16,981 research outputs found
A Supernova Factory in the Merger System Arp 299
We have imaged the nearby galaxy merger Arp 299 at arcsecond and
milliarcsecond resolution, using both the Very Large Array and the Very Long
Baseline Array. The large-scale radio emission from the merger contains 5
bright, compact radio sources embedded in diffuse emission, with diameters less
than 200 pc. Supernova rates of 0.1 to 1 per year are required to produce the
VLA-detected radio emission in these sources. Two of the compact VLA radio
sources, designated Source A and Source D, also have been detected and imaged
at milliarcsecond scales. Source A, which is associated with the nucleus of one
of the merging galaxies, contains five milliarcsecond-scale sources, each with
a radio power between 100 and 1000 times that of the Galactic supernova remnant
Cassiopeia A. Four of these have flat or inverted spectra and appear to be
young supernovae. Three of the VLBI-scale sources are located within 10 pc
(projected) of one another, and two are separated by less than 3 pc, indicating
that they all may be within the same super starcluster or complex of such
clusters. The brightest VLBI-scale source, A0, has an extremely inverted
pectrum, with alpha larger than +2 at gigahertz frequencies. It seems to be the
youngest supernova, which has not yet broken out of its circumstellar shell.
The milliarcsecond radio sources within Source A appear to constitute a
upernova factory, confirming the presence of an extreme starburst that peaked
at least a few million years ago.Comment: Accepted for the Astrophysical Journal, 22 pages, 10 figure
Regression Depth and Center Points
We show that, for any set of n points in d dimensions, there exists a
hyperplane with regression depth at least ceiling(n/(d+1)). as had been
conjectured by Rousseeuw and Hubert. Dually, for any arrangement of n
hyperplanes in d dimensions there exists a point that cannot escape to infinity
without crossing at least ceiling(n/(d+1)) hyperplanes. We also apply our
approach to related questions on the existence of partitions of the data into
subsets such that a common plane has nonzero regression depth in each subset,
and to the computational complexity of regression depth problems.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure
Half-Megasecond Chandra Spectral Imaging of the Hot Circumgalactic Nebula around Quasar Mrk 231
A deep 400-ksec ACIS-S observation of the nearest quasar known, Mrk 231, is
combined with archival 120-ksec data obtained with the same instrument and
setup to carry out the first ever spatially resolved spectral analysis of a hot
X-ray emitting circumgalactic nebula around a quasar. The 65 x 50 kpc X-ray
nebula shares no resemblance with the tidal debris seen at optical wavelengths.
One notable exception is the small tidal arc 3.5 kpc south of the nucleus where
excess soft X-ray continuum emission and Si XIII 1.8 keV line emission are
detected, consistent with star formation and its associated alpha-element
enhancement, respectively. An X-ray shadow is also detected at the location of
the 15-kpc northern tidal tail. The hard X-ray continuum emission within 6 kpc
of the center is consistent with being due entirely to the bright central AGN.
The soft X-ray spectrum of the outer (>6 kpc) portion of the nebula is best
described as the sum of two thermal components with T~3 and ~8 million K and
spatially uniform super-solar alpha element abundances, relative to iron. This
result implies enhanced star formation activity over ~10^8 yrs accompanied with
redistribution of the metals on large scale. The low-temperature thermal
component is not present within 6 kpc of the nucleus, suggesting extra heating
in this region from the circumnuclear starburst, the central quasar, or the
wide-angle quasar-driven outflow identified from optical IFU spectroscopy on a
scale of >3 kpc. Significant azimuthal variations in the soft X-ray intensity
are detected in the inner region where the outflow is present. The soft X-ray
emission is weaker in the western quadrant, coincident with a deficit of Halpha
and some of the largest columns of neutral gas outflowing from the nucleus.
Shocks created by the interaction of the wind with the ambient ISM may heat the
gas to high temperatures at this location. (abridged)Comment: 43 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journa
The effect of manganese oxide on the sinterability of hydroxyapatite
The sinterability of manganese oxide (MnO2) doped hydroxyapatite (HA) ranging from 0.05 to 1 wt% was investigated. Green samples were prepared and sintered in air at temperatures ranging from 1000 to 1400 °C. Sintered bodies were characterized to determine the phase stability, grain size, bulk density, hardness, fracture toughness and Young's modulus. XRD analysis revealed that the HA phase stability was not disrupted throughout the sintering regime employed. In general, samples containing less than 0.5 wt% MnO2 and when sintered at lower temperatures exhibited higher mechanical properties than the undoped HA. The study revealed that all the MnO2-doped HA achieved >99% relative density when sintered at 1100–1250 °C as compared to the undoped HA which could only attained highest value of 98.9% at 1150 °C. The addition of 0.05 wt% MnO2 was found to be most beneficial as the samples exhibited the highest hardness of 7.58 GPa and fracture toughness of 1.65 MPam1/2 as compared to 5.72 GPa and 1.22 MPam1/2 for the undoped HA when sintered at 1000 °C. Additionally, it was found that the MnO2-doped samples attained E values above 110 GPa when sintered at temperature as low as 1000 °C if compared to 1050 °C for the undoped HA
Unquantized thermal Hall effect in quantum spin liquids with spinon Fermi surfaces
Recent theoretical studies have found quantum spin liquid states with spinon
Fermi surfaces upon the application of a magnetic field on a gapped state with
topological order. We investigate the thermal Hall conductivity across this
transition, describing how the quantized thermal Hall conductivity of the
gapped state changes to an unquantized thermal Hall conductivity in the gapless
spinon Fermi surface state. We consider two cases, both of potential
experimental interest: the state with non-Abelian Ising topological order on
the honeycomb lattice, and the state with Abelian chiral spin liquid
topological order on the triangular lattice.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure
Constrained structure of ancient Chinese poetry facilitates speech content grouping
Ancient Chinese poetry is constituted by structured language that deviates from ordinary language usage [1, 2]; its poetic genres impose unique combinatory constraints on linguistic elements [3]. How does the constrained poetic structure facilitate speech segmentation when common linguistic [4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and statistical cues [5, 9] are unreliable to listeners in poems? We generated artificial Jueju, which arguably has the most constrained structure in ancient Chinese poetry, and presented each poem twice as an isochronous sequence of syllables to native Mandarin speakers while conducting magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording. We found that listeners deployed their prior knowledge of Jueju to build the line structure and to establish the conceptual flow of Jueju. Unprecedentedly, we found a phase precession phenomenon indicating predictive processes of speech segmentation—the neural phase advanced faster after listeners acquired knowledge of incoming speech. The statistical co-occurrence of monosyllabic words in Jueju negatively correlated with speech segmentation, which provides an alternative perspective on how statistical cues facilitate speech segmentation. Our findings suggest that constrained poetic structures serve as a temporal map for listeners to group speech contents and to predict incoming speech signals. Listeners can parse speech streams by using not only grammatical and statistical cues but also their prior knowledge of the form of language
Grown-in defects and defects produced by 1-Me electron irradiated in Al0.3Ga0.7As P-N junction solar cells
Studies of grown-in defects and defects produced by the one-MeV electron irradiation in Al sub 0.3 Ga sub 0.7As p-n junction solar cells fabricated by liquid phase epitaxial (LPE) technique were made for the unirradiated and one-MeV electron irradiated samples, using DLTS and C-V methods. Defect and recombination parameters such as energy level, defect density, carrier capture cross sections and lifetimes were determined for various growth, annealing, and irradiation conditions
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