Scattering of light by protons

Within the framework of the Chew-Low-Wick development an analysis of the scattering of photons from a nucleon is carried out. It is shown that an exact relationship exists between the Compton effect amplitude and the experimental meson-nucleon scattering phase shifts for all multipoles except magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole provided that effects arising from currents inside the nucleon source (i.e., line currents) are slowly varying functions of photon energy. That part of the magnetic dipole scattering which can be described in terms of the isotopic vector part of the anomalous magnetic moments of the nucleon is also treated exactly. The cross section for the Compton process is evaluated on the basis of the electric and magnetic dipole contributions only, since a nonrecoil theory is clearly expected to be poor for photon energies greater than 300 Mev. Fairly good agreement with experiment is achieved

Radiative Reactions and Coherence Modeling in the High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse

A high altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) with a peak field intensity of 5 x 10^4 V/m carries momentum that results in a retarding force on the average Compton electron (radiating coherently to produce the waveform) with magnitude near that of the geomagnetic force responsible for the coherent radiation. The retarding force results from a self field effect. The Compton electron interaction with the self generated magnetic field due to the other electrons accounts for the momentum density in the propagating wave; interaction with the self generated electric field accounts for the energy flux density in the propagating wave. Coherent addition of radiation is also quantitatively modeled.Comment: 23 pages, 0 figure

Thermal radiation processes

We discuss the different physical processes that are important to understand the thermal X-ray emission and absorption spectra of the diffuse gas in clusters of galaxies and the warm-hot intergalactic medium. The ionisation balance, line and continuum emission and absorption properties are reviewed and several practical examples are given that illustrate the most important diagnostic features in the X-ray spectra.Comment: 37 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews, special issue "Clusters of galaxies: beyond the thermal view", Editor J.S. Kaastra, Chapter 9; work done by an international team at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI), Bern, organised by J.S. Kaastra, A.M. Bykov, S. Schindler & J.A.M. Bleeke

Radiative transfer with scattering for domain-decomposed 3D MHD simulations of cool stellar atmospheres

We present the implementation of a radiative transfer solver with coherent scattering in the new BIFROST code for radiative magneto-hydrodynamical (MHD) simulations of stellar surface convection. The code is fully parallelized using MPI domain decomposition, which allows for large grid sizes and improved resolution of hydrodynamical structures. We apply the code to simulate the surface granulation in a solar-type star, ignoring magnetic fields, and investigate the importance of coherent scattering for the atmospheric structure. A scattering term is added to the radiative transfer equation, requiring an iterative computation of the radiation field. We use a short-characteristics-based Gauss-Seidel acceleration scheme to compute radiative flux divergences for the energy equation. The effects of coherent scattering are tested by comparing the temperature stratification of three 3D time-dependent hydrodynamical atmosphere models of a solar-type star: without scattering, with continuum scattering only, and with both continuum and line scattering. We show that continuum scattering does not have a significant impact on the photospheric temperature structure for a star like the Sun. Including scattering in line-blanketing, however, leads to a decrease of temperatures by about 350\,K below log tau < -4. The effect is opposite to that of 1D hydrostatic models in radiative equilibrium, where scattering reduces the cooling effect of strong LTE lines in the higher layers of the photosphere. Coherent line scattering also changes the temperature distribution in the high atmosphere, where we observe stronger fluctuations compared to a treatment of lines as true absorbers.Comment: A&A, in pres

Anthropogenic Space Weather

Anthropogenic effects on the space environment started in the late 19th century and reached their peak in the 1960s when high-altitude nuclear explosions were carried out by the USA and the Soviet Union. These explosions created artificial radiation belts near Earth that resulted in major damages to several satellites. Another, unexpected impact of the high-altitude nuclear tests was the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that can have devastating effects over a large geographic area (as large as the continental United States). Other anthropogenic impacts on the space environment include chemical release ex- periments, high-frequency wave heating of the ionosphere and the interaction of VLF waves with the radiation belts. This paper reviews the fundamental physical process behind these phenomena and discusses the observations of their impacts.Comment: 71 pages, 35 figure

Stark broadening in hot, dense laser-produced plasmas

Broadened Lyman-$alpha$ x-ray lines from neon X and argon XVIII radiators, which are immersed in a hot, dense deuterium or deuterium-tritium plasma, are discussed. In particular, these lines are analyzed for several temperature-density cases, characteristic of laser-produced plasmas; special attention paid to the relative importance of ion, electron, and Doppler effects. Static ion microfield distribution functions are tabulated

The effect of UV stars on the intergalactic medium

We have investigated the effect of ionizing radiation from the UV stars (hot prewhite dwarfs) on the intergalactic medium (IGM). If the UV stars are powered only by gravitational contraction they radiate most of their energy at a typical surface temperature of 1.5×10 5 K which produces a very highly ionized IGM in which the elements carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are left with only one or two electrons. This results in these elements being very inefficient coolants. The gas is cooled principally by free-free emission and the collisional ionization of hydrogen and helium. For a typical UV star temperature of T =1.5×10 5 K, the temperature of the ionized gas in the IGM is T g =1.2×10 5 K for a Hubble constant H o =75 km s −1 Mpc −1 and a hydrogen density n H =10 −6 cm −3 . Heating by cosmic rays and X-rays is insignificant in the IGM except perhaps in Hi clouds because when a hydrogen atom recombines in the IGM it is far more likely to be re-ionized by a UV-star photon than by of the other two types of particles due to the greater space density of UV-star photons and their appreciably larger ionization cross-sections. If the UV stars radiate a substantial fraction of their energy in a helium-burning stage in which they have surface temperatures of about 5×10 4 K, the temperature of the IGM could be lowered to about 5×10 4 K.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42092/1/10509_2004_Article_BF00642148.pd