13,206 research outputs found
Optimal Mass Configurations for Lensing High-Redshift Galaxies
We investigate the gravitational lensing properties of lines of sight
containing multiple cluster-scale halos, motivated by their ability to lens
very high-redshift (z ~ 10) sources into detectability. We control for the
total mass along the line of sight, isolating the effects of distributing the
mass among multiple halos and of varying the physical properties of the halos.
Our results show that multiple-halo lines of sight can increase the magnified
source-plane region compared to the single cluster lenses typically targeted
for lensing studies, and thus are generally better fields for detecting very
high-redshift sources. The configurations that result in optimal lensing cross
sections benefit from interactions between the lens potentials of the halos
when they overlap somewhat on the sky, creating regions of high magnification
in the source plane not present when the halos are considered individually. The
effect of these interactions on the lensing cross section can even be
comparable to changing the total mass of the lens from 10^15 M_sun to 3x10^15
M_sun. The gain in lensing cross section increases as the mass is split into
more halos, provided that the lens potentials are projected close enough to
interact with each other. A nonzero projected halo angular separation, equal
halo mass ratio, and high projected halo concentration are the best mass
configurations, whereas projected halo ellipticity, halo triaxiality, and the
relative orientations of the halos are less important. Such high mass,
multiple-halo lines of sight exist in the SDSS.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; emulateapj format; 24 pages, 13
figures, 1 table; plots updated to reflect erratu
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Sensory sensitivity as a link between concussive traumatic brain injury and PTSD.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the most common injuries to military personnel, a population often exposed to stressful stimuli and emotional trauma. Changes in sensory processing after TBI might contribute to TBI-post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) comorbidity. Combining an animal model of TBI with an animal model of emotional trauma, we reveal an interaction between auditory sensitivity after TBI and fear conditioning where 75 dB white noise alone evokes a phonophobia-like phenotype and when paired with footshocks, fear is robustly enhanced. TBI reduced neuronal activity in the hippocampus but increased activity in the ipsilateral lateral amygdala (LA) when exposed to white noise. The white noise effect in LA was driven by increased activity in neurons projecting from ipsilateral auditory thalamus (medial geniculate nucleus). These data suggest that altered sensory processing within subcortical sensory-emotional circuitry after TBI results in neutral stimuli adopting aversive properties with a corresponding impact on facilitating trauma memories and may contribute to TBI-PTSD comorbidity
Multiphase PC/PL Relations: Comparison between Theory and observations
Cepheids are fundamental objects astrophysically in that they hold the key to
a CMB independent estimate of Hubble's constant. A number of researchers have
pointed out the possibilities of breaking degeneracies between Omega_Matter and
H0 if there is a CMB independent distance scale accurate to a few percent (Hu
2005). Current uncertainties in the distance scale are about 10% but future
observations, with, for example, the JWST, will be capable of estimating H0 to
within a few percent. A crucial step in this process is the Cepheid PL
relation. Recent evidence has emerged that the PL relation, at least in optical
bands, is nonlinear and that neglect of such a nonlinearity can lead to errors
in estimating H0 of up to 2 percent. Hence it is important to critically
examine this possible nonlinearity both observationally and theoretically.
Existing PC/PL relations rely exclusively on evaluating these relations at mean
light. However, since such relations are the average of relations at different
phases. Here we report on recent attempts to compare theory and observation in
the multiphase PC/PL planes. We construct state of the art Cepheid pulsations
models appropriate for the LMC/Galaxy and compare the resulting PC/PL relations
as a function of phase with observations. For the LMC, the (V-I) period-color
relation at minimum light can have quite a narrow dispersion (0.2-0.3 mags) and
thus could be useful in placing constraints on models. At longer periods, the
models predict significantly redder (by about 0.2-0.3 mags) V-I colors. We
discuss possible reasons for this and also compare PL relations at various
phases of pulsation and find clear evidence in both theory and observations for
a nonlinear PL relation.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figures, proceeding for "Stellar Pulsation: Challenges for
Theory and Observation", Santa Fe 200
The Properties of Poor Groups of Galaxies: II. X-ray and Optical Comparisons
We use ROSAT PSPC data to study the X-ray properties of a sample of twelve
poor groups that have extensive membership information (Zabludoff and Mulchaey
1997; Paper I). Diffuse X-ray emission is detected in nine of these groups. In
all but one of the X-ray detected groups, the X-ray emission is centered on a
luminous elliptical galaxy. Fits to the surface brightness profiles of the
X-ray emission suggest the presence of two X-ray components in these groups.
The first component is centered on the central elliptical galaxy. The location
and extent of this component, combined with its X-ray temperature and
luminosity, favor an origin in the interstellar medium of the central galaxy.
Alternatively, the central component may be the result of a large-scale cooling
flow. The second X-ray component is detected out to a radius of at least
100-300 kpc. This component follows the same relationships found among the
X-ray temperature, X-ray luminosity and optical velocity dispersion of rich
clusters. This result suggests that the X-ray detected groups are low-mass
versions of clusters and that the extended gas component can properly be called
the intragroup medium, in analogy to the intracluster medium in clusters. We
also find a trend for the position angle of the optical light in the central
elliptical galaxy to align with the position angle of the large-scale X-ray
emission. (Abridged)Comment: 38 pages, AASLaTeX with 16 PS figures. Figure 1a-1l available in
gzipped postscript format at ftp://corvus.ociw.edu/pub/mulchae
White Dwarf Mergers on Adaptive Meshes I. Methodology and Code Verification
The Type Ia supernova progenitor problem is one of the most perplexing and
exciting problems in astrophysics, requiring detailed numerical modeling to
complement observations of these explosions. One possible progenitor that has
merited recent theoretical attention is the white dwarf merger scenario, which
has the potential to naturally explain many of the observed characteristics of
Type Ia supernovae. To date there have been relatively few self-consistent
simulations of merging white dwarf systems using mesh-based hydrodynamics. This
is the first paper in a series describing simulations of these systems using a
hydrodynamics code with adaptive mesh refinement. In this paper we describe our
numerical methodology and discuss our implementation in the compressible
hydrodynamics code CASTRO, which solves the Euler equations, and the Poisson
equation for self-gravity, and couples the gravitational and rotation forces to
the hydrodynamics. Standard techniques for coupling gravitation and rotation
forces to the hydrodynamics do not adequately conserve the total energy of the
system for our problem, but recent advances in the literature allow progress
and we discuss our implementation here. We present a set of test problems
demonstrating the extent to which our software sufficiently models a system
where large amounts of mass are advected on the computational domain over long
timescales. Future papers in this series will describe our treatment of the
initial conditions of these systems and will examine the early phases of the
merger to determine its viability for triggering a thermonuclear detonation.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa
Conservative Initial Mapping For Multidimensional Simulations of Stellar Explosions
Mapping one-dimensional stellar profiles onto multidimensional grids as
initial conditions for hydrodynamics calculations can lead to numerical
artifacts, one of the most severe of which is the violation of conservation
laws for physical quantities such as energy and mass. Here we introduce a
numerical scheme for mapping one-dimensional spherically-symmetric data onto
multidimensional meshes so that these physical quantities are conserved. We
validate our scheme by porting a realistic 1D Lagrangian stellar profile to the
new multidimensional Eulerian hydro code CASTRO. Our results show that all
important features in the profiles are reproduced on the new grid and that
conservation laws are enforced at all resolutions after mapping.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Proceeding for Conference on Computational
Physics (CCP 2011
Joint Strong and Weak Lensing Analysis of the Massive Cluster Field J0850+3604
We present a combined strong and weak lensing analysis of the
J085007.6+360428 (J0850) field, which was selected by its high projected
concentration of luminous red galaxies and contains the massive cluster Zwicky
1953. Using Subaru/Suprime-Cam imaging and
MMT/Hectospec spectroscopy, we first perform a weak lensing shear analysis to
constrain the mass distribution in this field, including the cluster at and a smaller foreground halo at . We then add a strong
lensing constraint from a multiply-imaged galaxy in the imaging data with a
photometric redshift of . Unlike previous cluster-scale lens
analyses, our technique accounts for the full three-dimensional mass structure
in the beam, including galaxies along the line of sight. In contrast with past
cluster analyses that use only lensed image positions as constraints, we use
the full surface brightness distribution of the images. This method predicts
that the source galaxy crosses a lensing caustic such that one image is a
highly-magnified "fold arc", which could be used to probe the source galaxy's
structure at ultra-high spatial resolution ( pc). We calculate the mass
of the primary cluster to be with a concentration of , consistent with the mass-concentration relation of
massive clusters at a similar redshift. The large mass of this cluster makes
J0850 an excellent field for leveraging lensing magnification to search for
high-redshift galaxies, competitive with and complementary to that of
well-studied clusters such as the HST Frontier Fields.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal; 14 pages, 13
figures, 3 table
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