7,015 research outputs found
A search for hydrogenated fullerenes in fullerene-containing planetary nebulae
Detections of C60 and C70 fullerenes in planetary nebulae (PNe) of the
Magellanic Clouds and of our own Galaxy have raised the idea that other forms
of carbon such as hydrogenated fullerenes (fulleranes like C60H36 and C60H18),
buckyonions, and carbon nanotubes, may be widespread in the Universe. Here we
present VLT/ISAAC spectra (R ~600) in the 2.9-4.1 microns spectral region for
the Galactic PNe Tc 1 and M 1-20, which have been used to search for
fullerene-based molecules in their fullerene-rich circumstellar environments.
We report the non-detection of the most intense infrared bands of several
fulleranes around ~3.4-3.6 microns in both PNe. We conclude that if fulleranes
are present in the fullerene-containing circumstellar environments of these
PNe, then they seem to be by far less abundant than C60 and C70. Our
non-detections together with the (tentative) fulleranes detection in the
proto-PN IRAS 01005+7910 suggest that fulleranes may be formed in the short
transition phase between AGB stars and PNe but they are quickly destroyed by
the UV radiation field from the central star.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (7 pages, 3
figures, and 3 Tables
Machine learning techniques to select Be star candidates. An application in the OGLE-IV Gaia south ecliptic pole field
Statistical pattern recognition methods have provided competitive solutions
for variable star classification at a relatively low computational cost. In
order to perform supervised classification, a set of features is proposed and
used to train an automatic classification system. Quantities related to the
magnitude density of the light curves and their Fourier coefficients have been
chosen as features in previous studies. However, some of these features are not
robust to the presence of outliers and the calculation of Fourier coefficients
is computationally expensive for large data sets. We propose and evaluate the
performance of a new robust set of features using supervised classifiers in
order to look for new Be star candidates in the OGLE-IV Gaia south ecliptic
pole field. We calculated the proposed set of features on six types of variable
stars and on a set of Be star candidates reported in the literature. We
evaluated the performance of these features using classification trees and
random forests along with K-nearest neighbours, support vector machines, and
gradient boosted trees methods. We tuned the classifiers with a 10-fold
cross-validation and grid search. We validated the performance of the best
classifier on a set of OGLE-IV light curves and applied this to find new Be
star candidates. The random forest classifier outperformed the others. By using
the random forest classifier and colour criteria we found 50 Be star candidates
in the direction of the Gaia south ecliptic pole field, four of which have
infrared colours consistent with Herbig Ae/Be stars. Supervised methods are
very useful in order to obtain preliminary samples of variable stars extracted
from large databases. As usual, the stars classified as Be stars candidates
must be checked for the colours and spectroscopic characteristics expected for
them
Continuous spectra in high-harmonic generation driven by multicycle laser pulses
We present observations of the emission of XUV continua in the 20-37 eV
region by high harmonic generation (HHG) with - pulses
focused onto a Kr gas jet. The underlying mechanism relies on coherent control
of the relative delays and phases between individually generated attosecond
pulse, achievable by adjusting the chirp of the driving pulses and the
interaction geometry. Under adequate negative chirp and phase matching
conditions, the resulting interpulse interference yields a continuum XUV
spectrum, which is due to both microscopic and macroscopic (propagation)
contributions. This technique opens the route for modifying the phase of
individual attosecond pulses and for the coherent synthesis of XUV continua
from multicycle driving laser pulses without the need of an isolated attosecond
burst.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Physical Review
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