831 research outputs found
New class I methanol masers
We review properties of all known collisionally pumped (class I) methanol
maser series based on observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array
(ATCA) and the Mopra radio telescope. Masers at 36, 84, 44 and 95 GHz are most
widespread, while 9.9, 25, 23.4 and 104 GHz masers are much rarer, tracing the
most energetic shocks. A survey of many southern masers at 36 and 44 GHz
suggests that these two transitions are highly complementary. The 23.4 GHz
maser is a new type of rare class I methanol maser, detected only in two
high-mass star-forming regions, G357.97-0.16 and G343.12-0.06, and showing a
behaviour similar to 9.9, 25 and 104 GHz masers. Interferometric positions
suggest that shocks responsible for class I masers could arise from a range of
phenomena, not merely an outflow scenario. For example, some masers might be
caused by interaction of an expanding HII region with its surrounding molecular
cloud. This has implications for evolutionary sequences incorporating class I
methanol masers if they appear more than once during the evolution of the
star-forming region. We also make predictions for candidate maser transitions
at the ALMA frequency range.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, to appear in proceedings for IAUS 287: Cosmic
Masers - from OH to H
High-velocity feature of the class I methanol maser in G309.38-0.13
The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) has been used to map class I
methanol masers at 36 and 44 GHz in G309.38-0.13. Maser spots are found at nine
locations in an area of 50''x30'', with both transitions reliably detected at
only two locations. The brightest spot is associated with shocked gas traced by
4.5 micron emission. The data allowed us to make a serendipitous discovery of a
high-velocity 36-GHz spectral feature, which is blue-shifted by about 30 km/s
from the peak velocity at this frequency, but spatially located close to
(within a few arcseconds of) the brightest maser spot. We interpret this as
indicating an outflow parallel to the line of sight. Such a high velocity
spread of maser features, which has not been previously reported in the class I
methanol masers associated with a single molecular cloud, suggests that the
outflow most likely interacts with a moving parcel of gas.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted by MNRAS Letter
Discovery of the new class I methanol maser transition at 23.4 GHz
We report the first detection of a methanol maser in the 10(1)-9(2)A-
transition at 23.4 GHz, discovered during the H2O southern Galactic Plane
Survey (HOPS) with the 22-m Mopra radio telescope. In the region covered by
HOPS, the 23.4 GHz maser was found at only one location, G357.97-0.16, which
was also a prominent source of maser emission in the J(2)-J(1)E series near 25
GHz. The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) was used to follow up these
detections at high angular resolution and prove the maser nature of the
observed emission. The analysis shows that the new methanol maser at 23.4 GHz
is a class I maser, which has properties similar to the 9.9 and 25 GHz masers
(i.e. traces strong shocks with higher than average temperature and density).
All class I masers were found to originate at the same spatial location (within
the measurement uncertainty of 0.5 arcseconds) in the vicinity of the dominant
infrared source, but at a clearly distinct position from nearby OH, H2O and
class II methanol masers at 6.7 GHz. All maser species are distributed
approximately on a line, but it is not clear at present whether this has any
physical significance. We also detected a weak (1.3 mJy) continuum source at 25
GHz near the OH maser (at the most northern site, associated with a class II
methanol maser and an H2O maser renowned for its extremely wide spread of
velocity components). The continuum source has not been reported at lower
frequencies and is therefore a candidate hypercompact HII region. We also used
the ATCA to find the strongest and only fifth known 9.9 GHz maser towards
G357.97-0.16 and another 23.4 GHz maser towards G343.12-0.06 not seen in HOPS.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, accepted by MNRA
Frontiers, challenges, and solutions in modeling of swift heavy ion effects in materials
Since a few breakthroughs in the fundamental understanding of the effects of
swift heavy ions (SHI) decelerating in the electronic stopping regime in the
matter have been achieved in the last decade, it motivated us to review the
state-of-the-art approaches in the modeling of SHI effects. The SHI track
kinetics occurs via several well-separated stages: from attoseconds in
ion-impact ionization depositing energy in a target, to femtoseconds of
electron transport and hole cascades, to picoseconds of lattice excitation and
response, to nanoseconds of atomic relaxation, and even longer macroscopic
reaction. Each stage requires its own approaches for quantitative description.
We discuss that understanding the links between the stages makes it possible to
describe the entire track kinetics within a multiscale model without fitting
procedures. The review focuses on the underlying physical mechanisms of each
process, the dominant effects they produce, and the limitations of the existing
approaches as well as various numerical techniques implementing these models.
It provides an overview of ab-initio-based modeling of the evolution of the
electronic properties; Monte Carlo simulations of nonequilibrium electronic
transport; molecular dynamics modeling of atomic reaction on the surface and in
the bulk; kinetic Mote Carlo of atomic defect kinetics; finite-difference
methods of tracks interaction with chemical solvents describing etching
kinetics. We outline the modern methods that couple these approaches into
multiscale multidisciplinary models and point to their bottlenecks, strengths,
and weaknesses. The analysis is accompanied by examples of important results
improving the understanding of track formation in various materials.
Summarizing the most recent advances in the field of the track formation
process, the review delivers a comprehensive picture and detailed understanding
of the phenomena.Comment: to be submitte
Second-layer nucleation in coherent Stranski-Krastanov growth of quantum dots
We have studied the monolayer-bilayer transformation in the case of the
coherent Stranski-Krastanov growth. We have found that the energy of formation
of a second layer nucleus is largest at the center of the first-layer island
and smallest on its corners. Thus nucleation is expected to take place at the
corners (or the edges) rather than at the center of the islands as in the case
of homoepitaxy. The critical nuclei have one atom in addition to a compact
shape, which is either a square of i*i or a rectangle of i*(i-1) atoms, with
i>1 an integer. When the edge of the initial monolayer island is much larger
than the critical nucleus size, the latter is always a rectangle plus an
additional atom, adsorbed at the longer edge, which gives rise to a new atomic
row in order to transform the rectangle into the equilibrium square shape.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Accepted version, minor change
PKSB1740-517: An ALMA view of the cold gas feeding a distant interacting young radio galaxy
Cold neutral gas is a key ingredient for growing the stellar and central
black hole mass in galaxies throughout cosmic history. We have used the Atacama
Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) to detect a rare example of redshifted
CO(2-1) absorption in PKS B1740-517, a young (
yr) and luminous ( erg s ) radio
galaxy at that is undergoing a tidal interaction with at least one
lower-mass companion. The coincident HI 21-cm and molecular absorption have
very similar line profiles and reveal a reservoir of cold gas ( M), likely distributed in a disc or ring within
a few kiloparsecs of the nucleus. A separate HI component is kinematically
distinct and has a very narrow line width ( km
s), consistent with a single diffuse cloud of cold (
K) atomic gas. The CO(2-1) absorption is not associated with this
component, which suggests that the cloud is either much smaller than 100 pc
along our sight-line and/or located in low-metallicity gas that was possibly
tidally stripped from the companion. We argue that the gas reservoir in PKS
B1740-517 may have accreted onto the host galaxy 50 Myr before the young
radio AGN was triggered, but has only recently reached the nucleus. This is
consistent with the paradigm that powerful luminous radio galaxies are
triggered by minor mergers and interactions with low-mass satellites and
represent a brief, possibly recurrent, active phase in the life cycle of
massive early type galaxies.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
The effect of oxide precipitates on minority carrier lifetime in n-type silicon
Supersaturated levels of interstitial oxygen in Czochralski silicon can lead to the formation of oxide precipitates. Although beneficial from an internal gettering perspective, oxygen-related extended defects give rise to recombination which reduces minority carrier lifetime. The highest efficiency silicon solar cells are made from n-type substrates in which oxide precipitates can have a detrimental impact on cell efficiency. In order to quantify and to understand the mechanism of recombination in such materials, we correlate injection level-dependent minority carrier lifetime data measured with silicon nitride surface passivation with interstitial oxygen loss and precipitate concentration measurements in samples processed under substantially different conditions. We account for surface recombination, doping level, and precipitate morphology to present a generalised parameterisation of lifetime. The lifetime data are analysed in terms of recombination activity which is dependent on precipitate density or on the surface area of different morphologies of precipitates. Correlation of the lifetime data with interstitial oxygen loss data shows that the recombination activity is likely to be dependent on the precipitate surface area. We generalise our findings to estimate the impact of oxide precipitates with a given surface area on lifetime in both n-type and p-type silicon
The Performance and Calibration of the CRAFT Fly's Eye Fast Radio Burst Survey
Since January 2017, the Commensal Real-time ASKAP Fast Transients survey
(CRAFT) has been utilising commissioning antennas of the Australian SKA
Pathfinder (ASKAP) to survey for fast radio bursts (FRBs) in fly's eye mode.
This is the first extensive astronomical survey using phased array feeds
(PAFs), and a total of 20 FRBs have been reported. Here we present a
calculation of the sensitivity and total exposure of this survey, using the
pulsars B1641-45 (J1644-4559) and B0833-45 (J0835-4510, i.e.\ Vela) as
calibrators. The design of the survey allows us to benchmark effects due to PAF
beamshape, antenna-dependent system noise, radio-frequency interference, and
fluctuations during commissioning on timescales from one hour to a year.
Observation time, solid-angle, and search efficiency are calculated as a
function of FRB fluence threshold. Using this metric, effective survey
exposures and sensitivities are calculated as a function of the source counts
distribution. The implied FRB rate is significantly lower than the
\,sky\,day calculated using nominal exposures and
sensitivities for this same sample by \citet{craft_nature}. At the Euclidean
power-law index of , the rate is \,sky\,day above a threshold of \,Jy\,ms, while for the best-fit index for this sample of , it is
\,sky\,day above a threshold of \,Jy\,ms. This strongly suggests that these calculations be performed
for other FRB-hunting experiments, allowing meaningful comparisons to be made
between them.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in PAS
High-velocity OH megamasers in IRAS 20100-4156: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole
We report the discovery of new, high-velocity narrow-line components of the
OH megamaser in IRAS 20100-4156. Results from the Australian Square Kilometre
Array Pathfinder (ASKAP)'s Boolardy Engineering Test Array (BETA) and the
Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) provide two independent measurements
of the OH megamaser spectrum. We found evidence for OH megamaser clumps at
409 and 562 km/s (blue-shifted) from the systemic velocity of the galaxy,
in addition to the lines previously known. The presence of such high velocities
in the molecular emission from IRAS 201004156 could be explained by a ~50 pc
molecular ring enclosing an approximately 3.8 billion solar mass black hole. We
also discuss two alternatives, i.e. that the narrow-line masers are dynamically
coupled to the wind driven by the active galactic nucleus or they are
associated with two separate galactic nuclei. The comparison between the BETA
and ATCA spectra provides another scientific verification of ASKAP's BETA. Our
data, combined with previous measurements of the source enabled us to study the
variability of the source over a twenty-six year period. The flux density of
the brightest OH maser components has reduced by more than a factor of two
between 1988 and 2015, whereas a secondary narrow-line component has more than
doubled in the same time. Plans for high-resolution VLBI follow-up of this
source are discussed, as are prospects for discovering new OH megamasers during
the ASKAP early science program.Comment: Accepted to MNRAS. Seven pages, three figure
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