A Search for Nitrogen Enriched Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release

A search for nitrogen-rich quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release (SDSS EDR) catalog has yielded 16 candidates, including five with very prominent emission, but no cases with nitrogen emission as strong as in Q0353-383. The quasar Q0353-383 has long been known to have extremely strong nitrogen intercombination lines at lambda 1486 and lambda 1750 Angstroms, implying an anomalously high nitrogen abundance of about 15 times solar. It is still the only one of its kind known. A preliminary search through the EDR using the observed property of the weak C IV emission seen in Q0353-383 resulted in a sample of 23 objects with unusual emission or absorption-line properties, including one very luminous redshift 2.5 star-forming galaxy. We present descriptions, preliminary emission-line measurements, and spectra for all the objects discussed here.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, submitted to AJ; final refereed versio

Measurement of the Integrated Faraday Rotations of BL Lac Objects

We present the results of multi-frequency polarization VLA observations of radio sources from the complete sample of northern, radio-bright BL Lac objects compiled by H. Kuhr and G. Schmidt. These were used to determine the integrated rotation measures of 18 objects, 15 of which had never been measured previously, which hindered analysis of the intrinsic polarization properties of objects in the complete sample. These measurements make it possible to correct the observed orientations of the linear polarizations of these sources for the effect of Faraday rotation. The most probable origin for Faraday rotation in these objects is the Galactic interstellar medium. The results presented complete measurements of the integrated rotation measures for all 34 sources in the complete sample of BL Lac objects.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Determination of complex dielectric functions of ion implanted and implanted‐annealed amorphous silicon by spectroscopic ellipsometry

Measuring with a spectroscopic ellipsometer (SE) in the 1.8–4.5 eV photon energy region we determined the complex dielectric function (ϵ = ϵ1 + iϵ2) of different kinds of amorphous silicon prepared by self‐implantation and thermal relaxation (500 °C, 3 h). These measurements show that the complex dielectric function (and thus the complex refractive index) of implanted a‐Si (i‐a‐Si) differs from that of relaxed (annealed) a‐Si (r‐a‐Si). Moreover, its ϵ differs from the ϵ of evaporated a‐Si (e‐a‐Si) found in the handbooks as ϵ for a‐Si. If we use this ϵ to evaluate SE measurements of ion implanted silicon then the fit is very poor. We deduced the optical band gap of these materials using the Davis–Mott plot based on the relation: (ϵ2E2)1/3 ∼ (E− Eg). The results are: 0.85 eV (i‐a‐Si), 1.12 eV (e‐a‐Si), 1.30 eV (r‐a‐Si). We attribute the optical change to annihilation of point defects

Simultaneous Denoising and Motion Estimation for Low-dose Gated PET using a Siamese Adversarial Network with Gate-to-Gate Consistency Learning

Gating is commonly used in PET imaging to reduce respiratory motion blurring and facilitate more sophisticated motion correction methods. In the applications of low dose PET, however, reducing injection dose causes increased noise and reduces signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), subsequently corrupting the motion estimation/correction steps, causing inferior image quality. To tackle these issues, we first propose a Siamese adversarial network (SAN) that can efficiently recover high dose gated image volume from low dose gated image volume. To ensure the appearance consistency between the recovered gated volumes, we then utilize a pre-trained motion estimation network incorporated into SAN that enables the constraint of gate-to-gate (G2G) consistency. With high-quality recovered gated volumes, gate-to-gate motion vectors can be simultaneously outputted from the motion estimation network. Comprehensive evaluations on a low dose gated PET dataset of 29 subjects demonstrate that our method can effectively recover the low dose gated PET volumes, with an average PSNR of 37.16 and SSIM of 0.97, and simultaneously generate robust motion estimation that could benefit subsequent motion corrections.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 202

Magnetic fields in the absence of spiral density waves - NGC 4414

We present three-frequency VLA observations of the flocculent spiral galaxy NGC 4414 made in order to study the magnetic field structure in absence of strong density wave flows. NGC 4414 shows a regular spiral pattern of observed polarization B-vectors with a radial component comparable in strength to the azimuthal one. The average pitch angle of the magnetic field is about 20\degr, similar to galaxies with a well-defined spiral pattern. This provides support for field generation by a turbulent dynamo without significant ``contamination'' from streaming motions in spiral arms. While the stellar light is very axisymmetric, the magnetic field structure shows a clear asymmetry with a stronger regular field and a smaller magnetic pitch angle in the northern disk. Extremely strong Faraday rotation is measured in the southern part of the disk, becoming Faraday thick at 6cm. The distribution of Faraday rotation suggests a mixture of axisymmetric and higher-mode magnetic fields. The strong Faraday effects in the southern region suggest a much thicker magnetoionic disk and a higher content of diffuse ionized gas than in the northern disk portion. An elongation of the 20cm total power emission is also seen towards the South. Although NGC 4414 is currently an isolated spiral, the asymmetries in the polarized radio emission may be sensitive tracers of previous encounters, including weak interactions which would chiefly affect the diffuse gas component without generating obvious long-term perturbations in the optical structure.Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures, A&A accepte

Search for gravitational radiation from intermediate mass black hole binaries in data from the second LIGO-Virgo joint science run

This paper reports on an unmodeled, all-sky search for gravitational waves from merging intermediate mass black hole binaries (IMBHB). The search was performed on data from the second joint science run of the LIGO and Virgo detectors (July 2009–October 2010) and was sensitive to IMBHBs with a range up to ∼200 Mpc, averaged over the possible sky positions and inclinations of the binaries with respect to the line of sight. No significant candidate was found. Upper limits on the coalescence-rate density of nonspinning IMBHBs with total masses between 100 and 450 M⊙ and mass ratios between 0.25 and 1 were placed by combining this analysis with an analogous search performed on data from the first LIGO-Virgo joint science run (November 2005–October 2007). The most stringent limit was set for systems consisting of two 88 M⊙ black holes and is equal to 0.12 Mpc−3 Myr−1 at the 90% confidence level. This paper also presents the first estimate, for the case of an unmodeled analysis, of the impact on the search range of IMBHB spin configurations: the visible volume for IMBHBs with nonspinning components is roughly doubled for a population of IMBHBs with spins aligned with the binary’s orbital angular momentum and uniformly distributed in the dimensionless spin parameter up to 0.8, whereas an analogous population with antialigned spins decreases the visible volume by ∼20%

Parameter estimation for compact binary coalescence signals with the first generation gravitational-wave detector network

Compact binary systems with neutron stars or black holes are one of the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Gravitational radiation encodes rich information about source physics; thus parameter estimation and model selection are crucial analysis steps for any detection candidate events. Detailed models of the anticipated waveforms enable inference on several parameters, such as component masses, spins, sky location and distance, that are essential for new astrophysical studies of these sources. However, accurate measurements of these parameters and discrimination of models describing the underlying physics are complicated by artifacts in the data, uncertainties in the waveform models and in the calibration of the detectors. Here we report such measurements on a selection of simulated signals added either in hardware or software to the data collected by the two LIGO instruments and the Virgo detector during their most recent joint science run, including a “blind injection” where the signal was not initially revealed to the collaboration. We exemplify the ability to extract information about the source physics on signals that cover the neutron-star and black-hole binary parameter space over the component mass range 1 M⊙–25 M⊙ and the full range of spin parameters. The cases reported in this study provide a snapshot of the status of parameter estimation in preparation for the operation of advanced detectors

Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with γ-ray Bursts Detected by the Interplanetary Network

We present the results of a search for gravitational waves associated with 223 γ-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the InterPlanetary Network (IPN) in 2005–2010 during LIGO’s fifth and sixth science runs and Virgo’s first, second, and third science runs. The IPN satellites provide accurate times of the bursts and sky localizations that vary significantly from degree scale to hundreds of square degrees. We search for both a well-modeled binary coalescence signal, the favored progenitor model for short GRBs, and for generic, unmodeled gravitational wave bursts. Both searches use the event time and sky localization to improve the gravitational wave search sensitivity as compared to corresponding all-time, all-sky searches. We find no evidence of a gravitational wave signal associated with any of the IPN GRBs in the sample, nor do we find evidence for a population of weak gravitational wave signals associated with the GRBs. For all IPN-detected GRBs, for which a sufficient duration of quality gravitational wave data are available, we place lower bounds on the distance to the source in accordance with an optimistic assumption of gravitational wave emission energy of 10−2M⊙c2 at 150 Hz, and find a median of 13 Mpc. For the 27 short-hard GRBs we place 90% confidence exclusion distances to two source models: a binary neutron star coalescence, with a median distance of 12 Mpc, or the coalescence of a neutron star and black hole, with a median distance of 22 Mpc. Finally, we combine this search with previously published results to provide a population statement for GRB searches in first-generation LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors and a resulting examination of prospects for the advanced gravitational wave detectors