36,361 research outputs found
Inhomogeneous Reionization Models in Cosmological Hydrodynamical Simulations
In this work we present a new hybrid method to simulate the thermal effects
of the reionization in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. The method
improves upon the standard approach used in simulations of the intergalactic
medium (IGM) and galaxy formation without a significant increase of the
computational cost allowing for efficient exploration of the parameter space.
The method uses a small set of phenomenological input parameters and combines a
semi-numerical reionization model to solve for the topology of reionization and
an approximate model of how reionization heats the IGM, with the massively
parallel \texttt{Nyx} hydrodynamics code, specifically designed to solve for
the structure of diffuse IGM gas. We have produced several large-scale high
resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations (, Mpc/h) with different instantaneous and inhomogeneous HI reionization
models that use this new methodology. We study the IGM thermal properties of
these models and find that large scale temperature fluctuations extend well
beyond the end of reionization. Analyzing the 1D flux power spectrum of these
models, we find up to differences in the large scale properties
(low modes, s/km) of the post-reionization power spectrum due
to the thermal fluctuations. We show that these differences could allow one to
distinguish between different reionization scenarios already with existing
Ly forest measurements. Finally, we explore the differences in the
small-scale cutoff of the power spectrum and we find that, for the same heat
input, models show very good agreement provided that the reionization redshift
of the instantaneous reionization model happens at the midpoint of the
inhomogeneous model.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. Minor changes to match
published versio
The effect of stellar-mass black holes on the structural evolution of massive star clusters
We present the results of realistic N-body modelling of massive star clusters
in the Magellanic Clouds, aimed at investigating a dynamical origin for the
radius-age trend observed in these systems. We find that stellar-mass black
holes, formed in the supernova explosions of the most massive cluster stars,
can constitute a dynamically important population. If a significant number of
black holes are retained (here we assume complete retention), these objects
rapidly form a dense core where interactions are common, resulting in the
scattering of black holes into the cluster halo, and the ejection of black
holes from the cluster. These two processes heat the stellar component,
resulting in prolonged core expansion of a magnitude matching the observations.
Significant core evolution is also observed in Magellanic Cloud clusters at
early times. We find that this does not result from the action of black holes,
but can be reproduced by the effects of mass-loss due to rapid stellar
evolution in a primordially mass segregated cluster.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters; 2 figures, 1 tabl
Polarization and readout of coupled single spins in diamond
We study the coupling of a single nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond to a
nearby single nitrogen defect at room temperature. The magnetic dipolar
coupling leads to a splitting in the electron spin resonance frequency of the
nitrogen-vacancy center, allowing readout of the state of a single nitrogen
electron spin. At magnetic fields where the spin splitting of the two centers
is the same we observe a strong polarization of the nitrogen electron spin. The
amount of polarization can be controlled by the optical excitation power. We
combine the polarization and the readout in time-resolved pump-probe
measurements to determine the spin relaxation time of a single nitrogen
electron spin. Finally, we discuss indications for hyperfine-induced
polarization of the nitrogen nuclear spin
Affine maps of density matrices
For quantum systems described by finite matrices, linear and affine maps of
matrices are shown to provide equivalent descriptions of evolution of density
matrices for a subsystem caused by unitary Hamiltonian evolution in a larger
system; an affine map can be replaced by a linear map, and a linear map can be
replaced by an affine map. There may be significant advantage in using an
affine map. The linear map is generally not completely positive, but the linear
part of an equivalent affine map can be chosen to be completely positive and
related in the simplest possible way to the unitary Hamiltonian evolution in
the larger system.Comment: 4 pages, title changed, sentence added, reference update
Reionization history constraints from neural network based predictions of high-redshift quasar continua
Observations of the early Universe suggest that reionization was complete by
, however, the exact history of this process is still unknown. One
method for measuring the evolution of the neutral fraction throughout this
epoch is via observing the Ly damping wings of high-redshift quasars.
In order to constrain the neutral fraction from quasar observations, one needs
an accurate model of the quasar spectrum around Ly, after the spectrum
has been processed by its host galaxy but before it is altered by absorption
and damping in the intervening IGM. In this paper, we present a novel machine
learning approach, using artificial neural networks, to reconstruct quasar
continua around Ly. Our QSANNdRA algorithm improves the error in this
reconstruction compared to the state-of-the-art PCA-based model in the
literature by 14.2% on average, and provides an improvement of 6.1% on average
when compared to an extension thereof. In comparison with the extended PCA
model, QSANNdRA further achieves an improvement of 22.1% and 16.8% when
evaluated on low-redshift quasars most similar to the two high-redshift quasars
under consideration, ULAS J1120+0641 at and ULAS J1342+0928 at
, respectively. Using our more accurate reconstructions of these two
quasars, we estimate the neutral fraction of the IGM using a homogeneous
reionization model and find at
and at . Our
results are consistent with the literature and favour a rapid end to
reionization
Gravitational Radiation From Globular Clusters
Space-based gravitational wave detectors will have the ability to observe
continuous low frequency gravitational radiation from binary star systems. They
can determine the direction to continuous sources with an angular resolution
approaching tens of arcminutes. This resolution should be sufficient to
identify binary sources as members of some nearby globular clusters. Thus,
gravitational radiation can be used to determine the population of hard
binaries in globular clusters. For particularly hard binaries, the orbital
period may change as a result of gravitational wave emission. If one of these
binaries can be identified with a globular cluster, then the distance to that
cluster can be determined. Thus, gravitational radiation may provide
reddening-independent distance measurements to globular clusters.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX, uses aasms4.sty, submitted to Ap.
Is our Sun a Singleton?
Most stars are formed in a cluster or association, where the number density
of stars can be high. This means that a large fraction of initially-single
stars will undergo close encounters with other stars and/or exchange into
binaries. We describe how such close encounters and exchange encounters can
affect the properties of a planetary system around a single star. We define a
singleton as a single star which has never suffered close encounters with other
stars or spent time within a binary system. It may be that planetary systems
similar to our own solar system can only survive around singletons. Close
encounters or the presence of a stellar companion will perturb the planetary
system, often leaving planets on tighter and more eccentric orbits. Thus
planetary systems which initially resembled our own solar system may later more
closely resemble some of the observed exoplanet systems.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure. To be published in the proceedings of IAUS246
"Dynamical Evolution of Dense Stellar Systems". Editors: E. Vesperini (Chief
Editor), M. Giersz, A. Sill
Ab-initio calculation of all-optical time-resolved calorimetry of nanosized systems: Evidence of nanosecond-decoupling of electron and phonon temperatures
The thermal dynamics induced by ultrashort laser pulses in nanoscale systems,
i.e. all-optical time-resolved nanocalorimetry is theoretically investigated
from 300 to 1.5 K. We report ab-initio calculations describing the temperature
dependence of the electron-phonon interactions for Cu nanodisks supported on
Si. The electrons and phonons temperatures are found to decouple on the ns time
scale at 10 K, which is two orders of magnitude in excess with respect to that
found for standard low-temperature transport experiments. By accounting for the
physics behind our results we suggest an alternative route for overhauling the
present knowledge of the electron-phonon decoupling mechanism in nanoscale
systems by replacing the mK temperature requirements of conventional
experiments with experiments in the time-domain.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted on Physical Review B
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