1,341 research outputs found
The snail-killing flies of Alaska (Diptera: Sciomyzidae)
Information is given on the geographic distribution, habitat preferences, larval foods, and immature stages for 57 species of 9 genera of Sciomyzidae known to occur in Alaska. An illustrated key to adults is included. Alaska as a habitat for sciomyzid flies is discussed, and information on feeding habits of the larvae is summarized
Obliquity Constraints on an Extrasolar Planetary-Mass Companion
We place the first constraints on the obliquity of a planetary-mass companion outside of the solar system. Our target is the directly imaged system 2MASS J01225093â2439505 (2M0122), which consists of a 120 Myr 0.4 Mâ star hosting a 12â27 M_J companion at 50 au. We constrain all three of the system's angular-momentum vectors: how the companion spin axis, the stellar spin axis, and the orbit normal are inclined relative to our line of sight. To accomplish this, we measure projected rotation rates (v sin i) for both the star and the companion using new near-infrared high-resolution spectra with NIRSPEC at Keck Observatory. We combine these with a new stellar photometric rotation period from TESS and a published companion rotation period from Hubble Space Telescope to obtain spin-axis inclinations for both objects. We also fitted multiple epochs of astrometry, including a new observation with NIRC2/Keck, to measure 2M0122b's orbital inclination. The three line-of-sight inclinations place limits on the true de-projected companion obliquity and stellar obliquity. We find that while the stellar obliquity marginally prefers alignment, the companion obliquity tentatively favors misalignment. We evaluate possible origin scenarios. While collisions, secular spinâorbit resonances, and KozaiâLidov oscillations are unlikely, formation by gravitational instability in a gravito-turbulent diskâthe scenario favored for brown dwarf companions to starsâappears promising
Associahedra via spines
An associahedron is a polytope whose vertices correspond to triangulations of
a convex polygon and whose edges correspond to flips between them. Using
labeled polygons, C. Hohlweg and C. Lange constructed various realizations of
the associahedron with relevant properties related to the symmetric group and
the classical permutahedron. We introduce the spine of a triangulation as its
dual tree together with a labeling and an orientation. This notion extends the
classical understanding of the associahedron via binary trees, introduces a new
perspective on C. Hohlweg and C. Lange's construction closer to J.-L. Loday's
original approach, and sheds light upon the combinatorial and geometric
properties of the resulting realizations of the associahedron. It also leads to
noteworthy proofs which shorten and simplify previous approaches.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures. Version 5: minor correction
Classification of Reductive Monoid Spaces Over an Arbitrary Field
In this semi-expository paper we review the notion of a spherical space. In
particular we present some recent results of Wedhorn on the classification of
spherical spaces over arbitrary fields. As an application, we introduce and
classify reductive monoid spaces over an arbitrary field.Comment: This is the final versio
Loop model with mixed boundary conditions, qKZ equation and alternating sign matrices
The integrable loop model with mixed boundary conditions based on the
1-boundary extended Temperley--Lieb algebra with loop weight 1 is considered.
The corresponding qKZ equation is introduced and its minimal degree solution
described. As a result, the sum of the properly normalized components of the
ground state in size L is computed and shown to be equal to the number of
Horizontally and Vertically Symmetric Alternating Sign Matrices of size 2L+3. A
refined counting is also considered
Uniformizing the Stacks of Abelian Sheaves
Elliptic sheaves (which are related to Drinfeld modules) were introduced by
Drinfeld and further studied by Laumon--Rapoport--Stuhler and others. They can
be viewed as function field analogues of elliptic curves and hence are objects
"of dimension 1". Their higher dimensional generalisations are called abelian
sheaves. In the analogy between function fields and number fields, abelian
sheaves are counterparts of abelian varieties. In this article we study the
moduli spaces of abelian sheaves and prove that they are algebraic stacks. We
further transfer results of Cerednik--Drinfeld and Rapoport--Zink on the
uniformization of Shimura varieties to the setting of abelian sheaves. Actually
the analogy of the Cerednik--Drinfeld uniformization is nothing but the
uniformization of the moduli schemes of Drinfeld modules by the Drinfeld upper
half space. Our results generalise this uniformization. The proof closely
follows the ideas of Rapoport--Zink. In particular, analogies of -divisible
groups play an important role. As a crucial intermediate step we prove that in
a family of abelian sheaves with good reduction at infinity, the set of points
where the abelian sheaf is uniformizable in the sense of Anderson, is formally
closed.Comment: Final version, appears in "Number Fields and Function Fields - Two
Parallel Worlds", Papers from the 4th Conference held on Texel Island, April
2004, edited by G. van der Geer, B. Moonen, R. Schoo
HST PanCET program: A Cloudy Atmosphere for the promising JWST target WASP-101b
We present results from the first observations of the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST) Panchromatic Comparative Exoplanet Treasury (PanCET) program for
WASP-101b, a highly inflated hot Jupiter and one of the community targets
proposed for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Early Release Science (ERS)
program. From a single HST Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) observation, we find that
the near-infrared transmission spectrum of WASP-101b contains no significant
HO absorption features and we rule out a clear atmosphere at 13{\sigma}.
Therefore, WASP-101b is not an optimum target for a JWST ERS program aimed at
observing strong molecular transmission features. We compare WASP-101b to the
well studied and nearly identical hot Jupiter WASP-31b. These twin planets show
similar temperature-pressure profiles and atmospheric features in the
near-infrared. We suggest exoplanets in the same parameter space as WASP-101b
and WASP-31b will also exhibit cloudy transmission spectral features. For
future HST exoplanet studies, our analysis also suggests that a lower count
limit needs to be exceeded per pixel on the detector in order to avoid unwanted
instrumental systematics.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, Accepted to ApJ
The Off Shell - Mixing in the QCD Sum Rules
The dependence of the mixing amplitude is analyzed with
the use of the QCD sum rules and the dispersion relation. Going off shell the
mixing decreases, changes sign at and is
negative in the space like region. Implications of this result to the isospin
breaking part of the nuclear force are discussed.Comment: 26 pages + 11 figures (PostScript
A giant comet-like cloud of hydrogen escaping the warm Neptune-mass exoplanet GJ 436b
Exoplanets orbiting close to their parent stars could lose some fraction of
their atmospheres because of the extreme irradiation. Atmospheric mass loss
primarily affects low-mass exoplanets, leading to suggest that hot rocky
planets might have begun as Neptune-like, but subsequently lost all of their
atmospheres; however, no confident measurements have hitherto been available.
The signature of this loss could be observed in the ultraviolet spectrum, when
the planet and its escaping atmosphere transit the star, giving rise to deeper
and longer transit signatures than in the optical spectrum. Here we report that
in the ultraviolet the Neptune-mass exoplanet GJ 436b (also known as Gliese
436b) has transit depths of 56.3 +/- 3.5% (1 sigma), far beyond the 0.69%
optical transit depth. The ultraviolet transits repeatedly start ~2 h before,
and end >3 h after the ~1 h optical transit, which is substantially different
from one previous claim (based on an inaccurate ephemeris). We infer from this
that the planet is surrounded and trailed by a large exospheric cloud composed
mainly of hydrogen atoms. We estimate a mass-loss rate in the range of
~10^8-10^9 g/s, which today is far too small to deplete the atmosphere of a
Neptune-like planet in the lifetime of the parent star, but would have been
much greater in the past.Comment: Published in Nature on 25 June 2015. Preprint is 28 pages, 12
figures, 2 table
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