1,800 research outputs found
A dual output polarimeter devoted to the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background
We have developed a correlation radiometer at 33 GHz devoted to the search
for residual polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The two
instruments`s outputs are linear combination of two Stokes Parameters (Q and U
or U and V). The instrument is therefore directly sensitive to the polarized
component of the radiation (respectively linear and circular). The radiometer
has a beam-width oif 7 or 14 deg, but it can be coupled to a telescope
increasing the resolution. The expected CMB polarization is at most a part per
milion. The polarimeter has been designed to be sensitive to this faint signal,
and it has been optimized to improve its long term stability, observing from
the ground. In this contribution the performances of the instrument are
presented, together with the preliminary test and observations.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, in print on the Proc. SPIE Conf. - August 200
Particle-in-cell simulations of shock-driven reconnection in relativistic striped winds
By means of two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we
investigate the process of driven magnetic reconnection at the termination
shock of relativistic striped flows. In pulsar winds and in magnetar-powered
relativistic jets, the flow consists of stripes of alternating magnetic field
polarity, separated by current sheets of hot plasma. At the wind termination
shock, the flow compresses and the alternating fields annihilate by driven
magnetic reconnection. Irrespective of the stripe wavelength "lambda" or the
wind magnetization "sigma" (in the regime sigma>>1 of magnetically-dominated
flows), shock-driven reconnection transfers all the magnetic energy of
alternating fields to the particles, whose average Lorentz factor increases by
a factor of sigma with respect to the pre-shock value. In the limit
lambda/(r_L*sigma)>>1, where r_L is the relativistic Larmor radius in the wind,
the post-shock particle spectrum approaches a flat power-law tail with slope
around -1.5, populated by particles accelerated by the reconnection electric
field. The presence of a current-aligned "guide" magnetic field suppresses the
acceleration of particles only when the guide field is stronger than the
alternating component. Our findings place important constraints on the models
of non-thermal radiation from Pulsar Wind Nebulae and relativistic jets.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, movies available at
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~lsironi/sironi_movies.tar ; in press, special
issue of Computational Science and Discovery on selected research from the
22nd International Conference on Numerical Simulation of Plasma
First optical validation of a Schwarzschild Couder telescope: the ASTRI SST-2M Cherenkov telescope
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) represents the most advanced facility
designed for Cherenkov Astronomy. ASTRI SST-2M has been developed as a
demonstrator for the Small Size Telescope in the context of the upcoming CTA.
Its main innovation consists in the optical layout which implements the
Schwarzschild-Couder configuration and is fully validated for the first time.
The ASTRI SST-2M optical system represents the first qualified example for two
mirrors telescope for Cherenkov Astronomy.
This configuration permits to (i) maintain a high optical quality across a
large FoV (ii) de-magnify the plate scale, (iii) exploit new technological
solutions for focal plane sensors. The goal of the paper is to present the
optical qualification of the ASTRI SST-2M telescope. The qualification has been
obtained measuring the PSF sizes generated in the focal plane at various
distance from the optical axis. These values have been compared with the
performances expected by design.
After an introduction on the Gamma Astronomy from the ground, the optical
design and how it has been implemented for ASTRI SST-2M is discussed. Moreover
the description of the setup used to qualify the telescope over the full field
of view is shown.
We report the results of the first--light optical qualification. The required
specification of a flat PSF of arcmin in a large field of view ~10
deg has been demonstrated. These results validate the design specifications,
opening a new scenario for Cherenkov Gamma ray Astronomy and, in particular,
for the detection of high energy (5 - 300 TeV) gamma rays and wide-field
observations with CTA.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Separation of the Galactic Synchrotron Foreground and the CMB Polarization Measurements
The polarization of the CMBR represents a powerful test for modern cosmology.
It allows to break the degeneracy of fundamental cosmological parameters, and
also to observe the contribution of gravitational waves background to the CMBR
anisotropy. To observe the CMBR polarization several experiments are either in
progress or planned and SPOrt is one of the most promising planned by ESA. At
the same time the observation of the CMBR polarization is a difficult task and
one of the reasons is the presence of polarized foreground emission. For
instance, galactic polarized synchrotron emission (according to some estimates)
can completely mimic the polarization of the CMBR. Nevertheless, one can use
mathematical properties of the spherical harmonics of the distribution of
radiation over the sky to separate different contributions. In this paper the
mathematical properties of the polarized synchrotron foreground and the
physical mechanism that produces it are discussed. The separation of
synchrotron polarization from the polarization generated by density
cosmological perturbations is discussed as well.Comment: 10 LaTeX pages, acceptted to AIP Conference Proceedin
Afterglow emission in gamma-ray bursts - I. Pair-enriched ambient medium and radiative blast waves
Forward shocks caused by the interaction between a relativistic blast wave and the circumburst medium are thought to be responsible for the afterglow emission in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We consider the hydrodynamics of a spherical relativistic blast wave expanding into the surrounding medium and we generalize the standard theory in order to account for several effects that are generally ignored. In particular, we consider the role of adiabatic and radiative losses in the hydrodynamical evolution of the shock, under the assumption that the cooling losses are fast. Our model can describe adiabatic, fully radiative and semiradiative blast waves, and can describe the effects of a time-varying radiative efficiency. The equations we present are valid for arbitrary density profiles, and also for a circumburst medium enriched with electron-positron pairs. The presence of pairs enhances the fraction of shock energy gained by the leptons, thus increasing the importance of radiative losses. Our model allows us to study whether the high-energy (>0.1 GeV) emission in GRBs may originate from afterglow radiation. In particular, it is suitable to test whether the fast decay of the high-energy light curve observed in several Fermi Large Area Telescope GRBs can be ascribed to an initial radiative phase, followed by the standard adiabatic evolution
TRIS II: search for CMB spectral distortions at 0.60, 0.82 and 2.5 GHz
With the TRIS experiment we have performed absolute measurements of the sky
brightness in a sky circle at at the frequencies
0.60, 0.82 and 2.5 GHz. In this paper we discuss the techniques used to
separate the different contributions to the sky emission and give an evaluation
of the absolute temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background. For the
black-body temperature of the CMB we get: at GHz; at GHz; at
GHz. The first error bar is statistic (1) while the second
one is systematic. These results represent a significant improvement with
respect to the previous measurements. We have also set new limits to the
free-free distortions, ,
and slightly improved the Bose-Einstein upper limit, , both at 95% confidence level.Comment: accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa
TRIS III: the diffuse galactic radio emission at
We present values of temperature and spectral index of the galactic diffuse
radiation measured at 600 and 820 MHz along a 24 hours right ascension circle
at declination . They have been obtained from a subset of
absolute measurements of the sky temperature made with TRIS, an experiment
devoted to the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature at
decimetric-wavelengths with an angular resolution of about .
Our analysis confirms the preexisting picture of the galactic diffuse
emission at decimetric wavelength and improves the accuracy of the measurable
quantities. In particular, the signal coming from the halo has a spectral index
in the range above 600 MHz, depending on the sky position. In the
disk, at TRIS angular resolution, the free-free emission accounts for the 11%
of the overall signal at 600 MHz and 21% at 1420 MHz. The polarized component
of the galactic emission, evaluated from the survey by Brouw and Spoelstra,
affects the observations at TRIS angular resolution by less than 3% at 820 MHz
and less than 2% at 600 MHz. Within the uncertainties, our determination of the
galactic spectral index is practically unaffected by the correction for
polarization.
Since the overall error budget of the sky temperatures measured by TRIS at
600 MHz, that is 66 mK(systematic)18 mK (statistical), is definitely smaller
than those reported in previous measurements at the same frequency, our data
have been used to discuss the zero levels of the sky maps at 150, 408, 820 and
1420 MHz in literature. Concerning the 408 MHz survey, limiting our attention
to the patch of sky corresponding to the region observed by TRIS, we suggest a
correction of the base-level of K.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa
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