Exploring the Implications of Monetary Policy Normalisation for Irish Mortgage Arrears. Quarterly Economic Commentary Special Article, Spring 2019.

The current level of the monetary policy rate in the Eurozone is low both by international and historical standards and will likely rise over the coming years. In this Article we consider what the impact of a rise in ECB policy rates would mean for the Irish mortgage market. First, we examine the structure of the Irish mortgage market in terms of interest rate contract types and explore the link between the mortgage rate and the policy rate. Second, we draw out the results of policy modelling linking arrears and interest rates using a model put forward in Slaymaker et al. (2019). We then use this model to provide some further scenarios exploring the impact of interest rate rises on the arrears rate for particular groups of Irish households. Our findings suggest a 25 basis point increase in the policy rate would lead to a 0.1 percentage point increase in new missed mortgage payments. While households are in a better economic position to withstand policy rate increases given the recovery in the labour market and in house prices, rate rises would lead to payments rising faster than long-term income growth. Younger, lower income households who are at an earlier stage in their mortgage contract are more at risk, as are households on tracker interest rates who have a contractual pass-through from the policy rate to the lending rate

Hot Subdwarfs in Resolved Binaries

In the last decade or so, there have been numerous searches for hot subdwarfs in close binaries. There has been little to no attention paid to wide binaries however. The advantages of understanding these systems can be many. The stars can be assumed to be coeval, which means they have common properties. The distance and metallicity, for example, are both unknown for the subdwarf component, but may be determinable for the secondary, allowing other properties of the subdwarf to be estimated. With this in mind, we have started a search for common proper motion pairs containing a hot subdwarf component. We have uncovered several promising candidate systems, which are presented here.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Proceedings of The Fourth Meeting on Hot Subdwarf Stars and Related Objects held in China, 20-24 July 2009. Accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Elementary Forms of the Metaphorical Life : Tropes at Work in Durkheim’s Theory of the Religious

Peer reviewedPostprin

First Attempt at Spectroscopic Detection of Gravity Modes in a Long-Period Pulsating Subdwarf B Star -- PG 1627+017

In the first spectroscopic campaign for a PG 1716 variable (or long-period pulsating subdwarf B star), we succeeded in detecting velocity variations due to g-mode pulsations at a level of 1.0-1.5 km/s.The observations were obtained during 40 nights on 2-m class telescopes in Arizona, South Africa,and Australia. The target,PG1627+017, is one of the brightest and largest amplitude stars in its class.It is also the visible component of a post-common envelope binary.Our final radial velocity data set includes 84 hours of time-series spectroscopy over a time baseline of 53 days. Our derived radial velocity amplitude spectrum, after subtracting the orbital motion, shows three potential pulsational modes 3-4 sigma above the mean noise level, at 7201.0s,7014.6s and 7037.3s.Only one of the features is statistically likely to be real,but all three are tantalizingly close to, or a one day alias of, the three strongest periodicities found in the concurrent photometric campaign. We further attempted to detect pulsational variations in the Balmer line amplitudes. The single detected periodicity of 7209 s, although weak, is consistent with theoretical expectations as a function of wavelength.Furthermore, it allows us to rule out a degree index of l= 3 or l= 5 for that mode. Given the extreme weakness of g-mode pulsations in these stars,we conclude that anything beyond simply detecting their presence will require larger telescopes,higher efficiency spectral monitoring over longer time baselines,improved longitude coverage, and increased radial velocity precision.Comment: 39 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables, ApJ accepted. See postscript for full abtrac

Hypervelocity Stars. I. The Spectroscopic Survey

We discuss our targeted search for hypervelocity stars (HVSs), stars traveling with velocities so extreme that dynamical ejection from a massive black hole is their only suggested origin. Our survey, now half complete, has successfully identified a total of four probable HVSs plus a number of other unusual objects. Here we report the most recently discovered two HVSs: SDSS J110557.45+093439.5 and possibly SDSS J113312.12+010824, traveling with Galactic rest-frame velocities at least +508+-12 and +418+-10 km/s, respectively. The other late B-type objects in our survey are consistent with a population of post main-sequence stars or blue stragglers in the Galactic halo, with mean metallicity [Fe/H]=-1.3 and velocity dispersion 108+-5 km/s. Interestingly, the velocity distribution shows a tail of objects with large positive velocities that may be a mix of low-velocity HVSs and high-velocity runaway stars. Our survey also includes a number of DA white dwarfs with unusually red colors, possibly extremely low mass objects. Two of our objects are B supergiants in the Leo A dwarf, providing the first spectroscopic evidence for star formation in this dwarf galaxy within the last ~30 Myr.Comment: 10 pages, uses emulateapj, accepted by Ap

Oscillation frequencies and mode lifetimes in alpha Centauri A

We analyse our recently-published velocity measurements of alpha Cen A (Butler et al. 2004). After adjusting the weights on a night-by-night basis in order to optimize the window function to minimize sidelobes, we extract 42 oscillation frequencies with l=0 to 3 and measure the large and small frequency separations. We give fitted relations to these frequencies that can be compared with theoretical models and conclude that the observed scatter about these fits is due to the finite lifetimes of the oscillation modes. We estimate the mode lifetimes to be 1-2 d, substantially shorter than in the Sun.Comment: Accepted by Ap

Observing Strategies for the Detection of Jupiter Analogs

To understand the frequency, and thus the formation and evolution, of planetary systems like our own solar system, it is critical to detect Jupiter-like planets in Jupiter-like orbits. For long-term radial-velocity monitoring, it is useful to estimate the observational effort required to reliably detect such objects, particularly in light of severe competition for limited telescope time. We perform detailed simulations of observational campaigns, maximizing the realism of the sampling of a set of simulated observations. We then compute the detection limits for each campaign to quantify the effect of increasing the number of observational epochs and varying their time coverage. We show that once there is sufficient time baseline to detect a given orbital period, it becomes less effective to add further time coverage-rather, the detectability of a planet scales roughly as the square root of the number of observations, independently of the number of orbital cycles included in the data string. We also show that no noise floor is reached, with a continuing improvement in detectability at the maximum number of observations N = 500 tested here.Peer reviewe

First Kepler results on compact pulsators II: KIC 010139564, a new pulsating subdwarf B (V361 Hya) star with an additional low-frequency mode

We present the discovery of nonradial pulsations in a hot subdwarf B star based on 30.5 days of nearly continuous time-series photometry using the \emph{Kepler} spacecraft. KIC 010139564 is found to be a short-period pulsator of the V361 Hya (EC 14026) class with more than 10 independent pulsation modes whose periods range from 130 to 190 seconds. It also shows one periodicity at a period of 3165 seconds. If this periodicity is a high order g-mode, then this star may be the hottest member of the hybrid DW Lyn stars. In addition to the resolved pulsation frequencies, additional periodic variations in the light curve suggest that a significant number of additional pulsation frequencies may be present. The long duration of the run, the extremely high duty cycle, and the well-behaved noise properties allow us to explore the stability of the periodic variations, and to place strong constraints on how many of them are independent stellar oscillation modes. We find that most of the identified periodicities are indeed stable in phase and amplitude, suggesting a rotation period of 2-3 weeks for this star, but further observations are needed to confirm this suspicion.Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in MNRA

Substellar companions and the formation of hot subdwarf stars

"Copyright 2011 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics."We give a brief review over the observational evidence for close substellar companions to hot subdwarf stars. The formation of these core helium-burning objects requires huge mass loss of their red giant progenitors. It has been suggested that besides stellar companions substellar objects in close orbits may be able to trigger this mass loss. Such objects can be easily detected around hot subdwarf stars by medium or high resolution spectroscopy with an RV accuracy at the km s(-1)-level. Eclipsing systems of Vir type stick out of transit surveys because of their characteristic light curves. The best evidence that substellar objects in close orbits around sdBs exist and that they are able to trigger the required mass loss is provided by the eclipsing system SDSS J0820+0008, which was found in the course of the MUCHFUSS project. Furthermore, several candidate systems have been discovered.Final Accepted Versio

Analytical maximum likelihood estimation of stellar magnetic fields

The polarised spectrum of stellar radiation encodes valuable information on the conditions of stellar atmospheres and the magnetic fields that permeate them. In this paper, we give explicit expressions to estimate the magnetic field vector and its associated error from the observed Stokes parameters. We study the solar case where specific intensities are observed and then the stellar case, where we receive the polarised flux. In this second case, we concentrate on the explicit expression for the case of a slow rotator with a dipolar magnetic field geometry. Moreover, we also give explicit formulae to retrieve the magnetic field vector from the LSD profiles without assuming mean values for the LSD artificial spectral line. The formulae have been obtained assuming that the spectral lines can be described in the weak field regime and using a maximum likelihood approach. The errors are recovered by means of the hermitian matrix. The bias of the estimators are analysed in depth.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRA