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Composite polymer membranes for laserinduced fluorescence thermometry
We demonstrate a modified version of laser-induced fluorescence thermometry (LIFT) for mapping temperature gradients in the vicinity of small photothermal devices. Our approach is based on temperature sensitive fluorescent membranes fabricated with rhodamine B and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Relevant membrane features for LIFT, such as temperature sensitivity, thermal quenching and photobleaching are presented for a range of 25 °C to 90 °C, and their performance is evaluated upon obtaining the temperature gradients produced in the proximity of optical fiber micro-heaters. Our results show that temperature measurements in regions as small as 750 μm x 650 μm, with a temperature resolution of 1 °C, can be readily obtained
On the void explanation of the Cold Spot
The integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) contribution induced on the cosmic microwave
background by the presence of a supervoid as the one detected by Szapudi et al.
(2015) is reviewed in this letter in order to check whether it could explain
the Cold Spot (CS) anomaly. Two different models, previously used for the same
purpose, are considered to describe the matter density profile of the void: a
top hat function and a compensated profile produced by a Gaussian potential.
The analysis shows that, even enabling ellipticity changes or different values
for the dark-energy equation of state parameter , the ISW contribution
due to the presence of the void does not reproduce the properties of the CS.
Finally, the probability of alignment between the void and the CS is also
questioned as an argument in favor of a physical connection between these two
phenomena
Multi-resolution internal template cleaning: An application to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7-yr polarization data
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation data obtained by different
experiments contain, besides the desired signal, a superposition of microwave
sky contributions. We present a fast and robust method, using a wavelet
decomposition on the sphere, to recover the CMB signal from microwave maps. An
application to \textit{WMAP} polarization data is presented, showing its good
performance particularly in very polluted regions of the sky. The applied
wavelet has the advantages of requiring little computational time in its
calculations, being adapted to the \textit{HEALPix} pixelization scheme, and
offering the possibility of multi-resolution analysis. The decomposition is
implemented as part of a fully internal template fitting method, minimizing the
variance of the resulting map at each scale. Using a characterization
of the noise, we find that the residuals of the cleaned maps are compatible
with those expected from the instrumental noise. The maps are also comparable
to those obtained from the \textit{WMAP} team, but in our case we do not make
use of external data sets. In addition, at low resolution, our cleaned maps
present a lower level of noise. The E-mode power spectrum is
computed at high and low resolution; and a cross power spectrum
is also calculated from the foreground reduced maps of temperature given by
\textit{WMAP} and our cleaned maps of polarization at high resolution. These
spectra are consistent with the power spectra supplied by the \textit{WMAP}
team. We detect the E-mode acoustic peak at , as predicted by
the standard model. The B-mode power spectrum is
compatible with zero.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. Some changes have been done from the original
manuscript. This paper is accepted by MNRA
Exploring two-spin internal linear combinations for the recovery of the CMB polarization
We present a methodology to recover cosmic microwave background (CMB)
polarization in which the quantity is linearly combined at
different frequencies using complex coefficients. This is the most general
linear combination of the and Stokes parameters which preserves the
physical coherence of the residual contribution on the CMB estimation. The
approach is applied to the internal linear combination (ILC) and the internal
template fitting (ITF) methodologies. The variance of of the resulting map
is minimized to compute the coefficients of the linear combination. One of the
key aspects of this procedure is that it serves to account for a global
frequency-dependent shift of the polarization phase. Although in the standard
case, in which no global E-B transference depending on frequency is expected in
the foreground components, minimizing is
similar to minimizing and separately (as previous methodologies proceed), multiplying
and by different coefficients induces arbitrary changes in the
polarization angle and it does not preserve the coherence between the spinorial
components. The approach is tested on simulations, obtaining a similar residual
level with respect to the one obtained with other implementations of the ILC,
and perceiving the polarization rotation of a toy model with the frequency
dependence of the Faraday rotation.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Improved constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity for the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 5-yr data
We present new constraints on the non-linear coupling parameter fnl with the
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data. We use an updated method
based on the spherical Mexican hat wavelet (SMHW) which provides improved
constraints on the fnl parameter. This paper is a continuation of a previous
work by Curto et al. where several third order statistics based on the SMHW
were considered. In this paper, we use all the possible third order statistics
computed from the wavelet coefficient maps evaluated at 12 angular scales. The
scales are logarithmically distributed from 6.9 arcmin to 500 arcmin. Our
analysis indicates that fnl is constrained to -18 < fnl < +80 at 95% confidence
level (CL) for the combined V+W WMAP map. This value has been corrected by the
presence of undetected point sources, which adds a positive contribution of
Delta_fnl = 6 +- 5. Our result excludes at ~99% CL the best-fitting value
fnl=87 reported by Yadav & Wandelt. We have also constrained fnl for the Q, V
and W frequency bands separately, finding compatibility with zero at 95 % CL
for the Q and V bands but not for the W band. We have performed some further
tests to understand the cause of this deviation which indicate that systematics
associated to the W radiometers could be responsible for this result. Finally
we have performed a Galactic North-South analysis for fnl. We have not found
any asymmetry, i.e. the best-fitting fnl for the northern pixels is compatible
with the best-fitting fnl for the southern pixels.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in Ap
Searching for a dipole modulation in the large-scale structure of the Universe
Several statistical anomalies in the CMB temperature anisotropies seem to
defy the assumption of a homogeneous and isotropic universe. In particular, a
dipole modulation has been detected both in WMAP and Planck data. We adapt the
methodology proposed by Eriksen et al. (2007) on CMB data to galaxy surveys,
tracing the large-scale structure. We analyse the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS)
data at a resolution of ~2 degrees for three different flux thresholds: 2.5,
5.0 and 10.0 mJy respectively. No evidence of a dipole modulation is found.
This result suggests that the origin of the dipole asymmetry found in the CMB
cannot be assigned to secondary anisotropies produced at redshifts around z =
1. However, it could still have been generated at redshifts higher or lower,
such as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect produced by the local structures.
Other all-sky surveys, like the infrared WISE catalogue, could help to explore
with a high sensitivity a redshift interval closer than the one probed with
NVSS.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Some minor changes have been done from the
original manuscript. This paper is accepted by MNRA
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