63,739 research outputs found
Lower Mass Bound on the mass via Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay in a 3-3-1 Model
The discovery of neutrino masses has raised the importance of studies in the
context of neutrinoless double beta decay, which constitutes a landmark for
lepton number violation. The standard interpretation is that the light massive
neutrinos, that we observed oscillating in terrestrial experiments, mediate
double beta decay. In the minimal 3-3-1 model, object of our study, there is an
additional contribution that stems from the mixing between a new charged vector
boson, , and the Standard Model W boson. Even after setting this
mixing to be very small, we show that tight constraints arise from the
non-observation of neutrinoless double beta decay. Indeed, we derive bounds on
the mass of the gauge boson that might exceed those from collider
probes, and most importantly push the scale of symmetry breaking beyond its
validity, leading to the exclusion of the minimal 3-3-1 model.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
K X-Ray Energies and Transition Probabilities for He-, Li- and Be-like Praseodymium ions
Theoretical transition energies and probabilities for He-, Li- and Be-like
Praseodymium ions are calculated in the framework of the multi-configuration
Dirac-Fock method (MCDF), including QED corrections. These calculated values
are compared to recent experimental data obtained in the Livermore SuperEBIT
electron beam ion trap facility
Impact of stellar companions on precise radial velocities
Context: With the announced arrival of instruments such as ESPRESSO one can
expect that several systematic noise sources on the measurement of precise
radial velocity will become the limiting factor instead of photon noise. A
stellar companion within the fiber is such a possible noise source. Aims: With
this work we aim at characterizing the impact of a stellar companion within the
fiber to radial velocity measurements made by fiber-fed spectrographs. We
consider the contaminant star either to be part of a binary system whose
primary star is the target star, or as a background/foreground star. Methods:
To carry out our study, we used HARPS spectra, co-added the target with
contaminant spectra, and then compared the resulting radial velocity with that
obtained from the original target spectrum. We repeated this procedure and used
different tunable knobs to reproduce the previously mentioned scenarios.
Results: We find that the impact on the radial velocity calculation is a
function of the difference between individual radial velocities, of the
difference between target and contaminant magnitude, and also of their spectral
types. For the worst-case scenario in which both target and contaminant star
are well centered on the fiber, the maximum contamination for a G or K star may
be higher than 10 cm/s, on average, if the difference between target and
contaminant magnitude is < 10, and higher than 1 m/s if <
8. If the target star is of spectral type M, < 8 produces the same
contamination of 10 cm/s, and a contamination may be higher than 1 m/sComment: Accepted for publication in A&A on 29/12/2019 - 14 page
Line-profile variations in radial-velocity measurements: Two alternative indicators for planetary searches
Aims. We introduce two methods to identify false-positive planetary signals
in the context of radial-velocity exoplanet searches. The first is the
bi-Gaussian cross-correlation function fitting, and the second is the
measurement of asymmetry in radial-velocity spectral line information content,
Vasy.
Methods. We make a systematic analysis of the most used common line profile
diagnosis, Bisector Inverse Slope and Velocity Span, along with the two
proposed ones. We evaluate all these diagnosis methods following a set of
well-defined common criteria and using both simulated and real data. We apply
them to simulated cross-correlation functions created with the program SOAP and
which are affected by the presence of stellar spots, and to real
cross-correlation functions, calculated from HARPS spectra, for stars with a
signal originating both in activity and created by a planet.
Results. We demonstrate that the bi-Gaussian method allows a more precise
characterization of the deformation of line profiles than the standard bisector
inverse slope. The calculation of the deformation indicator is simpler and its
interpretation more straightforward. More importantly, its amplitude can be up
to 30% larger than that of the bisector span, allowing the detection of
smaller-amplitude correlations with radial-velocity variations. However, a
particular parametrization of the bisector inverse slope is shown to be more
efficient on high-signal-to-noise data than both the standard bisector and the
bi-Gaussian. The results of the Vasy method show that this indicator is more
effective than any of the previous ones, being correlated with the
radial-velocity with more significance for signals resulting from a line
deformation. Moreover, it provides a qualitative advantage over the bisector,
showing significant correlations with RV for active stars for which bisector
analysis is inconclusive. (abridged)Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysics, comments welcom
Radial distribution function of penetrable sphere fluids to second order in density
The simplest bounded potential is that of penetrable spheres, which takes a
positive finite value if the two spheres are overlapped, being 0
otherwise. In this paper we derive the cavity function to second order in
density and the fourth virial coefficient as functions of (where is the Boltzmann constant and is the
temperature) for penetrable sphere fluids. The expressions are exact, except
for the function represented by an elementary diagram inside the core, which is
approximated by a polynomial form in excellent agreement with accurate results
obtained by Monte Carlo integration. Comparison with the hypernetted-chain
(HNC) and Percus-Yevick (PY) theories shows that the latter is better than the
former for only. However, even at zero temperature (hard sphere
limit), the PY solution is not accurate inside the overlapping region, where no
practical cancelation of the neglected diagrams takes place. The exact fourth
virial coefficient is positive for , reaches a minimum
negative value at , and then goes to zero from below as
for high temperatures. These features are captured qualitatively,
but not quantitatively, by the HNC and PY predictions. In addition, in both
theories the compressibility route is the best one for , while
the virial route is preferable if .Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures; v2: minor changes; to be published in PR
Probing the Cosmological Principle in the counts of radio galaxies at different frequencies
According to the Cosmological Principle, the matter distribution on very
large scales should have a kinematic dipole that is aligned with that of the
CMB. We determine the dipole anisotropy in the number counts of two all-sky
surveys of radio galaxies. For the first time, this analysis is presented for
the TGSS survey, allowing us to check consistency of the radio dipole at low
and high frequencies by comparing the results with the well-known NVSS survey.
We match the flux thresholds of the catalogues, with flux limits chosen to
minimise systematics, and adopt a strict masking scheme. We find dipole
directions that are in good agreement with each other and with the CMB dipole.
In order to compare the amplitude of the dipoles with theoretical predictions,
we produce sets of lognormal realisations. Our realisations include the
theoretical kinematic dipole, galaxy clustering, Poisson noise, simulated
redshift distributions which fit the NVSS and TGSS source counts, and errors in
flux calibration. The measured dipole for NVSS is times larger than
predicted by the mock data. For TGSS, the dipole is almost times
larger than predicted, even after checking for completeness and taking account
of errors in source fluxes and in flux calibration. Further work is required to
understand the nature of the systematics that are the likely cause of the
anomalously large TGSS dipole amplitude.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables; Significant improvements. Version
accepted by JCA
Revisiting the correlation between stellar activity and planetary surface gravity
Aims: We re-evaluate the correlation between planetary surface gravity and
stellar host activity as measured by the index log(). This
correlation, previously identified by Hartman (2010), is now analyzed in light
of an extended measurements dataset, roughly 3 times larger than the original
one.
Methods: We calculated the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between
the two quantities and its associated p-value. The correlation coefficient was
calculated for both the full dataset and the star-planet pairs that follow the
conditions proposed by Hartman (2010). In order to do so, we considered
effective temperatures both as collected from the literature and from the
SWEET-Cat catalog, which provides a more homogeneous and accurate effective
temperature determination.
Results: The analysis delivers significant correlation coefficients, but with
a lower value than those obtained by Hartman (2010). Yet, the two datasets are
compatible, and we show that a correlation coefficient as large as previously
published can arise naturally from a small-number statistics analysis of the
current dataset. The correlation is recovered for star-planet pairs selected
using the different conditions proposed by Hartman (2010). Remarkably, the
usage of SWEET-Cat temperatures leads to larger correlation coefficient values.
We highlight and discuss the role of the correlation betwen different
parameters such as effective temperature and activity index. Several additional
effects on top of those discussed previously were considered, but none fully
explains the detected correlation. In light of the complex issue discussed
here, we encourage the different follow-up teams to publish their activity
index values in the form of log() index so that a comparison across
stars and instruments can be pursued.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in A&
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