1,351 research outputs found
Kinematics signature of a giant planet in the disk of AS 209
[abridged] ALMA observations of dust in protoplanetary disks are revealing
the existence of sub-structures such as rings, gaps and cavities. Such
morphology are expected to be the outcome of dynamical interaction between the
disk and planets. However, other mechanisms are able to produce similar dust
sub-structures. A solution is to look at the perturbation induced by the planet
to the gas surface density and/or to the kinematics. In the case of the disk
around AS 209, a prominent gap has been reported in the surface density of CO
at au. Recently, Bae et al. (2022) detected a localized velocity
perturbation in the CO emission along with a clump in CO
at nearly 200 au, interpreted as a gaseous circumplanetary disk. We
report a new analysis of ALMA archival observations of CO and CO
J=2-1. A clear kinematics perturbation (kink) is detected in multiple channels
and over a wide azimuth range in both dataset. We compared the observed
perturbation with a semi-analytic model of velocity perturbations due to
planet-disk interaction. The observed kink is not consistent with a planet at
200\,au as this would require a low gas disk scale height () in
contradiction with previous estimate ( at au). When
we fix the disk scale height to 0.118 (at au) we find instead that a
planet of 3-5 M at 100 au induces a kinematics perturbation similar
to the observed one. Thus, we conclude that a giant protoplanet orbiting at au is responsible of the large scale kink as well as of the
perturbed dust and gas surface density previously detected. The position angle
of the planet is constrained to be between 60-100. Future
observations with high contrast imaging technique in the near- and mid-
infrared are needed to confirm the presence and position of such a planet.Comment: Accepted by A&
Constraints from Dust Mass and Mass Accretion Rate Measurements on Angular Momentum Transport in Protoplanetary Disks
We investigate the relation between disk mass and mass accretion rate to
constrain the mechanism of angular momentum transport in protoplanetary disks.
Dust mass and mass accretion rate in Chamaeleon I are correlated with a slope
close to linear, similar to the one recently identified in Lupus. We
investigate the effect of stellar mass and find that the intrinsic scatter
around the best-fit Mdust-Mstar and Macc-Mstar relations is uncorrelated. Disks
with a constant alpha viscosity can fit the observed relations between dust
mass, mass accretion rate, and stellar mass, but over-predict the strength of
the correlation between disk mass and mass accretion rate when using standard
initial conditions. We find two possible solutions. 1) The observed scatter in
Mdust and Macc is not primoridal, but arises from additional physical processes
or uncertainties in estimating the disk gas mass. Most likely grain growth and
radial drift affect the observable dust mass, while variability on large time
scales affects the mass accretion rates. 2) The observed scatter is primordial,
but disks have not evolved substantially at the age of Lupus and Chamaeleon I
due to a low viscosity or a large initial disk radius. More accurate estimates
of the disk mass and gas disk sizes in a large sample of protoplanetary disks,
either through direct observations of the gas or spatially resolved
multi-wavelength observations of the dust with ALMA, are needed to discriminate
between both scenarios or to constrain alternative angular momentum transport
mechanisms such as MHD disk winds.Comment: See also the paper by Lodato et a
E-PTFE (Gore-Tex) implant with or without low-dosage mitomycin-C as an adjuvant in penetrating glaucoma surgery: 2 year randomized clinical trial.
Purpose: To test the expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) as a new adjuvant
in trabeculectomy.
Methods: Consecutive glaucoma surgical inpatients were observed at the Department of Ophthalmology of Palermo University. Sixty patients (60 eyes)were randomly assigned to undergo trabeculectomy (T), trabeculectomy with
mitomycin-C (TMMC), with ePTFE (TG) or with mitomycin-C and ePTFE (TGMMC). Postoperative visits were scheduled at 24 hr, 7 days, 1, 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months. Complete success and qualified success were assessed at two target intraocular pressure (IOP) levels – £21 and £17 mmHg – by Kaplan–Meier curves.
Results: The postoperative IOP reduction was significant (P < 0.01) at the endpoint in all groups, with a mean IOP of 16.9 (±2.9), 16.2 (±2.7), 15.3 (±3.4) and 15.2 (±4.3) mmHg in T, TMMC, TG and TGMMC eyes, respectively. No intergroup difference was found at either IOP targets. The Kaplan–Meier curves relating to either the £21 mmHg or the £17 mmHg target
IOP did not show significant intergroup differences for complete and qualified
success rate. When ePTFE was used, a trend favouring the medium-term survival rate was noted. No adverse reaction to the ePTFE was present, and no membrane extrusion or conjuctival erosion were noted in any cases. Hypotony was significantly more frequent (P = 0.035) in groups without ePTFE.
Moreover, the late MMC-related complications were more frequent when MMC was applied.
Conclusion: Expanded polytetrafluoroethylene implant in trabeculectomy is well tolerated and could act as a filtration modulating device. Therefore, it is useful in reducing early hypotony-related complications and contributes to attaining medium-term IOP control that is comparable to the low-dosage MMC
HO distribution in the disc of HD 100546 and HD 163296: the role of dust dynamics and planet--disc interaction
[Abridged] Far-infrared observations with Herschel revealed a surprisingly
low abundance of cold-water reservoirs in protoplanetary discs. On the other
hand, a handful of discs show emission of hot water transitions excited at
temperatures above a few hundred Kelvin. In particular, the protoplanetary
discs around the Herbig Ae stars HD 100546 and HD 163296 show opposite trends
in terms of cold versus hot water emission: in the first case, the ground-state
transitions are detected and the high-J lines are undetected, while the trend
is opposite in HD 163296. We performed a spectral analysis using the
thermo-chemical model DALI. We find that HD 163296 is characterised by a
water-rich (abundance ) hot inner disc (within the snowline)
and a water-poor () outer disc: the relative abundance may be due
to the thermal desorption of icy grains that have migrated inward. Remarkably,
the size of the HO emitting region corresponds to a narrow dust gap visible
in the millimeter continuum at au with ALMA. The low-J lines detected
in HD 100546 instead imply an abundance of a few in the cold outer
disc ( au). The emitting region of the cold HO transitions is
spatially coincident with that of the HO ice previously seen in the
near-infrared. Notably, millimetre observations with ALMA reveal the presence
of a large dust gap between nearly 40 and 150 au, likely opened by a massive
embedded protoplanet. In both discs, we find that the warm molecular layer in
the outer region (beyond the snow line) is highly depleted of water molecules,
implying an oxygen-poor chemical composition of the gas. We speculate that
gas-phase oxygen in the outer disc is readily depleted and its distribution in
the disc is tightly coupled to the dynamics of the dust grains.Comment: Accepted for publication on A&
Black-Hole Spin Dependence in the Light Curves of Tidal Disruption Events
A star orbiting a supermassive black hole can be tidally disrupted if the
black hole's gravitational tidal field exceeds the star's self gravity at
pericenter. Some of this stellar tidal debris can become gravitationally bound
to the black hole, leading to a bright electromagnetic flare with bolometric
luminosity proportional to the rate at which material falls back to pericenter.
In the Newtonian limit, this flare will have a light curve that scales as
t^-5/3 if the tidal debris has a flat distribution in binding energy. We
investigate the time dependence of the black-hole mass accretion rate when
tidal disruption occurs close enough the black hole that relativistic effects
are significant. We find that for orbits with pericenters comparable to the
radius of the marginally bound circular orbit, relativistic effects can double
the peak accretion rate and halve the time it takes to reach this peak
accretion rate. The accretion rate depends on both the magnitude of the
black-hole spin and its orientation with respect to the stellar orbit; for
orbits with a given pericenter radius in Boyer-Lindquist coordinates, a maximal
black-hole spin anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum leads to the
largest peak accretion rate.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures, 1 table, PRD published versio
The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N@TNG VI: The Curious Case of TrES-4b
We revisit the TrES-4 system parameters based on high-precision HARPS-N
radial-velocity measurements and new photometric light curves. A combined
spectroscopic and photometric analysis allows us to determine a spectroscopic
orbit with an amplitude m s. The derived mass of TrES-4b is
found to be , significantly lower than
previously reported. Combined with the large radius () inferred from our analysis, TrES-4b becomes
the second-lowest density transiting hot Jupiter known. We discuss several
scenarios to explain the puzzling discrepancy in the mass of TrES-4b in the
context of the exotic class of highly inflated transiting giant planets.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Letter accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
Direct Formation of Supermassive Black Holes via Multi-Scale Gas Inflows in Galaxy Mergers
Observations of distant bright quasars suggest that billion solar mass
supermassive black holes (SMBHs) were already in place less than a billion
years after the Big Bang. Models in which light black hole seeds form by the
collapse of primordial metal-free stars cannot explain their rapid appearance
due to inefficient gas accretion. Alternatively, these black holes may form by
direct collapse of gas at the center of protogalaxies. However, this requires
metal-free gas that does not cool efficiently and thus is not turned into
stars, in contrast with the rapid metal enrichment of protogalaxies. Here we
use a numerical simulation to show that mergers between massive protogalaxies
naturally produce the required central gas accumulation with no need to
suppress star formation. Merger-driven gas inflows produce an unstable, massive
nuclear gas disk. Within the disk a second gas inflow accumulates more than 100
million solar masses of gas in a sub-parsec scale cloud in one hundred thousand
years. The cloud undergoes gravitational collapse, which eventually leads to
the formation of a massive black hole. The black hole can grow to a billion
solar masses in less than a billion years by accreting gas from the surrounding
disk.Comment: 26 pages, 4 Figures, submitted to Nature (includes Supplementary
Information
Measurement of an excess in the yield of J/ at very low in Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV
We report on the first measurement of an excess in the yield of J/ at
very low transverse momentum ( GeV/) in peripheral hadronic
Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV, performed by ALICE at the
CERN LHC. Remarkably, the measured nuclear modification factor of J/ in
the rapidity range reaches about 7 (2) in the range 0-0.3
GeV/ in the 70-90% (50-70%) centrality class. The J/ production cross
section associated with the observed excess is obtained under the hypothesis
that coherent photoproduction of J/ is the underlying physics mechanism.
If confirmed, the observation of J/ coherent photoproduction in Pb-Pb
collisions at impact parameters smaller than twice the nuclear radius opens new
theoretical and experimental challenges and opportunities. In particular,
coherent photoproduction accompanying hadronic collisions may provide insight
into the dynamics of photoproduction and nuclear reactions, as well as become a
novel probe of the Quark-Gluon Plasma.Comment: 18 pages, 3 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 13,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/191
HST measures of Mass Accretion Rates in the Orion Nebula Cluster
The present observational understanding of the evolution of the mass
accretion rates (Macc) in pre-main sequence stars is limited by the lack of
accurate measurements of Macc over homogeneous and large statistical samples of
young stars. Such observational effort is needed to properly constrain the
theory of star formation and disk evolution. Based on HST/WFPC2 observations,
we present a study of Macc for a sample of \sim 700 sources in the Orion Nebula
Cluster, ranging from the Hydrogen-burning limit to M\ast \sim 2M\odot. We
derive Macc from both the U-band excess and the H{\alpha} luminosity
(LH{\alpha}), after determining empirically both the shape of the typical
accretion spectrum across the Balmer jump and the relation between the
accretion luminosity (Lacc) and LH{\alpha}, that is Lacc/L\odot =
(1.31\pm0.03)\cdotLH{\alpha}/L\odot + (2.63\pm 0.13). Given our large
statistical sample, we are able to accurately investigate relations between
Macc and the parameters of the central star such as mass and age. We clearly
find Macc to increase with stellar mass, and decrease over evolutionary time,
but we also find strong evidence that the decay of Macc with stellar age occurs
over longer timescales for more massive PMS stars. Our best fit relation
between these parameters is given by: log(Macc/M\odot\cdotyr)=(-5.12 \pm 0.86)
-(0.46 \pm 0.13) \cdot log(t/yr) -(5.75 \pm 1.47)\cdot log(M\ast/M\odot) +
(1.17 \pm 0.23)\cdot log(t/yr) \cdot log(M\ast/M\odot). These results also
suggest that the similarity solution model could be revised for sources with
M\ast > 0.5M\odot. Finally, we do not find a clear trend indicating
environmental effects on the accretion properties of the sources.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
The GAPS programme with HARPS-N@TNG IV: A planetary system around XO-2S
We performed an intensive radial velocity monitoring of XO-2S, the wide
companion of the transiting planet-host XO-2N, using HARPS-N at TNG in the
framework of the GAPS programme. The radial velocity measurements indicate the
presence of a new planetary system formed by a planet that is slightly more
massive than Jupiter at 0.48 au and a Saturn-mass planet at 0.13 au. Both
planetary orbits are moderately eccentric and were found to be dynamically
stable. There are also indications of a long-term trend in the radial
velocities. This is the first confirmed case of a wide binary whose components
both host planets, one of which is transiting, which makes the XO-2 system a
unique laboratory for understanding the diversity of planetary systems.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted on A&A Lette
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