The Spectator Electromagnetic Effect on Charged Pion Spectra in Peripheral Ultrarelativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

We estimate the electromagnetic effect of the spectator charge on the momentum spectra of $\pi^+$ and $\pi^-$ produced in peripheral Pb+Pb collisions at SPS energies. We find that the effect is large and results in strongly varying structures in the $x_F$ dependence of the $\pi^+/\pi^-$ ratio, especially at low transverse momenta where a deep valley in the above ratio is predicted at $x_F \sim$ 0.15 -- 0.20. It appears that the effect depends on initial conditions. Thus, it provides new information on the space and time evolution of the non-perturbative pion creation process.Comment: 20 pages and 8 figure

The HEAO-2 Guest Investigator Program: Non-linear growth of instabilities in line-driven stellar winds

The linear instability of line-driven stellar winds to take proper account of the dynamical effect of scattered radiation were analyzed. It is found that: (1) the drag effect of the mean scattered radiation does greatly reduce the contribution of scattering lines to the instability at the very base of the wind, but the instability growth rate associated with such lines rapidly increases as the flow moves outward from the base, reaching more than 50% of the growth rate for pure absorption lines within a stellar radius of the surface, and eventually reaching 80% of that rate at large radii; (2) perturbations in the scattered radiation field may be important for the propagation of wind disturbances, but they have little effect on the wind instability; and (3) the contribution of strongly shadowed lines to the wind instability is often reduced compared to that of unshadowed lines, but their overall effect is not one of damping in the outer parts of the wind. It is concluded that, even when all scattering effects are taken into account, the bulk of the flow in a line-driven stellar wind is still highly unstable

The influence of coronal EUV irradiance on the emission in the He I 10830 A and D3 multiplets

Two of the most attractive spectral windows for spectropolarimetric investigations of the physical properties of the plasma structures in the solar chromosphere and corona are the ones provided by the spectral lines of the He I 10830 A and 5876 A (or D3) multiplets, whose polarization signals are sensitive to the Hanle and Zeeman effects. However, in order to be able to carry out reliable diagnostics, it is crucial to have a good physical understanding of the sensitivity of the observed spectral line radiation to the various competing driving mechanisms. Here we report a series of off-the-limb non-LTE calculations of the He I D3 and 10830 A emission profiles, focusing our investigation on their sensitivity to the EUV coronal irradiation and the model atmosphere used in the calculations. We show in particular that the intensity ratio of the blue to the red components in the emission profiles of the He I 10830 A multiplet turns out to be a good candidate as a diagnostic tool for the coronal irradiance. Measurements of this observable as a function of the distance to the limb and its confrontation with radiative transfer modeling might give us valuable information on the physical properties of the solar atmosphere and on the amount of EUV radiation at relevant wavelengths penetrating the chromosphere from above.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures (pre-print format). Accepted for publication in Ap

Non-Gaussianity analysis of GW background made by short-duration burst signals

We study an observational method to analyze non-Gaussianity of a gravitational wave (GW) background made by superposition of weak burst signals. The proposed method is based on fourth-order correlations of data from four detectors, and might be useful to discriminate the origin of a GW background. With a formulation newly developed to discuss geometrical aspects of the correlations, it is found that the method provides us with linear combinations of two interesting parameters, I_2 and V_2 defined by the Stokes parameters of individual GW burst signals. We also evaluate sensitivities of specific detector networks to these parameters.Comment: 18 pages, to appear in PR

A dark matter interpretation for the ARCADE excess?

The ARCADE 2 Collaboration has recently measured an isotropic radio emission which is significantly brighter than the expected contributions from known extra-galactic sources. The simplest explanation of such excess involves a "new" population of unresolved sources which become the most numerous at very low (observationally unreached) brightness. We investigate this scenario in terms of synchrotron radiation induced by WIMP annihilations or decays in extragalactic halos. Intriguingly, for light-mass WIMPs with thermal annihilation cross-section, and fairly conservative clustering assumptions, the level of expected radio emission matches the ARCADE observations.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. v2: one benchmark model added, comments and references expanded, to appear in PR

Prospects for direct detection of circular polarization of gravitational-wave background

We discussed prospects for directly detecting circular polarization signal of gravitational wave background. We found it is generally difficult to probe the monopole mode of the signal due to broad directivity of gravitational wave detectors. But the dipole (l=1) and octupole (l=3) modes of the signal can be measured in a simple manner by combining outputs of two unaligned detectors, and we can dig them deeply under confusion and detector noises. Around f~0.1mHz LISA will provide ideal data streams to detect these anisotropic components whose magnitudes are as small as ~1 percent of the detector noise level in terms of the non-dimensional energy density \Omega_{GW}(f).Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, PRL in pres

Non-LTE treatment of molecules in the photospheres of cool stars

We present a technique to treat systems with very many levels, like molecules, in non-LTE. This method is based on a superlevel formalism coupled with rate operator splitting. Superlevels consist of many individual levels that are assumed to be in LTE relative to each other. The usage of superlevels reduces the dimensionality of the rate equations dramatically and, thereby, makes the problem computationally more easily treatable. Our superlevel formalism retains maximum accuracy by using direct opacity sampling (dOS) when calculating the radiative transitions and the opacities. We developed this method in order to treat molecules in cool dwarf model calculations in non-LTE. Cool dwarfs have low electron densities and a radiation field that is far from a black body radiation field, both properties may invalidate the conditions for the common LTE approximation. Therefore, the most important opacity sources, the molecules, need to be treated in non-LTE. As a case study we applied our method to carbon monoxide. We find that our method gives accurate results since the conditions for the superlevel method are very well met for molecules. Due to very high collisional cross sections with hydrogen, and the high densities of H_2 the population of CO itself shows no significant deviation from LTE.Comment: AASTeX v50, 35 pages including 12 figures, accepted by Ap

The spectrum of the Broad Line Region and the high-energy emission of powerful blazars

High-energy emission (from the X-ray through the gamma-ray band) of Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars is widely associated with the inverse Compton (IC) scattering of ambient photons, produced either by the accretion disk or by the Broad Line Region, by high-energy electrons in a relativistic jet. In the modelling of the IC spectrum one usually adopts a simple black-body approximation for the external radiation field, though the real shape is probably more complex. The knowledge of the detailed spectrum of the external radiation field would allow to better characterize the soft-medium X-ray IC spectrum, which is crucial to address several issues related to the study of these sources. Here we present a first step in this direction, calculating the IC spectra expected by considering a realistic spectrum for the external radiation energy density produced by the BLR, as calculated with the photoionization code CLOUDY. We find that, under a wide range of the physical parameters characterizing the BLR clouds, the IC spectrum calculated with the black-body approximation reproduces quite well the exact spectrum for energies above few keV. In the soft energy band, instead, the IC emission calculated using the BLR emission shows a complex shape, with a moderate excess with respect to the approximate spectrum, which becomes more important for decreasing values of the peak frequency of the photoionizing continuum. We also show that the high-energy spectrum shows a marked steepening, due to the energy dependence of the scattering cross section, above a characteristic energy of 10-20 GeV, quasi independent on the Lorentz factor of the jet.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Two-photon transitions in primordial hydrogen recombination

The subject of cosmological hydrogen recombination has received much attention recently because of its importance to predictions for and cosmological constraints from CMB observations. While the central role of the two-photon decay 2s->1s has been recognized for many decades, high-precision calculations require us to consider two-photon decays from the higher states ns,nd->1s (n>=3). Simple attempts to include these processes in recombination calculations have suffered from physical problems associated with sequences of one-photon decays, e.g. 3d->2p->1s, that technically also produce two photons. These correspond to resonances in the two-photon spectrum that are optically thick, necessitating a radiative transfer calculation. We derive the appropriate equations, develop a numerical code to solve them, and verify the results by finding agreement with analytic approximations to the radiative transfer equation. The related processes of Raman scattering and two-photon recombination are included using similar machinery. Our results show that early in recombination the two-photon decays act to speed up recombination, reducing the free electron abundance by 1.3% relative to the standard calculation at z=1300. However we find that some photons between Ly-alpha and Ly-beta are produced, mainly by 3d->1s two-photon decay and 2s->1s Raman scattering. At later times these photons redshift down to Ly-alpha, excite hydrogen atoms, and act to slow recombination. Thus the free electron abundance is increased by 1.3% relative to the standard calculation at z=900. The implied correction to the CMB power spectrum is neligible for the recently released WMAP and ACBAR data, but at Fisher matrix level will be 7 sigma for Planck. [ABRIDGED]Comment: Matches PRD accepted version. 28 pages, 12 figure