33 research outputs found
A contribution to laser range imaging technology
The goal of the project was to develop a methodology for fusion of a Laser Range Imaging Device (LRID) and camera data. Our initial work in the project led to the conclusion that none of the LRID's that were available were sufficiently adequate for this purpose. Thus we spent the time and effort on the development of the new LRID with several novel features which elicit the desired fusion objectives. In what follows, we describe the device developed and built under contract. The Laser Range Imaging Device (LRID) is an instrument which scans a scene using a laser and returns range and reflection intensity data. Such a system would be extremely useful in scene analysis in industry and space applications. The LRID will be eventually implemented on board a mobile robot. The current system has several advantages over some commercially available systems. One improvement is the use of X-Y galvonometer scanning mirrors instead of polygonal mirrors present in some systems. The advantage of the X-Y scanning mirrors is that the mirror system can be programmed to provide adjustable scanning regions. For each mirror there are two controls accessible by the computer. The first is the mirror position and the second is a zoom factor which modifies the amplitude of the position of the parameter. Another advantage of the LRID is the use of a visible low power laser. Some of the commercial systems use a higher intensity invisible laser which causes safety concerns. By using a low power visible laser, not only can one see the beam and avoid direct eye contact, but also the lower intensity reduces the risk of damage to the eye, and no protective eyeware is required
CIV Line-Width Anomalies: The Perils of Low S/N Spectra
Comparison of six high-redshift quasar spectra obtained with the Large
Binocular Telescope with previous observations from the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey shows that failure to correctly identify absorption and other problems
with accurate characterization of the CIV emission line profile in low S/N data
can severely limit the reliability of single-epoch mass estimates based on the
CIV emission line. We combine the analysis of these new high-quality data with
a reanalysis of three other samples based on high S/N spectra of the CIV
emission line region. We find that a large scatter between the Hbeta- and
CIV-based masses remains even for this high S/N sample when using the FWHM to
characterize the BLR velocity dispersion and the standard virial assumption to
calculate the mass. However, we demonstrate that using high-quality data and
the line dispersion to characterize the CIV line width leads to a high level of
consistency between CIV- and Hbeta-based masses, with <0.3 dex of observed
scatter, and an estimated ~0.2 dex intrinsic scatter, in the mass residuals.Comment: 15 pages of emulate-ApJ text, including 8 figures + 5 included
tables. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (v2 represents
changes over v1 including minor revision from referee suggestions and a newly
included discussion section showing our results in context to those of Park
et al. 2013, ApJ, 770, 87
An Alternative Approach To Measuring Reverberation Lags in Active Galactic Nuclei
Motivated by recent progress in the statistical modeling of quasar
variability, we develop a new approach to measuring emission-line reverberation
lags to estimate the size of broad-line regions (BLRs) in active galactic
nuclei. Assuming that all emission-line light curves are scaled, smoothed, and
displaced versions of the continuum, this alternative approach fits the light
curves directly using a damped random walk model and aligns them to recover the
time lag and its statistical confidence limits. We introduce the mathematical
formalism of this approach and demonstrate its ability to cope with some of the
problems for traditional methods, such as irregular sampling, correlated
errors, and seasonal gaps. We redetermine the lags for 87 emission lines in 31
quasars and reassess the BLR size--luminosity relationship using 60 H-beta
lags. We confirm the general results from the traditional cross-correlation
methods, with a few exceptions. Our method, however, also supports a broad
range of extensions. In particular, it can simultaneously fit multiple lines
and continuum light curves which improves the lag estimate for the lines and
provides estimates of the error correlations between them. Determining these
correlations is of particular importance for interpreting emission-line
velocity--delay maps. We can also include parameters for luminosity-dependent
lags or line responses. We use this to detect the scaling of the BLR size with
continuum luminosity in NGC 5548.Comment: match to the version accepted to ApJ. New code release available at
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~yingzu/spear.htm
Simulations of the OzDES AGN Reverberation Mapping Project
As part of the OzDES spectroscopic survey we are carrying out a large scale
reverberation mapping study of 500 quasars over five years in the 30
deg area of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) supernova fields. These quasars
have redshifts ranging up to 4 and have apparent AB magnitudes between
mag. The aim of the survey is to measure time lags between
fluctuations in the quasar continuum and broad emission line fluxes of
individual objects in order to measure black hole masses for a broad range of
AGN and constrain the radius-luminosity () relationship. Here we
investigate the expected efficiency of the OzDES reverberation mapping campaign
and its possible extensions. We expect to recover lags for 35-45\% of the
quasars. AGN with shorter lags and greater variability are more likely to yield
a lag, and objects with lags 6 months or 1 year are expected be
recovered the most accurately. The baseline OzDES reverberation mapping
campaign is predicted to produce an unbiased measurement of the
relationship parameters for H, Mg II 2798, and C IV
1549. However, extending the baseline survey by either increasing the
spectroscopic cadence, extending the survey season, or improving the emission
line flux measurement accuracy will significantly improve the parameter
constraints for all broad emission lines.Comment: Published online in MNRAS. 28 page
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: No Evidence for Evolution in the M-sigma Relation to z~1
We present host stellar velocity dispersion measurements for a sample of 88
broad-line quasars at 0.10.6) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project. High signal-to-noise ratio coadded
spectra (average S/N~30 per 69 km/s pixel) from SDSS-RM allowed decomposition
of the host and quasar spectra, and measurement of the host stellar velocity
dispersions and black hole (BH) masses using the single-epoch (SE) virial
method. The large sample size and dynamic range in luminosity
(L5100=10^(43.2-44.7) erg/s) lead to the first clear detection of a correlation
between SE virial BH mass and host stellar velocity dispersion far beyond the
local universe. However, the observed correlation is significantly flatter than
the local relation, suggesting that there are selection biases in high-z
luminosity-threshold quasar samples for such studies. Our uniform sample and
analysis enable an investigation of the redshift evolution of the M-sigma
relation free of caveats by comparing different samples/analyses at disjoint
redshifts. We do not observe evolution of the M-sigma relation in our sample,
up to z~1, but there is an indication that the relation flattens towards higher
redshifts. Coupled with the increasing threshold luminosity with redshift in
our sample, this again suggests certain selection biases are at work, and
simple simulations demonstrate that a constant M-sigma relation is favored to
z~1. Our results highlight the scientific potential of deep coadded
spectroscopy from quasar monitoring programs, and offer a new path to probe the
co-evolution of BHs and galaxies at earlier times.Comment: replaced with the accepted version (minor changes and updated
references); ApJ in press; changed title to highlight the main resul
The Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2011: Dynamical Modeling of the Broad Line Region in Mrk 50
We present dynamical modeling of the broad line region (BLR) in the Seyfert 1
galaxy Mrk 50 using reverberation mapping data taken as part of the Lick AGN
Monitoring Project (LAMP) 2011. We model the reverberation mapping data
directly, constraining the geometry and kinematics of the BLR, as well as
deriving a black hole mass estimate that does not depend on a normalizing
factor or virial coefficient. We find that the geometry of the BLR in Mrk 50 is
a nearly face-on thick disk, with a mean radius of 9.6(+1.2,-0.9) light days, a
width of the BLR of 6.9(+1.2,-1.1) light days, and a disk opening angle of
25\pm10 degrees above the plane. We also constrain the inclination angle to be
9(+7,-5) degrees, close to face-on. Finally, the black hole mass of Mrk 50 is
inferred to be log10(M(BH)/Msun) = 7.57(+0.44,-0.27). By comparison to the
virial black hole mass estimate from traditional reverberation mapping
analysis, we find the normalizing constant (virial coefficient) to be log10(f)
= 0.78(+0.44,-0.27), consistent with the commonly adopted mean value of 0.74
based on aligning the M(BH)-{\sigma}* relation for AGN and quiescent galaxies.
While our dynamical model includes the possibility of a net inflow or outflow
in the BLR, we cannot distinguish between these two scenarios.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 8 pages, 6 figure
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Technical Overview
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping project (SDSS-RM) is a
dedicated multi-object RM experiment that has spectroscopically monitored a
sample of 849 broad-line quasars in a single 7 deg field with the SDSS-III
BOSS spectrograph. The RM quasar sample is flux-limited to i_psf=21.7 mag, and
covers a redshift range of 0.1<z<4.5. Optical spectroscopy was performed during
2014 Jan-Jul dark/grey time, with an average cadence of ~4 days, totaling more
than 30 epochs. Supporting photometric monitoring in the g and i bands was
conducted at multiple facilities including the CFHT and the Steward Observatory
Bok telescopes in 2014, with a cadence of ~2 days and covering all lunar
phases. The RM field (RA, DEC=14:14:49.00, +53:05:00.0) lies within the CFHT-LS
W3 field, and coincides with the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) Medium Deep Field MD07,
with three prior years of multi-band PS1 light curves. The SDSS-RM 6-month
baseline program aims to detect time lags between the quasar continuum and
broad line region (BLR) variability on timescales of up to several months (in
the observed frame) for ~10% of the sample, and to anchor the time baseline for
continued monitoring in the future to detect lags on longer timescales and at
higher redshift. SDSS-RM is the first major program to systematically explore
the potential of RM for broad-line quasars at z>0.3, and will investigate the
prospects of RM with all major broad lines covered in optical spectroscopy.
SDSS-RM will provide guidance on future multi-object RM campaigns on larger
scales, and is aiming to deliver more than tens of BLR lag detections for a
homogeneous sample of quasars. We describe the motivation, design and
implementation of this program, and outline the science impact expected from
the resulting data for RM and general quasar science.Comment: 25 pages, submitted to ApJS; project website at http://www.sdssrm.or
Velocity-resolved Reverberation Mapping of Five Bright Seyfert 1 Galaxies
We present the first results from a reverberation-mapping campaign undertaken during the first half of 2012, with additional data on one active galactic nucleus (AGN) (NGC 3227) from a 2014 campaign. Our main goals are (1) to determine the black hole masses from continuum-Hβ reverberation signatures, and (2) to look for velocity-dependent time delays that might be indicators of the gross kinematics of the broad-line region. We successfully measure Hβ time delays and black hole masses for five AGNs, four of which have previous reverberation mass measurements. The values measured here are in agreement with earlier estimates, though there is some intrinsic scatter beyond the formal measurement errors. We observe velocity-dependent Hβ lags in each case, and find that the patterns have changed in the intervening five years for three AGNs that were also observed in 2007.G.D.R., C.J.G., B.M.P., and R.W.P. are grateful for the
support of the National Science Foundation through grant
AST-1008882 to The Ohio State University. K.D.D., B.J.S.,
C.B.H., and J.L.V. acknowledge support by NSF Fellowships.
M.C.B. gratefully acknowledges support from the NSF through
CAREER grant AST-1253702. A.M.M. and D.M.S. acknowledge the support of NSF grants AST-1004756 and AST1009756. C.S.K. is supported by NSF grant AST-1515876.
S.K. is supported at the Technion by the Kitzman Fellowship
and by a grant from the Israel-Niedersachsen collaboration
program. S.R. is supported at Technion by the Zeff Fellowship.
S.G.S. acknowledges the support to CrAO in the frame of the
“CosmoMicroPhysics” Target Scientific Research Complex
Programme of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
(2007–2012). M.V. gratefully acknowledges support from the
Danish Council for Independent Research via grant no. DFF
4002-00275. V.T.D. acknowledges the support of the Russian
Foundation of Research (RF project no. 12-02-01237-a). The
CrAO CCD cameras were purchased through the US Civilian
Research and Development for Independent States of the
Former Soviet Union (CRDF) awards UP1-2116 and UP1-
2549-CR-03. This research has been partly supported by the
Grants-in-Aid of Scientific Research (17104002, 20041003,
21018003, 21018005, 22253002, and 22540247) of the
Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of Japan.
This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic
Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract
with the National Aeronautics and Space Administratio
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: First broad-line Hβ and Mg II lags at z ≳ 0.3 from six-month spectroscopy
Support for the work of Y.S. was provided by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant number HST-HF-51314, awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555. K.H. acknowledges support from UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) grant ST/M001296/1. C.J.G. and W.N.B. acknowledge support from NSF grant AST-1517113 and the V.M. Willaman Endowment. B.M.P. is grateful for support from the National Science Foundation through grant AST-1008882. K.D.D. is supported by an NSF AAPF fellowship awarded under NSF grant AST-1302093. J.R.T. acknowledges support from NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF-51330 awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA under contract NAS 5-26555. M.S. acknowledges support from the China Scholarship Council (No. [2013]3009). L.C.H. is supported by the Chinese Academy of Science through grant No. XDB09030102 (Emergence of Cosmological Structures) from the strategic Priority Research Program, and from the National Natural Science Foundation of China through grant No. 11473002. L.J. acknowledges the support from a 985 project at Peking University. Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.Reverberation mapping (RM) measurements of broad-line region (BLR) lags in z > 0.3 quasars are important for directly measuring black hole masses in these distant objects, but so far there have been limited attempts and success given the practical difficulties of RM in this regime. Here we report preliminary results of 15 BLR lag measurements from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project, a dedicated RM program with multi-object spectroscopy designed for RM over a wide redshift range. The lags are based on the 2014 spectroscopic light curves alone (32 epochs over six months) and focus on the Hβ and Mg II broad lines in the 100 lowest-redshift (z 0.3 is not yet possible owing to the limitations in our current sample. Our results demonstrate the general feasibility and potential of multi-object RM for z > 0.3 quasars.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Preventive evidence into practice (PEP) study: implementation of guidelines to prevent primary vascular disease in general practice protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial
There are significant gaps in the implementation and uptake of evidence-based guideline recommendations for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes in Australian general practice. This study protocol describes the methodology for a cluster randomised trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a model that aims to improve the implementation of these guidelines in Australian general practice developed by a collaboration between researchers, non-government organisations, and the profession.This study is funded by an Australian National Health and Medical Research
Council (NHMRC) Partnership grant (ID 568978) together with the Australian
National Heart Foundation, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners,
and the BUPA Foundation. MH is supported by a NHMRC Senior Principle
Research Fellowship