5,873 research outputs found
The Swift X-ray Telescope Cluster Survey II. X-ray spectral analysis
(Abridged) We present a spectral analysis of a new, flux-limited sample of 72
X-ray selected clusters of galaxies identified with the X-ray Telescope (XRT)
on board the Swift satellite down to a flux limit of ~10-14 erg/s/cm2 (SWXCS,
Tundo et al. 2012). We carry out a detailed X-ray spectral analysis with the
twofold aim of measuring redshifts and characterizing the properties of the
Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM). Optical counterparts and spectroscopic or
photometric redshifts are obtained with a cross-correlation with NED.
Additional photometric redshifts are computed with a dedicated follow-up
program with the TNG and a cross-correlation with the SDSS. We also detect the
iron emission lines in 35% of the sample, and hence obtain a robust measure of
the X-ray redshift zX. We use zX whenever the optical redshift is not
available. Finally, for all the sources with measured redshift,
background-subtracted spectra are fitted with a mekal model. We perform
extensive spectral simulations to derive an empirical formula to account for
fitting bias. The bias-corrected values are then used to investigate the
scaling properties of the X-ray observables. Overall, we are able to
characterize the ICM of 46 sources. The sample is mostly constituted by
clusters with temperatures between 3 and 10 keV, plus 14 low-mass clusters and
groups with temperatures below 3 keV. The redshift distribution peaks around
z~0.25 and extends up to z~1, with 60% of the sample at 0.1<z<0.4. We derive
the Luminosity-Temperature relation for these 46 sources, finding good
agreement with previous studies. The quality of the SWXCS sample is comparable
to other samples available in the literature and obtained with much larger
X-ray telescopes. Our results have interesting implications for the design of
future X-ray survey telescopes, characterised by good-quality PSF over the
entire field of view and low background.Comment: 27 pages, 15 figures; minor typos corrected. To be published in A&A,
Volume 567, July 2014. Websites of the SWXCS project:
http://www.arcetri.astro.it/SWXCS/ and http://swxcs.ustc.edu.cn
The Solar hep Process in Effective Field Theory
Using effective field theory, we calculate the S-factor for the hep process
in a totally parameter-free formulation. The transition operators are organized
according to chiral counting, and their matrix elements are evaluated using the
realistic nuclear wave functions obtained in the
correlated-hyperspherical-harmonics method. Terms of up to
next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in heavy-baryon chiral perturbation
theory are considered. Fixing the only parameter in the theory by fitting the
tritium \beta-decay rate, we predict the hep S-factor with accuracy better than
\sim 20 %.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex. Minor revision has been mad
Parameter-Free Calculation of the Solar Proton Fusion Rate in Effective Field Theory
Spurred by the recent complete determination of the weak currents in
two-nucleon systems up to in heavy-baryon chiral perturbation
theory, we carry out a parameter-free calculation of the solar proton fusion
rate in an effective field theory that combines the merits of the standard
nuclear physics method and systematic chiral expansion. Using the tritium
beta-decay rate as an input to fix the only unknown parameter in the effective
Lagrangian, we can evaluate with drastically improved precision the ratio of
the two-body contribution to the well established one-body contribution; the
ratio is determined to be (0.86\pm 0.05) %. This result is essentially
independent of the cutoff parameter for a wide range of its variation (500 MeV
\le \Lambda \le 800 MeV), a feature that substantiates the consistency of the
calculation.Comment: 10 pages. The argument is considerably more sharpened with a reduced
error ba
Spatiotemporal dynamics of Coulomb-correlated carriers in semiconductors
When the excitation of carriers in real space is focused down to the
nanometer scale, the carrier system can no longer be viewed as homogeneous and
ultrafast transport of the excited carrier wave packets occurs. In
state-of-the-art semiconductor structures like low-dimensional heterostructures
or monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides, the Coulomb interaction
between excited carriers becomes stronger due to confinement or reduced
screening. This demands a fundamental understanding of strongly interacting
electrons and holes and the influence of Coulomb correlations. To study the
corresponding particle dynamics in a controlled way we consider a system of up
to two electron-hole pairs exactly within a wave function approach. We show
that the excited wave packets contain a non-trivial mixture of free particle
and excitonic states. We further scrutinize the influence of Coulomb
interaction on the wave packet dynamics revealing its different role for below
and above band-gap excitation.Comment: submitted to Physical Review
An extension of SPARQL for expressing qualitative preferences
In this paper we present SPREFQL, an extension of the SPARQL language that
allows appending a PREFER clause that expresses "soft" preferences over the
query results obtained by the main body of the query. The extension does not
add expressivity and any SPREFQL query can be transformed to an equivalent
standard SPARQL query. However, clearly separating preferences from the "hard"
patterns and filters in the WHERE clause gives queries where the intention of
the client is more cleanly expressed, an advantage for both human readability
and machine optimization. In the paper we formally define the syntax and the
semantics of the extension and we also provide empirical evidence that
optimizations specific to SPREFQL improve run-time efficiency by comparison to
the usually applied optimizations on the equivalent standard SPARQL query.Comment: Accepted to the 2017 International Semantic Web Conference, Vienna,
October 201
Hubble Space Telescope Imaging in the Chandra Deep Field South: III. Quantitative Morphology of the 1Ms Chandra Counterparts and Comparison with the Field Population
We present quantitative morphological analyses of 37 HST/WFPC2 counterparts
of X-ray sources in the 1 Ms Chandra Deep Field-South (CDFS). We investigate:
1) 1-D surface brightness profiles via isophotal ellipse fitting; 2) 2-D, PSF-
convolved, bulge+disk+nucleus profile-fitting; 3) asymmetry and concentration
indices compared with all ~3000 sources in our three WFPC2 fields; and 4) near-
neighbor analyses comparing local environments of X-ray sources versus the
field control sample. Significant nuclear point-source optical components
appear in roughly half of the resolved HST/WFPC2 counterparts, showing a narrow
range of F_X/F_{opt,nuc} consistent with the several HST-unresolved X-ray
sources (putative type-1 AGN) in our fields. We infer roughly half of the
HST/WFPC2 counterparts host unobscured AGN, which suggests no steep decline in
the type-1/type-2 ratio out to the redshifts z~0.5-1 typical of our sources.
The concentration indices of the CDFS counterparts are clearly larger on
average than those of the field distribution, at 5-sigma, suggesting that the
strong correlation between central black hole mass and host galaxy properties
(including concentration index) observed in nearby galaxies is already evident
by z~0.5-1. By contrast, the asymmetry index distribution of the 21 resolved
CDFS sources at I<23 is indistinguishable from the I<23 field. Moreover, the
frequency of I<23 near neighbors around the CDFS counterparts is not
significantly different from the field sample. These results, combined with
previous similar findings for local samples, suggest that recent merger/
interaction history is not a good indicator of AGN activity over a substantial
range of look-back time.Comment: 30 pages, incl. 8 figures; accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journa
Detection of Evolved High-Redshift Galaxies in Deep NICMOS/VLT Images
A substantial population of high redshift early-type galaxies is detected in
very deep UBVRIJHK images towards the HDF-South. Four elliptical profile
galaxies are identified in the redshift range z=1-2, all with very red SEDs,
implying ages of >2 Gyrs for standard passive evolution. We also find later
type IR-luminous galaxies at similarly high redshift, (10 objects with z>1,
H1 Gyr. The number
and luminosity-densities of these galaxies are comparable with the local
E/SO-Sbc populations for \Omega_m>0.2, and in the absence of a significant
cosmological constant, we infer that the major fraction of luminous
Hubble-sequence galaxies have evolved little since z~2. A highly complete
photometric redshift distribution is constructed to H=25 (69 galaxies) showing
a broad spread of redshift, peaking at z~1.5, in reasonable agreement with some
analyses of the HDF. Five `dropout' galaxies are detected at z~3.8, which are
compact in the IR, ~0.5 kpc/h at rest 3500\AA. No example of a blue IR luminous
elliptical is found, restricting the star-formation epoch of ellipticals to
z>10 for a standard IMF and modest extinction.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal
Letters, discussion of clustering added, color image available at
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~tjb/nic3.htm
A highly-ionized region surrounding SN Refsdal revealed by MUSE
Supernova (SN) Refsdal is the first multiply-imaged, highly-magnified, and
spatially-resolved SN ever observed. The SN exploded in a highly-magnified
spiral galaxy at z=1.49 behind the Frontier Fields Cluster MACS1149, and
provides a unique opportunity to study the environment of SNe at high z. We
exploit the time delay between multiple images to determine the properties of
the SN and its environment, before, during, and after the SN exploded. We use
the integral-field spectrograph MUSE on the VLT to simultaneously target all
observed and model-predicted positions of SN Refsdal. We find MgII emission at
all positions of SN Refsdal, accompanied by weak FeII* emission at two
positions. The measured ratios of [OII] to MgII emission of 10-20 indicate a
high degree of ionization with low metallicity. Because the same high degree of
ionization is found in all images, and our spatial resolution is too coarse to
resolve the region of influence of SN Refsdal, we conclude that this high
degree of ionization has been produced by previous SNe or a young and hot
stellar population. We find no variability of the [OII] line over a period of
57 days. This suggests that there is no variation in the [OII] luminosity of
the SN over this period, or that the SN has a small contribution to the
integrated [OII] emission over the scale resolved by our observations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A&
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