743 research outputs found
Gravitational lens candidates in the E-CDFS
We report ten lens candidates in the E-CDFS from the GEMS survey. Nine of the
systems are new detections and only one of the candidates is a known lens
system. For the most promising five systems including the known lens system, we
present results from preliminary lens mass modelling, which tests if the
candidates are plausible lens systems. Photometric redshifts of the candidate
lens galaxies are obtained from the COMBO-17 galaxy catalog. Stellar masses of
the candidate lens galaxies within the Einstein radius are obtained by using
the -band luminosity and the color-based stellar mass-to-light ratios.
As expected, the lensing masses are found to be larger than the stellar masses
of the candidate lens galaxies. These candidates have similar dark matter
fractions as compared to lenses in SLACS and COSMOS. They also roughly follow
the halo mass-stellar mass relation predicted by the subhalo abundance matching
technique. One of the candidate lens galaxies qualifies as a LIRG and may not
be a true lens because the arc-like feature in the system is likely to be an
active region of star formation in the candidate lens galaxy. Amongst the five
best candidates, one is a confirmed lens system, one is a likely lens system,
two are less likely to be lenses and the status of one of the candidates is
ambiguous. Spectroscopic follow-up of these systems is still required to
confirm lensing and/or for more accurate determination of the lens masses and
mass density profiles.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, ApJ accepte
Stellar science from a blue wavelength range - A possible design for the blue arm of 4MOST
From stellar spectra, a variety of physical properties of stars can be
derived. In particular, the chemical composition of stellar atmospheres can be
inferred from absorption line analyses. These provide key information on large
scales, such as the formation of our Galaxy, down to the small-scale
nucleosynthesis processes that take place in stars and supernovae. By extending
the observed wavelength range toward bluer wavelengths, we optimize such
studies to also include critical absorption lines in metal-poor stars, and
allow for studies of heavy elements (Z>38) whose formation processes remain
poorly constrained. In this context, spectrographs optimized for observing blue
wavelength ranges are essential, since many absorption lines at redder
wavelengths are too weak to be detected in metal-poor stars. This means that
some elements cannot be studied in the visual-redder regions, and important
scientific tracers and science cases are lost. The present era of large public
surveys will target millions of stars. Here we describe the requirements
driving the design of the forthcoming survey instrument 4MOST, a multi-object
spectrograph commissioned for the ESO VISTA 4m-telescope. We focus here on
high-density, wide-area survey of stars and the science that can be achieved
with high-resolution stellar spectroscopy. Scientific and technical
requirements that governed the design are described along with a thorough line
blending analysis. For the high-resolution spectrograph, we find that a
sampling of >2.5 (pixels per resolving element), spectral resolution of 18000
or higher, and a wavelength range covering 393-436 nm, is the most
well-balanced solution for the instrument. A spectrograph with these
characteristics will enable accurate abundance analysis (+/-0.1 dex) in the
blue and allow us to confront the outlined scientific questions. (abridged)Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A
Evolution of optically faint AGN from COMBO-17 and GEMS
We have mapped the AGN luminosity function and its evolution between z=1 and
z=5 down to apparent magnitudes of . Within the GEMS project we have
analysed HST-ACS images of many AGN in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South,
enabling us to assess the evolution of AGN host galaxy properties with cosmic
time.Comment: to appear in proceedings 'Multiwavelength AGN Surveys', Cozumel 200
Inequivalent contact structures on Boothby-Wang 5-manifolds
We consider contact structures on simply-connected 5-manifolds which arise as
circle bundles over simply-connected symplectic 4-manifolds and show that
invariants from contact homology are related to the divisibility of the
canonical class of the symplectic structure. As an application we find new
examples of inequivalent contact structures in the same equivalence class of
almost contact structures with non-zero first Chern class.Comment: 27 pages; to appear in Math. Zeitschrif
Limiting behaviour of Fréchet means in the space of phylogenetic trees
As demonstrated in our previous work on T4, the space of phylogenetic trees with four leaves, the topological structure of the space plays an important role in the non-classical limiting behaviour of the sample Fréchet means in T4. Nevertheless, the techniques used in that paper cannot be adapted to analyse Fréchet means in the space Tm of phylogenetic trees with m(⩾5)m(⩾5) leaves. To investigate the latter, this paper first studies the log map of Tm. Then, in terms of a modified version of this map, we characterise Fréchet means in Tm that lie in top-dimensional or co-dimension one strata. We derive the limiting distributions for the corresponding sample Fréchet means, generalising our previous results. In particular, the results show that, although they are related to the Gaussian distribution, the forms taken by the limiting distributions depend on the co-dimensions of the strata in which the Fréchet means lie
Cosmological weak lensing with the HST GEMS survey
We present our cosmic shear analysis of GEMS, one of the largest wide-field
surveys ever undertaken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Imaged with the Advanced
Camera for Surveys (ACS), GEMS spans 795 square arcmin in the Chandra Deep
Field South. We detect weak lensing by large-scale structure in high resolution
F606W GEMS data from ~60 resolved galaxies per square arcminute. We measure the
two-point shear correlation function, the top-hat shear variance and the shear
power spectrum, performing an E/B mode decomposition for each statistic. We
show that we are not limited by systematic errors and use our results to place
joint constraints on the matter density parameter Omega_m and the amplitude of
the matter power spectrum sigma_8. We find sigma_8(Omega_m/0.3)^{0.65}=0.68 +/-
0.13 where the 1sigma error includes both our uncertainty on the median
redshift of the survey and sampling variance.
Removing image and point spread function (PSF) distortions are crucial to all
weak lensing analyses. We therefore include a thorough discussion on the degree
of ACS PSF distortion and anisotropy which we characterise directly from GEMS
data. Consecutively imaged over 20 days, GEMS data also allows us to
investigate PSF instability over time. We find that, even in the relatively
short GEMS observing period, the ACS PSF ellipticity varies at the level of a
few percent which we account for with a semi-time dependent PSF model. Our
correction for the temporal and spatial variability of the PSF is shown to be
successful through a series of diagnostic tests.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures. Version accepted by MNRA
Exploring the Impact of Galaxy Interactions over Seven Billion Years with CAS
We explore galaxy assembly over the last seven billion years by
characterizing "normal" galaxies along the Hubble sequence, against strongly
disturbed merging/interacting galaxies with the widely used CAS system of
concentration (C), asymmetry (A), and 'clumpiness' (S) parameters, as well as
visual classification. We analyze Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ACS images of
~4000 intermediate and high mass (> 10^9 solar masses) galaxies from the GEMS
survey, one of the largest HST surveys conducted to date in two filters. We
explore the effectiveness of the CAS criteria [A>S and A>~0.35] in separating
normal and strongly disturbed galaxies at different redshifts, and quantify the
recovery and contamination rate. We also compare the average star formation
rate and the cosmic star formation rate density as a function of redshift
between normal and interacting systems identified by CAS.Comment: ASP conference proceedings of 2007 Bash Symposium. Latex with
asp2006.sty. 4 pages, 4 figure
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