Young Globular Clusters and Dwarf Spheroidals

Most of the globular clusters in the main body of the Galactic halo were formed almost simultaneously. However, globular cluster formation in dwarf spheroidal galaxies appears to have extended over a significant fraction of a Hubble time. This suggests that the factors which suppressed late-time formation of globulars in the main body of the Galactic halo were not operative in dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Possibly the presence of significant numbers of ``young'' globulars at R_{GC} > 15 kpc can be accounted for by the assumption that many of these objects were formed in Sagittarius-like (but not Fornax-like) dwarf spheroidal galaxies, that were subsequently destroyed by Galactic tidal forces. It would be of interest to search for low-luminosity remnants of parental dwarf spheroidals around the ``young'' globulars Eridanus, Palomar 1, 3, 14, and Terzan 7. Furthermore multi-color photometry could be used to search for the remnants of the super-associations, within which outer halo globular clusters originally formed. Such envelopes are expected to have been tidally stripped from globulars in the inner halo.Comment: 18 pages, with 2 figures, in LaTeX format; to appear in the Astrophysical Journal in February 200

Tumour burden in early stage Hodgkin's disease: the single most important prognostic factor for outcome after radiotherapy.

One hundred and forty-two patients with Hodgkin's disease PS I or II were treated with total or subtotal nodal irradiation as part of a prospective randomized trial in the Danish National Hodgkin Study during the period 1971-83. They were followed till death or--at the time of this analysis--from 15 to 146 months after initiation of therapy. The initial tumour burden of each patient was assessed, combining tumour size of each involved region and number of regions involved. Tumour burden thus assessed proved to be the single most important prognostic factor with regard to disease free survival. Other known prognostic factors such as number of involved regions, mediastinal size, pathological stage, systemic symptoms, and ESR were related to tumour burden and lost their prognostic significance in a multivariate analysis. The only other factors of independent significance were histologic subtype and, to a lesser extent, sex. Combining tumour burden and histologic subtype made it possible to single out a group of patients with a very poor disease free survival. These patients also had a poorer survival from Hodgkin's disease and thus clearly candidates for additional initial treatment

The Kinematics of Thick Disks in External Galaxies

We present kinematic measurements of the thick and thin disks in two edge-on galaxies. We have derived stellar rotation curves at and above the galaxies' midplanes using Ca II triplet features measured with the GMOS spectrograph on Gemini North. In one galaxy, FGC 1415, the kinematics above the plane show clear rotation that lags that of the midplane by ~20-50%, similar to the behavior seen in the Milky Way. However, the kinematics of the second galaxy, FGC 227, are quite different. The rotation above the plane is extremely slow, showing <25% of the rotation speed of the stars at the midplane. We decompose the observed rotation curves into a superposition of thick and thin disk kinematics, using 2-dimensional fits to the galaxy images to determine the fraction of thick disk stars at each position. We find that the thick disk of FGC 1415 rotates at 30-40% of the rotation speed of the thin disk. In contrast, the thick disk of FGC 227 is very likely counter-rotating, if it is rotating at all. These observations are consistent with the velocity dispersion profiles we measure for each galaxy. The detection of counter-rotating thick disks conclusively rules out models where the thick disk forms either during monolithic collapse or from vertical heating of a previous thin disk. Instead, the data strongly support models where the thick disk forms from direct accretion of stars from infalling satellites.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Scaling of the specific heat in superfluid films

We study the specific heat of the $x-y$ model on lattices $L \times L \times H$ with $L \gg H$ (i.e. on lattices representing a film geometry) using the Cluster Monte--Carlo method. In the $H$--direction we apply Dirichlet boundary conditions so that the order parameter in the top and bottom layers is zero. We find that our results for the specific heat of various thickness size $H$ collapse on the same universal scaling function. The extracted scaling function of the specific heat is in good agreement with the experimentally determined universal scaling function using no free parameters.Comment: 4 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScrip

Scaling of the superfluid density in superfluid films

We study scaling of the superfluid density with respect to the film thickness by simulating the $x-y$ model on films of size $L \times L \times H$ ($L >> H$) using the cluster Monte Carlo. While periodic boundary conditions where used in the planar ($L$) directions, Dirichlet boundary conditions where used along the film thickness. We find that our results can be scaled on a universal curve by introducing an effective thickness. In the limit of large $H$ our scaling relations reduce to the conventional scaling forms. Using the same idea we find scaling in the experimental results using the same value of $\nu = 0.6705$.Comment: 4 pages, one postscript file replaced by one Latex file and 5 postscript figure

First Stellar Abundances in the Dwarf Irregular Galaxy Sextans A

We present the abundance analyses of three isolated A-type supergiant stars in the dwarf irregular galaxy Sextans A from high-resolution spectra the UVES spectrograph at the VLT. Detailed model atmosphere analyses have been used to determine the stellar atmospheric parameters and the elemental abundances of the stars. The mean iron group abundance was determined from these three stars to be [(FeII,CrII)/H]=-0.99+/-0.04+/-0.06. This is the first determination of the present-day iron group abundances in Sextans A. These three stars now represent the most metal-poor massive stars for which detailed abundance analyses have been carried out. The mean stellar alpha element abundance was determined from the alpha element magnesium as [alpha(MgI)/H]=-1.09+/-0.02+/-0.19. This is in excellent agreement with the nebular alpha element abundances as determined from oxygen in the H II regions. These results are consistent from star-to-star with no significant spatial variations over a length of 0.8 kpc in Sextans A. This supports the nebular abundance studies of dwarf irregular galaxies, where homogeneous oxygen abundances are found throughout, and argues against in situ enrichment. The alpha/Fe abundance ratio is [alpha(MgI)/FeII,CrII]=-0.11+/-0.02+/-0.10, which is consistent with the solar ratio. This is consistent with the results from A-supergiant analyses in other Local Group dwarf irregular galaxies but in stark contrast with the high [alpha/Fe] results from metal-poor stars in the Galaxy, and is most clearly seen from these three stars in Sextans A because of their lower metallicities. The low [alpha/Fe] ratios are consistent with the slow chemical evolution expected for dwarf galaxies from analyses of their stellar populations.Comment: 40 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A

The Age Of Globular Clusters In Light Of Hipparcos: Resolving the Age Problem?

We review five independent techniques which are used to set the distance scale to globular clusters, including subdwarf main sequence fitting utilizing the recent Hipparcos parallax catalogue. These data together all indicate that globular clusters are farther away than previously believed, implying a reduction in age estimates. This new distance scale estimate is combined with a detailed numerical Monte Carlo study designed to assess the uncertainty associated with the theoretical age-turnoff luminosity relationship in order to estimate both the absolute age and uncertainty in age of the oldest globular clusters. Our best estimate for the mean age of the oldest globular clusters is now $11.5\pm 1.3$Gyr, with a one-sided, 95% confidence level lower limit of 9.5 Gyr. This represents a systematic shift of over 2 $\sigma$ compared to our earlier estimate, due completely to the new distance scale---which we emphasize is not just due to the Hipparcos data. This now provides a lower limit on the age of the universe which is consistent with either an open universe, or a flat, matter dominated universe (the latter requiring H_0 \le 67 \kmsmpc). Our new study also explicitly quantifies how remaining uncertainties in the distance scale and stellar evolution models translate into uncertainties in the derived globular cluster ages. Simple formulae are provided which can be used to update our age estimate as improved determinations for various quantities become available.Comment: 41 pages, including 10 eps figs, uses aaspp4.sty and flushrt.sty, submitted to Ap.J., revised to incorporate FULL Hipparcos catalogue dat

Magnesium isotope ratios in Milky Way and dwarf galaxy stars

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Under the assumption of hierarchical galaxy formation, dwarf galaxies are the closest existing analogues to the high-redshift protogalaxies that merged to form the Milky Way. These low-mass systems serve as unique laboratories for studying nucleosynthetic channels given that the chemical compositions of their stars play a pivotal role in constraining their chemical enrichment history. To date, stellar abundances in dwarf galaxies have focused almost exclusively on elemental abundance ratios. While important, elemental abundances omit critical information about the isotopic composition. Here, we compute the Mg isotopic ratios of six accreted dwarf galaxy stars (low $\alpha$) and seven Milky Way stars (high $\alpha$) using a set of high-resolution (65 000 < R < 160 000) and high signal-to-noise ratio ($\rm {S/N} \gt 250$) optical spectra. We show, for the first time, that at a given [Fe/H] stars born in a dwarf galaxy differ in their Mg isotopic ratios from stars born in the Milky Way. However, when comparing isotopic ratios at a given [Mg/H] rather than [Fe/H], a powerful diagnostic emerges that suggests nucleosynthesis processes are consistent across different stellar environments. This universality of Mg isotopic abundances provides additional dimensionality for chemical evolution models and helps to constrain massive star nucleosynthesis across cosmic time.Peer reviewe

Starcounts Redivivus. IV. Density Laws Through Photometric Parallaxes

In an effort to more precisely define the spatial distribution of Galactic field stars, we present an analysis of the photometric parallaxes of 70,000 stars covering nearly 15 square degrees in seven Kapteyn Selected Areas. We address the affects of Malmquist Bias, subgiant/giant contamination, metallicity and binary stars upon the derived density laws. The affect of binary stars is the most significant. We find that while the disk-like populations of the Milky Way are easily constrained in a simultaneous analysis of all seven fields, no good simultaneous solution for the halo is found. We have applied halo density laws taken from other studies and find that the Besancon flattened power law halo model (c/a=0.6, r^-2.75) produces the best fit to our data. With this halo, the thick disk has a scale height of 750 pc with an 8.5% normalization to the old disk. The old disk scale height is 280-300 pc. Corrected for a binary fraction of 50%, these scale heights are 940 pc and 350-375 pc, respectively. Even with this model, there are systematic discrepancies between the observed and predicted density distributions. Our model produces density overpredictions in the inner Galaxy and density underpredictions in the outer Galaxy. A possible solution is modeling the stellar halo as a two-component system in which the halo has a flattened inner distribution and a roughly spherical, but substructured outer distribution. Further reconciliation could be provided by a flared thick disk, a structure consistent with a merger origin for that population. (Abridged)Comment: 66 pages, accepted to Astrophysical journal, some figures compresse

Determination of Omega_b From Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in the Presence of Regions of Antimatter

Production of regions of antimatter in the early universe is predicted in many baryogenesis models. Small scale antimatter regions would annihilate during or soon after nucleosynthesis, affecting the abundances of the light elements. In this paper we study how the acceptable range in Omega_b changes in the presence of antimatter regions, as compared to the standard big bang nucleosynthesis. It turns out that it is possible to produce at the same time both a low 4He value (Y_p < 0.240) and a low D/H value (D/H < 4e-5), but overproduction of 7Li is unavoidable at large Omega_b.Comment: 9 pages, PRD version, ref. 6 correcte