New Analysis Indicates No Thermal Inversion in the Atmosphere of HD 209458b

An important focus of exoplanet research is the determination of the atmospheric temperature structure of strongly irradiated gas giant planets, or hot Jupiters. HD 209458b is the prototypical exoplanet for atmospheric thermal inversions, but this assertion does not take into account recently obtained data or newer data reduction techniques. We re-examine this claim by investigating all publicly available Spitzer Space Telescope secondary-eclipse photometric data of HD 209458b and performing a self-consistent analysis. We employ data reduction techniques that minimize stellar centroid variations, apply sophisticated models to known Spitzer systematics, and account for time-correlated noise in the data. We derive new secondary-eclipse depths of 0.119 +/- 0.007%, 0.123 +/- 0.006%, 0.134 +/- 0.035%, and 0.215 +/- 0.008% in the 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 micron bandpasses, respectively. We feed these results into a Bayesian atmospheric retrieval analysis and determine that it is unnecessary to invoke a thermal inversion to explain our secondary-eclipse depths. The data are well-fitted by a temperature model that decreases monotonically between pressure levels of 1 and 0.01 bars. We conclude that there is no evidence for a thermal inversion in the atmosphere of HD 209458b.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Ap

A Search for Water in the Atmosphere of HAT-P-26b Using LDSS-3C

The characterization of a physically-diverse set of transiting exoplanets is an important and necessary step towards establishing the physical properties linked to the production of obscuring clouds or hazes. It is those planets with identifiable spectroscopic features that can most effectively enhance our understanding of atmospheric chemistry and metallicity. The newly-commissioned LDSS-3C instrument on Magellan provides enhanced sensitivity and suppressed fringing in the red optical, thus advancing the search for the spectroscopic signature of water in exoplanetary atmospheres from the ground. Using data acquired by LDSS-3C and the Spitzer Space Telescope, we search for evidence of water vapor in the transmission spectrum of the Neptune-mass planet HAT-P-26b. Our measured spectrum is best explained by the presence of water vapor, a lack of potassium, and either a high-metallicity, cloud-free atmosphere or a solar-metallicity atmosphere with a cloud deck at ~10 mbar. The emergence of multi-scale-height spectral features in our data suggests that future observations at higher precision could break this degeneracy and reveal the planet's atmospheric chemical abundances. We also update HAT-P-26b's transit ephemeris, t_0 = 2455304.65218(25) BJD_TDB, and orbital period, p = 4.2345023(7) days.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap

Autonomous clustering using rough set theory

This paper proposes a clustering technique that minimises the need for subjective human intervention and is based on elements of rough set theory. The proposed algorithm is unified in its approach to clustering and makes use of both local and global data properties to obtain clustering solutions. It handles single-type and mixed attribute data sets with ease and results from three data sets of single and mixed attribute types are used to illustrate the technique and establish its efficiency

Delayed Recombination and Standard Rulers

Measurements of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations in galaxy surveys have been recognized as a powerful tool for constraining dark energy. However, this method relies on the knowledge of the size of the acoustic horizon at recombination derived from Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy measurements. This estimate is typically derived assuming a standard recombination scheme; additional radiation sources can delay recombination altering the cosmic ionization history and the cosmological inferences drawn from CMB and BAO data. In this paper we quantify the effect of delayed recombination on the determination of dark energy parameters from future BAO surveys such as BOSS and WFMOS. We find the impact to be small but still not negligible. In particular, if recombination is non-standard (to a level still allowed by CMB data), but this is ignored, future surveys may incorrectly suggest the presence of a redshift dependent dark energy component. On the other hand, in the case of delayed recombination, adding to the analysis one extra parameter describing deviations from standard recombination, does not significantly degrade the error-bars on dark energy parameters and yields unbiased estimates.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Duality Cascade in Brane Inflation

We show that brane inflation is very sensitive to tiny sharp features in extra dimensions, including those in the potential and in the warp factor. This can show up as observational signatures in the power spectrum and/or non-Gaussianities of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). One general example of such sharp features is a succession of small steps in a warped throat, caused by Seiberg duality cascade using gauge/gravity duality. We study the cosmological observational consequences of these steps in brane inflation. Since the steps come in a series, the prediction of other steps and their properties can be tested by future data and analysis. It is also possible that the steps are too close to be resolved in the power spectrum, in which case they may show up only in the non-Gaussianity of the CMB temperature fluctuations and/or EE polarization. We study two cases. In the slow-roll scenario where steps appear in the inflaton potential, the sensitivity of brane inflation to the height and width of the steps is increased by several orders of magnitude comparing to that in previously studied large field models. In the IR DBI scenario where steps appear in the warp factor, we find that the glitches in the power spectrum caused by these sharp features are generally small or even unobservable, but associated distinctive non-Gaussianity can be large. Together with its large negative running of the power spectrum index, this scenario clearly illustrates how rich and different a brane inflationary scenario can be when compared to generic slow-roll inflation. Such distinctive stringy features may provide a powerful probe of superstring theory.Comment: Corrections in Eq.(5.47), Eq (5.48), Eq(5.49) and Fig

Cosmon dark matter?

We investigate if the fluctuations of the scalar field mediating quintessence -- the cosmon -- can play an important role in cosmology. Small fluctuations with short wavelength behave similar to a relativistic gas. In contrast, the contribution to the energy density from horizon size fluctuations may decrease less rapidly than radiation. We discuss the possibility that the cosmon fluctuations grow nonlinearly, form lumps and constitute the clustering dark matter of the universe. Cosmon dark matter would lead to interesting consequences for the equation of state and the coupling between quintessence and dark matter.Comment: Published version,correction in appendix A, 43 pages, LaTe