Relativistic Astronomy. III. Test of Special Relativity via Doppler Effect

The Breakthrough Starshot program is planning to send transrelativistic probes to travel to nearby stellar systems within decades. Because the probe velocity is designed to be a good fraction of the light speed, Zhang & Li recently proposed that these transrelativistic probes can be used to study astronomical objects and to test special relativity. In this work, we propose some methods to test special relativity and constrain photon mass using the Doppler effect with the images and spectral features of astronomical objects as observed in the transrelativistic probes. We introduce more general theories to set up the framework of testing special relativity, including the parametric general Doppler effect and the Doppler effect with massive photons. We find that by comparing the spectra of a certain astronomical object, one can test Lorentz invariance and constrain photon mass. Additionally, using the imaging and spectrograph capabilities of transrelativistic probes, one can test time dilation and constrain photon mass. For a transrelativistic probe with velocity v ~ 0.2c, aperture D ~ 3.5 cm, and spectral resolution R ~ 100 (or 1000), we find that the probe velocity uncertainty can be constrained to σ v ~ 0.01c (or 0.001c), and the time dilation factor uncertainty can be constrained to (or 0.001), where is the time dilation factor and γ is the Lorentz factor. Meanwhile, the photon mass limit is set to m γ 10−33 g, which is slightly lower than the energy of the optical photon

Multiagent Bidirectionally-Coordinated Nets: Emergence of Human-level Coordination in Learning to Play StarCraft Combat Games

Many artificial intelligence (AI) applications often require multiple intelligent agents to work in a collaborative effort. Efficient learning for intra-agent communication and coordination is an indispensable step towards general AI. In this paper, we take StarCraft combat game as a case study, where the task is to coordinate multiple agents as a team to defeat their enemies. To maintain a scalable yet effective communication protocol, we introduce a Multiagent Bidirectionally-Coordinated Network (BiCNet ['bIknet]) with a vectorised extension of actor-critic formulation. We show that BiCNet can handle different types of combats with arbitrary numbers of AI agents for both sides. Our analysis demonstrates that without any supervisions such as human demonstrations or labelled data, BiCNet could learn various types of advanced coordination strategies that have been commonly used by experienced game players. In our experiments, we evaluate our approach against multiple baselines under different scenarios; it shows state-of-the-art performance, and possesses potential values for large-scale real-world applications.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures. Previously as title: "Multiagent Bidirectionally-Coordinated Nets for Learning to Play StarCraft Combat Games", Mar 201

Higgs self-coupling in the MSSM and NMSSM after the LHC Run 1

Measuring the Higgs self-coupling is one of the crucial physics goals at the LHC Run-2 and other future colliders. In this work, we attempt to figure out the size of SUSY effects on the trilinear self-coupling of the 125 GeV Higgs boson in the MSSM and NMSSM after the LHC Run-1. Taking account of current experimental constraints, such as the Higgs data, flavor constraints, electroweak precision observables and dark matter detections, we obtain the observations: (1) In the MSSM, the ratio of $\lambda^{MSSM}_{3h}/\lambda^{SM}_{3h}$ has been tightly constrained by the LHC data, which can be only slightly smaller than 1 and minimally reach 97\%; (2) In the NMSSM with $\lambda<0.7$, a sizable reduction of $\lambda^{NMSSM}_{3h_2}/\lambda^{SM}_{3h_2}$ can occur and minimally reach 10\% when the lightest CP-even Higgs boson mass $m_{h_1}$ is close to the SM-like Higgs boson $m_{h_2}$ due to the large mixing angle between the singlet and doublet Higgs bosons; (3) In the NMSSM with $\lambda>0.7$, a large enhancement or reduction $-1.1<\lambda^{NMSSM}_{3h_1}/\lambda^{SM}_{3h_1}<2$ can occur, which is accompanied by a sizable change of $h_1\tau^+\tau^-$ coupling. The future colliders, such as the HL-LHC and ILC, will have the capacity to test these large deviations in the NMSSM.Comment: 28 pages, discussions and references added, matched to journal versio

Long Term Spectral Evolution of Tidal Disruption Candidates Selected by Strong Coronal Lines

We present results of follow-up optical spectroscopic observations of seven rare, extreme coronal line emitting galaxies reported by Wang et al. (2012) with Multi-Mirror Telescope (MMT). Large variations in coronal lines are found in four objects, making them strong candidates of tidal disruption events (TDE). For the four TDE candidates, all the coronal lines with ionization status higher than [Fe VII] disappear within 5-9 years. The [Fe VII] faded by a factor of about five in one object (J0952+2143) within 4 years, whereas emerged in other two without them previously. A strong increment in the [O III] flux is observed, shifting the line ratios towards the loci of active galactic nucleus on the BPT diagrams. Surprisingly, we detect a non-canonical [O III]5007/[O III]4959 2 in two objects, indicating a large column density of O$^{2+}$ and thus probably optical thick gas. This also requires a very large ionization parameter and relatively soft ionizing spectral energy distribution (e.g. blackbody with $T < 5\times 10^4$ K). Our observations can be explained as echoing of a strong ultraviolet to soft X-ray flare caused by tidal disruption events, on molecular clouds in the inner parsecs of the galactic nuclei. Re-analyzing the SDSS spectra reveals double-peaked or strongly blue-shouldered broad lines in three of the objects, which disappeared in the MMT spectra in two objects, and faded by a factor of ten in 8 years in the remaining object with a decrease in both the line width and centroid offset. We interpret these broad lines as arising from decelerating biconical outflows. Our results demonstrate that the signatures of echoing can persist for as long as ten years, and can be used to probe the gas environment in the quiescent galactic nuclei.Comment: 30 Pages, 10 Figures, 2 Tables, Accepted for Publication in Ap