Development of a Detector Control System for the ATLAS Pixel Detector

The innermost part of the ATLAS experiment will be a pixel detector containing around 1750 individual detector modules. A detector control system (DCS) is required to handle thousands of I/O channels with varying characteristics. The main building blocks of the pixel DCS are the cooling system, the power supplies and the thermal interlock system, responsible for the ultimate safety of the pixel sensors. The ATLAS Embedded Local Monitor Board (ELMB), a multi purpose front end I/O system with a CAN interface, is foreseen for several monitoring and control tasks. The Supervisory, Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system will use PVSS, a commercial software product chosen for the CERN LHC experiments. We report on the status of the different building blocks of the ATLAS pixel DCS.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, ICALEPCS 200

Design and implementation of the OFELIA FP7 facility: The European OpenFlow testbed

The growth of the Internet in terms of number of devices, the number of networks associated to each device and the mobility of devices and users makes the operation and management of the Internet network infrastructure a very complex challenge. In order to address this challenge, innovative solutions and ideas must be tested and evaluated in real network environments and not only based on simulations or laboratory setups. OFELIA is an European FP7 project and its main objective is to address the aforementioned challenge by building and operating a multi-layer, multi-technology and geographically distributed Future Internet testbed facility, where the network itself is precisely controlled and programmed by the experimenter using the emerging OpenFlow technology. This paper reports on the work done during the first half of the project, the lessons learned as well as the key advantages of the OFELIA facility for developing and testing new networking ideas. An overview on the challenges that have been faced on the design and implementation of the testbed facility is described, including the OFELIA Control Framework testbed management software. In addition, early operational experience of the facility since it was opened to the general public, providing five different testbeds or islands, is described

Brown dwarf census with the Dark Energy Survey year 3 data and the thin disc scale height of early L types

27 pages, 18 figuresIn this paper we present a catalogue of 11 745 brown dwarfs with spectral types ranging from L0 to T9, photometrically classified using data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) year 3 release matched to the Vista Hemisphere Survey (VHS) DR3 and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data, covering ≈2400 deg2 up to iAB = 22. The classification method follows the same phototype method previously applied to SDSS-UKIDSS-WISE data. The most significant difference comes from the use of DES data instead of SDSS, which allow us to classify almost an order of magnitude more brown dwarfs than any previous search and reaching distances beyond 400 pc for the earliest types. Next, we also present and validate the GalmodBD simulation, which produces brown dwarf number counts as a function of structural parameters with realistic photometric properties of a given survey. We use this simulation to estimate the completeness and purity of our photometric LT catalogue down to iAB = 22, as well as to compare to the observed number of LT types. We put constraints on the thin disc scale height for the early L (L0–L3) population to be around 450 pc, in agreement with previous findings. For completeness, we also publish in a separate table a catalogue of 20 863 M dwarfs that passed our colour cut with spectral types greater than M6. Both the LT and the late M catalogues are found at DES release page https://des.ncsa.illinois.edu/releases/other/y3-mlt.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Quasar accretion disk sizes from continuum reverberation mapping in the DES standard-star fields

Measurements of the physical properties of accretion disks in active galactic nuclei are important for better understanding the growth and evolution of supermassive black holes. We present the accretion disk sizes of 22 quasars from continuum reverberation mapping with data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) standard star fields and the supernova C fields. We construct continuum lightcurves with the \textit{griz} photometry that span five seasons of DES observations. These data sample the time variability of the quasars with a cadence as short as one day, which corresponds to a rest frame cadence that is a factor of a few higher than most previous work. We derive time lags between bands with both JAVELIN and the interpolated cross-correlation function method, and fit for accretion disk sizes using the JAVELIN Thin Disk model. These new measurements include disks around black holes with masses as small as $\sim10^7$ $M_{\odot}$, which have equivalent sizes at 2500\AA \, as small as $\sim 0.1$ light days in the rest frame. We find that most objects have accretion disk sizes consistent with the prediction of the standard thin disk model when we take disk variability into account. We have also simulated the expected yield of accretion disk measurements under various observational scenarios for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Deep Drilling Fields. We find that the number of disk measurements would increase significantly if the default cadence is changed from three days to two days or one day.Comment: 33 pages, 24 figure

The prospective kindergarten and elementary school teachers’ understanding of the ratio concept

Este artigo centra-se na compreensão que futuros educadores e professores dos primeiros anos de escolaridade evidenciam do conceito de razão. No estudo participaram 81 estudantes do 2º ano da Licenciatura em Educação Básica, de uma universidade portuguesa, aos quais foi aplicado um questionário, incidindo em quatro dimensões: significado de razão; usos do conceito de razão; representação simbólica de razão; e representações para explicação do conceito de razão. Em termos de resultados, as maiores frequências foram obtidas para a: ideia de razão como comparação/relação entre grandezas; crença em que o conceito de razão pode ser usado em contextos diversificados; crença em que pode ser representado através de operações envolvendo letras, números ou apenas os sinais das operações, quando é pedida a sua representação simbólica, e através de diagramas e representações gráficas, quando é solicitada a descrição da sua explicação. Estes resultados revelam fragilidades no conhecimento matemático dos estudantes, sobretudo no que se refere à definição do conceito de razão e às suas representações.This paper focuses on the prospective kindergarten and elementary school teachers’ understanding of the ratio concept. Eighty-one undergraduates preparing to become kindergarten and primary school teachers, in a Portuguese university, participated in the study. They answered to a questionnaire aiming at evaluating their understanding of the ratio concept based on four dimensions: meaning of ratio; use of the ratio concept; symbolic representations of ratio; and representations for explaining the ratio concept. As far as results are concerned, the highest frequencies were obtained for: the idea of ratio as a comparison/relationship between two magnitudes; the belief that this concept is used in several contexts; the belief that it can be represented through operations with letters, figures or operation signals, as in symbolic representations; and through diagrams and graphical representations, as in representations for explaining the ratio concept. The results show weaknesses in prospective teachers’ mathematical knowledge of ratio, namely with regard to its definition and representations.Este trabalho contou com o apoio de Fundos Nacionais através da FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia no âmbito do projecto PEst-OE/CED/UI1661/2014 do CIEd-UM.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

COSMOGRAIL XVI: Time delays for the quadruply imaged quasar DES J0408-5354 with high-cadence photometric monitoring

We present time-delay measurements for the new quadruply imaged quasar DES J0408-5354, the first quadruply imaged quasar found in the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Our result is made possible by implementing a new observational strategy using almost daily observations with the MPIA 2.2m telescope at La Silla observatory and deep exposures reaching a signal-to-noise ratio of about 1000 per quasar image. This data quality allows us to catch small photometric variations (a few mmag rms) of the quasar, acting on temporal scales much shorter than microlensing, hence making the time delay measurement very robust against microlensing. In only 7 months we measure very accurately one of the time delays in DES J0408-5354: Dt(AB) = -112.1 +- 2.1 days (1.8%) using only the MPIA 2.2m data. In combination with data taken with the 1.2m Euler Swiss telescope, we also measure two delays involving the D component of the system Dt(AD) = -155.5 +- 12.8 days (8.2%) and Dt(BD) = -42.4 +- 17.6 days (41%), where all the error bars include systematics. Turning these time delays into cosmological constraints will require deep HST imaging or ground-based Adaptive Optics (AO), and information on the velocity field of the lensing galaxy.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Chemical Abundance Analysis of Tucana III, the Second rr-process Enhanced Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy

We present a chemical abundance analysis of four additional confirmed member stars of Tucana III, a Milky Way satellite galaxy candidate in the process of being tidally disrupted as it is accreted by the Galaxy. Two of these stars are centrally located in the core of the galaxy while the other two stars are located in the eastern and western tidal tails. The four stars have chemical abundance patterns consistent with the one previously studied star in Tucana III: they are moderately enhanced in $r$-process elements, i.e. they have $\approx +$0.4 dex. The non-neutron-capture elements generally follow trends seen in other dwarf galaxies, including a metallicity range of 0.44 dex and the expected trend in $\alpha$-elements, i.e., the lower metallicity stars have higher Ca and Ti abundance. Overall, the chemical abundance patterns of these stars suggest that Tucana III was an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, and not a globular cluster, before being tidally disturbed. As is the case for the one other galaxy dominated by $r$-process enhanced stars, Reticulum II, Tucana III's stellar chemical abundances are consistent with pollution from ejecta produced by a binary neutron star merger, although a different $r$-process element or dilution gas mass is required to explain the abundances in these two galaxies if a neutron star merger is the sole source of $r$-process enhancement.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures; accepted by Ap

Photometric redshifts and clustering of emission line galaxies selected jointly by DES and eBOSS

We present the results of the first test plates of the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. This paper focuses on the emission line galaxies (ELG) population targetted from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) photometry. We analyse the success rate, efficiency, redshift distribution, and clustering properties of the targets. From the 9000 spectroscopic redshifts targetted, 4600 have been selected from the DES photometry. The total success rate for redshifts between 0.6 and 1.2 is 71\% and 68\% respectively for a bright and faint, on average more distant, samples including redshifts measured from a single strong emission line. We find a mean redshift of 0.8 and 0.87, with 15 and 13\% of unknown redshifts respectively for the bright and faint samples. In the redshift range 0.6<z<1.2, for the most secure spectroscopic redshifts, the mean redshift for the bright and faint sample is 0.85 and 0.9 respectively. Star contamination is lower than 2\%. We measure a galaxy bias averaged on scales of 1 and 10~Mpc/h of 1.72 \pm 0.1 for the bright sample and of 1.78 \pm 0.12 for the faint sample. The error on the galaxy bias have been obtained propagating the errors in the correlation function to the fitted parameters. This redshift evolution for the galaxy bias is in agreement with theoretical expectations for a galaxy population with MB-5\log h < -21.0. We note that biasing is derived from the galaxy clustering relative to a model for the mass fluctuations. We investigate the quality of the DES photometric redshifts and find that the outlier fraction can be reduced using a comparison between template fitting and neural network, or using a random forest algorithm