61 research outputs found
Constraints on the Local Sources of Ultra High-Energy Cosmic Rays
Ultra high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are believed to be protons accelerated
in magnetized plasma outflows of extra-Galactic sources. The acceleration of
protons to ~10^{20} eV requires a source power L>10^{47} erg/s. The absence of
steady sources of sufficient power within the GZK horizon of 100 Mpc, implies
that UHECR sources are transient. We show that UHECR "flares" should be
accompanied by strong X-ray and gamma-ray emission, and that X-ray and
gamma-ray surveys constrain flares which last less than a decade to satisfy at
least one of the following conditions: (i) L>10^{50} erg/s; (ii) the power
carried by accelerated electrons is lower by a factor >10^2 than the power
carried by magnetic fields or by >10^3 than the power in accelerated protons;
or (iii) the sources exist only at low redshifts, z<<1. The implausibility of
requirements (ii) and (iii) argue in favor of transient sources with L>10^{50}
erg/s.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to JCA
A lower bound on the local extragalactic magnetic field
Assuming that the hard gamma-ray emission of Cen A is a result of synchrotron
radiation of ultra-relativistic electrons, we derive a lower bound on the local
extragalactic magnetic field, G. This result is consistent with
(and close to) upper bounds on magnetic fields derived from consideration of
cosmic microwave background distortions and Faraday rotation measurements.Comment: Includes extensive discussion of particle acceleration above 10^20 eV
in the hot spot-like region of Cen
Multimessenger astronomy with the Einstein Telescope
Gravitational waves (GWs) are expected to play a crucial role in the
development of multimessenger astrophysics. The combination of GW observations
with other astrophysical triggers, such as from gamma-ray and X-ray satellites,
optical/radio telescopes, and neutrino detectors allows us to decipher science
that would otherwise be inaccessible. In this paper, we provide a broad review
from the multimessenger perspective of the science reach offered by the third
generation interferometric GW detectors and by the Einstein Telescope (ET) in
particular. We focus on cosmic transients, and base our estimates on the
results obtained by ET's predecessors GEO, LIGO, and Virgo.Comment: 26 pages. 3 figures. Special issue of GRG on the Einstein Telescope.
Minor corrections include
Fermi acceleration in astrophysical jets
We consider the acceleration of energetic particles by Fermi processes (i.e.,
diffusive shock acceleration, second order Fermi acceleration, and gradual
shear acceleration) in relativistic astrophysical jets, with particular
attention given to recent progress in the field of viscous shear acceleration.
We analyze the associated acceleration timescales and the resulting particle
distributions, and discuss the relevance of these processes for the
acceleration of charged particles in the jets of AGNs, GRBs and microquasars,
showing that multi-component powerlaw-type particle distributions are likely to
occur.Comment: 6 pages, one figure; based on talk at "The multimessenger approach to
unidentified gamma-ray sources", Barcelona/Spain, July 2006; accepted for
publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc
Particle swarm optimization for the Steiner tree in graph and delay-constrained multicast routing problems
This paper presents the first investigation on applying a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to both the Steiner tree problem and the delay constrained multicast routing problem. Steiner tree problems, being the underlining models of many applications, have received significant research attention within the meta-heuristics community. The literature on the application of meta-heuristics to multicast routing problems is less extensive but includes several promising approaches. Many interesting research issues still remain to be investigated, for example, the inclusion of different constraints, such as delay bounds, when finding multicast trees with minimum cost. In this paper, we develop a novel PSO algorithm based on the jumping PSO (JPSO) algorithm recently developed by Moreno-Perez et al. (Proc. of the 7th Metaheuristics International Conference, 2007), and also propose two novel local search heuristics within our JPSO framework. A path replacement operator has been used in particle moves to improve the positions of the particle with regard to the structure of the tree. We test the performance of our JPSO algorithm, and the effect of the integrated local search heuristics by an extensive set of experiments on multicast routing benchmark problems and Steiner tree problems from the OR library. The experimental results show the superior performance of the proposed JPSO algorithm over a number of other state-of-the-art approaches
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