1,507 research outputs found
Secondary radiation from the Pamela/ATIC excess and relevance for Fermi
The excess of electrons/positrons observed by the Pamela and ATIC experiments
gives rise to a noticeable amount of synchrotron and Inverse Compton Scattering
(ICS) radiation when the e^+e^- interact with the Galactic Magnetic Field, and
the InterStellar Radiation Field (ISRF). In particular, the ICS signal produced
within the WIMP annihilation interpretation of the Pamela/ATIC excess shows
already some tension with the EGRET data. On the other hand, 1 yr of Fermi data
taking will be enough to rule out or confirm this scenario with a high
confidence level. The ICS radiation produces a peculiar and clean "ICS Haze"
feature, as well, which can be used to discriminate between the astrophysical
and Dark Matter scenarios. This ICS signature is very prominent even several
degrees away from the galactic center, and it is thus a very robust prediction
with respect to the choice of the DM profile and the uncertainties in the ISRF.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; v2: improved figures, enlarged discussion on the
gamma signal and data; to appear in ApJ
Radio constraints on dark matter annihilation in the galactic halo and its substructures
Annihilation of Dark Matter usually produces together with gamma rays
comparable amounts of electrons and positrons. The e+e- gyrating in the
galactic magnetic field then produce secondary synchrotron radiation which thus
provides an indirect mean to constrain the DM signal itself. To this purpose,
we calculate the radio emission from the galactic halo as well as from its
expected substructures and we then compare it with the measured diffuse radio
background. We employ a multi-frequency approach using data in the relevant
frequency range 100 MHz-100 GHz, as well as the WMAP Haze data at 23 GHz. The
derived constraints are of the order =10^{-24} cm3 s^{-1} for a DM
mass m_chi=100 GeV sensibly depending however on the astrophysical
uncertainties, in particular on the assumption on the galactic magnetic field
model. The signal from single bright clumps is instead largely attenuated by
diffusion effects and offers only poor detection perspectives.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures; v2: some references added, some discussions
enlarged; matches journal versio
High Energy Neutrinos with a Mediterranean Neutrino Telescope
The high energy neutrino detection by a km^3 Neutrino Telescope placed in the
Mediterranean sea provides a unique tool to both determine the diffuse
astrophysical neutrino flux and the neutrino-nucleon cross section in the
extreme kinematical region, which could unveil the presence of new physics.
Here is performed a brief analysis of possible NEMO site performances.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the 30th ICRC 200
Disentangling neutrino-nucleon cross section and high energy neutrino flux with a km^3 neutrino telescope
The energy--zenith angular event distribution in a neutrino telescope
provides a unique tool to determine at the same time the neutrino-nucleon cross
section at extreme kinematical regions, and the high energy neutrino flux. By
using a simple parametrization for fluxes and cross sections, we present a
sensitivity analysis for the case of a km^3 neutrino telescope. In particular,
we consider the specific case of an under-water Mediterranean telescope placed
at the NEMO site, although most of our results also apply to an under-ice
detector such as IceCube. We determine the sensitivity to departures from
standard values of the cross sections above 1 PeV which can be probed
independently from an a-priori knowledge of the normalization and energy
dependence of the flux. We also stress that the capability to tag downgoing
neutrino showers in the PeV range against the cosmic ray induced background of
penetrating muons appears to be a crucial requirement to derive meaningful
constraints on the cross section.Comment: 10 pages, 28 figure
Application of dictionary learning to denoise LIGO's blip noise transients
Data streams of gravitational-wave detectors are polluted by transient noise features, or "glitches", of instrumental and environmental origin. In this work, we investigate the use of total-variation methods and learned dictionaries to mitigate the effect of those transients in the data. We focus on a specific type of transient, "blip" glitches, as this is the most common type of glitch present in the LIGO detectors and their waveforms are easy to identify. We randomly select 80 blip glitches scattered in the data from advanced LIGO's O1 run, as provided by the citizen-science project Gravity Spy. Our results show that dictionary-learning methods are a valid approach to model and subtract most of the glitch contribution in all cases analyzed, particularly at frequencies below kHz. The high-frequency component of the glitch is best removed when a combination of dictionaries with different atom length is employed. As a further example, we apply our approach to the glitch visible in the LIGO-Livingston data around the time of merger of binary neutron star signal GW170817, finding satisfactory results. This paper is the first step in our ongoing program to automatically classify and subtract all families of gravitational-wave glitches employing variational methods
Contextual Coding in Qualitative Research Involving Participants with Diverse Sociocultural Backgrounds
Understanding participants' perspectives in qualitative research is contingent on unravelling the essential meaning of their speech. When data are collected in native language and translated into English language, the underlying sociocultural meaning of participants' speech can be missed. This paper discusses a new contextual coding approach and illustrates its application in research. The technique was used in a phenomenological study in Pakistan and a mixed methods study in Europe. Contextual coding entails a preliminary coding stage involving data reading in native language, choosing socially and culturally relevant words and phrases, and developing preliminary codes. The concluding coding stage focuses on creating a sociocultural query list, seeking answers through discussions among multilingual individuals, and finding a common language for code description. Contextual coding can enable researchers to understand sociocultural meaning of their data at an early stage, rather than waiting at the later stage of theme development to contextualize the findings
On line power spectra identification and whitening for the noise in interferometric gravitational wave detectors
In this paper we address both to the problem of identifying the noise Power
Spectral Density of interferometric detectors by parametric techniques and to
the problem of the whitening procedure of the sequence of data. We will
concentrate the study on a Power Spectral Density like the one of the
Italian-French detector VIRGO and we show that with a reasonable finite number
of parameters we succeed in modeling a spectrum like the theoretical one of
VIRGO, reproducing all its features. We propose also the use of adaptive
techniques to identify and to whiten on line the data of interferometric
detectors. We analyze the behavior of the adaptive techniques in the field of
stochastic gradient and in the
Least Squares ones.Comment: 28 pages, 21 figures, uses iopart.cls accepted for pubblication on
Classical and Quantum Gravit
Optimal detection of burst events in gravitational wave interferometric observatories
We consider the problem of detecting a burst signal of unknown shape. We
introduce a statistic which generalizes the excess power statistic proposed by
Flanagan and Hughes and extended by Anderson et al. The statistic we propose is
shown to be optimal for arbitrary noise spectral characteristic, under the two
hypotheses that the noise is Gaussian, and that the prior for the signal is
uniform. The statistic derivation is based on the assumption that a signal
affects only affects N samples in the data stream, but that no other
information is a priori available, and that the value of the signal at each
sample can be arbitrary. We show that the proposed statistic can be implemented
combining standard time-series analysis tools which can be efficiently
implemented, and the resulting computational cost is still compatible with an
on-line analysis of interferometric data. We generalize this version of an
excess power statistic to the multiple detector case, also including the effect
of correlated noise. We give full details about the implementation of the
algorithm, both for the single and the multiple detector case, and we discuss
exact and approximate forms, depending on the specific characteristics of the
noise and on the assumed length of the burst event. As a example, we show what
would be the sensitivity of the network of interferometers to a delta-function
burst.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures in 3 groups. Submitted for publication to
Phys.Rev.D. A Mathematica notebook is available at
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~avicere/nda/burst/Burst.nb which allows to
reproduce the numerical results of the pape
Steps towards a map of the nearby universe
We present a new analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data aimed at
producing a detailed map of the nearby (z < 0.5) universe. Using neural
networks trained on the available spectroscopic base of knowledge we derived
distance estimates for about 30 million galaxies distributed over ca. 8,000 sq.
deg. We also used unsupervised clustering tools developed in the framework of
the VO-Tech project, to investigate the possibility to understand the nature of
each object present in the field and, in particular, to produce a list of
candidate AGNs and QSOs.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Nucl Phys. B, in the proceedings of
the NOW-2006 (Neutrino Oscillation Workshop - 2006), R. Fogli et al. ed
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