2,475 research outputs found
Second Einstein Telescope Mock Science Challenge : Detection of the GW Stochastic Background from Compact Binary Coalescences
We present the results of the search for an astrophysical gravitational-wave
stochastic background during the second Einstein Telescope mock data and
science challenge. Assuming that the loudest sources can be detected
individually and removed from the data, we show that the residual background
can be recovered with an accuracy of with the standard cross-correlation
statistic, after correction of a systematic bias due to the non-isotropy of the
sources.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
False positive probabilties for all Kepler Objects of Interest: 1284 newly validated planets and 428 likely false positives
We present astrophysical false positive probability calculations for every
Kepler Object of Interest (KOI)---the first large-scale demonstration of a
fully automated transiting planet validation procedure. Out of 7056 KOIs, we
determine that 1935 have probabilities <1% to be astrophysical false positives,
and thus may be considered validated planets. 1284 of these have not yet been
validated or confirmed by other methods. In addition, we identify 428 KOIs
likely to be false positives that have not yet been identified as such, though
some of these may be a result of unidentified transit timing variations. A side
product of these calculations is full stellar property posterior samplings for
every host star, modeled as single, binary, and triple systems. These
calculations use 'vespa', a publicly available Python package able to be easily
applied to any transiting exoplanet candidate.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures. Published in ApJ. Instructions to reproduce
results can be found at https://github.com/timothydmorton/koi-fp
Low-Mass Eclipsing Binaries in the Initial Kepler Data Release
We identify 231 objects in the newly released Cycle 0 dataset from the Kepler
Mission as double-eclipse, detached eclipsing binary systems with Teff < 5500 K
and orbital periods shorter than ~32 days. We model each light curve using the
JKTEBOP code with a genetic algorithm to obtain precise values for each system.
We identify 95 new systems with both components below 1.0 M_sun and eclipses of
at least 0.1 magnitudes, suitable for ground-based follow-up. Of these, 14 have
periods less than 1.0 day, 52 have periods between 1.0 and 10.0 days, and 29
have periods greater than 10.0 days. This new sample of main-sequence,
low-mass, double-eclipse, detached eclipsing binary candidates more than
doubles the number of previously known systems, and extends the sample into the
completely heretofore unexplored P > 10.0 day period regime. We find
preliminary evidence from these systems that the radii of low-mass stars in
binary systems decrease with period. This supports the theory that binary
spin-up is the primary cause of inflated radii in low-mass binary systems,
although a full analysis of each system with radial-velocity and multi-color
light curves is needed to fully explore this hypothesis. As well, we present 7
new transiting planet candidates that do not appear among the recently released
list of 706 candidates by the Kepler team, nor in the Kepler False Positive
Catalog, along with several other new and interesting systems. We also present
novel techniques for the identification, period analysis, and modeling of
eclipsing binaries.Comment: 22 pages in emulateapj format. 9 figures, 4 tables, 2 appendices.
Accepted to AJ. Includes a significant addition of new material since last
arXiv submission and an updated method for estimating masses and radi
Coherence-based approaches for estimating the composition of the seismic wavefield
As new techniques exploiting the Earth's ambient seismic noise field are developed and applied, such as for the observation of temporal changes in seismic velocity structure, it is crucial to quantify the precision with which wave‐type measurements can be made. This work uses array data at the Homestake mine in Lead, South Dakota, and an array at Sweetwater, Texas, to consider two aspects that control this precision: the types of seismic wave contributing to the ambient noise field at microseism frequencies and the effect of array geometry. Both are quantified using measurements of wavefield coherence between stations in combination with Wiener filters. We find a strong seasonal change between body‐wave and surface‐wave content. Regarding the inclusion of underground stations, we quantify the lower limit to which the ambient noise field can be characterized and reproduced; the applications of the Wiener filters are about 4 times more successful in reproducing ambient noise waveforms when underground stations are included in the array, resulting in predictions of seismic time series with less than a 1% residual, and are ultimately limited by the geometry and aperture of the array, as well as by temporal variations in the seismic field. We discuss the implications of these results for the geophysics community performing ambient seismic noise studies, as well as for the cancellation of seismic Newtonian gravity noise in ground‐based, sub‐Hertz, gravitational‐wave detectors
Central exclusive production of longlived gluinos at the LHC
We examine the possibility of producing gluino pairs at the LHC via the
exclusive reaction pp -> p+gluino+gluino+p in the case where the gluinos are
long lived. Such long lived gluinos are possible if the scalar super-partners
have large enough masses. We show that it may be possible to observe the
gluinos via their conversion to R-hadron jets and measure their mass to better
than 1% accuracy for masses below 350 GeV with 300/fb of data.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Minor corrections to version
Thrombin-induced events in non-platelet cells are mediated by the unique proteolytic mechanism established for the cloned platelet thrombin receptor.
We recently isolated a cDNA clone encoding a functional platelet thrombin receptor that defined a unique mechanism of receptor activation. Thrombin cleaves its receptor's extracellular amino terminal extension, unmasking a new amino terminus that functions as a tethered peptide ligand and activates the receptor. A novel peptide mimicking this new amino terminus was a full agonist for platelet secretion and aggregation, suggesting that this unusual mechanism accounts for platelet activation by thrombin. Does this mechanism also mediate thrombin's assorted actions on non-platelet cells? We now report that the novel thrombin receptor agonist peptide reproduces thrombin-induced events (specifically, phosphoinositide hydrolysis and mitogenesis) in CCL-39 hamster lung fibroblasts, a naturally thrombin-responsive cell line. Moreover, these thrombin-induced events could be recapitulated in CV-1 cells, normally poorly responsive to thrombin, after transfection with human platelet thrombin receptor cDNA. Our data show that important thrombin-induced cellular events are mediated by the same unusual mechanism of receptor activation in both platelets and fibroblasts, very likely via the same or very similar receptors
Measuring Transit Signal Recovery in the Kepler Pipeline. III. Completeness of the Q1-Q17 DR24 Planet Candidate Catalogue, with Important Caveats for Occurrence Rate Calculations
With each new version of the Kepler pipeline and resulting planet candidate
catalogue, an updated measurement of the underlying planet population can only
be recovered with an corresponding measurement of the Kepler pipeline detection
efficiency. Here, we present measurements of the sensitivity of the pipeline
(version 9.2) used to generate the Q1-Q17 DR24 planet candidate catalog
(Coughlin et al. 2016). We measure this by injecting simulated transiting
planets into the pixel-level data of 159,013 targets across the entire Kepler
focal plane, and examining the recovery rate. Unlike previous versions of the
Kepler pipeline, we find a strong period dependence in the measured detection
efficiency, with longer (>40 day) periods having a significantly lower
detectability than shorter periods, introduced in part by an incorrectly
implemented veto. Consequently, the sensitivity of the 9.2 pipeline cannot be
cast as a simple one-dimensional function of the signal strength of the
candidate planet signal as was possible for previous versions of the pipeline.
We report on the implications for occurrence rate calculations based on the
Q1-Q17 DR24 planet candidate catalog and offer important caveats and
recommendations for performing such calculations. As before, we make available
the entire table of injected planet parameters and whether they were recovered
by the pipeline, enabling readers to derive the pipeline detection sensitivity
in the planet and/or stellar parameter space of their choice.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, full electronic version of Table 1 available at
the NASA Exoplanet Archive; accepted by ApJ May 2nd, 201
Observations of the GRB afterglow ATLAS17aeu and its possible association with GW170104
We report the discovery and multi-wavelength data analysis of the peculiar
optical transient, ATLAS17aeu. This transient was identified in the skymap of
the LIGO gravitational wave event GW170104 by our ATLAS and Pan-STARRS
coverage. ATLAS17aeu was discovered 23.1hrs after GW170104 and rapidly faded
over the next 3 nights, with a spectrum revealing a blue featureless continuum.
The transient was also detected as a fading x-ray source by Swift and in the
radio at 6 and 15 GHz. A gamma ray burst GRB170105A was detected by 3
satellites 19.04hrs after GW170104 and 4.10hrs before our first optical
detection. We analyse the multi-wavelength fluxes in the context of the known
GRB population and discuss the observed sky rates of GRBs and their afterglows.
We find it statistically likely that ATLAS17aeu is an afterglow associated with
GRB170105A, with a chance coincidence ruled out at the 99\% confidence or
2.6. A long, soft GRB within a redshift range of would be consistent with all the observed multi-wavelength data. The
Poisson probability of a chance occurrence of GW170104 and ATLAS17aeu is
. This is the probability of a chance coincidence in 2D sky location
and in time. These observations indicate that ATLAS17aeu is plausibly a normal
GRB afterglow at significantly higher redshift than the distance constraint for
GW170104 and therefore a chance coincidence. However if a redshift of the faint
host were to place it within the GW170104 distance range, then physical
association with GW170104 should be considered.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, accepted to Ap
Methods for Reducing False Alarms in Searches for Compact Binary Coalescences in LIGO Data
The LIGO detectors are sensitive to a variety of noise transients of
non-astrophysical origin. Instrumental glitches and environmental disturbances
increase the false alarm rate in the searches for gravitational waves. Using
times already identified when the interferometers produced data of questionable
quality, or when the channels that monitor the interferometer indicated
non-stationarity, we have developed techniques to safely and effectively veto
false triggers from the compact binary coalescences (CBCs) search pipeline
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