Faraday Rotation Measure Synthesis

We extend the rotation measure work of Burn (1966) to the cases of limited sampling of lambda squared space and non-constant emission spectra. We introduce the rotation measure transfer function (RMTF), which is an excellent predictor of n-pi ambiguity problems with the lambda squared coverage. Rotation measure synthesis can be implemented very efficiently on modern computers. Because the analysis is easily applied to wide fields, one can conduct very fast RM surveys of weak spatially extended sources. Difficult situations, for example multiple sources along the line of sight, are easily detected and transparently handled. Under certain conditions, it is even possible to recover the emission as a function of Faraday depth within a single cloud of ionized gas. Rotation measure synthesis has already been successful in discovering widespread, weak, polarized emission associated with the Perseus cluster (De Bruyn and Brentjens, 2005). In simple, high signal to noise situations it is as good as traditional linear fits to polarization angle versus lambda squared plots. However, when the situation is more complex or very weak polarized emission at high rotation measures is expected, it is the only viable option.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, accepted by A&A, added references, corrected typo

A 90 nm CMOS 16 Gb/s Transceiver for Optical Interconnects

Interconnect architectures which leverage high-bandwidth optical channels offer a promising solution to address the increasing chip-to-chip I/O bandwidth demands. This paper describes a dense, high-speed, and low-power CMOS optical interconnect transceiver architecture. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) data rate is extended for a given average current and corresponding reliability level with a four-tap current summing FIR transmitter. A low-voltage integrating and double-sampling optical receiver front-end provides adequate sensitivity in a power efficient manner by avoiding linear high-gain elements common in conventional transimpedance-amplifier (TIA) receivers. Clock recovery is performed with a dual-loop architecture which employs baud-rate phase detection and feedback interpolation to achieve reduced power consumption, while high-precision phase spacing is ensured at both the transmitter and receiver through adjustable delay clock buffers. A prototype chip fabricated in 1 V 90 nm CMOS achieves 16 Gb/s operation while consuming 129 mW and occupying 0.105 mm^2

A Sensitivity and Array-Configuration Study for Measuring the Power Spectrum of 21cm Emission from Reionization

Telescopes aiming to measure 21cm emission from the Epoch of Reionization must toe a careful line, balancing the need for raw sensitivity against the stringent calibration requirements for removing bright foregrounds. It is unclear what the optimal design is for achieving both of these goals. Via a pedagogical derivation of an interferometer's response to the power spectrum of 21cm reionization fluctuations, we show that even under optimistic scenarios, first-generation arrays will yield low-SNR detections, and that different compact array configurations can substantially alter sensitivity. We explore the sensitivity gains of array configurations that yield high redundancy in the uv-plane -- configurations that have been largely ignored since the advent of self-calibration for high-dynamic-range imaging. We first introduce a mathematical framework to generate optimal minimum-redundancy configurations for imaging. We contrast the sensitivity of such configurations with high-redundancy configurations, finding that high-redundancy configurations can improve power-spectrum sensitivity by more than an order of magnitude. We explore how high-redundancy array configurations can be tuned to various angular scales, enabling array sensitivity to be directed away from regions of the uv-plane (such as the origin) where foregrounds are brighter and where instrumental systematics are more problematic. We demonstrate that a 132-antenna deployment of the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER) observing for 120 days in a high-redundancy configuration will, under ideal conditions, have the requisite sensitivity to detect the power spectrum of the 21cm signal from reionization at a 3\sigma level at k<0.25h Mpc^{-1} in a bin of \Delta ln k=1. We discuss the tradeoffs of low- versus high-redundancy configurations.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figures, 2 appendices. Version accepted to Ap

Optimal sub-arraying of compromise planar arrays through an innovative ACO-weighted procedure

In this paper, the synthesis of sub-arrayed monopulse planar arrays providing an optimal sum pattern and best compromise difference patterns is addressed by means of an innovative clustering approach based on the Ant Colony Optimizer. Exploiting the similarity properties of optimal and independent sum and difference excitation sets, the problem is reformulated into a combinatorial one where the definition of the sub-array configuration is obtained through the search of a path within a weighted graph. Such a weighting strategy allows one to effectively sample the solution space avoiding bias towards sub-optimal solutions. The sub-array weight coefficients are then determined in an optimal way by exploiting the convexity of the problem at hand by means of a convex programming procedure. Representative results are reported to assess the effectiveness of the weighted global optimization and its advantages over previous implementations. (c) The Electromagnetics Academy - The final version of this article is available at the url of the journal PIER (Progress In Electromagnetics Research): http://www.jpier.org/PIER/pier.php?paper=1009200

(k,q)-Compressed Sensing for dMRI with Joint Spatial-Angular Sparsity Prior

Advanced diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) techniques, like diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) and high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI), remain underutilized compared to diffusion tensor imaging because the scan times needed to produce accurate estimations of fiber orientation are significantly longer. To accelerate DSI and HARDI, recent methods from compressed sensing (CS) exploit a sparse underlying representation of the data in the spatial and angular domains to undersample in the respective k- and q-spaces. State-of-the-art frameworks, however, impose sparsity in the spatial and angular domains separately and involve the sum of the corresponding sparse regularizers. In contrast, we propose a unified (k,q)-CS formulation which imposes sparsity jointly in the spatial-angular domain to further increase sparsity of dMRI signals and reduce the required subsampling rate. To efficiently solve this large-scale global reconstruction problem, we introduce a novel adaptation of the FISTA algorithm that exploits dictionary separability. We show on phantom and real HARDI data that our approach achieves significantly more accurate signal reconstructions than the state of the art while sampling only 2-4% of the (k,q)-space, allowing for the potential of new levels of dMRI acceleration.Comment: To be published in the 2017 Computational Diffusion MRI Workshop of MICCA

Modeling the ionizing spectra of H ii regions: individual stars versus stellar ensembles

Aims. We study how IMF sampling affects the ionizing flux and emission line spectra of low mass stellar clusters. Methods. We performed 2 x 10^6 Monte Carlo simulations of zero-age solar-metallicity stellar clusters covering the 20 - 10^6 Mo mass range. We study the distribution of cluster stellar masses, Mclus, ionizing fluxes, Q(H0), and effective temperatures, Tclus. We compute photoionization models that broadly describe the results of the simulations and compare them with photoionization grids. Results. Our main results are: (a) A large number of low mass clusters (80% for Mclus = 100 Mo) are unable to form an H ii region. (b) There are a few overluminous stellar clusters that form H ii regions. These overluminous clusters preserve statistically the mean value of obtained by synthesis models, but the mean value cannot be used as a description of particular clusters. (c) The ionizing continuum of clusters with Mclus < 10^4 Mo is more accurately described by an individual star with self-consistent effective temperature(T*) and Q(H0) than by the ensemble of stars (or a cluster Tclus) produced by synthesis models. (d)Photoionization grids of stellar clusters can not be used to derive the global properties of low mass clusters. Conclusions. Although variations in the upper mass limit, mup, of the IMF would reproduce the effects of IMF sampling, we find that an ad hoc law that relates mup to Mclus in the modelling of stellar clusters is useless, since: (a) it does not cover the whole range of possible cases, and (b) the modelling of stellar clusters with an IMF is motivated by the need to derive the global properties of the cluster: however, in clusters affected by sampling effects we have no access to global information of the cluster but only particular information about a few individual stars.Comment: A&A in pres

Statistical Methods for Thermonuclear Reaction Rates and Nucleosynthesis Simulations

Rigorous statistical methods for estimating thermonuclear reaction rates and nucleosynthesis are becoming increasingly established in nuclear astrophysics. The main challenge being faced is that experimental reaction rates are highly complex quantities derived from a multitude of different measured nuclear parameters (e.g., astrophysical S-factors, resonance energies and strengths, particle and gamma-ray partial widths). We discuss the application of the Monte Carlo method to two distinct, but related, questions. First, given a set of measured nuclear parameters, how can one best estimate the resulting thermonuclear reaction rates and associated uncertainties? Second, given a set of appropriate reaction rates, how can one best estimate the abundances from nucleosynthesis (i.e., reaction network) calculations? The techniques described here provide probability density functions that can be used to derive statistically meaningful reaction rates and final abundances for any desired coverage probability. Examples are given for applications to s-process neutron sources, core-collapse supernovae, classical novae, and big bang nucleosynthesis.Comment: Accepted for publication in J. Phys. G Focus issue "Enhancing the interaction between nuclear experiment and theory through information and statistics

Distributed Event-Based State Estimation for Networked Systems: An LMI-Approach

In this work, a dynamic system is controlled by multiple sensor-actuator agents, each of them commanding and observing parts of the system's input and output. The different agents sporadically exchange data with each other via a common bus network according to local event-triggering protocols. From these data, each agent estimates the complete dynamic state of the system and uses its estimate for feedback control. We propose a synthesis procedure for designing the agents' state estimators and the event triggering thresholds. The resulting distributed and event-based control system is guaranteed to be stable and to satisfy a predefined estimation performance criterion. The approach is applied to the control of a vehicle platoon, where the method's trade-off between performance and communication, and the scalability in the number of agents is demonstrated.Comment: This is an extended version of an article to appear in the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (additional parts in the Appendix