17,960 research outputs found
The Effect of Local Galaxy Surface Density on Star Formation for HI selected galaxies
We present the result of investigations into two theories to explain the star
formation rate-density relationship. For regions of high galaxy density, either
there are fewer star forming galaxies, or galaxies capable of forming stars are
present but some physical process is suppressing their star formation. We use
HI Parkes All Sky Survey's (HIPASS) HI detected galaxies and infrared and radio
fluxes to investigate star formation rates and efficiencies with respect to
local surface density. For nearby (vel<10000 km\s) HI galaxies we find a strong
correlation between HI mass and star formation rate. The number of HI galaxies
decreases with increasing local surface density. For HI galaxies (1000<vel<6000
km\s) there is no significant change in the star formation rate or the
efficiency of star formation with respect to local surface density. We conclude
the SFR-density relation is due to a decrease in the number of HI star forming
galaxies in regions of high galaxy density and not to the suppression of star
formation.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures, Accepted for publication by MNRAS 2 August 200
Chromospheric Inversions of a Micro-flaring Region
We use spectropolarimetric observations of the Ca II 8542~\AA\ line, taken
from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST), in an attempt to recover dynamic
activity in a micro-flaring region near a sunspot via inversions. These
inversions show localized mean temperature enhancements of 1000~K in the
chromosphere and upper photosphere, along with co-spatial bi-directional
Doppler shifting of 5 - 10 km s. This heating also extends along a
nearby chromospheric fibril, co-spatial to 10 - 15 km s down-flows.
Strong magnetic flux cancellation is also apparent in one of the footpoints,
concentrated in the chromosphere. This event more closely resembles that of an
Ellerman Bomb (EB), though placed slightly higher in the atmosphere than is
typically observed.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, accepted in ApJ. Movies are stored here:
https://star.pst.qub.ac.uk/webdav/public/areid/Microflare
Planetological implications of mass loss from the early Sun
The element lithium is observed to be underabundant in the Sun by a factor of approx. equal to 100. To account for this depletion, Boothroyd et al. (Ap. J., in press 1991) proposed a model in which the Sun's zero-age-main-sequence mass was approx. 1.1 solar magnitude. If this is the explanation for the lithium depletion, then astronomical observations of F/G dwarfs in clusters suggest that the timescale for mass loss is approx. equal to 0.6 Gyr. Assuming this approximate timescale, the authors investigated several planetological implications of the astrophysical model
A Dynamical Analysis of the Proposed Circumbinary HW Virginis Planetary System
In 2009, the discovery of two planets orbiting the evolved binary star system
HW Virginis was announced, based on systematic variations in the timing of
eclipses between the two stars. The planets invoked in that work were
significantly more massive than Jupiter, and moved on orbits that were mutually
crossing - an architecture which suggests that mutual encounters and strong
gravitational interactions are almost guaranteed. In this work, we perform a
highly detailed analysis of the proposed HW Vir planetary system. First, we
consider the dynamical stability of the system as proposed in the discovery
work. Through a mapping process involving 91,125 individual simulations, we
find that the system is so unstable that the planets proposed simply cannot
exist, due to mean lifetimes of less than a thousand years across the whole
parameter space. We then present a detailed re-analysis of the observational
data on HW Vir, deriving a new orbital solution that provides a very good fit
to the observational data. Our new analysis yields a system with planets more
widely spaced, and of lower mass, than that proposed in the discovery work, and
yields a significantly greater (and more realistic) estimate of the uncertainty
in the orbit of the outermost body. Despite this, a detailed dynamical analysis
of this new solution similarly reveals that it also requires the planets to
move on orbits that are simply not dynamically feasible. Our results imply that
some mechanism other than the influence of planetary companions must be the
principal cause of the observed eclipse timing variations for HW Vir. If the
sys- tem does host exoplanets, they must move on orbits differing greatly from
those previously proposed. Our results illustrate the critical importance of
performing dynamical analyses as a part of the discovery process for
multiple-planet exoplanetary systems.Comment: Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Societ
Jets or high velocity flows revealed in high-cadence spectrometer and imager co-observations?
We report on active region EUV dynamic events observed simultaneously at
high-cadence with SUMER/SoHO and TRACE. Although the features appear in the
TRACE Fe ix/x 171A images as jets seen in projection on the solar disk, the
SUMER spectral line profiles suggest that the plasma has been driven along a
curved large scale magnetic structure, a pre-existing loop. The SUMER
observations were carried out in spectral lines covering a large temperature
range from 10^4 K to 10^6 K. The spectral analysis revealed that a sudden
heating from an energy deposition is followed by a high velocity plasma flow.
The Doppler velocities were found to be in the range from 90 to 160 km/s. The
heating process has a duration which is below the SUMER exposure time of 25 s
while the lifetime of the events is from 5 to 15 min. The additional check on
soft X-ray Yohkoh images shows that the features most probably reach 3 MK
(X-ray) temperatures. The spectroscopic analysis showed no existence of cold
material during the events
Trans-sonic cusped shaped, periodic waves and solitary waves of the electrostatic ion-cyclotron type
International audienceBy adopting an essentially fluid dynamic viewpoint we derive the wave structure equation for stationary, fully nonlinear, electrostatic, ion-cyclotron waves. The existence of two fundamental constants of the motion, namely, conservation of momentum flux parallel to the ambient magnetic field, and energy flux parallel to the direction of wave propagation, enables the wave structure equation to be reduced to a first order differential equation, which has solutions that are physically transparent. The analysis shows that sufficiently oblique waves, propagating at sub-ion acoustic speeds, form soliton pulse-like solutions whose amplitudes are greatest for perpendicular propagation. Waves that propagate supersonically have periodic cnoidal waveforms, which are asymmetric about the compressive and rarefactive phases of the wave. It is also shown that there exist critical driver fields for which the end point of the compressive phase goes sonic (in the wave frame), with the consequence that the wave form develops a cusp. It is possible that this trans-sonic, choked flow feature provides a mechanism for the "spiky" waveforms observed in auroral electric field measurements
Formation of van der Waals molecules in buffer gas cooled magnetic traps
We show that a large class of helium-containing cold polar molecules form
readily in a cryogenic buffer gas, achieving densities as high as 10^12 cm^-3.
We explore the spin relaxation of these molecules in buffer gas loaded magnetic
traps, and identify a loss mechanism based on Landau-Zener transitions arising
from the anisotropic hyperfine interaction. Our results show that the recently
observed strong T^6 thermal dependence of spin change in buffer gas trapped
silver (Ag) is accounted for by the formation and spin change of AgHe, thus
providing evidence for molecular formation in a buffer gas trap.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Rayleigh scattering in the transmission spectrum of HAT-P-18b
We have performed ground-based transmission spectroscopy of the hot Jupiter
HAT-P-18b using the ACAM instrument on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT).
Differential spectroscopy over an entire night was carried out at a resolution
of using a nearby comparison star. We detect a bluewards slope
extending across our optical transmission spectrum which runs from 4750 to
9250\AA. The slope is consistent with Rayleigh scattering at the equilibrium
temperature of the planet (852K). We do not detect enhanced sodium absorption,
which indicates that a high-altitude haze is masking the feature and giving
rise to the Rayleigh slope. This is only the second discovery of a Rayleigh
scattering slope in a hot Jupiter atmosphere from the ground, and our study
illustrates how ground-based observations can provide transmission spectra with
precision comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Collisional properties of cold spin-polarized nitrogen gas: theory, experiment, and prospects as a sympathetic coolant for trapped atoms and molecules
We report a combined experimental and theoretical study of collision-induced
dipolar relaxation in a cold spin-polarized gas of atomic nitrogen (N). We use
buffer gas cooling to create trapped samples of 14N and 15N atoms with
densities 5+/-2 x 10^{12} cm-3 and measure their magnetic relaxation rates at
milli-Kelvin temperatures. Rigorous quantum scattering calculations based on
accurate ab initio interaction potentials for the 7Sigma_u electronic state of
N2 demonstrate that dipolar relaxation in N + N collisions occurs at a slow
rate of ~10^{-13} cm3/s over a wide range of temperatures (1 mK to 1 K) and
magnetic fields (10 mT to 2 T). The calculated dipolar relaxation rates are
insensitive to small variations of the interaction potential and to the
magnitude of the spin-exchange interaction, enabling the accurate calibration
of the measured N atom density. We find consistency between the calculated and
experimentally determined rates. Our results suggest that N atoms are promising
candidates for future experiments on sympathetic cooling of molecules.Comment: 48 pages, 17 figures, 3 table
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