311 research outputs found
An Excess of C IV Absorbers in Luminous QSOs: Evidence for Gravitational Lensing?
We have compiled a new and extensive catalog of heavy-element QSO absorption
line systems and analyzed the distribution of absorbers in bright and faint
QSOs, to search for gravitational lensing of background QSOs by the matter
associated with the absorbers. There is a highly significant excess of C {\sc
iv} absorbers in bright QSOs in the redshift range , and this excess
increases strongly as a function of QSO absolute magnitude. No significant
excess is found for Mg {\sc ii} absorbers in the redshift range .
We rule out several possible reasons for this effect and argue that the C {\sc
iv} excess could be due to gravitational lensing. If so, then the lensing
masses must be at and within several hundred comoving Mpc of
the QSOs, where the C {\sc iv} absorbers are mainly found. The absence of an
excess in the available Mg {\sc ii} sample would then arise because the Mg {\sc
ii} data does not sample this region of space.Comment: 21 LaTeX pages with 5 encapsulated Postscript figures included, uses
AASTeX (v. 4.0) available at ftp://ftp.aas.org/pubs/ , to appear in The
Astrophysical Journal, Sept. 20, 199
Dust Reddening in SDSS Quasars
We explore the form of extragalactic reddening toward quasars using a sample
of 9566 quasars with redshifts 0<z<2.2, and accurate optical colors from the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We confirm that dust reddening is the primary
explanation for the red ``tail'' of the color distribution of SDSS quasars. Our
fitting to 5-band photometry normalized by the modal quasar color as a function
of redshift shows that this ``tail'' is well described by SMC-like reddening
but not by LMC-like, Galactic, or Gaskell et al. (2004) reddening. Extension to
longer wavelengths using a subset of 1886 SDSS-2MASS matches confirms these
results at high significance. We carry out Monte-Carlo simulations that match
the observed distribution of quasar spectral energy distributions using a
Lorentzian dust reddening distribution; 2% of quasars selected by the main SDSS
targeting algorithm (i.e., which are not extincted out of the sample) have
E_{B-V} > 0.1; less than 1% have E_{B-V} > 0.2, where the extinction is
relative to quasars with modal colors. Reddening is uncorrelated with the
presence of intervening narrow-line absorption systems, but reddened quasars
are much more likely to show narrow absorption at the redshift of the quasar
than are unreddened quasars. Thus the reddening towards quasars is dominated by
SMC-like dust at the quasar redshift.Comment: 29 pages including 8 figures. AJ, September 2004 issu
The UV, Optical, and IR Properties of SDSS Sources Detected by GALEX
We discuss the UV, optical, and IR properties of the SDSS sources detected by
GALEX as part of its All-sky Imaging Survey Early Release Observations.
Virtually all of the GALEX sources in the overlap region are detected by SDSS.
GALEX sources represent ~2.5% of all SDSS sources within these fields and about
half are optically unresolved. Most unresolved GALEX/SDSS sources are bright
blue turn-off thick disk stars and are typically detected only in the GALEX
near-UV band. The remaining unresolved sources include low-redshift quasars,
white dwarfs, and white dwarf/M dwarf pairs, and these dominate the optically
unresolved sources detected in both GALEX bands.
Almost all the resolved SDSS sources detected by GALEX are fainter than the
SDSS 'main' spectroscopic limit. These sources have colors consistent with
those of blue (spiral) galaxies (u-r<2.2), and most are detected in both GALEX
bands. Measurements of their UV colors allow much more accurate and robust
estimates of star-formation history than are possible using only SDSS data.
Indeed, galaxies with the most recent (<20 Myr) star formation can be robustly
selected from the GALEX data by requiring that they be brighter in the far-UV
than in the near-UV band. However, older starburst galaxies have UV colors
similar to AGN, and thus cannot be selected unambiguously on the basis of GALEX
fluxes alone.
With the aid of 2MASS data, we construct and discuss median 10 band
UV-optical-IR spectral energy distributions for turn-off stars, hot white
dwarfs, low-redshift quasars, and spiral and elliptical galaxies. We point out
the high degree of correlation between the UV color and the contribution of the
UV flux to the UV-optical-IR flux of galaxies detected by GALEX.Comment: 35 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables; to appear in the AJ. PS with better
figures available from http://www.astro.washington.edu/agueros/pub
Model for screening of resonant magnetic perturbations by plasma in a realistic tokamak geometry and its impact on divertor strike points
This work addresses the question of the relation between strike-point
splitting and magnetic stochasticity at the edge of a poloidally diverted
tokamak in the presence of externally imposed magnetic perturbations. More
specifically, ad-hoc helical current sheets are introduced in order to mimic a
hypothetical screening of the external resonant magnetic perturbations by the
plasma. These current sheets, which suppress magnetic islands, are found to
reduce the amount of splitting expected at the target, which suggests that
screening effects should be observable experimentally. Multiple screening
current sheets reinforce each other, i.e. less current relative to the case of
only one current sheet is required to screen the perturbation.Comment: Accepted in the Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on
Plasma Surface Interactions, to be published in Journal of Nuclear Materials.
Version 2: minor formatting and text improvements, more results mentioned in
the conclusion and abstrac
Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET
The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR
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