25,416 research outputs found
Major Galaxy Mergers and the Growth of Supermassive Black Holes in Quasars
Despite observed strong correlations between central supermassive black holes
(SMBHs) and star-formation in galactic nuclei, uncertainties exist in our
understanding of their coupling. We present observations of the ratio of
heavily-obscured to unobscured quasars as a function of cosmic epoch up to z~3,
and show that a simple physical model describing mergers of massive, gas-rich
galaxies matches these observations. In the context of this model, every
obscured and unobscured quasar represent two distinct phases that result from a
massive galaxy merger event. Much of the mass growth of the SMBH occurs during
the heavily-obscured phase. These observations provide additional evidence for
a causal link between gas-rich galaxy mergers, accretion onto the nuclear SMBH
and coeval star formation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Science. Published by Science Express on
March 25th. 17 pages, 5 figures, including supplemental online materia
STOL Simulation Requirements for Development of Integrated Flight/propulsion Control Systems
The role and use of simulation as a design tool in developing integrated systems where design criteria is largely unavailable is well known. This paper addresses additional simulation needs for the development of Integrated Flight/Propulsion Control Systems (IFPCS) which will improve the probability of properly interpreting simulation results. These needs are based on recent experience with power approach flying qualities evaluations of an advanced fighter configuration which incorporated Short Takeoff and Landing (STOL) technologies and earlier experiences with power approach flying qualities evaluations on the AFTI/F-16 program. The use of motion base platforms with axial and normal degrees of freedom will help in evaluating pilot coupling and workload in the presence of high frequency low amplitude axial accelerations produced by high bandwidth airspeed controllers in a gusty environment
Metastability in Markov processes
We present a formalism to describe slowly decaying systems in the context of
finite Markov chains obeying detailed balance. We show that phase space can be
partitioned into approximately decoupled regions, in which one may introduce
restricted Markov chains which are close to the original process but do not
leave these regions. Within this context, we identify the conditions under
which the decaying system can be considered to be in a metastable state.
Furthermore, we show that such metastable states can be described in
thermodynamic terms and define their free energy. This is accomplished showing
that the probability distribution describing the metastable state is indeed
proportional to the equilibrium distribution, as is commonly assumed. We test
the formalism numerically in the case of the two-dimensional kinetic Ising
model, using the Wang--Landau algorithm to show this proportionality
explicitly, and confirm that the proportionality constant is as derived in the
theory. Finally, we extend the formalism to situations in which a system can
have several metastable states.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures; version with one higher quality figure available
at http://www.fis.unam.mx/~dsanders
Optical Spectroscopy of the IRAS 1-Jy Sample of Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies
This paper discusses the optical spectroscopic properties of the IRAS 1-Jy
sample of ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIGs). One hundred and eight of the
118 1-Jy ULIGs have been observed at dlambda = 8.3 AA resolution over the
wavelength range ~4500 A -- 8900 A. These data are combined with large,
previously published sets of optical spectroscopic data of lower luminosity
infrared galaxies to look for systematic trends with infrared luminosity over
the luminosity range L_ir ~ 10^{10.5}-10^{13} L_sun. As found in previous
studies, the fraction of Seyfert galaxies among luminous infrared galaxies
increases abruptly above L_ir ~ 10^{12.3} L_sun --- about 50% of the galaxies
with L_ir > 10^{12.3} L_sun present Seyfert characteristics. Many of the
optical and infrared spectroscopic properties of the Seyfert galaxies are
consistent with the presence of a genuine active galactic nucleus (AGN). About
30% of these galaxies are Seyfert 1s with broad-line regions similar to those
of optical quasars. The percentage of Seyfert 1 ULIGs increases with infrared
luminosity, contrary to the predictions of the standard unification model for
Seyfert galaxies. Comparisons of the broad-line luminosities of optical and
obscured Seyfert 1 ULIGs with those of optically selected quasars of comparable
bolometric luminosity suggest that the dominant energy source in most of these
ULIGs is the same as in optical quasars, namely mass accretion onto a
supermassive black hole, rather than a starburst. These results are consistent
with recently published ISO, ASCA, and VLBI data. (abridged)Comment: Text and 23 figures (45 pages), Tables 1 - 6 (16 pages
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Oxygen isotopic constraints on the origin and parent bodies of eucrites, howardites, and diogenites
Chandra Observations of ULIRGs: Extended Hot Gas Halos in Merging Galaxies
We study the properties of hot gaseous halos in 10 nearby ultraluminous IRAS
galaxies observed with the ACIS instrument on board Chandra. For all sample
galaxies, diffuse soft X-ray emissions are found within ~10 kpc of the central
region; their spectra are well fitted by a MEKAL model plus emission lines from
alpha-elements and other ions. The temperature of the hot gas is about 0.7 keV
and metallicity is about 1 solar. Outside the central region, extended hot
gaseous halos are found for nine out of the ten ULIRGs. Most spectra of these
extended halos can be fitted with a MEKAL model with a temperature of about 0.6
keV and a low metallicity (~ 0.1 solar). We discuss the implications of our
results on the origin of X-ray halos in elliptical galaxies and the feedback
processes associated with starbursts.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figuers, ApJ in press, accepted versio
Memetic Multilevel Hypergraph Partitioning
Hypergraph partitioning has a wide range of important applications such as
VLSI design or scientific computing. With focus on solution quality, we develop
the first multilevel memetic algorithm to tackle the problem. Key components of
our contribution are new effective multilevel recombination and mutation
operations that provide a large amount of diversity. We perform a wide range of
experiments on a benchmark set containing instances from application areas such
VLSI, SAT solving, social networks, and scientific computing. Compared to the
state-of-the-art hypergraph partitioning tools hMetis, PaToH, and KaHyPar, our
new algorithm computes the best result on almost all instances
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