WFPC2 Observations of NGC 454: an Interacting Pair of Galaxies

We present WFPC2 images in the F450W, F606W and F814W filters of the interacting pair of galaxies NGC 454. Our data indicate that the system is in the early stages of interaction. A population of young star-clusters has formed around the late component, and substantial amounts of gas have sunk into the center of the earlier component, where it has not yet produced significant visible star formation or nuclear activity. We have photometric evidence that the star-clusters have strong line emission, which indicate the presence of a substantial component of hot, massive stars which formed less than 5-10 Myrs ago.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, Latex (AAS macros), ApJL in pres

Resistivity and Hall effect of LiFeAs: Evidence for electron-electron scattering

LiFeAs is unique among the broad family of FeAs-based superconductors, because it is superconducting with a rather large $T_c\simeq 18$ K under ambient conditions although it is a stoichiometric compound. We studied the electrical transport on a high-quality single crystal. The resistivity shows quadratic temperature dependence at low temperature giving evidence for strong electron-electron scattering and a tendency towards saturation around room temperature. The Hall constant is negative and changes with temperature, what most probably arises from a van Hove singularity close to the Fermi energy in one of the hole-like bands. Using band structure calculations based on angular resolved photoemission spectra we are able to reproduce all the basic features of both the resistivity as well as the Hall effect data.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures included; V2 has been considerably revised and contain a more detailed analysis of the Hall effect dat

Phase diagram and isotope effect in (PrEu)_0.7Ca_0.3CoO_3 cobaltites exhibiting spin-state transitions

We present the study of magnetization, thermal expansion, specific heat, resistivity, and a.c. susceptibility of (Pr$_{1-y}$Eu$_y$)$_{0.7}$Ca$_{0.3}$CoO$_3$ cobaltites. The measurements were performed on ceramic samples with $y = 0.12 - 0.26$ and $y = 1$. Based on these results, we construct the phase diagram, including magnetic and spin-state transitions. The transition from the low- to intermediate-spin state is observed for the samples with $y > 0.18$, whereas for a lower Eu-doping level, there are no spin-state transitions, but a crossover between the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic states occurs. The effect of oxygen isotope substitution along with Eu doping on the magnetic/spin state is discussed. The oxygen-isotope substitution ($^{16}$O by $^{18}$O) is found to shift both the magnetic and spin-state phase boundaries to lower Eu concentrations. The isotope effect on the spin-state transition temperature ($y > 0.18$) is rather strong, but it is much weaker for the transition to a ferromagnetic state ($y < 0.18$). The ferromagnetic ordering in the low-Eu doped samples is shown to be promoted by the Co$^{4+}$ ions, which favor the formation of the intermediate-spin state of neighboring Co$^{3+}$ ions.Comment: 13 pages, including 11 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Narrow Na and K Absorption Lines Toward T Tauri Stars: Tracing the Atomic Envelope of Molecular Clouds

We present a detailed analysis of narrow Na i and K i absorption resonance lines toward nearly 40 T Tauri stars in Taurus with the goal of clarifying their origin. The Na i λ5889.95 line is detected toward all but one source, while the weaker K i λ7698.96 line is detected in about two-thirds of the sample. The similarity in their peak centroids and the significant positive correlation between their equivalent widths demonstrate that these transitions trace the same atomic gas. The absorption lines are present toward both disk and diskless young stellar objects, which excludes cold gas within the circumstellar disk as the absorbing material. A comparison of Na i and CO detections and peak centroids demonstrates that the atomic gas and molecular gas are not co-located, the atomic gas being more extended than the molecular gas. The width of the atomic lines corroborates this finding and points to atomic gas about an order of magnitude warmer than the molecular gas. The distribution of Na i radial velocities shows a clear spatial gradient along the length of the Taurus molecular cloud filaments. This suggests that absorption is associated with the Taurus molecular cloud. Assuming that the gradient is due to cloud rotation, the rotation of the atomic gas is consistent with differential galactic rotation, whereas the rotation of the molecular gas, although with the same rotation axis, is retrograde. Our analysis shows that narrow Na i and K i absorption resonance lines are useful tracers of the atomic envelope of molecular clouds. In line with recent findings from giant molecular clouds, our results demonstrate that the velocity fields of the atomic and molecular gas are misaligned. The angular momentum of a molecular cloud is not simply inherited from the rotating Galactic disk from which it formed but may be redistributed by cloud–cloud interactions

Constraints on the ICM velocity power spectrum from the X-ray lines width and shift

Future X-ray observations of galaxy clusters by high spectral resolution missions will provide spatially resolved measurements of the energy and width for the brightest emission lines in the intracluster medium (ICM) spectrum. In this paper we discuss various ways of using these high resolution data to constrain velocity power spectrum in galaxy clusters. We argue that variations of these quantities with the projected distance R in cool core clusters contain important information on the velocity field length scales in the ICM. The effective length $l_{\rm eff}$ along the line of sight, which provides dominant contribution to the line flux, increases with R, allowing one to probe the amplitude of the velocity variations at different spatial scales. In particular, we show that the width of the line as a function of R is closely linked to the structure function of the 3D velocity field. Yet another easily obtainable proxy of the velocity field length scales is the ratio of the amplitude of the projected velocity field (line energy) variations to the dispersion of the velocity along the line of sight (line width). Finally the projected velocity field can be easily converted into 3D velocity field, especially for clusters like Coma with an extended flat core in the surface brightness. Under assumption of a homogeneous isotropic Gaussian 3D velocity field we derived simple expressions relating the power spectrum of the 3D velocity field (or structure function) and the observables. The uncertainties in the observables, caused by stochastic nature of the velocity field, are estimated by making multiple realizations of the random Gaussian velocity field and evaluating the scatter in observables. If large scale motions are present in the ICM these uncertainties may dominate the statistical errors of line width and shift measurements.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted to MNRA

Sow body condition at weaning and reproduction performance in organic piglet production

The objective was to investigate the variation in backfat at weaning and its relations to reproduction results in organic sow herds in Denmark. The study included eight herds and 573 sows. The average backfat at weaning mean�13 mm; SD�4.2 mm) ranging from 10.5 to 17.3 mm among herds shows that it is possible to avoid poor body condition at weaning even with a lactation length of seven weeks or more. No main effect of backfat at weaning on reproduction performance was found, but the probability of a successful reproduction after weaning tended to decrease with decreasing backfat for first parity sows, whereas the opposite was the case for multiparous sows

Sub-Alfvenic Non-Ideal MHD Turbulence Simulations with Ambipolar Diffusion: II. Comparison with Observation, Clump Properties, and Scaling to Physical Units

Ambipolar diffusion is important in redistributing magnetic flux and in damping Alfven waves in molecular clouds. The importance of ambipolar diffusion on a length scale $\ell$ is governed by the ambipolar diffusion Reynolds number, \rad=\ell/\lad, where \lad is the characteristic length scale for ambipolar diffusion. The logarithmic mean of the AD Reynolds number in a sample of 15 molecular clumps with measured magnetic fields (Crutcher 1999) is 17, comparable to the theoretically expected value. We identify several regimes of ambipolar diffusion in a turbulent medium, depending on the ratio of the flow time to collision times between ions and neutrals; the clumps observed by Crutcher (1999) are all in the standard regime of ambipolar diffusion, in which the neutrals and ions are coupled over a flow time. We have carried out two-fluid simulations of ambipolar diffusion in isothermal, turbulent boxes for a range of values of \rad. The mean Mach numbers were fixed at \calm=3 and \ma=0.67; self-gravity was not included. We study the properties of overdensities--i.e., clumps--in the simulation and show that the slope of the higher-mass portion of the clump mass spectrum increases as \rad decreases, which is qualitatively consistent with Padoan et al. (2007)'s finding that the mass spectrum in hydrodynamic turbulence is significantly steeper than in ideal MHD turbulence. For a value of \rad similar to the observed value, we find a slope that is consistent with that of the high-mass end of the Initial Mass Function for stars. However, the value we find for the spectral index in our ideal MHD simulation differs from theirs, presumably because our simulations have different initial conditions. This suggests that the mass spectrum of the clumps in the Padoan et al. (2007) turbulent fragmentation model for the IMF depends on the environment, which would conflict with evidence ...Comment: 33 pages, 7 figure

Molecular gas, CO, and star formation in galaxies: emergent empirical relations, feedback, and the evolution of very gas-rich systems

We use time-varying models of the coupled evolution of the HI, H_2 gas phases and stars in galaxy-sized numerical simulations to: a) test for the emergence of the Kennicutt-Schmidt (K-S) and the H_2-pressure relation, b) explore a realistic H_2-regulated star formation recipe which brings forth a neglected and potentially significant SF-regulating factor, and c) go beyond typical galactic environments (for which these galactic empirical relations are deduced) to explore the early evolution of very gas-rich galaxies. In this work we model low mass galaxies (M_{\rm baryon} \le 10^9 \msun), while incorporating an independent treatment of CO formation and destruction, the most important tracer molecule of H2 in galaxies, along with that for the H2 gas itself. We find that both the K-S and the H_2-pressure empirical relations can robustly emerge in galaxies after a dynamic equilibrium sets in between the various ISM states, the stellar component and its feedback. (abridged)Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Using NuRadioMC to study the performance of UHE radio neutrino detectors

NuRadioMC is an open-source, Python-based simulation and reconstruction framework for radio detectors of ultra-high energy neutrinos and cosmic rays. Its modular design makes NuRadioMC suitable for use with a range of past, current and future detectors. In addition, the recent deployment of a complete documentation as well as a pip release make NuRadioMC relatively easy to learn and use. Here, we outline the features currently available and under development in NuRadioMC, with a focus on its usage to simulate and study in-ice radio neutrino detectors