289 research outputs found
On the influence of the cosmological constant on gravitational lensing in small systems
The cosmological constant Lambda affects gravitational lensing phenomena. The
contribution of Lambda to the observable angular positions of multiple images
and to their amplification and time delay is here computed through a study in
the weak deflection limit of the equations of motion in the Schwarzschild-de
Sitter metric. Due to Lambda the unresolved images are slightly demagnified,
the radius of the Einstein ring decreases and the time delay increases. The
effect is however negligible for near lenses. In the case of null cosmological
constant, we provide some updated results on lensing by a Schwarzschild black
hole.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure; v2: extended discussion on the lens equation,
references added, results unchanged, in press on PR
Operation Of The NuMi Beam Monitoring System
The NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) facility produces an intense neutrino beam for experiments. The NuMI Beam Monitoring system consists of four arrays of ion chambers that measure the intensity and distribution of the remnant hadron and tertiary muon beams produced in association with the neutrinos. The ion chambers operate in an environment of high particle fluxes and high radiation.Physic
All Weather Calibration of Wide Field Optical and NIR Surveys
The science goals for ground-based large-area surveys, such as the Dark
Energy Survey, Pan-STARRS, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, require
calibration of broadband photometry that is stable in time and uniform over the
sky to precisions of a per cent or better. This performance will need to be
achieved with data taken over the course of many years, and often in less than
ideal conditions. This paper describes a strategy to achieve precise internal
calibration of imaging survey data taken in less than photometric conditions,
and reports results of an observational study of the techniques needed to
implement this strategy. We find that images of celestial fields used in this
case study with stellar densities of order one per arcmin-squared and taken
through cloudless skies can be calibrated with relative precision of 0.5 per
cent (reproducibility). We report measurements of spatial structure functions
of cloud absorption observed over a range of atmospheric conditions, and find
it possible to achieve photometric measurements that are reproducible to 1 per
cent in images that were taken through cloud layers that transmit as little as
25 per cent of the incident optical flux (1.5 magnitudes of extinction). We
find, however, that photometric precision below 1 per cent is impeded by the
thinnest detectable cloud layers. We comment on implications of these results
for the observing strategies of future surveys.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal (AJ
Effects of Varying the Three-Body Molecular Hydrogen Formation Rate in Primordial Star Formation
The transformation of atomic hydrogen to molecular hydrogen through
three-body reactions is a crucial stage in the collapse of primordial,
metal-free halos, where the first generation of stars (Population III stars) in
the Universe are formed. However, in the published literature, the rate
coefficient for this reaction is uncertain by nearly an order of magnitude. We
report on the results of both adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) and smoothed
particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of the collapse of metal-free halos as
a function of the value of this rate coefficient. For each simulation method,
we have simulated a single halo three times, using three different values of
the rate coefficient. We find that while variation between halo realizations
may be greater than that caused by the three-body rate coefficient being used,
both the accretion physics onto Population III protostars as well as the
long-term stability of the disk and any potential fragmentation may depend
strongly on this rate coefficient.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures; Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical
Journa
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Direct measurements of beta-star in the Tevatron
Simultaneous turn-by-turn beam position measurements across collider detector long straight sections provide full phase space information of a free oscillation. For signals with enough coherence (typically 1-2000 revolutions) the amplitude function and its slope at the two BPM's can be directly measured. Results for the Tevatron low-{beta} regions with a few percent accuracy are described
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Geometrical interpretation of nonlinearities from a cylindrical pick-up
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SDSS spectroscopic survey of stars
In addition to optical photometry of unprecedented quality, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is also producing a massive spectroscopic database. They discuss determination of stellar parameters, such as effective temperature, gravity and metallicity from SDSS spectra, describe correlations between kinematics and metallicity, and study their variation as a function of the position in the Galaxy. They show that stellar parameter estimates by Beers et al. show a good correlation with the position of a star in the g-r vs. u-g color-color diagram, thereby demonstrating their robustness as well as a potential for photometric parameter estimation methods. Using Beers et al. parameters, they find that the metallicity distribution of the Milky Way stars at a few kpc from the galactic plane is bimodal with a local minimum at [Z/Z{sub {circle_dot}}] {approx} -1.3. The median metallicity for the low-metallicity [Z/Z{sub {circle_dot}}] < =1.3 subsample is nearly independent of Galactic cylindrical coordinates R and z, while it decreases with z for the high-metallicity [Z/Z{sub {circle_dot}}] > -1.3 sample. they also find that the low-metallicity sample has {approx} 2.5 times larger velocity dispersion and that it does not rotate (at the {approx} 10 km/s level), while the rotational velocity of the high-metallicity sample decreases smoothly with the height above the galactic plane
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Inversion of Airborne Contaminants in a Regional Model
We are interested in a DDDAS problem of localization of airborne contaminant releases in regional atmospheric transport models from sparse observations. Given measurements of the contaminant over an observation window at a small number of points in space, and a velocity field as predicted for example by a mesoscopic weather model, we seek an estimate of the state of the contaminant at the beginning of the observation interval that minimizes the least squares misfit between measured and predicted contaminant field, subject to the convection-diffusion equation for the contaminant. Once the ''initial'' conditions are estimated by solution of the inverse problem, we issue predictions of the evolution of the contaminant, the observation window is advanced in time, and the process repeated to issue a new prediction, in the style of 4D-Var. We design an appropriate numerical strategy that exploits the spectral structure of the inverse operator, and leads to efficient and accurate resolution of the inverse problem. Numerical experiments verify that high resolution inversion can be carried out rapidly for a well-resolved terrain model of the greater Los Angeles area
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Reionization: Characteristic Scales, Topology And Observability
Recently the numerical simulations of the process of reionization of the universe at z > 6 have made a qualitative leap forward, reaching sufficient sizes and dynamic range to determine the characteristic scales of this process. This allowed making the first realistic predictions for a variety of observational signatures. We discuss recent results from large-scale radiative transfer and structure formation simulations on the observability of high-redshift Ly-{alpha} sources. We also briefly discuss the dependence of the characteristic scales and topology of the ionized and neutral patches on the reionization parameters
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