Dust photophoretic transport around a T Tauri star: Implications for comets composition

There is a growing body of evidences for the presence of crystalline material in comets. These crystals are believed to have been annealed in the inner part of the proto-solar nebula, while comets should have been formed in the outer regions. Several transport processes have been proposed to reconcile these two facts; among them a migration driven by photophoresis. The primarily goal of this work is to assess whether disk irradiation by a Pre-Main Sequence star would influence the photophoretic transport. To do so, we have implemented an evolving 1+1D model of an accretion disk, including advanced numerical techniques, undergoing a time-dependent irradiation, consistent with the evolution of the proto-Sun along the Pre-Main Sequence. The photophoresis is described using a formalism introduced in several previous works. Adopting the opacity prescription used in these former studies, we find that the disk irradiation enhances the photophoretic transport: the assumption of a disk central hole of several astronomical units in radius is no longer strictly required, whereas the need for an ad hoc introduction of photoevaporation is reduced. However, we show that a residual trail of small particles could annihilate the photophoretic driven transport via their effect on the opacity. We have also confirmed that the thermal conductivity of transported aggregates is a crucial parameter which could limit or even suppress the photophoretic migration and generate several segregation effects

Indirect (source-free) integration method. II. Self-force consistent radial fall

We apply our method of indirect integration, described in Part I, at fourth order, to the radial fall affected by the self-force. The Mode-Sum regularisation is performed in the Regge-Wheeler gauge using the equivalence with the harmonic gauge for this orbit. We consider also the motion subjected to a self-consistent and iterative correction determined by the self-force through osculating stretches of geodesics. The convergence of the results confirms the validity of the integration method. This work complements and justifies the analysis and the results appeared in Int. J. Geom. Meth. Mod. Phys., 11, 1450090 (2014).Comment: To appear in Int. J. Geom. Meth. Mod. Phy

Integral and Light Dark Matter

The nature of Dark Matter remains one of the outstanding questions of modern astrophysics. The success of the Cold Dark Matter cosmological model argues strongly in favor of a major component of the dark matter being in the form of elementary particles, not yet discovered. Based on earlier theoretical considerations, a possible link between the recent SPI/INTEGRAL measurement of an intense and extended emission of 511 keV photons (positron annihilation) from the central Galaxy, and this mysterious component of the Universe, has been established advocating the existence of a light dark matter particle at variance with the neutralino, in general considered as very heavy. We show that it can explain the 511 keV emission mapped with SPI/INTEGRAL without overproducing undesirable signals like high energy gamma-rays arising from $\pi^\circ$ decays, and radio synchrotron photons emitted by high energy positrons circulating in magnetic fields. Combining the annihilation line constraint with the cosmological one (i.e. that the relic LDM energy density reaches about 23% of the density of the Universe), one can restrict the main properties of the light dark matter particle. Its mass should lie between 1 and 100 MeV, and the required annihilation cross section, velocity dependent, should be significantly larger than for weak interactions, and may be induced by the virtual production of a new light neutral spin 1 boson $U$. On astrophysical grounds, the best target to validate the LDM proposal seems to be the observation by SPI/INTEGRAL and future gamma ray telescopes of the annihilation line from the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy and the Palomar-13 globular cluster, thought to be dominated by dark matter.Comment: 7 pages, 0 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of the 5th INTEGRAL Workshop: "The INTEGRAL Universe", February 16-20, 2004, Munich, German

An estimate of the chemical composition of Titan's lakes

Hundreds of radar-dark patches interpreted as lakes have been discovered in the north and south polar regions of Titan. We have estimated the composition of these lakes by using the direct abundance measurements from the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) aboard the Huygens probe and recent photochemical models based on the vertical temperature profile derived by the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI). Thermodynamic equilibrium is assumed between the atmosphere and the lakes, which are also considered as nonideal solutions. We find that the main constituents of the lakes are ethane (C2H6) (~76-79%), propane (C3H8) (~7-8%), methane (CH4) (~5-10%), hydrogen cyanide (HCN) (~2-3%), butene (C4H8) (~1%), butane (C4H10) (~1%) and acetylene (C2H2) (~1%). The calculated composition of lakes is then substantially different from what has been expected from models elaborated prior to the exploration of Titan by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted in ApJ

Monte-Carlo simulations of the background of the coded-mask camera for X- and Gamma-rays on-board the Chinese-French GRB mission SVOM

For several decades now, wide-field coded mask cameras have been used with success to localise Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). In these instruments, the event count rate is dominated by the photon background due to their large field of view and large effective area. It is therefore essential to estimate the instrument background expected in orbit during the early phases of the instrument design in order to optimise the scientific performances of the mission. We present here a detailed study of the instrument background and sensitivity of the coded-mask camera for X- and Gamma-rays (CXG) to be used in the detection and localisation of high-redshift GRBs on-board the international GRB mission SVOM. To compute the background spectrum, a Monte-Carlo approach was used to simulate the primary and secondary interactions between particles from the main components of the space environment that SVOM will encounter along its Low Earth Orbit (LEO) (with an altitude of 600 km and an inclination of ~ 30 deg) and the body of the CXG. We consider the detailed mass model of the CXG in its latest design. According to our results, i) the design of the passive shield of the camera ensures that in the 4-50 keV imaging band the cosmic X-Gamma-ray background is dominant whilst the internal background should start to become dominant above 70-90 keV; ii) the current camera design ensures that the CXG camera will be more sensitive to high-redshift GRBs than the Swift Burst Alert Telescope thanks to a low-energy threshold of 4 keV.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures (1 colour), accepted for publication in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research: Section

Modelling the effect of pressure on the critical shear stress of MgO single crystals

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A-STAR: The All-Sky Transient Astrophysics Reporter

The small mission A-STAR (All-Sky Transient Astrophysics Reporter) aims to locate the X-ray counterparts to ALIGO and other gravitational wave detector sources, to study the poorly-understood low luminosity gamma-ray bursts, and to find a wide variety of transient high-energy source types, A-STAR will survey the entire available sky twice per 24 hours. The payload consists of a coded mask instrument, Owl, operating in the novel low energy band 4-150 keV, and a sensitive wide-field focussing soft X-ray instrument, Lobster, working over 0.15-5 keV. A-STAR will trigger on ~100 GRBs/yr, rapidly distributing their locations.Comment: Accepted for the European Astronomical Society Publications Series: Proceedings of the Fall 2012 Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium held in Marbella, Spain, 8-12 Oct 201