2,649 research outputs found
Tracking the phase-transition energy in disassembly of hot nuclei
In efforts to determine phase transitions in the disintegration of highly
excited heavy nuclei, a popular practice is to parametrise the yields of
isotopes as a function of temperature in the form
, where 's are the measured yields
and and are fitted to the yields. Here would be
interpreted as the phase transition temperature. For finite systems such as
those obtained in nuclear collisions, this parametrisation is only approximate
and hence allows for extraction of in more than one way. In this work we
look in detail at how values of differ, depending on methods of
extraction. It should be mentioned that for finite systems, this approximate
parametrisation works not only at the critical point, but also for first order
phase transitions (at least in some models). Thus the approximate fit is no
guarantee that one is seeing a critical phenomenon. A different but more
conventional search for the nuclear phase transition would look for a maximum
in the specific heat as a function of temperature . In this case is
interpreted as the phase transition temperature. Ideally and would
coincide. We invesigate this possibility, both in theory and from the ISiS
data, performing both canonical () and microcanonical ()
calculations. Although more than one value of can be extracted from the
approximate parmetrisation, the work here points to the best value from among
the choices. Several interesting results, seen in theoretical calculations, are
borne out in experiment.Comment: Revtex, 10 pages including 8 figures and 2 table
The Star Blended with the MOA-2008-BLG-310 Source Is Not the Exoplanet Host Star
High resolution Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image analysis of the
MOA-2008-BLG-310 microlens system indicates that the excess flux at the
location of the source found in the discovery paper cannot primarily be due to
the lens star because it does not match the lens-source relative proper motion,
, predicted by the microlens models. This excess flux is most
likely to be due to an unrelated star that happens to be located in close
proximity to the source star. Two epochs of HST observations indicate proper
motion for this blend star that is typical of a random bulge star, but is not
consistent with a companion to the source or lens stars if the flux is
dominated by only one star, aside from the lens. We consider models in which
the excess flux is due to a combination of an unrelated star and the lens star,
and this yields 95\% confidence level upper limit on the lens star brightness
of and . A Bayesian analysis using a standard
Galactic model and these magnitude limits yields a host star mass , a planet mass of at a projected separation of AU. This result illustrates excess flux in a high
resolution image of a microlens-source system need not be due to the lens. It
is important to check that the lens-source relative proper motion is consistent
with the microlensing prediction. The high resolution image analysis techniques
developed in this paper can be used to verify the WFIRST exoplanet microlensing
survey mass measurements.Comment: Submitted to AJ on March 18, 201
MOA-2011-BLG-293Lb: First Microlensing Planet possibly in the Habitable Zone
We used Keck adaptive optics observations to identify the first planet
discovered by microlensing to lie in or near the habitable zone, i.e., at
projected separation AU from its host, being the highest microlensing mass definitely identified.
The planet has a mass , and could in principle
have habitable moons. This is also the first planet to be identified as being
in the Galactic bulge with good confidence: kpc. The
planet/host masses and distance were previously not known, but only estimated
using Bayesian priors based on a Galactic model (Yee et al. 2012). These
estimates had suggested that the planet might be a super-Jupiter orbiting an M
dwarf, a very rare class of planets. We obtained high-resolution images
using Keck adaptive optics to detect the lens and so test this hypothesis. We
clearly detect light from a G dwarf at the position of the event, and exclude
all interpretations other than that this is the lens with high confidence
(95%), using a new astrometric technique. The calibrated magnitude of the
planet host star is . We infer the following probabilities
for the three possible orbital configurations of the gas giant planet: 53% to
be in the habitable zone, 35% to be near the habitable zone, and 12% to be
beyond the snow line, depending on the atmospherical conditions and the
uncertainties on the semimajor axis.Comment: Accepted by ApJ, 21 pages, 4 figure
ExELS: an exoplanet legacy science proposal for the ESA Euclid mission. II. Hot exoplanets and sub-stellar systems
The Exoplanet Euclid Legacy Survey (ExELS) proposes to determine the
frequency of cold exoplanets down to Earth mass from host separations of ~1 AU
out to the free-floating regime by detecting microlensing events in Galactic
Bulge. We show that ExELS can also detect large numbers of hot, transiting
exoplanets in the same population. The combined microlensing+transit survey
would allow the first self-consistent estimate of the relative frequencies of
hot and cold sub-stellar companions, reducing biases in comparing "near-field"
radial velocity and transiting exoplanets with "far-field" microlensing
exoplanets. The age of the Bulge and its spread in metallicity further allows
ExELS to better constrain both the variation of companion frequency with
metallicity and statistically explore the strength of star-planet tides.
We conservatively estimate that ExELS will detect ~4100 sub-stellar objects,
with sensitivity typically reaching down to Neptune-mass planets. Of these,
~600 will be detectable in both Euclid's VIS (optical) channel and NISP H-band
imager, with ~90% of detections being hot Jupiters. Likely scenarios predict a
range of 2900-7000 for VIS and 400-1600 for H-band. Twice as many can be
expected in VIS if the cadence can be increased to match the 20-minute H-band
cadence. The separation of planets from brown dwarfs via Doppler boosting or
ellipsoidal variability will be possible in a handful of cases. Radial velocity
confirmation should be possible in some cases, using 30-metre-class telescopes.
We expect secondary eclipses, and reflection and emission from planets to be
detectable in up to ~100 systems in both VIS and NISP-H. Transits of ~500
planetary-radius companions will be characterised with two-colour photometry
and ~40 with four-colour photometry (VIS,YJH), and the albedo of (and emission
from) a large sample of hot Jupiters in the H-band can be explored
statistically.Comment: 18 pages, 16 figures, accepted MNRA
Solutions for 10,000 Eclipsing Binaries in the Bulge Fields of OGLE II Using DEBiL
We have developed a fully-automated pipeline for systematically identifying
and analyzing eclipsing binaries within large datasets of light curves. The
pipeline is made up of multiple tiers which subject the light curves to
increasing levels of scrutiny. After each tier, light curves that did not
conform to a given criteria were filtered out of the pipeline, reducing the
load on the following, more computationally intensive tiers. As a central
component of the pipeline, we created the fully automated Detached Eclipsing
Binary Light curve fitter (DEBiL), which rapidly fits large numbers of light
curves to a simple model. Using the results of DEBiL, light curves of interest
can be flagged for follow-up analysis. As a test case, we analyzed the 218699
light curves within the bulge fields of the OGLE II survey and produced 10862
model fits. We point out a small number of extreme examples as well as
unexpected structure found in several of the population distributions. We
expect this approach to become increasingly important as light curve datasets
continue growing in both size and number.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 36 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables. See
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~jdevor/DEBiL.html for high-resolution figures and
further informatio
ExELS: an exoplanet legacy science proposal for the ESA Euclid mission. II. Hot exoplanets and sub-stellar systems
The Exoplanet Euclid Legacy Survey (ExELS) proposes to determine the
frequency of cold exoplanets down to Earth mass from host separations of ~1 AU
out to the free-floating regime by detecting microlensing events in Galactic
Bulge. We show that ExELS can also detect large numbers of hot, transiting
exoplanets in the same population. The combined microlensing+transit survey
would allow the first self-consistent estimate of the relative frequencies of
hot and cold sub-stellar companions, reducing biases in comparing "near-field"
radial velocity and transiting exoplanets with "far-field" microlensing
exoplanets. The age of the Bulge and its spread in metallicity further allows
ExELS to better constrain both the variation of companion frequency with
metallicity and statistically explore the strength of star-planet tides.
We conservatively estimate that ExELS will detect ~4100 sub-stellar objects,
with sensitivity typically reaching down to Neptune-mass planets. Of these,
~600 will be detectable in both Euclid's VIS (optical) channel and NISP H-band
imager, with ~90% of detections being hot Jupiters. Likely scenarios predict a
range of 2900-7000 for VIS and 400-1600 for H-band. Twice as many can be
expected in VIS if the cadence can be increased to match the 20-minute H-band
cadence. The separation of planets from brown dwarfs via Doppler boosting or
ellipsoidal variability will be possible in a handful of cases. Radial velocity
confirmation should be possible in some cases, using 30-metre-class telescopes.
We expect secondary eclipses, and reflection and emission from planets to be
detectable in up to ~100 systems in both VIS and NISP-H. Transits of ~500
planetary-radius companions will be characterised with two-colour photometry
and ~40 with four-colour photometry (VIS,YJH), and the albedo of (and emission
from) a large sample of hot Jupiters in the H-band can be explored
statistically.Comment: 18 pages, 16 figures, accepted MNRA
EUCLID : Dark Universe Probe and Microlensing planet Hunter
There is a remarkable synergy between requirements for Dark Energy probes by
cosmic shear measurements and planet hunting by microlensing. Employing weak
and strong gravitational lensing to trace and detect the distribution of matter
on cosmic and Galactic scales, but as well as to the very small scales of
exoplanets is a unique meeting point from cosmology to exoplanets. It will use
gravity as the tool to explore the full range of masses not accessible by any
other means. EUCLID is a 1.2m telescope with optical and IR wide field imagers
and slitless spectroscopy, proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision to probe for Dark
Energy, Baryonic acoustic oscillation, galaxy evolution, and an exoplanet hunt
via microlensing. A 3 months microlensing program will already efficiently
probe for planets down to the mass of Mars at the snow line, for free floating
terrestrial or gaseous planets and habitable super Earth. A 12+ months survey
would give a census on habitable Earth planets around solar like stars. This is
the perfect complement to the statistics that will be provided by the KEPLER
satellite, and these missions combined will provide a full census of extrasolar
planets from hot, warm, habitable, frozen to free floating.Comment: 6 pages 3 figures, invited talk in Pathways towards habitable
planets, Barcelona, Sept 200
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