The rotational broadening and the mass of the donor star of GRS 1915+105

The binary parameters of the microquasar GRS 1915+105 have been determined by the detection of Doppler-shifted 12CO and 13CO lines in its K-band spectrum (Greiner et al., 2001, Nature, 414, 522). Here, we present further analysis of the same K-band VLT spectra and we derive a rotational broadening of the donor star of V sin i=26+-3 km/s from the 12CO/13CO lines. Assuming that the K-type star is tidally locked to the black hole and is filling its Roche-lobe surface, then the implied mass ratio is q = M_d/M_x = 0.058+-0.033. This result, combined with (P, K, i)=(33.5 d, 140 km/s, 66 deg) gives a more refined mass estimate for the black hole, $M_x=14.0+-4.4 M_{\odot}$, than previously estimated, using an inclination of i=66+-2 deg (Fender et al. 1999) as derived from the orientation of the radio jets and a more accurate distance. The mass for the early K-type giant star is $M_d=0.81\pm0.53 M_{\odot}$, consistent with a more evolved stripped-giant donor star in GRS 1915+105 than, for example, the donor star of the prototype black-hole X-ray transient, V404 Cyg which has the longest binary period after GRS 1915+105.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, A&A Lette

Observations of Massive Star Forming Regions with Water Masers: Mid-Infrared Imaging

We present here a mid-infrared imaging survey of 26 sites of water maser emission. Observations were obtained at the InfraRed Telescope Facility 3-m telescope with the University of Florida mid-infrared imager/spectrometer OSCIR, and the JPL mid-infrared camera MIRLIN. The main purpose of the survey was to explore the relationship between water masers and the massive star formation process. It is generally believed that water masers predominantly trace outflows and embedded massive stellar objects, but may also exist in circumstellar disks around young stars. We investigate each of these possibilities in light of our mid-infrared imaging. We find that mid-infrared emission seems to be more closely associated with water and OH maser emission than cm radio continuum emission from UC HII regions. We also find from the sample of sources in our survey that, like groups of methanol masers, both water and OH masers have a proclivity for grouping into linear or elongated distributions. We conclude that the vast majority of linearly distributed masers are not tracing circumstellar disks, but outflows and shocks instead.Comment: 49 pages; 23 figures; To appear in February 2005 ApJS; To download a version with better quality figures, go to http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~debuizer

Membrane shape as a reporter for applied forces

Recent advances have enabled 3-dimensional reconstructions of biological structures in vivo, ranging in size and complexity from single proteins to multicellular structures. In particular, tomography and confocal microscopy have been exploited to capture detailed 3-dimensional conformations of membranes in cellular processes ranging from viral budding and organelle maintenance to phagocytosis. Despite the wealth of membrane structures available, there is as yet no generic, quantitative method for their interpretation. We propose that by modeling these observed biomembrane shapes as fluid lipid bilayers in mechanical equilibrium, the externally applied forces as well as the pressure, tension, and spontaneous curvature can be computed directly from the shape alone. To illustrate the potential power of this technique, we apply an axial force with optical tweezers to vesicles and explicitly demonstrate that the applied force is equal to the force computed from the membrane conformation

Hard X-ray spectral variability of the brightest Seyfert AGN in the Swift/BAT sample

Aims: We used data from the 58 month long, continuous Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) observations of the five brightest Seyfert galaxies at hard X-rays, to study their flux and spectral variability in the 20-100 keV energy band. The column density in these objects is less than 10^24 cm-2, which implies that the Swift/BAT data allow us to study the "true" variability of the central source. Results: All objects show significant variations, with an amplitude which is similar to the AGN variability amplitude at energies below 10 keV. We found evidence for an anti-correlation between variability amplitude and black hole mass. The light curves in both bands are well correlated, with no significant delays on time scales as short as 2 days. NGC 4151 and NGC 2110 do not show spectral variability, but we found a significant anti-correlation between hardness ratios and source flux in NGC 4388 (and NGC 4945, IC 4329, to a lesser extent). This "softer when brighter" behaviour is similar to what has been observed at energies below 10 keV, and cannot be explained if the continuum varies only in flux; the intrinsic shape should also steepen with increasing flux. Conclusions: The presence of significant flux variations indicate that the central source in these objects is intrinsically variable on time scales as short as 1-2 days. The intrinsic slope of the continuum varies with the flux (at least in NGC 4388). The positive "spectral slope-flux" correlation can be explained if the temperature of the hot corona decreases with increasing flux. The lack of spectral variations in two objects, could be due to the fact that they may operate in a different "state", as their accretion rate is less than 1% of the Eddington limit (significantly smaller than the rate of the other three objects in the sample).Comment: Accepted (29/10/11) for publication in A&A (12 pages, containing 14 figures and 2 tables). (Abstract shortened --see link for the complete one

Selberg Supertrace Formula for Super Riemann Surfaces III: Bordered Super Riemann Surfaces

This paper is the third in a sequel to develop a super-analogue of the classical Selberg trace formula, the Selberg supertrace formula. It deals with bordered super Riemann surfaces. The theory of bordered super Riemann surfaces is outlined, and the corresponding Selberg supertrace formula is developed. The analytic properties of the Selberg super zeta-functions on bordered super Riemann surfaces are discussed, and super-determinants of Dirac-Laplace operators on bordered super Riemann surfaces are calculated in terms of Selberg super zeta-functions.Comment: 43 pages, amste

Towards Pose-Invariant 2D Face Classification for Surveillance

A key problem for "face in the crowd" recognition from existing surveillance cameras in public spaces (such as mass transit centres) is the issue of pose mismatches between probe and gallery faces. In addition to accuracy, scalability is also important, necessarily limiting the complexity of face classification algorithms. In this paper we evaluate recent approaches to the recognition of faces at relatively large pose angles from a gallery of frontal images and propose novel adaptations as well as modifications. Specifically, we compare and contrast the accuracy, robustness and speed of an Active Appearance Model (AAM) based method (where realistic frontal faces are synthesized from non-frontal probe faces) against bag-of-features methods (which are local feature approaches based on block Discrete Cosine Transforms and Gaussian Mixture Models). We show a novel approach where the AAM based technique is sped up by directly obtaining pose-robust features, allowing the omission of the computationally expensive and artefact producing image synthesis step. Additionally, we adapt a histogram-based bag-of-features technique to face classification and contrast its properties to a previously proposed direct bag-of-features method. We also show that the two bag-of-features approaches can be considerably sped up, without a loss in classification accuracy, via an approximation of the exponential function. Experiments on the FERET and PIE databases suggest that the bag-of-features techniques generally attain better performance, with significantly lower computational loads. The histogram-based bag-of-features technique is capable of achieving an average recognition accuracy of 89% for pose angles of around 25 degrees

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13