Polarization change due to fast winds from accretion disks

A fraction of the radiation produced by an accretion disk may be Thomson scattered by a wind flowing away from the disk. Employing a simple plane-parallel model of the wind, we calculate the polarization of the scattered radiation and find that its sign depends on the wind velocity, beta=v/c. In the case, 0.12 < beta < 0.78, the polarization is parallel to the disk normal, i.e., it is orthogonal to the standard Chandrasekhar's polarization expected from accretion disks. The velocity of an electron-positron wind is likely to saturate near the equilibrium value beta_* of order 0.5 for which the accelerating radiation pressure is balanced by the Compton drag. Then the change of polarization by the wind is most pronounced. This may help to reconcile the standard accretion disk model with the optical polarimetric observations of non-blazar AGNs.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Cosmological test of gravity with polarizations of stochastic gravitational waves around 0.1-1 Hz

In general relativity, a gravitational wave has two polarization modes (tensor mode), but it could have additional polarizations (scalar and vector modes) in the early stage of the universe, where the general relativity may not strictly hold and/or the effect of higher-dimensional gravity may become significant. In this paper, we discuss how to detect extra-polarization modes of stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB), and study the separability of each polarization using future space-based detectors such as BBO and DECIGO. We specifically consider two plausible setups of the spacecraft constellations consisting of two and four clusters, and estimate the sensitivity to each polarization mode of GWBs. We find that a separate detection of each polarization mode is rather sensitive to the geometric configuration and distance between clusters and that the clusters should be, in general, separated by an appropriate distance. This seriously degrades the signal sensitivity, however, for suitable conditions, space-based detector can separately detect scalar, vector and tensor modes of GWBs with energy density as low as ~10^-15.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure

Radiative acceleration and transient, radiation-induced electric fields

The radiative acceleration of particles and the electrostatic potential fields that arise in low density plasmas hit by radiation produced by a transient, compact source are investigated. We calculate the dynamical evolution and asymptotic energy of the charged particles accelerated by the photons and the radiation-induced electric double layer in the full relativistic, Klein-Nishina regime. For fluxes in excess of $10^{27}$ ${\rm erg} {\rm cm}^{-2} {\rm s}^{-1}$, the radiative force on a diluted plasma (n\la 10^{11} cm$^{-3}$) is so strong that electrons are accelerated rapidly to relativistic speeds while ions lag behind owing to their larger inertia. The ions are later effectively accelerated by the strong radiation-induced double layer electric field up to Lorentz factors $\approx 100$, attainable in the case of negligible Compton drag. The asymptotic energies achieved by both ions and electrons are larger by a factor 2--4 with respect to what one could naively expect assuming that the electron-ion assembly is a rigidly coupled system. The regime we investigate may be relevant within the framework of giant flares from soft gamma-repeaters.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, ApJ, in press (tentatively scheduled for the v. 592, 2003 issue

Non-precessional spin-orbit effects on gravitational waves from inspiraling compact binaries to second post-Newtonian order

We derive all second post-Newtonian (2PN), non-precessional effects of spin- orbit coupling on the gravitational wave forms emitted by an inspiraling binary composed of spinning, compact bodies in a quasicircular orbit. Previous post- Newtonian calculations of spin-orbit effects (at 1.5PN order) relied on a fluid description of the spinning bodies. We simplify the calculations by introducing into post-Newtonian theory a delta-function description of the influence of the spins on the bodies' energy-momentum tensor. This description was recently used by Mino, Shibata, and Tanaka (MST) in Teukolsky-formalism analyses of particles orbiting massive black holes, and is based on prior work by Dixon. We compute the 2PN contributions to the wave forms by combining the MST energy-momentum tensor with the formalism of Blanchet, Damour, and Iyer for evaluating the binary's radiative multipoles, and with the well-known 1.5PN order equations of motion for the binary. Our results contribute at 2PN order only to the amplitudes of the wave forms. The secular evolution of the wave forms' phase, the quantity most accurately measurable by LIGO, is not affected by our results until 2.5PN order, at which point other spin-orbit effects also come into play. We plan to evaluate the entire 2.5PN spin-orbit contribution to the secular phase evolution in a future paper, using the techniques of this paper.Comment: 11 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Higher Order Corrections to the Primordial Gravitational Wave Spectrum and its Impact on Parameter Estimates for Inflation

We study the impact of the use of the power series expression for the primordial tensor spectrum on parameter estimation from future direct detection gravitational wave experiments. The spectrum approximated by the power series expansion may give large deviation from the true (fiducial) value when it is normalized at CMB scale because of the large separation between CMB and direct detection scales. We derive the coefficients of the higher order terms of the expansion up to the sixth order within the framework of the slow-roll approximation and investigate how well the inclusion of higher order terms improves the analytic prediction of the spectrum amplitude by comparing with numerical results. Using the power series expression, we consider future constraints on inflationary parameters expected from direct detection experiments of the inflationary gravitational wave background and show that the truncation of the higher order terms can lead to incorrect evaluation of the parameters. We present two example models; a quadratic chaotic inflation model and mixed inflaton and curvaton model with a quartic inflaton potential.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, revised version accepted by JCA

Lesbian and bisexual women's experiences of sexuality-based discrimination and their appearance concerns

Lesbian and bisexual women frequently experience sexuality-based discrimination, which is often based on others' judgements about their appearance. This short article aims to explore whether there is a relationship between lesbian and bisexual women's experiences of sexuality-based discrimination and their satisfaction with the way that they look. Findings from an online survey suggest that discrimination is negatively related to appearance satisfaction for lesbian women, but not for bisexual women. It is argued that this difference exists because lesbian appearance norms are more recognisable and distinctive than bisexual women's appearance norms

Star Clusters

This review concentrates almost entirely on globular star clusters. It emphasises the increasing realisation that few of the traditional problems of star cluster astronomy can be studied in isolation: the influence of the Galaxy affects dynamical evolution deep in the core, and the spectrum of stellar masses; in turn the evolution of the core determines the highest stellar densities, and the rate of encounters. In this way external tidal effects indirectly influence the formation and evolution of blue stragglers, binary pulsars, X-ray sources, etc. More controversially, the stellar density appears to influence the relative distribution of normal stars. In the opposite sense, the evolution of individual stars governs much of the early dynamics of a globular cluster, and the existence of large numbers of primordial binary stars has changed important details of our picture of the dynamical evolution. New computational tools which will become available in the next few years will help dynamical theorists to address these questions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, Te

Discovery of the Onset of Rapid Accretion by a Dormant Massive Black Hole

Massive black holes are believed to reside at the centres of most galaxies. They can be- come detectable by accretion of matter, either continuously from a large gas reservoir or impulsively from the tidal disruption of a passing star, and conversion of the gravitational energy of the infalling matter to light. Continuous accretion drives Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), which are known to be variable but have never been observed to turn on or off. Tidal disruption of stars by dormant massive black holes has been inferred indirectly but the on- set of a tidal disruption event has never been observed. Here we report the first discovery of the onset of a relativistic accretion-powered jet in the new extragalactic transient, Swift J164449.3+573451. The behaviour of this new source differs from both theoretical models of tidal disruption events and observations of the jet-dominated AGN known as blazars. These differences may stem from transient effects associated with the onset of a powerful jet. Such an event in the massive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy could strongly ionize the upper atmosphere of the Earth, if beamed towards us.Comment: Submitted to Nature. 4 pages, 3 figures (main paper). 26 pages, 13 figures (supplementary information

Bayesian Bounds on Parameter Estimation Accuracy for Compact Coalescing Binary Gravitational Wave Signals

A global network of laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors is projected to be in operation by around the turn of the century. Here, the noisy output of a single instrument is examined. A gravitational wave is assumed to have been detected in the data and we deal with the subsequent problem of parameter estimation. Specifically, we investigate theoretical lower bounds on the minimum mean-square errors associated with measuring the parameters of the inspiral waveform generated by an orbiting system of neutron stars/black holes. Three theoretical lower bounds on parameter estimation accuracy are considered: the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB); the Weiss-Weinstein bound (WWB); and the Ziv-Zakai bound (ZZB). We obtain the WWB and ZZB for the Newtonian-form of the coalescing binary waveform, and compare them with published CRB and numerical Monte-Carlo results. At large SNR, we find that the theoretical bounds are all identical and are attained by the Monte-Carlo results. As SNR gradually drops below 10, the WWB and ZZB are both found to provide increasingly tighter lower bounds than the CRB. However, at these levels of moderate SNR, there is a significant departure between all the bounds and the numerical Monte-Carlo results.Comment: 17 pages (LaTeX), 4 figures. Submitted to Physical Review