Bar-induced central star formation as revealed by integral field spectroscopy from CALIFA

We investigate the recent star formation history (SFH) in the inner region of 57 nearly face-on spiral galaxies selected from the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey. For each galaxy we use the integral field spectroscopy from CALIFA to obtain two-dimensional maps and radial profiles of three parameters that are sensitive indicators of the recent SFH: the 4000\AA\ break (D$_n$(4000)), and the equivalent width of H$\delta$ absorption (EW(H$\delta_A$)) and H$\alpha$ emission (EW(H$\alpha$)). We have also performed photometric decomposition of bulge/bar/disk components based on SDSS optical image. We identify a class of 17 "turnover" galaxies whose central region present significant drop in D$_n$(4000), and most of them correspondingly show a central upturn in EW(H$\delta_A$) and EW(H$\alpha$). This indicates that the central region of the turnover galaxies has experienced star formation in the past 1-2 Gyr, which makes the bulge younger and more star-forming than surrounding regions. We find almost all (15/17) the turnover galaxies are barred, while only half of the barred galaxies in our sample (15/32) are classified as a turnover galaxy. This finding provides strong evidence in support of the theoretical expectation that the bar may drive gas from the disc inward to trigger star formation in galaxy center, an important channel for the growth/rejuvenation of pseudobulges in disc galaxies.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, ApJ accepte

Signatures of strong correlation effects in RIXS on Cuprates

Recently, spin excitations in doped cuprates are measured using the resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS). The paramagnon dispersions show the large hardening effect in the electron-doped systems and seemingly doping-independence in the hole-doped systems, with the energy scales comparable to that of the antiferromagnetic magnons. This anomalous hardening effect was partially explained by using the strong coupling t-J model but with a three-site term(Nature communications 5, 3314 (2014)). However we show that hardening effect is a signature of strong coupling physics even without including this extra term. By considering the t-t'-t"-J model and using the Slave-Boson (SB) mean field theory, we obtain, via the spin-spin susceptibility, the spin excitations in qualitative agreement with the experiments. These anomalies is mainly due to the doping-dependent bandwidth. We further discuss the interplay between particle-hole-like and paramagnon-like excitations in the RIXS measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

The peculiar filamentary HI structure of NGC 6145

In this paper, we report the peculiar HI morphology of the cluster spiral galaxy NGC 6145, which has a 150 kpc HI filament on one side that is nearly parallel to its major axis. This filament is made up of several HI clouds and the diffuse HI gas between them, with no optical counterparts. We compare its HI distribution with other one-sided HI distributions in the literature, and find that the overall HI distribution is very different from the typical tidal and ram-pressure stripped HI shape, and its morphology is inconsistent with being a pure accretion event. Only about 30% of the total HI gas is anchored on the stellar disk, while most of HI gas forms the filament in the west. At a projected distance of 122 kpc, we find a massive elliptical companion (NGC 6146) with extended radio emission, whose axis points to an HI gap in NGC 6145. The velocity of the HI filament shows an overall light-of- sight motion of 80 to 180 km/s with respect to NGC 6145. Using the long-slit spectra of NGC 6145 along its major stellar axis, we find that some outer regions show enhanced star formation, while in contrast, almost no star formation activities are found in its center (less than 2 kpc). Pure accretion, tidal or ram-pressure stripping is not likely to produce the observed HI filament. An alternative explanation is the jet-stripping from NGC 6146, although direct evidence for a jet-cold gas interaction has not been found.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures; Accepted for publication in A

On the Universal Approximation Property of Deep Fully Convolutional Neural Networks

We study the approximation of shift-invariant or equivariant functions by deep fully convolutional networks from the dynamical systems perspective. We prove that deep residual fully convolutional networks and their continuous-layer counterpart can achieve universal approximation of these symmetric functions at constant channel width. Moreover, we show that the same can be achieved by non-residual variants with at least 2 channels in each layer and convolutional kernel size of at least 2. In addition, we show that these requirements are necessary, in the sense that networks with fewer channels or smaller kernels fail to be universal approximators

Progressive amorphization of GeSbTe phase-change material under electron beam irradiation

Fast and reversible phase transitions in chalcogenide phase-change materials (PCMs), in particular, Ge-Sb-Te compounds, are not only of fundamental interests, but also make PCMs based random access memory (PRAM) a leading candidate for non-volatile memory and neuromorphic computing devices. To RESET the memory cell, crystalline Ge-Sb-Te has to undergo phase transitions firstly to a liquid state and then to an amorphous state, corresponding to an abrupt change in electrical resistance. In this work, we demonstrate a progressive amorphization process in GeSb2Te4 thin films under electron beam irradiation on transmission electron microscope (TEM). Melting is shown to be completely absent by the in situ TEM experiments. The progressive amorphization process resembles closely the cumulative crystallization process that accompanies a continuous change in electrical resistance. Our work suggests that if displacement forces can be implemented properly, it should be possible to emulate symmetric neuronal dynamics by using PCMs