4,185 research outputs found
Possible Contribution to Electron and Positron Fluxes from Pulsars and their Nebulae
The AMS-02 experiment confirms the excess of positrons in cosmic rays (CRs)
for energy above 10 GeV with respect to the secondary production of positrons
in the interstellar medium. This is interpreted as evidence of the existence of
a primary source of these particles. Possible candidates are dark matter or
astrophysical sources. In this work we discuss the possible contribution due to
pulsars and their nebulae. Our key assumption is that the primary spectrum of
electrons and positrons at the source is the same of the well known photon
spectrum observed from gamma-rays telescopes. Using a diffusion model in the
Galaxy we propagate the source spectra up to the Solar System. We compare our
results with the recent experiments and with the LIS modelComment: To appear in the Proceedings of the 14th ICATPP Conference, Villa
Olmo 23-27 September 201
Pulsar Wind Nebulae as a source of the observed electron and positron excess at high energy: the case of Vela-X
We investigate, in terms of production from pulsars and their nebulae, the
cosmic ray positron and electron fluxes above GeV, observed by the
AMS-02 experiment up to 1 TeV. We concentrate on the Vela-X case. Starting from
the gamma-ray photon spectrum of the source, generated via synchrotron and
inverse Compton processes, we estimated the electron and positron injection
spectra. Several features are fixed from observations of Vela-X and unknown
parameters are borrowed from the Crab nebula. The particle spectra produced in
the pulsar wind nebula are then propagated up to the Solar System, using a
diffusion model. Differently from previous works, the omnidirectional intensity
excess for electrons and positrons is obtained as a difference between the
AMS-02 data and the corresponding local interstellar spectrum. An equal amount
of electron and positron excess is observed and we interpreted this excess
(above 100 GeV in the AMS-02 data) as a supply coming from Vela-X. The
particle contribution is consistent with models predicting the gamma-ray
emission at the source. The input of a few more young pulsars is also allowed,
while below 100 GeV more aged pulsars could be the main contributors.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of High Energy Astrophysics
(2015
Virtual Social Currencies for Unemployed People
Complementary currencies develop all around the world, taking various forms (material or immaterial) and fulfilling various functions. They are frequently introduced in order to promote local economy development and to fight against social exclusion. In this paper, we analyze the particular case of virtual currency circulation inside a local community of unemployed people. We elaborate on the assumptions that the organization of LETS and the circulation of complementary currencies have two properties: (i) they help unemployed workers to overcome the double coincidence of want necessity of an informal sector founded on barter exchange; (ii) they contribute to maintain and develop unemployed workers’ skills and employability of unemployed workers outside job. We study the global properties of a job market associating traditional short-term and long-term unemployment to the organization of LETS. Using a search theoretic model, we find that the initial level of trust of agents in the complementary currency(cies) but also the effective properties of this(ese) currency(cies) inside the LETS are crucial for LETS to become survive and becoming permanent. We also find that if the stationary equilibrium of the jobmarket includes LETS, then LETS have a positive influence on the rate of employment, on the expected utility of employed workers, and are Pareto improving when the benchmark case is a job market without any LETS
The cool core state of Planck SZ-selected clusters versus X-ray selected samples: evidence for cool core bias
We characterized the population of galaxy clusters detected with the SZ
effect with Planck, by measuring the cool core state of the objects in a
well-defined subsample of the Planck catalogue. We used as indicator the
concentration parameter Santos et al. (2008). The fraction of cool core
clusters is and does not show significant indications of
evolution in the redshift range covered by our sample. We compare the
distribution of the concentration parameter in the Planck sample with the one
of the X-ray selected sample MACS (Mann & Ebeling, 2011): the distributions are
significantly different and the cool core fraction in MACS is much higher (). Since X-ray selected samples are known to be biased towards cool
cores due to the presence of their prominent surface brightness peak, we
simulated the impact of the "cool core bias" following Eckert et al. (2011). We
found that it plays a large role in the difference between the fractions of
cool cores in the two samples. We examined other selection effects that could
in principle bias SZ-surveys against cool cores but we found that their impact
is not sufficient to explain the difference between Planck and MACS. The
population of X-ray under-luminous objects, which are found in SZ-surveys but
missing in X-ray samples (Planck Collaboration 2016), could possibly contribute
to the difference, as we found most of them to be non cool cores, but this
hypothesis deserves further investigation.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
SURVEY, HBIM AND CONSERVATION PLAN OF A MONUMENTAL BUILDING DAMAGED BY EARTHQUAKE
open4Oreni, D.; Brumana, R.; Della Torre, S.; Banfi, F.Oreni, Daniela; Brumana, Raffaella; DELLA TORRE, Stefano; Banfi, Fabrizi
Deep learning model for automated detection of efflorescence and its possible treatment in images of brick facades
One of the most common pathologies in exposed brick facades is efflorescence, which, although they often have a similar appearance, their effects and way of solving them can range from a one-off cleaning to a repair that involves adding or replacing the material. Therefore, the novel goal of this work is to verify whether it is possible to automate this task of distinguishing what type of intervention each brick needs. To do this, the methodology followed focuses on proposing, training and validating a deep convolutional neural network with the real-time end-to-end method that simultaneously predicts multiple bounding boxes and class probabilities for those boxes. For this, images of 765 building facades will be used, of which 392 were selected, proceeding to label 4704 bricks, resulting in that the model achieved a mAP maximum at epoch 100 with 0.894, which is therefore of interest for the creation of intervention maps
Antiproton modulation in the Heliosphere and AMS-02 antiproton over proton ratio prediction
We implemented a quasi time-dependent 2D stochastic model of solar modulation
describing the transport of cosmic rays (CR) in the heliosphere. Our code can
modulate the Local Interstellar Spectrum (LIS) of a generic charged particle
(light cosmic ions and electrons), calculating the spectrum at 1AU. Several
measurements of CR antiparticles have been performed. Here we focused our
attention on the CR antiproton component and the antiproton over proton ratio.
We show that our model, using the same heliospheric parameters for both
particles, fit the observed anti-p/p ratio. We show a good agreement with
BESS-97 and PAMELA data and make a prediction for the AMS-02 experiment
Latitudinal Dependence of Cosmic Rays Modulation at 1 AU and Interplanetary-Magnetic-Field Polar Correction
The cosmic rays differential intensity inside the heliosphere, for energy
below 30 GeV/nuc, depends on solar activity and interplanetary magnetic field
polarity. This variation, termed solar modulation, is described using a 2-D
(radius and colatitude) Monte Carlo approach for solving the Parker transport
equation that includes diffusion, convection, magnetic drift and adiabatic
energy loss. Since the whole transport is strongly related to the
interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) structure, a better understanding of his
description is needed in order to reproduce the cosmic rays intensity at the
Earth, as well as outside the ecliptic plane. In this work an interplanetary
magnetic field model including the standard description on ecliptic region and
a polar correction is presented. This treatment of the IMF, implemented in the
HelMod Monte Carlo code (version 2.0), was used to determine the effects on the
differential intensity of Proton at 1\,AU and allowed one to investigate how
latitudinal gradients of proton intensities, observed in the inner heliosphere
with the Ulysses spacecraft during 1995, can be affected by the modification of
the IMF in the polar regions.Comment: accepted for publication inAdvances in Astronom
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