Chemical Abundances of the Outer Halo Stars in the Milky Way

We present chemical abundances of 57 metal-poor stars that are likely constituents of the outer stellar halo in the Milky Way. Almost all of the sample stars have an orbit reaching a maximum vertical distance (Z_max) of >5 kpc above and below the Galactic plane. High-resolution, high signal-to-noise spectra for the sample stars obtained with Subaru/HDS are used to derive chemical abundances of Na, Mg, Ca, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Zn, Y and Ba with an LTE abundance analysis code. The resulting abundance data are combined with those presented in literature that mostly targeted at smaller Z_max stars, and both data are used to investigate any systematic trends in detailed abundance patterns depending on their kinematics. It is shown that, in the metallicity range of -25 kpc are systematically lower (~0.1 dex) than those with smaller Z_max. This result of the lower [alpha/Fe] for the assumed outer halo stars is consistent with previous studies that found a signature of lower [alpha/Fe] ratios for stars with extreme kinematics. A distribution of the [Mg/Fe] ratios for the outer halo stars partly overlaps with that for stars belonging to the Milky Way dwarf satellites in the metallicity interval of -2<[Fe/H]<-1 and spans a range intermediate between the distributions for the inner halo stars and the stars belonging to the satellites. Our results confirm inhomogeneous nature of chemical abundances within the Milky Way stellar halo depending on kinematic properties of constituent stars as suggested by earlier studies. Possible implications for the formation of the Milky Way halo and its relevance to the suggested dual nature of the halo are discussed.Comment: 68 pages with 23 figures, Accepted for publication in PAS

Chemical Abundances of the Milky Way Thick Disk and Stellar Halo I.: Implications of [alpha/Fe] for Star Formation Histories in Their Progenitors

We present the abundance analysis of 97 nearby metal-poor (-3.3<[Fe/H]<-0.5) stars having kinematics characteristics of the Milky Way (MW) thick disk, inner, and outer stellar halos. The high-resolution, high-signal-to-noise optical spectra for the sample stars have been obtained with the High Dispersion Spectrograph mounted on the Subaru Telescope. Abundances of Fe, Mg, Si, Ca and Ti have been derived using a one-dimensional LTE abundance analysis code with Kurucz NEWODF model atmospheres. By assigning membership of the sample stars to the thick disk, inner or outer halo components based on their orbital parameters, we examine abundance ratios as a function of [Fe/H] and kinematics for the three subsamples in wide metallicity and orbital parameter ranges. We show that, in the metallicity range of -1.5<[Fe/H]<= -0.5, the thick disk stars show constantly high mean [Mg/Fe] and [Si/Fe] ratios with small scatter. In contrast, the inner, and the outer halo stars show lower mean values of these abundance ratios with larger scatter. The [Mg/Fe], [Si/Fe] and [Ca/Fe] for the inner and the outer halo stars also show weak decreasing trends with [Fe/H] in the range [Fe/H]$>-2$. These results favor the scenarios that the MW thick disk formed through rapid chemical enrichment primarily through Type II supernovae of massive stars, while the stellar halo has formed at least in part via accretion of progenitor stellar systems having been chemically enriched with different timescales.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Current-induced spin torque resonance of magnetic insulators affected by field-like spin-orbit torques and out-of-plane magnetizations

The spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance (ST-FMR) in a bilayer system consisting of a magnetic insulator such as Y3Fe5O12 and a normal metal with spin-orbit interaction such as Pt is addressed theoretically. We model the ST-FMR for all magnetization directions and in the presence of field-like spin-orbit torques based on the drift-diffusion spin model and quantum mechanical boundary conditions. ST-FMR experiments may expose crucial information about the spin-orbit coupling between currents and magnetization in the bilayers.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Study of Field-Induced Magnetic Order in Singlet-Ground-State Magnet CsFeCl3_3

The field-induced magnetic order in the singlet-ground-state system CsFeCl$_3$ has been studied by measuring magnetization and neutron diffraction. The field dependence of intensity for the neutron magnetic reflection has clearly demonstrated that the field-induced ordered phase is described by the order parameter $$. A condensate growth of magnons is investigated through the temperature dependence of $M_z$ and $M_{\perp}$, and this ordering is discussed in the context of a magnon Bose-Einstein condensation. Development of the coherent state and the static correlation length has been observed in the incommensurate phase in the field region of $5 H_{\rm c}$, a satellite peak was found in coexistence with the commensurate peak at the phase boundary around 10 T, which indicates that the tilt of the c-axis would be less than $\sim 0.5^{\circ}$ in the whole experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Conformal anomaly in 2d dilaton-scalar theory

The discrepancy between the anomaly found by Bousso and Hawking (hep-th/9705236) and that of other workers is explained by the omission of a zero mode contribution to the effective action.Comment: 5 pages, JyTeX. References added with brief remar

Three-dimensional Mapping of CDM Substructure at Submillimeter Wavelengths

The cold dark matter (CDM) structure formation model predicts that about 5-10 percent of a typical galactic halo of mass \sim 10^{12} \ms is in substructures with masses \lesssim 10^8 \ms. To directly detect such substructures, we propose to observe dust continuum emission from a strongly lensed QSO-host galaxy using a large submillimeter interferometer array with a high angular resolution of $\sim 0.01$arcsec such as the planned Atacama Large Submillimeter Array (ALMA). To assess their observational feasibility, we numerically simulate millilensing of an extended circular source by a CDM substructure modeled as a tidally truncated singular isothermal sphere (SIS) embedded in a typical QSO-galaxy lens system, B1422+231, modeled as a singular isothermal ellipsoid (SIE) with an external constant shear and a constant convergence. Assuming an angular resolution of 0.01arcsec, we find that the angular positions of \sim 10^8 \ms substructures at several kpc from the center of the macrolens halo can be directly measured if the size of the dust continuum emission region and the gradient of the surface brightness at the position of the perturber are sufficiently large. From the astrometric shift on a scale of a few times $10~$mas of an image perturbed by a subhalo with respect to an unperturbed macrolensed image, we can break the degeneracy between subhalo mass and distance provided that macrolensing parameters are determined from positions and fluxes of multiple images.Comment: 7 pages, 7 EPS files. An assessment of our assumption of constancy in shear and convergence has been included. Version accepted for publication in Ap

Quantum theory of spectral diffusion induced electron spin decoherence

A quantum cluster expansion method is developed for the problem of localized electron spin decoherence due to dipolar fluctuations of lattice nuclear spins. At the lowest order it provides a microscopic explanation for the Lorentzian diffusion of Hahn echoes without resorting to any phenomenological Markovian assumption. Our numerical results show remarkable agreement with recent electron spin echo experiments in phosphorus doped silicon.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

A Comparison of Quintessence and Nonlinear Born-Infeld Scalar Field Using Gold Supernova data

We study the Non-Linear Born-Infeld(NLBI) scalar field model and quintessence model with two different potentials($V(\phi)=-s\phi$ and ${1/2}m^2\phi^2$). We investigate the differences between those two models. We explore the equation of state parameter w and the evolution of scale factor $a(t)$ in both NLBI scalar field and quintessence model. The present age of universe and the transition redshift are also obtained. We use the Gold dataset of 157 SN-Ia to constrain the parameters of the two models. All the results show that NLBI model is slightly superior to quintessence model.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, some references adde