40 research outputs found
Characteristic Energy of the Coulomb Interactions and the Pileup of States
Tunneling data on crystals confirm
Coulomb interaction effects through the dependence of the
density of states. Importantly, the data and analysis at high energy, E, show a
pileup of states: most of the states removed from near the Fermi level are
found between ~40 and 130 meV, from which we infer the possibility of universal
behavior. The agreement of our tunneling data with recent photoemission results
further confirms our analysis.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR
The Distances of the Magellanic Clouds
The present status of our knowledge of the distances to the Magellanic Clouds
is evaluated from a post-Hipparcos perspective. After a brief summary of the
effects of structure, reddening, age and metallicity, the primary distance
indicators for the Large Magellanic Cloud are reviewed: The SN 1987A ring,
Cepheids, RR Lyraes, Mira variables, and Eclipsing Binaries. Distances derived
via these methods are weighted and combined to produce final "best" estimates
for the Magellanic Clouds distance moduli.Comment: Invited review article to appear in ``Post Hipparcos Cosmic
Candles'', F. Caputo & A. Heck (Eds.), Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht, in
pres
A 4% Geometric Distance to the Galaxy NGC4258 from Orbital Motions in a Nuclear Gas Disk
The water maser in the mildly active nucleus in the nearby galaxy NGC4258
traces a thin, nearly edge-on, subparsec-scale Keplerian disk. Using the
technique of very long baseline interferometry, we have detected the proper
motions of these masers as they sweep in front of the central black hole at an
orbital velocity of about 1100 km/s. The average maser proper motion of 31.5
microarcseconds per year is used in conjunction with the observed acceleration
of the masers to derive a purely geometric distance to the galaxy of 7.2 +- 0.3
Mpc. This is the most precise extragalactic distance measured to date, and,
being independent of all other distance indicators, is likely to play an
important role in calibrating the extragalactic distance scale.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Natur
ASASSN-15oi: A Rapidly Evolving, Luminous Tidal Disruption Event at 216 Mpc
We present ground-based and Swift photometric and spectroscopic observations of the tidal disruption event (TDE) ASASSN-15oi, discovered at the center of 2MASX J20390918-3045201 ( Mpc) by the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN). The source peaked at a bolometric luminosity of ergs s and radiated a total energy of ergs over the months of observations. The early optical/UV emission of the source can be fit by a blackbody with temperature increasing from K to K while the luminosity declines from ergs s to ergs s, requiring the photosphere to be shrinking rapidly. The optical/UV luminosity decline is broadly consistent with an exponential decline, , with days. ASASSN-15oi also exhibits roughly constant soft X-ray emission that is significantly weaker than the optical/UV emission. Spectra of the source show broad helium emission lines and strong blue continuum emission in early epochs, although these features fade rapidly and are not present months after discovery. The early spectroscopic features and color evolution of ASASSN-15oi are consistent with a TDE, but the rapid spectral evolution is unique among optically-selected TDEs
A catalog of Kazarian galaxies
The entire Kazarian galaxies (KG) catalog is presented which combines
extensive new measurements of their optical parameters with a literature and
database search. The measurements were made using images extracted from the
STScI Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) of Jpg(blue), Fpg(red) and Ipg(NIR) band
photographic sky survey plates obtained by the Palomar and UK Schmidt
telescopes. We provide accurate coordinates, morphological type, spectral and
activity classes, blue apparent diameters, axial ratios, position angles, red,
blue and NIR apparent magnitudes, as well as counts of neighboring objects in a
circle of radius 50 kpc from centers of KG. Special attention was paid to the
individual descriptions of the galaxies in the original Kazarian lists, which
clarified many cases of misidentifications of the objects, particularly among
interacting systems. The total number of individual Kazarian objects in the
database is now 706. We also include the redshifts which are now available for
404 galaxies and the 2MASS infrared magnitudes for 598 KG. The database also
includes extensive notes, which summarize information about the membership of
KG in different systems of galaxies, and about revised activity classes and
redshifts. An atlas of several interesting subclasses of KG is also presented.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, Accepted in Astrophysics, Vol. 53, No.
1, 2010 (English translation of Astrofizika
The contribution of microlensing surveys to the distance scale
In the early nineties several teams started large scale systematic surveys of
the Magellanic Clouds and the Galactic Bulge to search for microlensing
effects. As a by product, these groups have created enormous time-series
databases of photometric measurements of stars with a temporal sampling
duration and accuracy which are unprecedented. They provide the opportunity to
test the accuracy of primary distance indicators, such as Cepheids, RRLyrae
stars, the detached eclipsing binaries, or the luminosity of the red clump. We
will review the contribution of the microlensing surveys to the understanding
of the physics of the primary distance indicators, recent differential studies
and direct distance determinations to the Magellanic Clouds and the Galactic
Bulge.Comment: Invited review article to appear in: `Post-Hipparcos Cosmic Candles',
A. Heck & F. Caputo (Eds), Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht, in press. 21
pages; uses Kluwer's crckapb.sty LaTeX style file, enclose
Type Ia Supernovae and the Hubble Constant
The focus of this review is the work that has been done during the 1990s on
using Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) to measure the Hubble constant (). SNe
Ia are well suited for measuring . A straightforward maximum-light color
criterion can weed out the minority of observed events that are either
intrinsically subluminous or substantially extinguished by dust, leaving a
majority subsample that has observational absolute-magnitude dispersions of
less than mag.
Correlations between absolute magnitude and one or more distance-independent SN
Ia or parent-galaxy observables can be used to further standardize the absolute
magnitudes to better than 0.2 mag. The absolute magnitudes can be calibrated in
two independent ways --- empirically, using Cepheid-based distances to parent
galaxies of SNe Ia, and physically, by light curve and spectrum fitting. At
present the empirical and physical calibrations are in agreement at or -19.5. Various ways that have been used to match
Cepheid-calibrated SNe Ia or physical models to SNe Ia that have been observed
out in the Hubble flow have given values of distributed throughout the
range 54 to 67 km/s Mpc. Astronomers who want a consensus value of
from SNe Ia with conservative errors could, for now, use km/s
Mpc^{-1}$.Comment: 46 pages. Hard copies of figures, all from the published literature,
can be obtained from the author. With permission, from the Annual Review of
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 36, copyright 1998, by Annual Review
The ASAS-SN Bright Supernova Catalog - II. 2015
This manuscript presents information for all supernovae discovered by the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) during 2015, its second full year of operations. The same information is presented for bright (), spectroscopically confirmed supernovae discovered by other sources in 2015. As with the first ASAS-SN bright supernova catalog, we also present redshifts and near-UV through IR magnitudes for all supernova host galaxies in both samples. Combined with our previous catalog, this work comprises a complete catalog of 455 supernovae from multiple professional and amateur sources, allowing for population studies that were previously impossible. This is the second of a series of yearly papers on bright supernovae and their hosts from the ASAS-SN team
A Visual Metaphor Describing Neural Dynamics in Schizophrenia
Background: In many scientific disciplines the use of a metaphor as an heuristic aid is not uncommon. A well known example in somatic medicine is the 'defense army metaphor' used to characterize the immune system. In fact, probably a large part of the everyday work of doctors consists of 'translating' scientific and clinical information (i.e. causes of disease, percentage of succes versus risk of side-effects) into information tailored to the needs and capacities of the individual patient. The ability to do so in an effective way is at least partly what makes a clinician a good communicator. Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder which affects approximately 1% of the population. Over the last two decades a large amount of molecular-biological, imaging and genetic data have been accumulated regarding the biological underpinnings of schizophrenia. However, it remains difficult to understand how the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions are related to disturbances on the molecular-biological level. In general, psychiatry seems to lack a conceptual framework with sufficient explanatory power to link the mental- and molecular-biological domains. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we present an essay-like study in which we propose to use visualized concepts stemming from the theory on dynamical complex systems as a 'visual metaphor' to bridge the mental- and molecular-biological domains in schizophrenia. We first describe a computer model of neural information processing; we show how the information processing in this model can be visualized, using concepts from the theory on complex systems. We then describe two computer models which have been used to investigate the primary theory on schizophrenia, the neurodevelopmental model, and show how disturbed information processing in these two computer models can be presented in terms of the visual metaphor previously described. Finally, we describe the effects of dopamine neuromodulation, of which disturbances have been frequently described in schizophrenia, in terms of the same visualized metaphor. Conclusions/Significance: The conceptual framework and metaphor described offers a heuristic tool to understand the relationship between the mental- and molecular-biological domains in an intuitive way. The concepts we present may serve to facilitate communicatio
The Second Byurakan Survey Galaxies. I. The Optical Database
A database for the entire catalog of the Second Byurakan Survey (SBS)
galaxies is presented. It contains new measurements of their optical parameters
and additional information taken from the literature and other databases. The
measurements were made using Ipg(near-infrared), Fpg(red) and Jpg(blue) band
images from photographic sky survey plates obtained by the Palomar Schmidt
telescope and extracted from the STScI Digital Sky Survey (DSS). The database
provides accurate coordinates, morphological type, spectral and activity
classes, apparent magnitudes and diameters, axial ratios, and position angles,
as well as number counts of neighboring objects in a circle of radius 50 kpc.
The total number of individual SBS objects in the database is now 1676. The 188
Markarian galaxies which were re-discovered by SBS are not included in this
database. We also include redshifts that are now available for 1576 SBS
objects, as well as 2MASS infrared magnitudes for 1117 SBS galaxies.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl