IMPROVING PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

X-ray Properties of the Abell 644 Cluster of Galaxies

We use new ASCA observations and archival ROSAT Position Sensitive Proportional Counter (PSPC) data to determine the X-ray spectral properties of the intracluster gas in Abell 644. From the overall spectrum, we determine the average gas temperature to be 8.64 (+0.67,-0.56) keV, and an abundance of 0.32 (+/-0.04) $Z_{\odot}$. The global ASCA and ROSAT spectra imply a cooling rate of 214 (+100,-91) $M_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$. The PSPC X-ray surface brightness profile and the ASCA data suggest a somewhat higher cooling rate. We determine the gravitational mass and gas mass as a function of radius. The total gravitating mass within 1.2 Mpc is $6.2\times10^{14}$ $M_{\odot}$, of which 20% is in the form of hot gas. There is a region of elevated temperature 1.5-5 arcmin to the west of the cluster center. The south-southwest region of the cluster also shows excess emission in the ROSAT PSPC X-ray image, aligned with the major axis of the optical cD galaxy in the center of the cluster. We argue that the cluster is undergoing or has recently undergone a minor merger. The combination of a fairly strong cooling flow and evidence for a merger make this cluster an interesting case to test the disruption of cooling flow in mergers.Comment: 26 pages LaTeX including 9 eps figures + 4 pages LaTeX tables (landscape); accepted to ApJ, uses aaspp

Texas Shoreline Change Project Gulf of Mexico Shoreline Change from the Brazos River to Pass Cavallo

In June, Governor Bush signed into law the Coastal Erosion Planning and Response Act (CEPRA). This act provides $15 million over the next 2 years for coastal erosion projects. It authorizes the Texas General Land Office (GLO) to implement a comprehensive coastal erosion response program that can include designing, funding, building, and maintaining erosion projects. The GLO is named in the act as the entity that will monitor shoreline change rates with the assistance of the Bureau of Economic Geology and local governments. Through the Texas Shoreline Change Project (TSCP), the Bureau is working with the GLO to identify and quantify eroding areas. The TSCP is addressing requirements of the CEPRA regarding (1) identification of "critical coastal erosion areas," (2) monitoring of historical shoreline erosion rates, (3) making data accessible on the Internet, and (4) increasing public awareness of coastal erosion issues. The TSCP will be completed in stages according to Gulf of Mexico shoreline segment and bay systems. This report presents an analysis of shoreline change along the Gulf of Mexico Shoreline between the Brazos River and Pass Cavallo (Fig. 1). Other resources provided by the TSCP, including all data used in this report, may be found on the Internet at http://www.beg.utexas.edu/Bureau of Economic Geolog

A Two-Fluid Thermally-Stable Cooling Flow Model

A new model for cooling flows in X-ray clusters, capable of naturally explaining salient features observed, is proposed. The only requirement is that a significant relativistic component, in the form of cosmic rays (CR), be present in the intra-cluster medium and significantly frozen to the thermal gas. Such an addition qualitatively alters the conventional isobaric thermal instability criterion such that a fluid parcel becomes thermally stable when its thermal pressure drops below a threshold fraction of its CR pressure. Consequently, the lowest possible temperature at any radius is about one third of the ambient temperature {\it at that radius}, exactly as observed, In addition, we suggest that dissipation of internal gravity waves, excited by radial oscillatory motions of inward drifting cooling clouds about their radial equilibrium positions, may be responsible for heating up cooling gas. With the ultimate energy source for powering the cooling X-ray luminosity and heating up cooling gas being gravitational due to inward drifting cooling clouds as well as the general inward flow, heating is spatially distributed and energetically matched with cooling. One desirable property of this heating mechanism is that heating energy is strongly centrally concentrated, providing the required heating for emission-line nebulae.Comment: 13 pages, submitted to ApJ

A numerical method for detecting incommensurate correlations in the Heisenberg zigzag ladder

We study two Heisenberg spin-1/2 chains coupled by a frustrating ``zigzag'' interaction. We are particularly interested in the regime of weak interchain coupling, which is difficult to analyse by either numerical or analytical methods. Previous density matrix renormalisation group (DMRG) studies of the isotropic model with open boundary conditions and sizeable interchain coupling have established the presence of incommensurate correlations and of a spectral gap. By using twisted boundary conditions with arbitrary twist angle, we are able to determine the incommensurabilities both in the isotropic case and in the presence of an exchange anisotropy by means of exact diagonalisation of relatively short finite chains of up to 24 sites. Using twisted boundary conditions results in a very smooth dependence of the incommensurabilities on system size, which makes the extrapolation to infinite systems significantly easier than for open or periodic chains.Comment: 6 pages, including 7 figure

Deep images of cluster radio halos

New radio data are presented for the clusters A401, A545, A754, A1914, A2219 and A2390, where the presence of diffuse radio emission was suggested from the images of the NRAO VLA Sky Survey. Sensitive images of these clusters, obtained with the Very Large Array (VLA)at 20 cm confirm the existence of the diffuse sources and allow us to derive their fluxes and intrinsic parameters.The correlation between the halo radio power and cluster X-ray luminosity is derived for a large sample of halo clusters, and is briefly discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, Astron. Astrophys. in pres

X-Ray Spectral Properties of the Cluster Abell 2029

We have analyzed ASCA and ROSAT PSPC spectra and images of the galaxy cluster Abell 2029. The ASCA spectra of the cluster indicate that the gas temperature declines with radius. The PSPC image shows that the cluster is very regular and smooth. Also, there is no significant evidence for any irregularities in the temperature distribution in the cluster, as would be produced by a subcluster merger. These results suggest that A2029 is a relaxed cluster, and that the gas is in hydrostatic equilibrium. We use the assumption of equilibrium to determine the gravitational mass of the cluster as a function of radius. At a radius of 16' (1.92 h_50^-1 Mpc), the gravitational mass is M_tot = (9.42+-4.22) x 10^14 h_50^-1 Msun, while the mass of gas is M_gas = (2.52+-0.77) x 10^14 h_50^-5/2 Msun. The gas fraction is found to increase with radius; within a spherical radius of 16', the fraction is (M_gas/M_tot) = (0.26+-0.14) h_50^-3/2. The iron abundance in the gas is found to be (0.40+-0.04) of solar. There is no significant evidence for any variation in the abundance with position in the cluster. The global X-ray spectra, central X-ray spectra, and ROSAT surface brightness all require a cooling flow at the cluster center. The global X-ray spectrum implies that the total cooling rate is 363^+79_-96 h_50^-2 Msun/yr. The global X-ray spectra are consistent with the Galactic value for the soft X-ray absorption toward the cluster. The PSPC spectra of the central regions of the cluster are inconsistent with the large value of foreground excess absorption found by White et al. (1991) based on the Einstein SSS spectrum. The upper limit on excess foreground absorption is 7.3 x 10^19 cm^-2. However, the spectra do not rule a significant amount of intrinsic absorbing gas located within the cooling flow region.Comment: ApJ, in press, 16 pages including 13 figures, formatted with emulateapj Latex styl

A Deep Look at the Emission-Line Nebula in Abell 2597

The close correlation between cooling flows and emission-line nebulae in clusters of galaxies has been recognized for over a decade and a half, but the physical reason for this connection remains unclear. Here we present deep optical spectra of the nebula in Abell 2597, one of the nearest strong cooling-flow clusters. These spectra reveal the density, temperature, and metal abundances of the line-emitting gas. The abundances are roughly half-solar, and dust produces an extinction of at least a magnitude in V. The absence of [O III] 4363 emission rules out shocks as a major ionizing mechanism, and the weakness of He II 4686 rules out a hard ionizing source, such as an active galactic nucleus or cooling intracluster gas. Hot stars are therefore the best candidate for producing the ionization. However, even the hottest O stars cannot power a nebula as hot as the one we see. Some other nonionizing source of heat appears to contribute a comparable amount of power. We show that the energy flux from a confining medium can become important when the ionization level of a nebula drops to the low levels seen in cooling-flow nebulae. We suggest that this kind of phenomenon, in which energy fluxes from the surrounding medium augment photoelectric heating, might be the common feature underlying the diverse group of objects classified as LINERS.Comment: 33 Latex pages, including 16 Postscript figures, to appear in 1997 September 1 Astrophysical Journa

Magneto-optical spectra of closely spaced magnetite nanoparticles

The Faraday rotation spectrum of composites containing magnetite nanoparticles is found to be dependent on the interparticle spacing of the constituent nanoparticles. The composite materials are prepared by combining chemically synthesized Fe 3O4 smagnetited nanoparticles s8-nm diameterd and polysmethylmethacrylated . Composites are made containing a range of nanoparticle concentrations. The peak of the main spectral feature depends on nanoparticle concentration; this peak is observed to shift from approximately 470 nm for sdilute compositesd to 540 nm concentrated . We present a theory based on the discrete-dipole approximation which accounts for optical coupling between magnetite particles. Qualitative correlations between theoretical calculations and experimental data suggest that the shifts in spectral peak position depend on both interparticle distance and geometrical configuratio

Electronic thermal conductivity at high temperatures: Violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law in narrow band metals

We study the electronic part of the thermal conductivity kappa of metals. We present two methods for calculating kappa, a quantum Monte-Carlo (QMC) method and a method where the phonons but not the electrons are treated semiclassically (SC). We compare the two methods for a model of alkali-doped C60, A3C60, and show that they agree well. We then mainly use the SC method, which is simpler and easier to interpret. We perform SC calculations for Nb for large temperatures T and find that kappa increases with T as kappa(T)=a+bT, where a and b are constants, consistent with a saturation of the mean free path, l, and in good agreement with experiment. In contrast, we find that for A3C60, kappa(T) decreases with T for very large T. We discuss the reason for this qualitatively in the limit of large T. We give a quantum-mechanical explanation of the saturation of l for Nb and derive the Wiedemann-Franz law in the limit of T much smaller than W, where W is the band width. In contrast, due to the small W of A3C60, the assumption T much smaller than W can be violated. We show that this leads to kappa(T) \sim T^{-3/2} for very large T and a strong violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure