466 research outputs found
Ce(OH)2Cl and lanthanide-substituted variants as precursors to redox-active CeO2 materials
The cerium(III) hydroxide chloride Ce(OH)2Cl crystallises directly as a polycrystalline powder from a solution of CeCl3·7H2O in poly(ethylene) glycol (Mn = 400) heated at 240 °C and is found to be isostructural with La(OH)2Cl, as determined from high-resolution synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction (P21/m, a = 6.2868(2) Ă
, b = 3.94950(3) Ă
, c = 6.8740(3) Ă
, ÎČ = 113.5120(5)°). Replacement of a proportion of the cerium chloride in synthesis by a second lanthanide chloride yields a set of materials Ce1âxLnx(OH)2Cl for Ln = La, Pr, Gd, Tb. For La the maximum value of x is 0.2, with an isotropic expansion of the unit cell, but for the other lanthanides a wider composition range is possible, and the lattice parameters show an isotropic contraction with increasing x. Thermal decomposition of the hydroxide chlorides at 700 °C yields mixed-oxides Ce1âxLnxO2âÎŽ that all have cubic fluorite structures with either expanded (Ln = La, Gd) or contracted (Ln = Pr, Tb) unit cells compared to CeO2. Scanning electron microscopy shows a shape memory effect in crystal morphology upon decomposition, with clusters of anisotropic sub-micron crystallites being seen in the precursor and oxide products. The Pr- and Tb-substituted oxides contain the substituent in a mixture of +3 and +4 oxidation states, as seen by X-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy at the lanthanide LIII edges. The mixed oxide materials are examined using temperature programmed reduction in 10%H2 in N2, which reveals redox properties suitable for heterogeneous catalysis, with the Pr-substituted materials showing the greatest reducibility at lower temperature
Solvothermal synthesis routes to substituted cerium dioxide materials
We review the solution-based synthesis routes to cerium oxide materials where one or more elements are included in place of a proportion of the cerium, i.e., substitution of cerium is performed. The focus is on the solvothermal method, where reagents are heated above the boiling point of the solvent to induce crystallisation directly from the solution. This yields unusual compositions with crystal morphology often on the nanoscale. Chemical elements from all parts of the periodic table are considered, from transition metals to main group elements and the rare earths, including isovalent and aliovalent cations, and surveyed using the literature published in the past ten years. We illustrate the versatility of this synthesis method to allow the formation of functional materials with applications in contemporary applications such as heterogeneous catalysis, electrodes for solid oxide fuel cells, photocatalysis, luminescence and biomedicine. We pick out emerging trends towards control of crystal habit by use of non-aqueous solvents and solution additives and identify challenges still remaining, including in detailed structural characterisation, the understanding of crystallisation mechanisms and the scale-up of synthesis
The C4 Clustering Algorithm: Clusters of Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
We present the "C4 Cluster Catalog", a new sample of 748 clusters of galaxies
identified in the spectroscopic sample of the Second Data Release (DR2) of the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The C4 cluster--finding algorithm identifies
clusters as overdensities in a seven-dimensional position and color space, thus
minimizing projection effects which plagued previous optical clusters
selection. The present C4 catalog covers ~2600 square degrees of sky with
groups containing 10 members to massive clusters having over 200 cluster
members with redshifts. We provide cluster properties like sky location, mean
redshift, galaxy membership, summed r--band optical luminosity (L_r), velocity
dispersion, and measures of substructure. We use new mock galaxy catalogs to
investigate the sensitivity to the various algorithm parameters, as well as to
quantify purity and completeness. These mock catalogs indicate that the C4
catalog is ~90% complete and 95% pure above M_200 = 1x10^14 solar masses and
within 0.03 <=z <= 0.12. The C4 algorithm finds 98% of X-ray identified
clusters and 90% of Abell clusters within 0.03 <= z <= 0.12. We show that the
L_r of a cluster is a more robust estimator of the halo mass (M_200) than the
line-of-sight velocity dispersion or the richness of the cluster. L_r. The
final SDSS data will provide ~2500 C4 clusters and will represent one of the
largest and most homogeneous samples of local clusters.Comment: 32 pages of figures and text accepted in AJ. Electronic version with
additional tables, links, and figures is available at
http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~chrism/c
The u'g'r'i'z' Standard Star Network
We present the 158 standard stars that define the u'g'r'i'z' photometric
system. These stars form the basis for the photometric calibration of the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The defining instrument system and filters, the
observing process, the reduction techniques, and the software used to create
the stellar network are all described. We briefly discuss the history of the
star selection process, the derivation of a set of transformation equations for
the UBVRcIc system, and plans for future work.Comment: References to URLs in paper have been updated to reflect moved
website. Accepted by AJ. 50 pages, including 20 pages of text, 9 tables, and
15 figures. Plain ASCII text versions of Tables 8 and 9 can be found at
http://home.fnal.gov/~dtucker/ugriz/index.html (new URL
Merging Galaxies in the SDSS EDR
We present a new catalog of merging galaxies obtained through an automated
systematic search routine. The 1479 new pairs of merging galaxies were found in
approximately 462 sq deg of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release
(SDSS EDR; Stoughton et al. 2002) photometric data, and the pair catalog is
complete for galaxies in the magnitude range 16.0 <= g* <= 20.
The selection algorithm, implementing a variation on the original
Karachentsev (1972) criteria, proved to be very efficient and fast. Merging
galaxies were selected such that the inter-galaxy separations were less than
the sum of the component galaxies' radii.
We discuss the characteristics of the sample in terms of completeness, pair
separation, and the Holmberg effect. We also present an online atlas of images
for the SDSS EDR pairs obtained using the corrected frames from the SDSS EDR
database. The atlas images also include the relevant data for each pair member.
This catalog will be useful for conducting studies of the general
characteristics of merging galaxies, their environments, and their component
galaxies. The redshifts for a subset of the interacting and merging galaxies
and the distribution of angular sizes for these systems indicate the SDSS
provides a much deeper sample than almost any other wide-area catalog to date.Comment: 58 pages, which includes 15 figures and 6 tables. Figures 2, 8, 9,
10, 11, 13, and 14 are provided as JPEG files. For online atlas, see
http://home.fnal.gov/~sallam/MergePair/ . Accepted for publication in A
High-Redshift Quasars Found in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Commissioning Data II: The Spring Equatorial Stripe
This is the second paper in a series aimed at finding high-redshift quasars
from five-color (u'g'r'i'z') imaging data taken along the Celestial Equator by
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) during its commissioning phase. In this
paper, we present 22 high-redshift quasars (z>3.6) discovered from ~250 deg^2
of data in the spring Equatorial Stripe, plus photometry for two previously
known high-redshift quasars in the same region of sky. Our success rate of
identifying high-redshift quasars is 68%. Five of the newly discovered quasars
have redshifts higher than 4.6 (z=4.62, 4.69, 4.70, 4.92 and 5.03). All the
quasars have i* < 20.2 with absolute magnitude -28.8 < M_B < -26.1 (h=0.5,
q_0=0.5). Several of the quasars show unusual emission and absorption features
in their spectra, including an object at z=4.62 without detectable emission
lines, and a Broad Absorption Line (BAL) quasar at z=4.92.Comment: 28 pages, AJ in press (Jan 2000), final version with minor changes;
high resolution finding charts available at
http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~fan/paper/qso2.htm
KL Estimation of the Power Spectrum Parameters from the Angular Distribution of Galaxies in Early SDSS Data
We present measurements of parameters of the 3-dimensional power spectrum of
galaxy clustering from 222 square degrees of early imaging data in the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey. The projected galaxy distribution on the sky is expanded
over a set of Karhunen-Loeve eigenfunctions, which optimize the signal-to-noise
ratio in our analysis. A maximum likelihood analysis is used to estimate
parameters that set the shape and amplitude of the 3-dimensional power
spectrum. Our best estimates are Gamma=0.188 +/- 0.04 and sigma_8L = 0.915 +/-
0.06 (statistical errors only), for a flat Universe with a cosmological
constant. We demonstrate that our measurements contain signal from scales at or
beyond the peak of the 3D power spectrum. We discuss how the results scale with
systematic uncertainties, like the radial selection function. We find that the
central values satisfy the analytically estimated scaling relation. We have
also explored the effects of evolutionary corrections, various truncations of
the KL basis, seeing, sample size and limiting magnitude. We find that the
impact of most of these uncertainties stay within the 2-sigma uncertainties of
our fiducial result.Comment: Fig 1 postscript problem correcte
Spectroscopic Target Selection for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Luminous Red Galaxy Sample
We describe the target selection and resulting properties of a spectroscopic
sample of luminous, red galaxies (LRG) from the imaging data of the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). These galaxies are selected on the basis of color
and magnitude to yield a sample of luminous, intrinsically red galaxies that
extends fainter and further than the main flux-limited portion of the SDSS
galaxy spectroscopic sample. The sample is designed to impose a
passively-evolving luminosity and rest-frame color cut to a redshift of 0.38.
Additional, yet more luminous, red galaxies are included to a redshift of 0.5.
Approximately 12 of these galaxies per square degree are targeted for
spectroscopy, so the sample will number over 100,000 with the full survey. SDSS
commissioning data indicate that the algorithm efficiently selects luminous
(M_g=-21.4), red galaxies, that the spectroscopic success rate is very high,
and that the resulting set of galaxies is approximately volume-limited out to
z=0.38. When the SDSS is complete, the LRG spectroscopic sample will fill over
1h^-3 Gpc^3 with an approximately homogeneous population of galaxies and will
therefore be well suited to studies of large-scale structure and clusters out
to z=0.5.Comment: 30 pages, LaTeX. Accepted to the Astronomical Journa
The Multi-Object, Fiber-Fed Spectrographs for SDSS and the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
We present the design and performance of the multi-object fiber spectrographs
for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and their upgrade for the Baryon
Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). Originally commissioned in Fall 1999
on the 2.5-m aperture Sloan Telescope at Apache Point Observatory, the
spectrographs produced more than 1.5 million spectra for the SDSS and SDSS-II
surveys, enabling a wide variety of Galactic and extra-galactic science
including the first observation of baryon acoustic oscillations in 2005. The
spectrographs were upgraded in 2009 and are currently in use for BOSS, the
flagship survey of the third-generation SDSS-III project. BOSS will measure
redshifts of 1.35 million massive galaxies to redshift 0.7 and Lyman-alpha
absorption of 160,000 high redshift quasars over 10,000 square degrees of sky,
making percent level measurements of the absolute cosmic distance scale of the
Universe and placing tight constraints on the equation of state of dark energy.
The twin multi-object fiber spectrographs utilize a simple optical layout
with reflective collimators, gratings, all-refractive cameras, and
state-of-the-art CCD detectors to produce hundreds of spectra simultaneously in
two channels over a bandpass covering the near ultraviolet to the near
infrared, with a resolving power R = \lambda/FWHM ~ 2000. Building on proven
heritage, the spectrographs were upgraded for BOSS with volume-phase
holographic gratings and modern CCD detectors, improving the peak throughput by
nearly a factor of two, extending the bandpass to cover 360 < \lambda < 1000
nm, and increasing the number of fibers from 640 to 1000 per exposure. In this
paper we describe the original SDSS spectrograph design and the upgrades
implemented for BOSS, and document the predicted and measured performances.Comment: 43 pages, 42 figures, revised according to referee report and
accepted by AJ. Provides background for the instrument responsible for SDSS
and BOSS spectra. 4th in a series of survey technical papers released in
Summer 2012, including arXiv:1207.7137 (DR9), arXiv:1207.7326 (Spectral
Classification), and arXiv:1208.0022 (BOSS Overview
Measurement of Galaxy Cluster Sizes, Radial Profiles, and Luminosity Functions from SDSS Photometric Data
Imaging data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is used to measure the
empirical size-richness relation for a large sample of galaxy clusters. Using
population subtraction methods, we determine the radius at which the cluster
galaxy number density is 200/Omega_m times the mean galaxy density, without
assuming a model for the radial distribution of galaxies in clusters. If these
galaxies are unbiased on Mpc scales, this galaxy-density-based R_200 reflects
the characteristic radii of clusters. We measure the scaling of this
characteristic radius with richness over an order of magnitude in cluster
richness, from rich clusters to poor groups. We use this information to examine
the radial profiles of galaxies in clusters as a function of cluster richness,
finding that the concentration of the galaxy distribution decreases with
richness and is systematically lower than the concentrations measured for dark
matter profiles in N-body simulations. Using these scaled radii, we investigate
the behavior of the cluster luminosity function, and find that it is well
matched by a Schechter function for galaxies brighter than M_r = -18 only after
the central galaxy has been removed. We find that the luminosity function
varies with richness and with distance from the cluster center, underscoring
the importance of using an aperture that scales with cluster mass to compare
physically equivalent regions of these different systems. We note that the
lowest richness systems in our catalog have properties consistent with those
expected of the earliest-forming halos; our cluster-finding algorithm, in
addition to reliably finding clusters, may be efficient at finding fossil
groups.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap
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