10,826 research outputs found
Physical Structure of Planetary Nebulae. I. The Owl Nebula
The Owl Nebula is a triple-shell planetary nebula with the outermost shell
being a faint bow-shaped halo. We have obtained deep narrow-band images and
high-dispersion echelle spectra in the H-alpha, [O III], and [N II] emission
lines to determine the physical structure of each shell in the nebula. These
spatio-kinematic data allow us to rule out hydrodynamic models that can
reproduce only the nebular morphology. Our analysis shows that the inner shell
of the main nebula is slightly elongated with a bipolar cavity along its major
axis, the outer nebula is a filled envelope co-expanding with the inner shell
at 40 km/s, and the halo has been braked by the interstellar medium as the Owl
Nebula moves through it. To explain the morphology and kinematics of the Owl
Nebula, we suggest the following scenario for its formation and evolution. The
early mass loss at the TP-AGB phase forms the halo, and the superwind at the
end of the AGB phase forms the main nebula. The subsequent fast stellar wind
compressed the superwind to form the inner shell and excavated an elongated
cavity at the center, but has ceased in the past. At the current old age, the
inner shell is backfilling the central cavity.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, to appear in the Astronomical Journa
PT-Symmetric Versus Hermitian Formulations of Quantum Mechanics
A non-Hermitian Hamiltonian that has an unbroken PT symmetry can be converted
by means of a similarity transformation to a physically equivalent Hermitian
Hamiltonian. This raises the following question: In which form of the quantum
theory, the non-Hermitian or the Hermitian one, is it easier to perform
calculations? This paper compares both forms of a non-Hermitian
quantum-mechanical Hamiltonian and demonstrates that it is much harder to
perform calculations in the Hermitian theory because the perturbation series
for the Hermitian Hamiltonian is constructed from divergent Feynman graphs. For
the Hermitian version of the theory, dimensional continuation is used to
regulate the divergent graphs that contribute to the ground-state energy and
the one-point Green's function. The results that are obtained are identical to
those found much more simply and without divergences in the non-Hermitian
PT-symmetric Hamiltonian. The contribution to the
ground-state energy of the Hermitian version of the theory involves graphs with
overlapping divergences, and these graphs are extremely difficult to regulate.
In contrast, the graphs for the non-Hermitian version of the theory are finite
to all orders and they are very easy to evaluate.Comment: 13 pages, REVTeX, 10 eps figure
Clusters in the Luminous Giant HII Regions in M101
(Abridged) We have obtained HST WFPC2 observations of three very luminous but
morphologically different giant HII regions (GHRs) in M101, NGC5461, NGC5462,
and NGC5471, in order to study cluster formation in GHRs. The measured (M_F547M
- M_F675W) colors and M_F547M magnitudes are used to determine the ages and
masses of the cluster candidates with M_F547M <= -9.0. NGC5461 is dominated by
a very luminous core, and has been suggested to host a super-star cluster
(SSC). Our observations show that it contains three R136-class clusters
superposed on a bright stellar background in a small region. This tight group
of clusters may dynamically evolve into an SSC in the future, and may appear
unresolved and be identified as an SSC at large distances, but at present
NGC5461 has no SSCs. NGC5462 has loosely distributed HII regions and clusters
without a prominent core. It has the largest number of cluster candidates among
the three GHRs, but most of them are faint and older than 10 Myr. NGC5471 has
multiple bright HII regions, and contains a large number of faint clusters
younger than 5 Myr. Two of the clusters in NGC5471 are older than R136, but
just as luminous; they may be the most massive clusters in the three GHRs. The
fraction of stars formed in massive clusters is estimated from the clusters'
contribution to the total stellar continuum emission and a comparison of the
ionizing power of the clusters to the ionizing requirement of the associated
HII regions. Both estimates show that <~ 50% of massive stars are formed in
massive clusters. The cluster luminosity functions (CLFs) of the three GHRs
show different slopes. NGC5462 has the steepest CLF and the most loosely
distributed interstellar gas, qualitatively consistent with the hypothesis that
massive clusters are formed in high-pressure interstellar environments.Comment: 36 pages (figures not included), 16 figures (3 of them are color
figures). Figures are in JPEG or GIF format with a lower resolution due to
the size limit of the file. For a higher resolution version of the paper,
please download from http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~c-chen/clusters.pdf. accepted
for ApJ (scheduled for the ApJ 2005 February issue
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