Shadows and strong gravitational lensing: a brief review

For ultra compact objects (UCOs), Light Rings (LRs) and Fundamental Photon Orbits (FPOs) play a pivotal role in the theoretical analysis of strong gravitational lensing effects, and of BH shadows in particular. In this short review, specific models are considered to illustrate how FPOs can be useful in order to understand some non-trivial gravitational lensing effects. This paper aims at briefly overviewing the theoretical foundations of these effects, touching also some of the related phenomenology, both in General Relativity (GR) and alternative theories of gravity, hopefully providing some intuition and new insights for the underlying physics, which might be critical when testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures; Review paper in the General Relativity and Gravitation (GRG) Topical Collection "Testing the Kerr spacetime with gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations" (Guest Editor: Emanuele Berti); v2: Typo corrected and two references adde

Interpretation of Pliocene littoral blocks in eastern Leiria area (central Portugal)

Comunicação apresentada ao VIII Congresso Nacional de Geologia, em Braga (9-16 de Julho 2010)Foram estudados blocos que atingem 2 metros de diâmetro, constituídos por arenito silicioso ou doleritos, que se encontram na área do sinclinal de Pousos (a leste de Leiria), estratigraficamente atribuíveis à transição Zancliano-Placenciano. Interpretamos a génese dos blocos siliciosos a partir da erosão litoral de arenitos siliciosos da Formação de Bom Sucesso e os de rocha básica a partir de doleritos, durante o máximo transgressivo pliocénico.This paper analyses the large blocks, consisting of siliceous sandstone and basic rock that are in the eastern area of Leiria (Pousos sinclyne), with Zanclean to Placenzian age. We assumed the origin of the siliceous sandstone from the destruction by marine erosion of siliceous materials from the Senhora do Bom Sucesso formation and the basic blocks from the dolerites during the Pliocene maximum transgressive

Asteroseismic Theory of Rapidly Oscillating Ap Stars

This paper reviews some of the important advances made over the last decade concerning theory of roAp stars.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

A thorough analysis of the short- and mid-term activity-related variations in the solar acoustic frequencies

The frequencies of the solar acoustic oscillations vary over the activity cycle. The variations in other activity proxies are found to be well correlated with the variations in the acoustic frequencies. However, each proxy has a slightly different time behaviour. Our goal is to characterize the differences between the time behaviour of the frequency shifts and of two other activity proxies, namely, the area covered by sunspots and the 10.7cm flux. We define a new observable that is particularly sensitive to the short-term frequency variations. We then compare the observable when computed from model frequency shifts and from observed frequency shifts obtained with the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) for cycle 23. Our analysis shows that on the shortest time-scales the variations in the frequency shifts seen in the GONG observations are strongly correlated with the variations in the area covered by sunspots. However, a significant loss of correlation is still found. We verify that the times when the frequency shifts and the sunspot area do not vary in a similar way tend to coincide with the times of the maxima of the quasi-biennial variations seen in the solar seismic data. A similar analysis of the relation between the 10.7cm flux and the frequency shifts reveals that the short-time variations in the frequency shifts follow even more closely those of the 10.7cm flux than those of the sunspot area. However, a loss of correlation between frequency shifts and 10.7cm flux variations is still found around the same times.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Equipe técnica de abacaxi comemora 30 anos de atividades e realizações.

A Embrapa Mandioca e Fruticultura Tropical instituiu há poucos anos atrás, os ?Dias dos Produtos? pesquisados pelo Centro. A data escolhida para a comemoração do ?Dia do Abacaxi? foi 04 de novembro. Isso porque foi nessa data que o navegador genovês, Cristóvão Colombo, em uma de suas históricas viagens, aportou na ilha de Guadalupe, e lá encontrou o abacaxi sendo cultivado pelos nativos. Impressionado pela beleza e forma da planta, pelo aroma e sabor do fruto, coletou alguns exemplares e os levou para a Europa, onde esse fruto teve grande aceitação. Em 2007, a comemoração do ?Dia do Abacaxi? foi adiada e ocorreu no dia 10/12/2007 à tarde, e também teve uma programação diferente, da qual constou, além da confraternização informal de praxe, uma sessão técnica composta de um painel. Nesse painel foram apresentadas quatro palestras referentes a alguns dos impactos e avanços obtidos pela Equipe Técnica de Abacaxi /ETA, da Unidade, ao longo de sua existência. Os temas das palestras versaram sobre o VI Simpósio Internacional de Abacaxi (pela primeira vez realizado no continente sulamericano e, mais especificamente, no Brasil); fitossanidade (fusariose) e produção integrada (com destaque para o Tocantins); melhoramento genético (híbridos resistentes e herança da resistência); usos alternativos do abacaxi (como ornamental, flor de corte, de vaso e de jardim); e aspectos econômicos e de mercado (peso médio do fruto brasileiro e posição do Brasil no mercado internacional). As palestras foram apresentadas, respectivamente, pelos pesquisadores Domingo Haroldo Reinhardt (coordenador do simpósio), Aristóteles Pires de Matos, José Renato Santos Cabral, Janay dos Santos-Serejo, Fernanda Vidigal Duarte Souza e Clóvis Oliveira de Almeida.bitstream/CNPMF/24074/1/documentos_170.pd

On the relation between activity-related frequency shifts and the sunspot distribution over the solar cycle 23

The activity-related variations in the solar acoustic frequencies have been known for 30 years. However, the importance of the different contributions is still not well established. With this in mind, we developed an empirical model to estimate the spot-induced frequency shifts, which takes into account the sunspot properties, such as area and latitude. The comparison between the model frequency shifts obtained from the daily sunspot records and those observed suggests that the contribution from a stochastic component to the total frequency shifts is about 30%. The remaining 70% is related to a global, long-term variation. We also propose a new observable to investigate the short- and mid-term variations of the frequency shifts, which is insensitive to the long-term variations contained in the data. On the shortest time scales the variations in the frequency shifts are strongly correlated with the variations in the total area covered by sunspots. However, a significant loss of correlation is still found, which cannot be fully explained by ignoring the invisible side of the Sun when accounting for the total sunspot area. We also verify that the times when the frequency shifts and the sunspot areas do not vary in a similar way tend to coincide with the times of the maximum amplitude of the quasi-biennial variations found in the seismic data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, proceedings of the Joint TASC2 - KASC9 Workshop - SPACEINN - HELAS8 Conference "Seismology of the Sun and the Distant Stars 2016: Using Today's Successes to Prepare the Future". To be published by the EPJ Web of Conference

Spin-polarized transport in ferromagnetic multilayered semiconductor nanostructures

The occurrence of inhomogeneous spin-density distribution in multilayered ferromagnetic diluted magnetic semiconductor nanostructures leads to strong dependence of the spin-polarized transport properties on these systems. The spin-dependent mobility, conductivity and resistivity in (Ga,Mn)As/GaAs,(Ga,Mn)N/GaN, and (Si,Mn)/Si multilayers are calculated as a function of temperature, scaled by the average magnetization of the diluted magnetic semiconductor layers. An increase of the resistivity near the transition temperature is obtained. We observed that the spin-polarized transport properties changes strongly among the three materials.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure

Impact of micro-telluric lines on precise radial velocities and its correction

Context: In the near future, new instruments such as ESPRESSO will arrive, allowing us to reach a precision in radial-velocity measurements on the order of 10 cm/s. At this level of precision, several noise sources that until now have been outweighed by photon noise will start to contribute significantly to the error budget. The telluric lines that are not neglected by the masks for the radial velocity computation, here called micro-telluric lines, are one such noise source. Aims: In this work we investigate the impact of micro-telluric lines in the radial velocities calculations. We also investigate how to correct the effect of these atmospheric lines on radial velocities. Methods: The work presented here follows two parallel lines. First, we calculated the impact of the micro-telluric lines by multiplying a synthetic solar-like stellar spectrum by synthetic atmospheric spectra and evaluated the effect created by the presence of the telluric lines. Then, we divided HARPS spectra by synthetic atmospheric spectra to correct for its presence on real data and calculated the radial velocity on the corrected spectra. When doing so, one considers two atmospheric models for the synthetic atmospheric spectra: the LBLRTM and TAPAS. Results: We find that the micro-telluric lines can induce an impact on the radial velocities calculation that can already be close to the current precision achieved with HARPS, and so its effect should not be neglected, especially for future instruments such as ESPRESSO. Moreover, we find that the micro-telluric lines' impact depends on factors, such as the radial velocity of the star, airmass, relative humidity, and the barycentric Earth radial velocity projected along the line of sight at the time of the observation.Comment: Accepted in A&