13,931 research outputs found
Calibrating and Stabilizing Spectropolarimeters with Charge Shuffling and Daytime Sky Measurements
Well-calibrated spectropolarimetry studies at resolutions of 10,000 with
signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) better than 0.01\% across individual line
profiles, are becoming common with larger aperture telescopes.
Spectropolarimetric studies require high SNR observations and are often limited
by instrument systematic errors. As an example, fiber-fed spectropolarimeters
combined with advanced line-combination algorithms can reach statistical error
limits of 0.001\% in measurements of spectral line profiles referenced to the
continuum. Calibration of such observations is often required both for
cross-talk and for continuum polarization. This is not straightforward since
telescope cross-talk errors are rarely less than 1\%. In solar
instruments like the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), much more
stringent calibration is required and the telescope optical design contains
substantial intrinsic polarization artifacts. This paper describes some
generally useful techniques we have applied to the HiVIS spectropolarimeter at
the 3.7m AEOS telescope on Haleakala. HiVIS now yields accurate polarized
spectral line profiles that are shot-noise limited to 0.01\% SNR levels at our
full spectral resolution of 10,000 at spectral sampling of 100,000. We
show line profiles with absolute spectropolarimetric calibration for cross-talk
and continuum polarization in a system with polarization cross-talk levels of
essentially 100\%. In these data the continuum polarization can be recovered to
one percent accuracy because of synchronized charge-shuffling model now working
with our CCD detector. These techniques can be applied to other
spectropolarimeters on other telescopes for both night and day-time
applications such as DKIST, TMT and ELT which have folded non-axially symmetric
foci.Comment: Accepted to A&
LASR-Guided Stellar Photometric Variability Subtraction: The Linear Algorithm For Significance Reduction
We develop a technique for removing stellar variability in the light curves
of -Scuti and similar stars. Our technique, which we name the Linear
Algorithm for Significance Reduction (LASR), subtracts oscillations from a time
series by minimizing their statistical significance in frequency space. We
demonstrate that LASR can subtract variable signals of near-arbitrary
complexity and can robustly handle close frequency pairs and overtone
frequencies. We demonstrate that our algorithm performs an equivalent fit as
prewhitening to the straightforward variable signal of KIC 9700322. We also
show that LASR provides a better fit to seismic activity than prewhitening in
the case of the complex -Scuti KOI-976.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysics. Pseudocode and github link to code included in manuscrip
DPO - Denoising, Deconvolving, and Decomposing Photon Observations
The analysis of astronomical images is a non-trivial task. The D3PO algorithm
addresses the inference problem of denoising, deconvolving, and decomposing
photon observations. Its primary goal is the simultaneous but individual
reconstruction of the diffuse and point-like photon flux given a single photon
count image, where the fluxes are superimposed. In order to discriminate
between these morphologically different signal components, a probabilistic
algorithm is derived in the language of information field theory based on a
hierarchical Bayesian parameter model. The signal inference exploits prior
information on the spatial correlation structure of the diffuse component and
the brightness distribution of the spatially uncorrelated point-like sources. A
maximum a posteriori solution and a solution minimizing the Gibbs free energy
of the inference problem using variational Bayesian methods are discussed.
Since the derivation of the solution is not dependent on the underlying
position space, the implementation of the D3PO algorithm uses the NIFTY package
to ensure applicability to various spatial grids and at any resolution. The
fidelity of the algorithm is validated by the analysis of simulated data,
including a realistic high energy photon count image showing a 32 x 32 arcmin^2
observation with a spatial resolution of 0.1 arcmin. In all tests the D3PO
algorithm successfully denoised, deconvolved, and decomposed the data into a
diffuse and a point-like signal estimate for the respective photon flux
components.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics;
refereed version, 1 figure added, results unchanged, software available at
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/ift/d3po
ADAM: a general method for using various data types in asteroid reconstruction
We introduce ADAM, the All-Data Asteroid Modelling algorithm. ADAM is simple
and universal since it handles all disk-resolved data types (adaptive optics or
other images, interferometry, and range-Doppler radar data) in a uniform manner
via the 2D Fourier transform, enabling fast convergence in model optimization.
The resolved data can be combined with disk-integrated data (photometry). In
the reconstruction process, the difference between each data type is only a few
code lines defining the particular generalized projection from 3D onto a 2D
image plane. Occultation timings can be included as sparse silhouettes, and
thermal infrared data are efficiently handled with an approximate algorithm
that is sufficient in practice due to the dominance of the high-contrast
(boundary) pixels over the low-contrast (interior) ones. This is of particular
importance to the raw ALMA data that can be directly handled by ADAM without
having to construct the standard image. We study the reliability of the
inversion by using the independent shape supports of function series and
control-point surfaces. When other data are lacking, one can carry out fast
nonconvex lightcurve-only inversion, but any shape models resulting from it
should only be taken as illustrative global-scale ones.Comment: 11 pages, submitted to A&
HOL(y)Hammer: Online ATP Service for HOL Light
HOL(y)Hammer is an online AI/ATP service for formal (computer-understandable)
mathematics encoded in the HOL Light system. The service allows its users to
upload and automatically process an arbitrary formal development (project)
based on HOL Light, and to attack arbitrary conjectures that use the concepts
defined in some of the uploaded projects. For that, the service uses several
automated reasoning systems combined with several premise selection methods
trained on all the project proofs. The projects that are readily available on
the server for such query answering include the recent versions of the
Flyspeck, Multivariate Analysis and Complex Analysis libraries. The service
runs on a 48-CPU server, currently employing in parallel for each task 7 AI/ATP
combinations and 4 decision procedures that contribute to its overall
performance. The system is also available for local installation by interested
users, who can customize it for their own proof development. An Emacs interface
allowing parallel asynchronous queries to the service is also provided. The
overall structure of the service is outlined, problems that arise and their
solutions are discussed, and an initial account of using the system is given
Using 3D Voronoi grids in radiative transfer simulations
Probing the structure of complex astrophysical objects requires effective
three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulation of the relevant radiative transfer
(RT) processes. As with any numerical simulation code, the choice of an
appropriate discretization is crucial. Adaptive grids with cuboidal cells such
as octrees have proven very popular, however several recently introduced
hydrodynamical and RT codes are based on a Voronoi tessellation of the spatial
domain. Such an unstructured grid poses new challenges in laying down the rays
(straight paths) needed in RT codes. We show that it is straightforward to
implement accurate and efficient RT on 3D Voronoi grids. We present a method
for computing straight paths between two arbitrary points through a 3D Voronoi
grid in the context of a RT code. We implement such a grid in our RT code
SKIRT, using the open source library Voro++ to obtain the relevant properties
of the Voronoi grid cells based solely on the generating points. We compare the
results obtained through the Voronoi grid with those generated by an octree
grid for two synthetic models, and we perform the well-known Pascucci RT
benchmark using the Voronoi grid. The presented algorithm produces correct
results for our test models. Shooting photon packages through the geometrically
much more complex 3D Voronoi grid is only about three times slower than the
equivalent process in an octree grid with the same number of cells, while in
fact the total number of Voronoi grid cells may be lower for an equally good
representation of the density field. We conclude that the benefits of using a
Voronoi grid in RT simulation codes will often outweigh the somewhat slower
performance.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, accepted by A
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