6,272 research outputs found
Thermalization by synchrotron absorption in compact sources: electron and photon distributions
The high energy continuum in Seyfert galaxies and galactic black hole
candidates is likely to be produced by a thermal plasma. There are difficulties
in understanding what can keep the plasma thermal, especially during fast
variations of the emitted flux. Particle-particle collisions are too
inefficient in hot and rarefied plasmas, and a faster process is called for. We
show that cyclo-synchrotron absorption can be such a process: mildly
relativistic electrons thermalize in a few synchrotron cooling times by
emitting and absorbing cyclo-synchrotron photons. The resulting equilibrium
function is a Maxwellian at low energies, with a high energy tail when Compton
cooling is important. Assuming that electrons emit completely self absorbed
synchrotron radiation and at the same time Compton scatter their own
cyclo-synchrotron radiation and ambient UV photons, we calculate the time
dependent behavior of the electron distribution function, and the final
radiation spectra. In some cases, the 2-10 keV spectra are found to be
dominated by thermal synchrotron self-Compton process rather than by thermal
Comptonization of UV disk radiation.Comment: 8pages, MN.sty, accepted for pubblication in MNRA
Hydrogen induced optically-active defects in silicon photonic nanocavities
This work was supported by Era-NET NanoSci LECSIN project coordinated by F. Priolo, by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, FIRB contract No. RBAP06L4S5 and by the EPSRC UKSp project. Partial financial support by the Norwegian Research Council is also acknowledged.We demonstrate intense room temperature photoluminescence (PL) from optically active hydrogen- related defects incorporated into crystalline silicon. Hydrogen was incorporated into the device layer of a silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer by two methods: hydrogen plasma treatment and ion implantation. The room temperature PL spectra show two broad PL bands centered at 1300 and 1500 nm wavelengths: the first one relates to implanted defects while the other band mainly relates to the plasma treatment. Structural characterization reveals the presence of nanometric platelets and bubbles and we attribute different features of the emission spectrum to the presence of these different kind of defects. The emission is further enhanced by introducing defects into photonic crystal (PhC) nanocavities. Transmission electron microscopy analyses revealed that the isotropicity of plasma treatment causes the formation of a higher defects density around the whole cavity compared to the ion implantation technique, while ion implantation creates a lower density of defects embedded in the Si layer, resulting in a higher PL enhancement. These results further increase the understanding of the nature of optically active hydrogen defects and their relation with the observed photoluminescence, which will ultimately lead to the development of intense and tunable crystalline silicon light sources at room temperature.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Optimal partial-arcs in VMAT treatment planning
Purpose: To improve the delivery efficiency of VMAT by extending the recently
published VMAT treatment planning algorithm vmerge to automatically generate
optimal partial-arc plans.
Methods and materials: A high-quality initial plan is created by solving a
convex multicriteria optimization problem using 180 equi-spaced beams. This
initial plan is used to form a set of dose constraints, and a set of
partial-arc plans is created by searching the space of all possible partial-arc
plans that satisfy these constraints. For each partial-arc, an iterative
fluence map merging and sequencing algorithm (vmerge) is used to improve the
delivery efficiency. Merging continues as long as the dose quality is
maintained above a user-defined threshold. The final plan is selected as the
partial arc with the lowest treatment time. The complete algorithm is called
pmerge.
Results: Partial-arc plans are created using pmerge for a lung, liver and
prostate case, with final treatment times of 127, 245 and 147 seconds.
Treatment times using full arcs with vmerge are 211, 357 and 178 seconds. Dose
quality is maintained across the initial, vmerge, and pmerge plans to within 5%
of the mean doses to the critical organs-at-risk and with target coverage above
98%. Additionally, we find that the angular distribution of fluence in the
initial plans is predictive of the start and end angles of the optimal
partial-arc.
Conclusions: The pmerge algorithm is an extension to vmerge that
automatically finds the partial-arc plan that minimizes the treatment time.
VMAT delivery efficiency can be improved by employing partial-arcs without
compromising dose quality. Partial arcs are most applicable to cases with
non-centralized targets, where the time savings is greatest
High Energy Break and Reflection Features in the Seyfert Galaxy MCG+8-11-11
We present the results from ASCA and OSSE simultaneous observations of the
Seyfert 1.5 galaxy MCG+8-11-11 performed in August-September 1995. The ASCA
observations indicate a modest flux increase (20%) in 3 days, possibly
correlated to a softening of the 0.6-9 keV spectrum. The spectrum is well
described by a hard power law (Gamma=1.64) absorbed by a column density
slightly larger than the Galactic value, with an iron line at 6.4 keV of EW=400
eV. The simultaneous OSSE data are characterized by a much softer power law
with photon index Gamma=3.0, strongly suggesting the presence of a spectral
break in the hard X/soft gamma-ray band. A joint fit to OSSE and ASCA data
clearly shows an exponential cut-off at about 300 keV, and strong reflection
component. MCG+8-11-11 features a spectral break in the underlying continuum
unambiguously. This, together with the inferred low compactness of this source,
favours thermal or quasi-thermal electron Comptonization in a structured Corona
as the leading process of high energy radiation production.Comment: 13 pages, + 4 figure.ps AAS LateX [11pt,aasms4]{article} To be
published in ApJ, Main Journa
Static Response Function for Longitudinal and Transverse Excitations in Superfluid Helium
The sum rule formalism is used to evaluate rigorous bounds for the density
and current static response functions in superfluid helium at zero temperature.
Both lower and upper bounds are considered. The bounds are expressed in terms
of ground state properties (density and current correlation funtions) and of
the interatomic potential. The results for the density static response
significantly improve the Feynman approximation and turn out to be close to the
experimental (neutron scattering) data. A quantitative prediction for the
transverse current response is given. The role of one-phonon and multi-particle
excitations in the longitudinal and transverse channels is discussed.
(Phys.Rev.B, in press)Comment: 19 pages (plain TeX) and 3 Figures (postscript), UTF-26
- …