285 research outputs found
Rapid Bayesian position reconstruction for gravitational-wave transients
Within the next few years, Advanced LIGO and Virgo should detect
gravitational waves from binary neutron star and neutron star-black hole
mergers. These sources are also predicted to power a broad array of
electromagnetic transients. Because the electromagnetic signatures can be faint
and fade rapidly, observing them hinges on rapidly inferring the sky location
from the gravitational-wave observations. Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for
gravitational-wave parameter estimation can take hours or more. We introduce
BAYESTAR, a rapid, Bayesian, non-Markov chain Monte Carlo sky localization
algorithm that takes just seconds to produce probability sky maps that are
comparable in accuracy to the full analysis. Prompt localizations from BAYESTAR
will make it possible to search electromagnetic counterparts of compact binary
mergers.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures, published in Phys. Rev.
Tiling strategies for optical follow-up of gravitational wave triggers by wide field of view telescopes
Binary neutron stars are among the most promising candidates for joint
gravitational-wave and electromagnetic astronomy. The goal of this work is to
investigate the strategy of using gravitational wave sky-localizations for
binary neutron star systems, to search for electromagnetic counterparts using
wide field of view optical telescopes. We examine various strategies of
scanning the gravitational wave sky-localizations on the mock 2015-16
gravitational-wave events. We propose an optimal tiling-strategy that would
ensure the most economical coverage of the gravitational wave sky-localization,
while keeping in mind the realistic constrains of transient optical astronomy.
Our analysis reveals that the proposed tiling strategy improves the
sky-localization coverage over naive contour-covering method. The improvement
is more significant for observations conducted using larger field of view
telescopes, or for observations conducted over smaller confidence interval of
gravitational wave sky-localization probability distribution. Next, we
investigate the performance of the tiling strategy for telescope arrays and
compare their performance against monolithic giant field of view telescopes. We
observed that distributing the field of view of the telescopes into arrays of
multiple telescopes significantly improves the coverage efficiency by as much
as 50% over a single large FOV telescope in 2016 localizations while scanning
around 100 sq. degrees. Finally, we studied the ability of optical counterpart
detection by various types of telescopes. In Our analysis for a range of wide
field-of-view telescopes we found improvement in detection upon sacrificing
coverage of localization in order to achieve greater observation depth for very
large field-of-view - small aperture telescopes, especially if the intrinsic
brightness of the optical counterparts are weak.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 10 pages, 10 figure
Assessing Online Viewing Practices Among College Students
This article focuses on media literacy education for college students. First, we conducted psychometric analyses to verify the properties of the Critical Evaluation and Analysis of Media (CEAM) scale. CEAM measures college studentsâ self-reported practices for critically evaluating and analyzing the credibility, audience, and technical design elements of online media, such as news, advertisement, and entertainment media. Using CEAM, our second goal was to identify trends in critical viewing practices among first-year students enrolled in college. Results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and item response theory (IRT) supported a three-factor structure for the CEAM scale. Composite score reliability for all items comprising the total scale displayed strong evidence for the internal consistency of the scale with a Coefficient Alpha (α) of .91. Score reliability estimates for each subscale follow: (a) Questioning Credibility (α = .80), (b) Recognizing Audience (α = .78), and (c) Recognizing Design (α = .81). Findings from the study indicate that while first-year college students generally perceive they have adequate practices in recognizing audience in media messages and questioning the credibility of news, there is room for improvement in questioning the credibility of advertisements, suggesting that college instructors should focus more on advertising literacy
On the Existence of Radiation Gauges in Petrov type II spacetimes
The radiation gauges used by Chrzanowski (his IRG/ORG) for metric
reconstruction in the Kerr spacetime seem to be over-specified. Their
specification consists of five conditions: four, which we treat here as valid
gauge conditions, plus an additional condition on the trace of the metric
perturbation. In this work, we utilize a newly developed form of the perturbed
Einstein equations to establish a condition -- on a particular tetrad component
of the stress-energy tensor -- under which the full IRG/ORG can be imposed.
Using gauge freedom, we are able to impose the full IRG for Petrov type II and
type D backgrounds, using a different tetrad for each case. As a specific
example, we work through the process of imposing the IRG in a Schwarzschild
background, using a more traditional approach. Implications for metric
reconstruction using the Teukolsky curvature perturbations in type D spacetimes
are briefly discussed.Comment: 21 pages, uses iop style files. v2: proved a stronger result for type
II backgrounds, added a subsection on remaining gauge freedom in the full IRG
and improved calrity and readability throughout due to insightful referee
comments; published as Class. Quantum Grav. 24 (2007) 2367-238
Towards the Laboratory Search for Space-Time Dissipation
It has been speculated that gravity could be an emergent phenomenon, with
classical general relativity as an effective, macroscopic theory, valid only
for classical systems at large temporal and spatial scales. As in classical
continuum dynamics, the existence of underlying microscopic degrees of freedom
may lead to macroscopic dissipative behaviors. With the hope that such
dissipative behaviors of gravity could be revealed by carefully designed
experiments in the laboratory, we consider a phenomenological model that adds
dissipations to the gravitational field, much similar to frictions in solids
and fluids. Constraints to such dissipative behavior can already be imposed by
astrophysical observations and existing experiments, but mostly in lower
frequencies. We propose a series of experiments working in higher frequency
regimes, which may potentially put more stringent bounds on these models.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure
Gravitational Radiation from Preheating with Many Fields
Parametric resonances provide a mechanism by which particles can be created
just after inflation. Thus far, attention has focused on a single or many
inflaton fields coupled to a single scalar field. However, generically we
expect the inflaton to couple to many other relativistic degrees of freedom
present in the early universe. Using simulations in an expanding
Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker spacetime, in this paper we show how
preheating is affected by the addition of multiple fields coupled to the
inflaton. We focus our attention on gravitational wave production--an important
potential observational signature of the preheating stage. We find that
preheating and its gravitational wave signature is robust to the coupling of
the inflaton to more matter fields.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, v2 submission version, thank you for comments
Tiling strategies for optical follow-up of gravitational-wave triggers by telescopes with a wide field of view
Aims. Binary neutron stars are among the most promising candidates for joint gravitational-wave and electromagnetic astronomy. The goal of this work is to investigate various observing strategies that telescopes with wide field of view might incorporate while searching for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational-wave triggers.
Methods. We examined various strategies of scanning the gravitational-wave sky localizations on the mock 2015â16 gravitational-wave events. First, we studied the performance of the sky coverage using a naive tiling system that completely covers a given confidence interval contour using a fixed grid. Then we propose the ranked-tiling strategy where we sample the localization in discrete two-dimensional intervals that are equivalent to the telescopeâs field of view and rank them based on their sample localizations. We then introduce an optimization of the grid by iterative sliding of the tiles. Next, we conducted tests for all the methods on a large sample of sky localizations that are expected in the first two years of operation of the Laser interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo detectors. We investigated the performance of the ranked-tiling strategy for telescope arrays and compared their performance against monolithic telescopes with a giant field of view. Finally, we studied the ability of optical counterpart detection by various types of telescopes.
Results. Our analysis reveals that the ranked-tiling strategy improves the localization coverage over the contour-covering method. The improvement is more significant for telescopes with larger fields of view. We also find that while optimizing the position of the tiles significantly improves the coverage compared to contour-covering tiles. For ranked-tiles the same procedure leads to negligible improvement in the coverage of the sky localizations. We observed that distributing the field of view of the telescopes into arrays of multiple telescopes significantly improves the coverage efficiency, by as much as 50% over a single telescope with a large field of view in 2016 localizations while scanning ~100 deg2. Finally, through analyzing a range telescopes with wide field of view, we discovered that counterpart detection can be improved by sacrificing coverage of localization in order to achieve a greater observation depth for telescopes with very large field of view and small aperture, especially if the intrinsic brightness of the optical counterparts is weak
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