Fermi Large Area Telescope Observations of the Fast-dimming Crab Nebula in 60-600 MeV

Context: The Crab pulsar and its nebula are the origin of relativistic electrons which can be observed through their synchrotron and inverse Compton emission. The transition between synchrotron-dominated and inverse-Compton-dominated emissions takes place at $\approx 10^9$ eV. Aims: The short-term (weeks to months) flux variability of the synchrotron emission from the most energetic electrons is investigated with data from ten years of observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) in the energy range from 60 MeV to 600 MeV. Methods: The off-pulse light-curve has been reconstructed from phase-resolved data. The corresponding histogram of flux measurements is used to identify distributions of flux-states and the statistical significance of a lower-flux component is estimated with dedicated simulations of mock light-curves. The energy spectra for different flux states are reconstructed. Results: We confirm the presence of flaring-states which follow a log-normal flux distribution. Additionally, we discover a low-flux state where the flux drops to as low as 18.4% of the intermediate-state average flux and stays there for several weeks. The transition time is observed to be as short as 2 days. The energy spectrum during the low-flux state resembles the extrapolation of the inverse-Compton spectrum measured at energies beyond several GeV energy, implying that the high-energy part of the synchrotron emission is dramatically depressed. Conclusions: The low-flux state found here and the transition time of at most 10 days indicate that the bulk ($>75$%) of the synchrotron emission above $10^8$ eV originates in a compact volume with apparent angular size of $\theta\approx0.4" t_\mathrm{var}/(5 \mathrm{d})$. We tentatively infer that the so-called inner knot feature is the origin of the bulk of the $\gamma$-ray emission.Comment: Accepted by A&A on 05.05.2020; Original version submitted on 19.09.201

Strong-coupling solution of the bosonic dynamical mean-field theory

We derive an approximate analytical solution of the self-consistency equations of the bosonic dynamical mean-field theory (B-DMFT) in the strong-coupling limit. The approach is based on a linked-cluster expansion in the hybridization function of normal bosons around the atomic limit. The solution is used to compute the phase diagram of the bosonic Hubbard model for different lattices. We compare our results with numerical solutions of the B-DMFT equations and numerically exact methods, respectively. The very good agreement with those numerical results demonstrates that our approach captures the essential physics of correlated bosons both in the Mott insulator and in the superfluid phase. Close to the transition into the superfluid phase the momentum distribution function at zero momentum is found to be strongly enhanced already in the normal phase. The linked-cluster expansion also allows us to compute dynamical properties such as the spectral function of bosons. The evolution of the spectral function across the transition from the normal to the superfluid phase is seen to be characteristically different for the interaction driven and density driven transition, respectively.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

The Generation and Dissipation of Interstellar Turbulence - Results from Large Scale High Resolution Simulations

We study, by means of adaptive mesh refinement hydro- and magnetohydrodynamical simulations that cover a wide range of scales (from kpc to sub-parsec), the dimension of the most dissipative structures and the injection scale of the turbulent interstellar gas, which we find to be about 75 pc, in agreement with observations. This is however smaller than the average size of superbubbles, but consistent with significant density and pressure changes in the ISM, which leads to the break-up of bubbles locally and hence to injection of turbulence. The scalings of the structure functions are consistent with log-Poisson statistics of supersonic turbulence where energy is dissipated mainly through shocks. Our simulations are different from previous ones by other authors as (i) we do not assume an isothermal gas, but have temperature variations of several orders of magnitude and (ii) we have no artificial forcing of the fluid with some ad hoc Fourier spectrum, but drive turbulence by stellar explosions at the Galactic rate, self-regulated by density and temperature thresholds imposed on the ISM gas.Comment: Five pages and three figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal (Letters

Density of States of GaAs-AlGaAs Heterostructures Deduced from Temperature Dependend Magnetocapacitance Measurements

Abstract We have analyzed the density of states of a two dimensional electron gas in a GaAs- AlGaAs hetereostructure by measuring the magnetocapacitance in magnetic fields up to 6 Tesla at temperatures below 10 K. The experimental data are well described by a Gaussian-like density of states where the linewidth à is proportional to B