632 research outputs found
Measuring Black Hole Spin in OJ287
We model the binary black hole system OJ287 as a spinning primary and a
non-spinning secondary. It is assumed that the primary has an accretion disk
which is impacted by the secondary at specific times. These times are
identified as major outbursts in the light curve of OJ287. This identification
allows an exact solution of the orbit, with very tight error limits. Nine
outbursts from both the historical photographic records as well as from recent
photometric measurements have been used as fixed points of the solution: 1913,
1947, 1957, 1973, 1983, 1984, 1995, 2005 and 2007 outbursts. This allows the
determination of eight parameters of the orbit. Most interesting of these are
the primary mass of , the secondary mass , major axis precession rate per period, and the
eccentricity of the orbit 0.70. The dimensionless spin parameter is
(1 sigma). The last parameter will be more tightly
constrained in 2015 when the next outburst is due. The outburst should begin on
15 December 2015 if the spin value is in the middle of this range, on 3 January
2016 if the spin is 0.25, and on 26 November 2015 if the spin is 0.31. We have
also tested the possibility that the quadrupole term in the Post Newtonian
equations of motion does not exactly follow Einstein's theory: a parameter
is introduced as one of the 8 parameters. Its value is within 30% (1 sigma) of
the Einstein's value . This supports the of black
holes within the achievable precision. We have also measured the loss of
orbital energy due to gravitational waves. The loss rate is found to agree with
Einstein's value with the accuracy of 2% (1 sigma).Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, IAU26
PAMELA, DAMA, INTEGRAL and Signatures of Metastable Excited WIMPs
Models of dark matter with ~ GeV scale force mediators provide attractive
explanations of many high energy anomalies, including PAMELA, ATIC, and the
WMAP haze. At the same time, by exploiting the ~ MeV scale excited states that
are automatically present in such theories, these models naturally explain the
DAMA/LIBRA and INTEGRAL signals through the inelastic dark matter (iDM) and
exciting dark matter (XDM) scenarios, respectively. Interestingly, with only
weak kinetic mixing to hypercharge to mediate decays, the lifetime of excited
states with delta < 2 m_e is longer than the age of the universe. The
fractional relic abundance of these excited states depends on the temperature
of kinetic decoupling, but can be appreciable. There could easily be other
mechanisms for rapid decay, but the consequences of such long-lived states are
intriguing. We find that CDMS constrains the fractional relic population of
~100 keV states to be <~ 10^-2, for a 1 TeV WIMP with sigma_n = 10^-40 cm^2.
Upcoming searches at CDMS, as well as xenon, silicon, and argon targets, can
push this limit significantly lower. We also consider the possibility that the
DAMA excitation occurs from a metastable state into the XDM state, which decays
via e+e- emission, which allows lighter states to explain the INTEGRAL signal
due to the small kinetic energies required. Such models yield dramatic signals
from down-scattering, with spectra peaking at high energies, sometimes as high
as ~1 MeV, well outside the usual search windows. Such signals would be visible
at future Ar and Si experiments, and may be visible at Ge and Xe experiments.
We also consider other XDM models involving ~ 500 keV metastable states, and
find they can allow lighter WIMPs to explain INTEGRAL as well.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure
Star Formation and Dynamics in the Galactic Centre
The centre of our Galaxy is one of the most studied and yet enigmatic places
in the Universe. At a distance of about 8 kpc from our Sun, the Galactic centre
(GC) is the ideal environment to study the extreme processes that take place in
the vicinity of a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Despite the hostile
environment, several tens of early-type stars populate the central parsec of
our Galaxy. A fraction of them lie in a thin ring with mild eccentricity and
inner radius ~0.04 pc, while the S-stars, i.e. the ~30 stars closest to the
SMBH (<0.04 pc), have randomly oriented and highly eccentric orbits. The
formation of such early-type stars has been a puzzle for a long time: molecular
clouds should be tidally disrupted by the SMBH before they can fragment into
stars. We review the main scenarios proposed to explain the formation and the
dynamical evolution of the early-type stars in the GC. In particular, we
discuss the most popular in situ scenarios (accretion disc fragmentation and
molecular cloud disruption) and migration scenarios (star cluster inspiral and
Hills mechanism). We focus on the most pressing challenges that must be faced
to shed light on the process of star formation in the vicinity of a SMBH.Comment: 68 pages, 35 figures; invited review chapter, to be published in
expanded form in Haardt, F., Gorini, V., Moschella, U. and Treves, A.,
'Astrophysical Black Holes'. Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer 201
The evolution of galaxy groups and of galaxies therein
Properties of groups of galaxies depend sensitively on the algorithm for
group selection, and even the most recent catalogs of groups built from
redshift-space selection should suffer from projections and infalling galaxies.
The cosmo-dynamical evolution of groups from initial Hubble expansion to
collapse and virialization leads to a fundamental track (FT) in
virial-theorem-M/L vs crossing time. The increased rates of mergers, both
direct and after dynamical friction, in groups relative to clusters, explain
the higher fraction of elliptical galaxies at given local number density in
X-ray selected groups, relative to clusters, even when the hierarchical
evolution of groups is considered. Galaxies falling into groups and clusters
should later travel outwards to typically 2 virial radii, which is somewhat
less than the outermost radius where observed galaxy star formation
efficiencies are enhanced relative to field galaxies of same morphological
type. An ongoing analysis of the internal kinematics of X-ray selected groups
suggests that the radial profiles of line of sight velocity dispersion are
consistent with isotropic NFW distributions for the total mass density, with
higher (lower) concentrations than LambdaCDM predictions in groups of high
(low) mass. The critical mass, at M200 ~ 10^13 M_sun is consistent with
possible breaks in the X-ray luminosity-temperature and Fundamental Plane
relations. The internal kinematics of groups indicate that the M-T relation of
groups should agree with that extrapolated from clusters with no break at the
group scale. The analyses of observed velocity dispersion profiles and of the
FT both suggest that low velocity dispersion groups (compact and loose, X-ray
emitting or undetected) are quite contaminated by chance projections.Comment: Invited review, ESO workshop "Groups of Galaxies in the Nearby
Universe", held in Santiago, Chile, 5-9 December 2005, ed. I. Saviane, V.
Ivanov & J. Borissova, 16 page
Menus for Feeding Black Holes
Black holes are the ultimate prisons of the Universe, regions of spacetime
where the enormous gravity prohibits matter or even light to escape to
infinity. Yet, matter falling toward the black holes may shine spectacularly,
generating the strongest source of radiation. These sources provide us with
astrophysical laboratories of extreme physical conditions that cannot be
realized on Earth. This chapter offers a review of the basic menus for feeding
matter onto black holes and discusses their observational implications.Comment: 27 pages. Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews. Also to
appear in hard cover in the Space Sciences Series of ISSI "The Physics of
Accretion onto Black Holes" (Springer Publisher
The Fueling and Evolution of AGN: Internal and External Triggers
In this chapter, I review the fueling and evolution of active galactic nuclei
(AGN) under the influence of internal and external triggers, namely intrinsic
properties of host galaxies (morphological or Hubble type, color, presence of
bars and other non-axisymmetric features, etc) and external factors such as
environment and interactions. The most daunting challenge in fueling AGN is
arguably the angular momentum problem as even matter located at a radius of a
few hundred pc must lose more than 99.99 % of its specific angular momentum
before it is fit for consumption by a BH. I review mass accretion rates,
angular momentum requirements, the effectiveness of different fueling
mechanisms, and the growth and mass density of black BHs at different epochs. I
discuss connections between the nuclear and larger-scale properties of AGN,
both locally and at intermediate redshifts, outlining some recent results from
the GEMS and GOODS HST surveys.Comment: Invited Review Chapter to appear in LNP Volume on "AGN Physics on All
Scales", Chapter 6, in press. 40 pages, 12 figures. Typo in Eq 5 correcte
On the Computational Power of Shared Objects
Abstract. We propose a new classification for evaluating the strength of shared objects. The classification is based on finding, for each object of type o, the strongest progress condition for which it is possible to solve consensus for any number of processes, using any number of objects of type o and atomic registers. We use the strongest progress condition to associate with each object a number call the power number of that object. Objects with higher power numbers are considered stronger. Then, we define the power hierarchy which is an infinite hi-erarchy of objects such that the objects at level i of the hierarchy are exactly those objects with power number i. Comparing our classification with the traditional one which is based on fixing the progress condition (namely, wait-freedom) and finding the largest number of processes for which consensus is solvable, reveals interesting results. Our equivalence and extended universality results, provide a deeper understanding of the nature of the relative computational power of shared objects
Supermassive Black Hole Binaries: The Search Continues
Gravitationally bound supermassive black hole binaries (SBHBs) are thought to
be a natural product of galactic mergers and growth of the large scale
structure in the universe. They however remain observationally elusive, thus
raising a question about characteristic observational signatures associated
with these systems. In this conference proceeding I discuss current theoretical
understanding and latest advances and prospects in observational searches for
SBHBs.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of 2014 Sant Cugat
Forum on Astrophysics. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, ed.
C.Sopuerta (Berlin: Springer-Verlag
A measurement of the tau mass and the first CPT test with tau leptons
We measure the mass of the tau lepton to be 1775.1+-1.6(stat)+-1.0(syst.) MeV
using tau pairs from Z0 decays. To test CPT invariance we compare the masses of
the positively and negatively charged tau leptons. The relative mass difference
is found to be smaller than 3.0 10^-3 at the 90% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts.
First Measurement of Z/gamma* Production in Compton Scattering of Quasi-real Photons
We report the first observation of Z/gamma* production in Compton scattering
of quasi-real photons. This is a subprocess of the reaction e+e- to
e+e-Z/gamma*, where one of the final state electrons is undetected.
Approximately 55 pb-1 of data collected in the year 1997 at an e+e-
centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV with the OPAL detector at LEP have been
analysed. The Z/gamma* from Compton scattering has been detected in the
hadronic decay channel. Within well defined kinematic bounds, we measure the
product of cross-section and Z/gamma* branching ratio to hadrons to be
(0.9+-0.3+-0.1) pb for events with a hadronic mass larger than 60 GeV,
dominated by (e)eZ production. In the hadronic mass region between 5 GeV and 60
GeV, dominated by (e)egamma* production, this product is found to be
(4.1+-1.6+-0.6) pb. Our results agree with the predictions of two Monte Carlo
event generators, grc4f and PYTHIA.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures included, submitted to Physics Letters
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