498 research outputs found
Design and development of a low temperature, inductance based high frequency ac susceptometer
We report on the development of an induction based low temperature high
frequency ac susceptometer capable of measuring at frequencies up to 3.5 MHz
and at temperatures between 2 K and 300 K. Careful balancing of the detection
coils and calibration have allowed a sample magnetic moment resolution of
at 1 MHz. We will discuss the design and
characterization of the susceptometer, and explain the calibration process. We
also include some example measurements on the spin ice material CdErS
and iron oxide based nanoparticles to illustrate functionality
The discovery of polarization in the afterglow of GRB 990510 with the ESO Very Large Telescope
Following a BeppoSAX alert (Piro 1999a) and the discovery of the OT at SAAO
(Vreeswijk et al. 1999a), we observed GRB 990510 with the FORS instrument on
ESO's VLT Unit 1 (`Antu'). The burst is unremarkable in gamma rays, but in
optical is the first one to show good evidence for jet-like outflow (Stanek et
al. 1999, Harrison et al. 1999). We report the detection of significant linear
polarization in the afterglow: it is (1.6 +/- 0.2)% 0.86 days after trigger,
and after 1.81 days is consistent with that same value, but much more
uncertain. The polarization angle is constant on a time scale of hours, and may
be constant over one day. We conclude that the polarization is intrinsic to the
source and due to the synchrotron nature of the emission, and discuss the
random and ordered field geometries that may be responsible for it.Comment: submitted to ApJ Lett., 5 pages including 2 figures, uses
emulateapj.st
Partitioning of on-demand electron pairs
We demonstrate the high fidelity splitting of electron pairs emitted on
demand from a dynamic quantum dot by an electronic beam splitter. The fidelity
of pair splitting is inferred from the coincidence of arrival in two detector
paths probed by a measurement of the partitioning noise. The emission
characteristic of the on-demand electron source is tunable from electrons being
partitioned equally and independently to electron pairs being split with a
fidelity of 90%. For low beam splitter transmittance we further find evidence
of pair bunching violating statistical expectations for independent fermions
New High-quality Strong Lens Candidates with Deep Learning in the Kilo-Degree Survey
We report new high-quality galaxy scale strong lens candidates found in the
Kilo Degree Survey data release 4 using Machine Learning. We have developed a
new Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifier to search for gravitational
arcs, following the prescription by \cite{2019MNRAS.484.3879P} and using only
band images. We have applied the CNN to two "predictive samples": a
Luminous red galaxy (LRG) and a "bright galaxy" (BG) sample (). We have
found 286 new high probability candidates, 133 from the LRG sample and 153 from
the BG sample. We have then ranked these candidates based on a value that
combines the CNN likelihood to be a lens and the human score resulting from
visual inspection (P-value) and we present here the highest 82 ranked
candidates with P-values . All these high-quality candidates have
obvious arc or point-like features around the central red defector. Moreover,
we define the best 26 objects, all with scores P-values as a "golden
sample" of candidates. This sample is expected to contain very few false
positives and thus it is suitable for follow-up observations. The new lens
candidates come partially from the the more extended footprint adopted here
with respect to the previous analyses, partially from a larger predictive
sample (also including the BG sample). These results show that machine learning
tools are very promising to find strong lenses in large surveys and more
candidates that can be found by enlarging the predictive samples beyond the
standard assumption of LRGs. In the future, we plan to apply our CNN to the
data from next-generation surveys such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope,
Euclid, and the Chinese Space Station Optical Survey.Comment: Accepted by AP
Metastable and localized Ising magnetism in α−CoV2O6 magnetization plateaus
-CoVO consists of Ising
spins located on an anisotropic triangular motif with magnetization plateaus in
an applied field. We combine neutron diffraction with low temperature
magnetization to investigate the magnetic periodicity in the vicinity of these
plateaus. We find these steps to be characterized by metastable and spatially
short-range ( 10 ) magnetic correlations with antiphase
boundaries defining a local periodicity of $\langle \hat{T}^{2} \rangle =\
\uparrow \downarrow\langle \hat{T}^{3} \rangle =\ \uparrow \uparrow
\downarrow\langle \hat{T}^{4} \rangle=\ \uparrow \uparrow \downarrow
\downarrow\uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \downarrow$ spin arrangements. This
shows the presence of spatially short range and metastable/hysteretic,
commensurate magnetism in Ising magnetization steps.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
KiDS-450: enhancing cosmic shear with clipping transformations
We present the first ‘clipped’ cosmic shear measurement using data from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-450). ‘Clipping’ transformations suppress the signal from the highest density, non-linear regions of cosmological fields. We demonstrate that these transformations improve constraints on S8 = σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5 when used in combination with conventional two-point statistics. For the KiDS-450 data, we find that the combined measurements improve the constraints on S8 by 17 per cent, compared to shear correlation functions alone. We determine the expectation value of the clipped shear correlation function using a suite of numerical simulations, and develop methodology to mitigate the impact of masking and shot noise. Future improvements in numerical simulations and mass reconstruction methodology will permit the precise calibration of clipped cosmic shear statistics such that clipping can become a standard tool in weak-lensing analyses
LinKS:Discovering galaxy-scale strong lenses in the Kilo-Degree Survey using Convolutional Neural Networks
We present a new sample of galaxy-scale strong gravitational lens candidates, selected from 904 deg2 of Data Release 4 of the Kilo-Degree Survey, i.e. the `Lenses in the Kilo-Degree Survey' (LinKS) sample. We apply two convolutional neural networks (ConvNets) to {˜ }88 000 colour-magnitude-selected luminous red galaxies yielding a list of 3500 strong lens candidates. This list is further downselected via human inspection. The resulting LinKS sample is composed of 1983 rank-ordered targets classified as `potential lens candidates' by at least one inspector. Of these, a high-grade subsample of 89 targets is identified with potential strong lenses by all inspectors. Additionally, we present a collection of another 200 strong lens candidates discovered serendipitously from various previous ConvNet runs. A straightforward application of our procedure to future Euclid or Large Synoptic Survey Telescope data can select a sample of ˜3000 lens candidates with less than 10 per cent expected false positives and requiring minimal human intervention
KiDS-1000 catalogue::Redshift distributions and their calibration
We present redshift distribution estimates of galaxies selected from the fourth data release of the Kilo-Degree Survey over an area of ∼1000 deg2 (KiDS-1000). These redshift distributions represent one of the crucial ingredients for weak gravitational lensing measurements with the KiDS-1000 data. The primary estimate is based on deep spectroscopic reference catalogues that are re-weighted with the help of a self-organising map (SOM) to closely resemble the KiDS-1000 sources, split into five tomographic redshift bins in the photometric redshift range 0.1 < zB ≤ 1.2. Sources are selected such that they only occupy that volume of nine-dimensional magnitude-space that is also covered by the reference samples (‘gold’ selection). Residual biases in the mean redshifts determined from this calibration are estimated from mock catalogues to be ≲0.01 for all five bins with uncertainties of ∼0.01. This primary SOM estimate of the KiDS-1000 redshift distributions is complemented with an independent clustering redshift approach. After validation of the clustering-z on the same mock catalogues and a careful assessment of systematic errors, we find no significant bias of the SOM redshift distributions with respect to the clustering-z measurements. The SOM redshift distributions re-calibrated by the clustering-z represent an alternative calibration of the redshift distributions with only slightly larger uncertainties in the mean redshifts of ∼0.01 − 0.02 to be used in KiDS-1000 cosmological weak lensing analyses. As this includes the SOM uncertainty, clustering-z are shown to be fully competitive on KiDS-1000 data
Cosmology From Random Multifield Potentials
We consider the statistical properties of vacua and inflationary trajectories
associated with a random multifield potential. Our underlying motivation is the
string landscape, but our calculations apply to general potentials. Using
random matrix theory, we analyze the Hessian matrices associated with the
extrema of this potential. These potentials generically have a vast number of
extrema. If the cross-couplings (off-diagonal terms) are of the same order as
the self-couplings (diagonal terms) we show that essentially all extrema are
saddles, and the number of minima is effectively zero. Avoiding this requires
the same separation of scales needed to ensure that Newton's constant is stable
against radiative corrections in a string landscape. Using the central limit
theorem we find that even if the number of extrema is enormous, the typical
distance between extrema is still substantial -- with challenging implications
for inflationary models that depend on the existence of a complicated path
inside the landscape.Comment: revtex, 3 figures, 10 pages v2 refs adde
An accurate high-speed single-electron quantum dot pump
Using standard microfabrication techniques, it is now possible to construct devices that appear to reliably manipulate electrons one at a time. These devices have potential use as building blocks in quantum computing devices, or as a standard of electrical current derived only from a frequency and the fundamental charge. To date, the error rate in semiconductor 'tuneable-barrier' pump devices, those which show most promise for high-frequency operation, have not been tested in detail. We present high-accuracy measurements of the current from an etched GaAs quantum dot pump, operated at zero source-drain bias voltage with a single ac-modulated gate at 340 MHz driving the pump cycle. By comparison with a reference current derived from primary standards, we show that the electron transfer accuracy is better than 15 parts per million. High-resolution studies of the dependence of the pump current on the quantum dot tuning parameters also reveal possible deviations from a model used to describe the pumping cycle
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