686 research outputs found
Pseudo-Dipole Signal Removal from WMAP Data
It is discovered in our previous work that different observational
systematics, e.g., errors of antenna pointing directions, asynchronous between
the attitude and science data, can generate pseudo-dipole signal in full-sky
maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy published by The
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) team. Now the antenna sidelobe
response to the Doppler signal is found to be able to produce similar effect as
well. In this work, independent to the sources, we uniformly model the
pseudo-dipole signal and remove it from published WMAP7 CMB maps by model
fitting. The result demonstrates that most of the released WMAP CMB quadrupole
is artificial.Comment: V3: using WMAP7 dat
Constraining the Cosmic Background Light with four BL Lac TeV spectra
The intrinsic BL Lac spectra above few hundreds GeV can be very different
from the observed ones due to the absorption effects by the diffuse
Extragalactic Background Light (EBL), at present poorly known. With the recent
results, there are now 4 sources with good spectral information: Mkn 421
(z=0.031), Mkn 501 (z=0.034), 1ES 1426+428 (z=0.129) and 1ES 1959+650
(z=0.047). Making simple assumptions on the shape of the intrinsic spectra
(according to the present blazar knowledge), we have considered the effects of
different EBL spectral energy distributions (SED) for the first time on all 4
objects together, deriving constraints for the EBL fluxes. These resulted
significantly lower than many direct estimates.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figures; to appear in the proceedings of the 2nd Veritas
Symposium: "TeV Astrophysics of extragalactic sources". April 2003, Chicag
Extrapolation of Galactic Dust Emission at 100 Microns to CMBR Frequencies Using FIRAS
We present predicted full-sky maps of submillimeter and microwave emission
from the diffuse interstellar dust in the Galaxy. These maps are extrapolated
from the 100 micron emission and 100/240 micron flux ratio maps that Schlegel,
Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998; SFD98) generated from IRAS and COBE/DIRBE data.
Results are presented for a number of physically plausible emissivity models.
We find that no power law emissivity function fits the FIRAS data from 200 -
2100 GHz. In this paper we provide a formalism for a multi-component model for
the dust emission. A two-component model with a mixture of silicate and
carbon-dominated grains (motivated by Pollack et al., 1994}) provides a fit to
an accuracy of about 15% to all the FIRAS data over the entire high-latitude
sky. Small systematic differences are found between the atomic and molecular
phases of the ISM.
Our predictions for the thermal (vibrational) emission from Galactic dust at
\nu < 3000 GHz are available for general use. These full-sky predictions can be
made at the DIRBE resolution of 40' or at the higher resolution of 6.1 arcmin
from the SFD98 DIRBE-corrected IRAS maps.Comment: 48 pages, AAS LaTeX, 6 figures, ApJ (accepted). Data described in the
text, as well as 4 additional figures, are available at
http://astro.berkeley.edu/dus
Verification and Control of Partially Observable Probabilistic Real-Time Systems
We propose automated techniques for the verification and control of
probabilistic real-time systems that are only partially observable. To formally
model such systems, we define an extension of probabilistic timed automata in
which local states are partially visible to an observer or controller. We give
a probabilistic temporal logic that can express a range of quantitative
properties of these models, relating to the probability of an event's
occurrence or the expected value of a reward measure. We then propose
techniques to either verify that such a property holds or to synthesise a
controller for the model which makes it true. Our approach is based on an
integer discretisation of the model's dense-time behaviour and a grid-based
abstraction of the uncountable belief space induced by partial observability.
The latter is necessarily approximate since the underlying problem is
undecidable, however we show how both lower and upper bounds on numerical
results can be generated. We illustrate the effectiveness of the approach by
implementing it in the PRISM model checker and applying it to several case
studies, from the domains of computer security and task scheduling
Minimal Synthesis of String To String Functions From Examples
We study the problem of synthesizing string to string transformations from a
set of input/output examples. The transformations we consider are expressed
using deterministic finite automata (DFA) that read pairs of letters, one
letter from the input and one from the output. The DFA corresponding to these
transformations have additional constraints, ensuring that each input string is
mapped to exactly one output string.
We suggest that, given a set of input/output examples, the smallest DFA
consistent with the examples is a good candidate for the transformation the
user was expecting. We therefore study the problem of, given a set of examples,
finding a minimal DFA consistent with the examples and satisfying the
functionality and totality constraints mentioned above.
We prove that, in general, this problem (the corresponding decision problem)
is NP-complete. This is unlike the standard DFA minimization problem which can
be solved in polynomial time. We provide several NP-hardness proofs that show
the hardness of multiple (independent) variants of the problem.
Finally, we propose an algorithm for finding the minimal DFA consistent with
input/output examples, that uses a reduction to SMT solvers. We implemented the
algorithm, and used it to evaluate the likelihood that the minimal DFA indeed
corresponds to the DFA expected by the user.Comment: SYNT 201
Determining Foreground Contamination in CMB Observations: Diffuse Galactic Emission in the MAXIMA-I Field
Observations of the CMB can be contaminated by diffuse foreground emission
from sources such as Galactic dust and synchrotron radiation. In these cases,
the morphology of the contaminating source is known from observations at
different frequencies, but not its amplitude at the frequency of interest for
the CMB. We develop a technique for accounting for the effects of such emission
in this case, and for simultaneously estimating the foreground amplitude in the
CMB observations. We apply the technique to CMB data from the MAXIMA-1
experiment, using maps of Galactic dust emission from combinations of IRAS and
DIRBE observations, as well as compilations of Galactic synchrotron emission
observations. The spectrum of the dust emission over the 150--450 GHz observed
by MAXIMA is consistent with preferred models but the effect on CMB power
spectrum observations is negligible.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journal. Monor changes to match the published versio
Non-Abelian Dark Sectors and Their Collider Signatures
Motivated by the recent proliferation of observed astrophysical anomalies,
Arkani-Hamed et al. have proposed a model in which dark matter is charged under
a non-abelian "dark" gauge symmetry that is broken at ~ 1 GeV. In this paper,
we present a survey of concrete models realizing such a scenario, followed by a
largely model-independent study of collider phenomenology relevant to the
Tevatron and the LHC. We address some model building issues that are easily
surmounted to accommodate the astrophysics. While SUSY is not necessary, we
argue that it is theoretically well-motivated because the GeV scale is
automatically generated. Specifically, we propose a novel mechanism by which
mixed D-terms in the dark sector induce either SUSY breaking or a super-Higgs
mechanism precisely at a GeV. Furthermore, we elaborate on the original
proposal of Arkani-Hamed et al. in which the dark matter acts as a messenger of
gauge mediation to the dark sector. In our collider analysis we present
cross-sections for dominant production channels and lifetime estimates for
primary decay modes. We find that dark gauge bosons can be produced at the
Tevatron and the LHC, either through a process analogous to prompt photon
production or through a rare Z decay channel. Dark gauge bosons will decay back
to the SM via "lepton jets" which typically contain >2 and as many as 8
leptons, significantly improving their discovery potential. Since SUSY decays
from the MSSM will eventually cascade down to these lepton jets, the discovery
potential for direct electroweak-ino production may also be improved.
Exploiting the unique kinematics, we find that it is possible to reconstruct
the mass of the MSSM LSP. We also present decay channels with displaced
vertices and multiple leptons with partially correlated impact parameters.Comment: 44 pages, 25 figures, version published in JHE
Extracting cosmic microwave background polarisation from satellite astrophysical maps
We present the application of the Fast Independent Component Analysis
({\ica}) technique for blind component separation to polarized astrophysical
emission. We study how the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarized signal,
consisting of and modes, can be extracted from maps affected by
substantial contamination from diffuse Galactic foreground emission and
instrumental noise. {We implement Monte Carlo chains varying the CMB and noise
realizations in order to asses the average capabilities of the algorithm and
their variance.} We perform the analysis of all sky maps simulated according to
the {\sc Planck} satellite capabilities, modelling the sky signal as a
superposition of the CMB and of the existing simulated polarization templates
of Galactic synchrotron. Our results indicate that the angular power spectrum
of CMB -mode can be recovered on all scales up to ,
corresponding to the fourth acoustic oscillation, while the -mode power
spectrum can be detected, up to its turnover at , if the ratio
of tensor to scalar contributions to the temperature quadrupole exceeds 30%.
The power spectrum of the cross correlation between total intensity and
polarization, , can be recovered up to , corresponding to
the seventh acoustic oscillation.Comment: 20 pages, MNRAS in pres
Submillimetre point sources from the Archeops experiment: Very Cold Clumps in the Galactic Plane
Archeops is a balloon-borne experiment, mainly designed to measure the Cosmic
Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropies at high angular resolution
(~ 12 arcminutes). By-products of the mission are shallow sensitivity maps over
a large fraction of the sky (about 30 %) in the millimetre and submillimetre
range at 143, 217, 353 and 545 GHz. From these maps, we produce a catalog of
bright submillimetre point sources. We present in this paper the processing and
analysis of the Archeops point sources. Redundancy across detectors is the key
factor allowing to sort out glitches from genuine point sources in the 20
independent maps. We look at the properties of the most reliable point sources,
totalling 304. Fluxes range from 1 to 10,000 Jy (at the frequencies covering
143 to 545 GHz). All sources are either planets (2) or of galactic origin.
Longitude range is from 75 to 198 degrees. Some of the sources are associated
with well-known Lynds Nebulae and HII compact regions in the galactic plane. A
large fraction of the sources have an IRAS counterpart. Except for Jupiter,
Saturn, the Crab and Cas A, all sources show a dust-emission-like modified
blackbody emission spectrum. Temperatures cover a range from 7 to 27 K. For the
coldest sources (T<10 K), a steep nu^beta emissivity law is found with a
surprising beta ~ 3 to 4. An inverse relationship between T and beta is
observed. The number density of sources at 353 GHz with flux brighter than 100
Jy is of the order of 1 per degree of Galactic longitude. These sources will
provide a strong check for the calibration of the Planck HFI focal plane
geometry as a complement to planets. These very cold sources observed by
Archeops should be prime targets for mapping observations by the Akari and
Herschel space missions and ground--based observatories.Comment: Version matching the published article (English improved). Published
in Astron. Astrophys, 21 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables Full article (with
complete tables) can be retrieved at
http://www.archeops.org/Archeops_Publicatio
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