5,633 research outputs found
Further remarks on isospin breaking in charmless semileptonic B decays
We consider the isospin breaking corrections to charmless semileptonic decays
of B mesons. Both, the recently measured branching ratios of exclusive decays
by the CLEO Collaboration and the end-point reion of the inclusive lepton
spectrum in form factor models, can be affected by these corrections. Isospin
corrections can affect the determination of |V_ub| from exclusive semileptonic
B decays at a level comparable to present statistical uncertainties.Comment: Latex, 7 pages, 1 .ps figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Star Formation in Tadpole Galaxies
Tadpole Galaxies look like a star forming head with a tail structure to the
side. They are also named cometaries. In a series of recent works we have
discovered a number of issues that lead us to consider them extremely
interesting targets. First, from images, they are disks with a lopsided
starburst. This result is firmly established with long slit spectroscopy in a
nearby representative sample. They rotate with the head following the rotation
pattern but displaced from the rotation center. Moreover, in a search for
extremely metal poor (XMP) galaxies, we identified tadpoles as the dominant
shapes in the sample- nearly 80% of the local XMP galaxies have a tadpole
morphology. In addition, the spatially resolved analysis of the metallicity
shows the remarkable result that there is a metallicity drop right at the
position of the head. This is contrary to what intuition would say and
difficult to explain if star formation has happened from gas processed in the
disk. The result could however be understood if the star formation is driven by
pristine gas falling into the galaxy disk. If confirmed, we could be unveiling,
for the first time, cool flows in action in our nearby world. The tadpole class
is relatively frequent at high redshift - 10% of resolvable galaxies in the
Hubble UDF but less than 1% in the local Universe. They are systems that could
track cool flows and test models of galaxy formation.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1302.435
Metallicity inhomogeneities in local star-forming galaxies as sign of recent metal-poor gas accretion
We measure the oxygen metallicity of the ionized gas along the major axis of
seven dwarf star-forming galaxies. Two of them, SDSSJ1647+21 and SDSSJ2238+14,
show 0.5 dex metallicity decrements in inner regions with enhanced
star-formation activity. This behavior is similar to the metallicity drop
observed in a number of local tadpole galaxies by Sanchez Almeida et al. (2013)
and interpreted as showing early stages of assembling in disk galaxies, with
the star formation sustained by external metal-poor gas accretion. The
agreement with tadpoles has several implications: (1) it proves that galaxies
other than the local tadpoles present the same unusual metallicity pattern. (2)
Our metallicity inhomogeneities were inferred using the direct method, thus
discarding systematic errors usually attributed to other methods. (3) Taken
together with the tadpole data, our findings suggest a threshold around one
tenth the solar value for the metallicity drops to show up. Although galaxies
with clear metallicity drops are rare, the physical mechanism responsible for
them may sustain a significant part of the star-formation activity in the local
Universe. We argue that the star-formation dependence of the mass-metallicity
relationship, as well as other general properties followed by most local disk
galaxies, are naturally interpreted as side effects of pristine gas infall.
Alternatives to the metal poor gas accretion are examined too.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 10 pages. 5 Fig
An X-ray study of the SNR G344.7-0.1 and the central object CXOU J170357.8-414302
Aims. We report results of an X-ray study of the supernova remnant (SNR)
G344.7-0.1 and the point-like X-ray source located at the geometrical center of
the SNR radio structure. Methods. The morphology and spectral properties of the
remnant and the central X-ray point-like source were studied using data from
the XMM-Newton and Chandra satellites. Archival radio data and infrared Spitzer
observations at 8 and 24 m were used to compare and study its multi-band
properties at different wavelengths. Results. The XMM-Newton and Chandra
observations reveal that the overall X-ray emission of G344.7-0.1 is extended
and correlates very well with regions of bright radio and infrared emission.
The X-ray spectrum is dominated by prominent atomic emission lines. These
characteristics suggest that the X-ray emission originated in a thin thermal
plasma, whose radiation is represented well by a plane-parallel shock plasma
model (PSHOCK). Our study favors the scenario in which G344.7-0.1 is a 6 x 10^3
year old SNR expanding in a medium with a high density gradient and is most
likely encountering a molecular cloud on the western side. In addition, we
report the discovery of a soft point-like X-ray source located at the
geometrical center of the radio SNR structure. The object presents some
characteristics of the so-called compact central objects (CCO). However, its
neutral hydrogen absorption column (N_{H}) is inconsistent with that of the
SNR. Coincident with the position of the source, we found infrared and optical
objects with typical early-K star characteristics. The X-ray source may be a
foreground star or the CCO associated with the SNR. If this latter possibility
were confirmed, the point-like source would be the farthest CCO detected so far
and the eighth member of the new population of isolated and weakly magnetized
neutron stars.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysics. Higher resolution figures can be seen on A&
Measurement driven quantum evolution
We study the problem of mapping an unknown mixed quantum state onto a known
pure state without the use of unitary transformations. This is achieved with
the help of sequential measurements of two non-commuting observables only. We
show that the overall success probability is maximized in the case of measuring
two observables whose eigenstates define mutually unbiased bases. We find that
for this optimal case the success probability quickly converges to unity as the
number of measurement processes increases and that it is almost independent of
the initial state. In particular, we show that to guarantee a success
probability close to one the number of consecutive measurements must be larger
than the dimension of the Hilbert space. We connect these results to quantum
copying, quantum deleting and entanglement generation.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
Localized starbursts in dwarf galaxies produced by impact of low metallicity cosmic gas clouds
Models of galaxy formation predict that gas accretion from the cosmic web is
a primary driver of star formation over cosmic history. Except in very dense
environments where galaxy mergers are also important, model galaxies feed from
cold streams of gas from the web that penetrate their dark matter haloes.
Although these predictions are unambiguous, the observational support has been
indirect so far. Here we report spectroscopic evidence for this process in
extremely metal-poor galaxies (XMPs) of the local Universe, taking the form of
localized starbursts associated with gas having low metallicity. Detailed
abundance analyses based on Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) optical spectra of
ten XMPs show that the galaxy hosts have metallicities around 60 % solar on
average, while the large star-forming regions that dominate their integrated
light have low metallicities of some 6 % solar. Because gas mixes azimuthally
in a rotation timescale (a few hundred Myr), the observed metallicity
inhomogeneities are only possible if the metal-poor gas fell onto the disk
recently. We analyze several possibilities for the origin of the metal-poor
gas, favoring the metal-poor gas infall predicted by numerical models. If this
interpretation is correct, XMPs trace the cosmic web gas in their surroundings,
making them probes to examine its properties.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ
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