsars with main sequence or white-dwarf binaries). The most promising pulsars are PSR J0737-3039A and PSR J1757-1854. The spin-precession of pulsars due to the misalignment between the spin and the orbital angular momentum vectors affect the contribution of the Lense-Thirring effect to the periastron advance. This effect has been explored for both PSR J0737-3039A and PSR J1757-1854, and as the misalignment angles for both of these pulsars are small, the variation in the Lense-Thirring term is not much. However, to extract the Lense-Thirring effect from the observed rate of the periastron advance, more accurate timing solutions including precise proper motion and distance measurements are essential.Comment: To appear in the special issue of `Universe' dedicated to the conference: "Compact Stars in the QCD Phase Diagram VI" held at The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, Russia; during 26 - 29 September, 201

PEXO : a global modeling framework for nanosecond timing, microsecond astrometry, and μm/s radial velocities

54 pages, 2 tables, 19 figures, accepted for publication in ApJS, PEXO is available at https://github.com/phillippro/pexoThe ability to make independent detections of the signatures of exoplanets with complementary telescopes and instruments brings a new potential for robust identification of exoplanets and precision characterization. We introduce PEXO, a package for Precise EXOplanetology to facilitate the efficient modeling of timing, astrometry, and radial velocity data, which will benefit not only exoplanet science but also various astrophysical studies in general. PEXO is general enough to account for binary motion and stellar reflex motions induced by planetary companions and is precise enough to treat various relativistic effects both in the solar system and in the target system. We also model the post-Newtonian barycentric motion for future tests of general relativity in extrasolar systems. We benchmark PEXO with the pulsar timing package TEMPO2 and find that PEXO produces numerically similar results with timing precision of about 1 ns, space-based astrometry to a precision of 1{\mu}as, and radial velocity of 1 {\mu}m/s and improves on TEMPO2 for decade-long timing data of nearby targets, due to its consideration of third-order terms of Roemer delay. PEXO is able to avoid the bias introduced by decoupling the target system and the solar system and to account for the atmospheric effects which set a practical limit for ground-based radial velocities close to 1 cm/s. Considering the various caveats in barycentric correction and ancillary data required to realize cm/s modeling, we recommend the preservation of original observational data. The PEXO modeling package is available at GitHub (https://github.com/phillippro/pexo).Peer reviewe

Detecting New Planets in Transiting Systems

I present an initial investigation into a new planet detection technique that uses the transit timing of a known, transiting planet. The transits of a solitary planet orbiting a star occur at equally spaced intervals in time. If a second planet is present, dynamical interactions within the system will cause the time interval between transits to vary. These transit time variations can be used to infer the orbital elements of the unseen, perturbing planet. I show analytic expressions for the amplitude of the transit time variations in several limiting cases. Under certain conditions the transit time variations can be comparable to the period of the transiting planet. I also present the application of this planet detection technique to existing transit observations of the TrES-1 and HD209458 systems. While no convincing evidence for a second planet in either system was found from those data, I constrain the mass that a perturbing planet could have as a function of the semi-major axis ratio of the two planets and the eccentricity of the perturbing planet. Near low-order, mean-motion resonances (within about 1% fractional deviation), I find that a secondary planet must generally have a mass comparable to or less than the mass of the Earth--showing that these data are the first to have sensitivity to sub Earth-mass planets orbiting main sequence stars. These results show that TTV will be an important tool in the detection and characterization of extrasolar planetary systems.Comment: Ph.D. dissertation (2006). 108 page

The third data release of the Kilo-Degree Survey and associated data products

The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) is an ongoing optical wide-field imaging survey with the OmegaCAM camera at the VLT Survey Telescope. It aims to image 1500 square degrees in four filters (ugri). The core science driver is mapping the large-scale matter distribution in the Universe, using weak lensing shear and photometric redshift measurements. Further science cases include galaxy evolution, Milky Way structure, detection of high-redshift clusters, and finding rare sources such as strong lenses and quasars. Here we present the third public data release (DR3) and several associated data products, adding further area, homogenized photometric calibration, photometric redshifts and weak lensing shear measurements to the first two releases. A dedicated pipeline embedded in the Astro-WISE information system is used for the production of the main release. Modifications with respect to earlier releases are described in detail. Photometric redshifts have been derived using both Bayesian template fitting, and machine-learning techniques. For the weak lensing measurements, optimized procedures based on the THELI data reduction and lensfit shear measurement packages are used. In DR3 stacked ugri images, weight maps, masks, and source lists for 292 new survey tiles (~300 sq.deg) are made available. The multi-band catalogue, including homogenized photometry and photometric redshifts, covers the combined DR1, DR2 and DR3 footprint of 440 survey tiles (447 sq.deg). Limiting magnitudes are typically 24.3, 25.1, 24.9, 23.8 (5 sigma in a 2 arcsec aperture) in ugri, respectively, and the typical r-band PSF size is less than 0.7 arcsec. The photometric homogenization scheme ensures accurate colors and an absolute calibration stable to ~2% for gri and ~3% in u. Separately released are a weak lensing shear catalogue and photometric redshifts based on two different machine-learning techniques.Comment: small modifications; 27 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

A Radio Pulsar/X-ray Binary Link

Radio pulsars with millisecond spin periods are thought to have been spun up by transfer of matter and angular momentum from a low-mass companion star during an X-ray-emitting phase. The spin periods of the neutron stars in several such low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) systems have been shown to be in the millisecond regime, but no radio pulsations have been detected. Here we report on detection and follow-up observations of a nearby radio millisecond pulsar (MSP) in a circular binary orbit with an optically identified companion star. Optical observations indicate that an accretion disk was present in this system within the last decade. Our optical data show no evidence that one exists today, suggesting that the radio MSP has turned on after a recent LMXB phase.Comment: published in Scienc