407 research outputs found
Robert W. Kastenmeier: Copyright Legislator Par Excellence
The legacy of Robert W. Kastenmeier, former Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Administration of Justice, is discussed. Kastenmeier deserves praise for his leadership on patent and copyright laws
CLASS Survey Description: Coronal Line Needles in the SDSS Haystack
Coronal lines are a powerful, yet poorly understood, tool to identify and
characterize Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). There have been few large scale
surveys of coronal lines in the general galaxy population in the literature so
far. Using a novel pre-selection technique with a flux-to-RMS ratio ,
followed by Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) fitting, we searched for the full
suite of 20 coronal lines in the optical spectra of almost 1 million galaxies
from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 8. We present a catalog
of the emission line parameters for the resulting 258 galaxies with detections.
The Coronal Line Activity Spectroscopic Survey (CLASS) includes line
properties, host galaxy properties, and selection criteria for all galaxies in
which at least one line is detected. This comprehensive study reveals that a
significant fraction of coronal line activity is missed in past surveys based
on a more limited set of coronal lines; 60% of our sample do not display
the more widely surveyed [Fe X] 6374. In addition, we discover a
strong correlation between coronal line and WISE W2 luminosities, suggesting
that the mid-infrared flux can be used to predict coronal line fluxes. For each
line we also provide a confidence level that the line is present, generated by
a novel neural network, trained on fully simulated data. We find that after
training the network to detect individual lines using 100,000 simulated
spectra, we achieve an overall true positive rate of 75.49% and a false
positive rate of only 3.96%.Comment: 27 pages, 16 figures, 4 table
The Messy Nature of Fiber Spectra: Star-Quasar Pairs Masquerading as Dual Type 1 AGNs
Theoretical studies predict that the most significant growth of supermassive
black holes occurs in late-stage mergers, coinciding with the manifestation of
dual active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and both major and minor mergers are
expected to be important for dual AGN growth. In fact, dual AGNs in minor
mergers should be signposts for efficient minor merger-induced SMBH growth for
both the more and less massive progenitor. We identified two candidate dual
AGNs residing in apparent minor mergers with mass ratios of 1:7 and
1:30. SDSS fiber spectra show broad and narrow emission lines in the
primary nuclei of each merger while only a narrow [O III] emission line and a
broad and prominent H/[N II] complex is observed in the secondary
nuclei. The FWHMs of the broad H lines in the primary and secondary
nuclei are inconsistent in each merger, suggesting that each nucleus in each
merger hosts a Type 1 AGN. However, spatially-resolved LBT optical spectroscopy
reveal rest-frame stellar absorption features, indicating the secondary sources
are foreground stars and that the previously detected broad lines are likely
the result of fiber spillover effects induced by the atmospheric seeing at the
time of the SDSS observations. This study demonstrates for the first time that
optical spectroscopic searches for Type 1/Type 1 pairs similarly suffer from
fiber spillover effects as has been observed previously for Seyfert 2 dual AGN
candidates. The presence of foreground stars may not have been clear if an
instrument with more limited wavelength range or limited sensitivity had been
used.Comment: 15 pages including appendix and references, 6 figures, 1 table.
Accepted for publication in Ap
Laser experiments to simulate supernova remnants
An experiment using a large laser facility to simulate young supernova remnants (SNRs) is discussed. By analogy to the SNR, the laboratory system includes dense matter that explodes, expansion and cooling to produce energetic, flowing plasma, and the production of shock waves in lower-density surrounding matter. The scaling to SNRs in general and to SN1987A in particular is reviewed. The methods and results of x-ray radiography, by which the system in diagnosed, are discussed. The data show that the hohlraum used to provide the energy for explosion does so in two ways—first, through its radiation pulse, and second, through an additional impulse that is attributed to stagnation pressure. Attempts to model these dynamics are discussed. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69889/2/PHPAEN-7-5-2142-1.pd
Nuclear Activity in the Low Metallicity Dwarf Galaxy SDSS J0944-0038: A Glimpse into the Primordial Universe
Local low metallicity dwarf galaxies are relics of the early universe and
hold clues into the origins of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). In recent
work, coronal lines have been used to unveil a population of candidate
accreting black holes in dwarf galaxies with gas phase metallicities and
stellar masses well below the host galaxies of any previously known AGNs. Using
MUSE/VLT observations, we report the detection of [Fe X] 6374 coronal
line emission and a broad H line in the nucleus of SDSS
J094401.87003832.1, a nearby () metal poor dwarf galaxy at least
fifty times less massive than the LMC. The [Fe X] 6374 emission is
compact and centered on the brightest nuclear source, with a spatial extent of
100 pc. The [Fe X] luminosity is erg s,
within the range seen in previously identified AGNs in the dwarf galaxy
population. This line has never been observed in gas ionized by hot stars.
While it can be produced in supernova ejecta, the [Fe X] flux from SDSS
J094401.87003832.1 has persisted over the ~19 year time period between the
SDSS and MUSE observations, ruling out supernovae as the origin for the
emission. The FWHM of the broad component of the H line is
km s and its luminosity is erg s,
lower than the broad line luminosities of previously identified low mass broad
line AGNs. These observations, together with previously reported
multi-wavelength observations, can most plausibly be explained by the presence
of an accreting intermediate mass black hole in a primordial galaxy analog.
However, we cannot rule out the possibility that current stellar population
models of metal poor stars significantly under-predict the stellar ionizing
photon flux, and that metal poor stars can produce an extreme ionizing spectrum
similar to that produced by AGNs.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, submitted to ApJL. Comments welcom
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