Investigation of Co3O4 and LaCoO3 interaction by performing N2O decomposition tests under Co3O4-CoO transition temperature

The research presented in this paper addresses the question: How does the addition of a small amount of LaCoO3 impact the activity of a Co3O4 catalyst? By testing such a catalyst in N2O decomposition under conditions at which the thermal decomposition of Co3O4 to CoO is possible, one gains unique insight into how the two phases interact. The activity of such a catalyst increases in the entire studied temperature range, unlike the activity of the undoped cobalt catalyst which is lower at 850 °C than at 800 °C due to the reduction of Co3O4 to CoO. XRD measurements showed that CoO was also the main cobalt oxide present in the Co3.5La catalyst after operating at 850 °C, as did the XPS measurements, but there was no drop of activity associated with this change. The influence of NO, O2 and H2O on the activity of the new catalyst, Co3.5La, was determined. Lack of positive effect of NO, a known oxygen scavenger, on the activity was noticed at all temperatures, showing that the effect of LaCoO3 is probably due to increased oxygen desorption. Temperature programed oxidation (TPO) tests showed that the beneficial effects of the presence of LaCoO3 on the activity of cobalt oxide at 850 °C were probably caused by enhanced diffusion of O2− anions through the entire catalyst, which facilitates desorption of oxygen molecules from the surface

Application of potassium ion deposition in determining the impact of support reducibility on catalytic activity of au/ceria-zirconia catalysts in CO oxidation, NO oxidation, and C3H8 combustion

The purpose of the study was to show how a controlled, subtle change of the reducibility of the support by deposition of potassium ions impacts the activity of gold catalysts. Since the activity of supported gold catalysts in carbon monoxide oxidation is known to strongly depend on the reducibility of the support, this reaction was chosen as the model reaction. The results of tests conducted in a simple system in which the only reagents were CO and O2 showed good agreement with the CO activity trend in tests performed in a complex stream of reagents, which also contained CH4, C2H6, C3H8, NO, and water vapor. The results of the X-ray Diffraction (XRD) studies revealed that the support has the composition Ce0.85Zr0.15O2, that its lattice constant is the same for all samples, and that gold is mostly present in the metallic phase. The reducibility of the systems was established based on Temperature Programmed Reduction (TPR) and in situ XRD measurements in H2 atmosphere. The results show that the low temperature reduction peak, which is due to the presence of gold, is shifted to a higher value by the presence of 0.3 at% potassium ions on the surface. Moreover, the increase of the potassium loading leads to a more pronounced shift. The T50 of CO oxidation in the simple model stream was found to exhibit an excellent linear correlation with the maximum temperature of the low temperature reduction peak of Au catalysts. This means that stabilizing oxygen with a known amount of potassium ions can be numerically used to estimate the T50 in CO oxidation. The results in the complex stream also showed a similar dependence of CO conversion on reducibility, though there was no substantial difference in the activity of the catalysts in other reactions regardless of the potassium loading. These studies have shown that the influence of potassium varies depending on the reaction, which highlights differences in the impact of reducibility and importance of other factors in these reactions

Ogle-2018-blg-0677lb: A super earth near the galactic bulge

We report the analysis of the microlensing event OGLE-2018-BLG-0677. A small feature in the light curve of the event leads to the discovery that the lens is a star-planet system. Although there are two degenerate solutions that could not be distinguished for this event, both lead to a similar planet-host mass ratio. We perform a Bayesian analysis based on a Galactic model to obtain the properties of the system and find that the planet corresponds to a super-Earth/sub-Neptune with a mass $M_{\mathrm{planet}} = {3.96}^{+5.88}_{-2.66}\mathrm{M_\oplus}$. The host star has a mass $M_{\mathrm{host}} = {0.12}^{+0.14}_{-0.08}\mathrm{M_\odot}$. The projected separation for the inner and outer solutions are ${0.63}^{+0.20}_{-0.17}$~AU and ${0.72}^{+0.23}_{-0.19}$~AU respectively. At $\Delta\chi^2=\chi^2({\rm 1L1S})-\chi^2({\rm 2L1S})=46$, this is by far the lowest $\Delta\chi^2$ for any securely-detected microlensing planet to date, a feature that is closely connected to the fact that it is detected primarily via a "dip" rather than a "bump".Comment: 15 page, 12 figures, Published in A

OGLE-2018-BLG-0532Lb: Cold Neptune With Possible Jovian Sibling

We report the discovery of the planet OGLE-2018-BLG-0532Lb, with very obvious signatures in the light curve that lead to an estimate of the planet-host mass ratio $q=M_{\rm planet}/M_{\rm host}\simeq 1\times10^{-4}$. Although there are no obvious systematic residuals to this double-lens/single-source (2L1S) fit, we find that $\chi^2$ can be significantly improved by adding either a third lens (3L1S, $\Delta\chi^2=81$) or second source (2L2S, $\Delta\chi^2=65$) to the lens-source geometry. After thorough investigation, we conclude that we cannot decisively distinguish between these two scenarios and therefore focus on the robustly-detected planet. However, given the possible presence of a second planet, we investigate to what degree and with what probability such additional planets may affect seemingly single-planet light curves. Our best estimates for the properties of the lens star and the secure planet are: a host mass $M\sim 0.25\,M_\odot$, system distance $D_L\sim 1\,$kpc and planet mass $m_{p,1}= 8\,M_\oplus$ with projected separation $a_{1,\perp}=1.4\,$au. However, there is a relatively bright $I=18.6$ (and also relatively blue) star projected within $<50\,$mas of the lens, and if future high-resolution images show that this is coincident with the lens, then it is possible that it is the lens, in which case, the lens would be both more massive and more distant than the best-estimated values above.Comment: 48 pages, 9 figures, 7 table

OGLE-2017-BLG-0329L: A Microlensing Binary Characterized with Dramatically Enhanced Precision Using Data from Space-based Observations

Mass measurements of gravitational microlenses require one to determine the microlens parallax π E, but precise π E measurement, in many cases, is hampered due to the subtlety of the microlens-parallax signal combined with the difficulty of distinguishing the signal from those induced by other higher-order effects. In this work, we present the analysis of the binary-lens event OGLE-2017-BLG-0329, for which π E is measured with a dramatically improved precision using additional data from space-based Spitzer observations. We find that while the parallax model based on the ground-based data cannot be distinguished from a zero-π E model at the 2σ level, the addition of the Spitzer data enables us to identify two classes of solutions, each composed of a pair of solutions according to the well-known ecliptic degeneracy. It is found that the space-based data reduce the measurement uncertainties of the north and east components of the microlens-parallax vector π E by factors ~18 and ~4, respectively. With the measured microlens parallax combined with the angular Einstein radius measured from the resolved caustic crossings, we find that the lens is composed of a binary with component masses of either (M1, M2) ~ (1.1, 0.8) M⊙ or ~(0.4, 0.3) M⊙ according to the two solution classes. The first solution is significantly favored but the second cannot be securely ruled out based on the microlensing data alone. However, the degeneracy can be resolved from adaptive optics observations taken ~10 years after the event

Spectroscopic Mass and Host-star Metallicity Measurements for Newly Discovered Microlensing Planet OGLE-2018-BLG-0740Lb

We report the discovery of the microlensing planet OGLE-2018-BLG-0740Lb. The planet is detected with a very strong signal of $\Delta\chi^2\sim 4630$, but the interpretation of the signal suffers from two types of degeneracies. One type is caused by the previously known close/wide degeneracy, and the other is caused by an ambiguity between two solutions, in which one solution requires to incorporate finite-source effects, while the other solution is consistent with a point-source interpretation. Although difficult to be firmly resolved based on only the photometric data, the degeneracy is resolved in strong favor of the point-source solution with the additional external information obtained from astrometric and spectroscopic observations. The small astrometric offset between the source and baseline object supports that the blend is the lens and this interpretation is further secured by the consistency of the spectroscopic distance estimate of the blend with the lensing parameters of the point-source solution. The estimated mass of the host is $1.0\pm 0.1~M_\odot$ and the mass of the planet is $4.5\pm 0.6~M_{\rm J}$ (close solution) or $4.8\pm 0.6~M_{\rm J}$ (wide solution) and the lens is located at a distance of $3.2\pm 0.5$~kpc. The bright nature of the lens, with $I\sim 17.1$ ($V\sim 18.2$), combined with its dominance of the observed flux suggest that radial-velocity (RV) follow-up observations of the lens can be done using high-resolution spectrometers mounted on large telescopes, e.g., VLT/ESPRESSO, and this can potentially not only measure the period and eccentricity of the planet but also probe for close-in planets. We estimate that the expected RV amplitude would be $\sim 60\sin i ~{\rm m~s}^{-1}$.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, 4 table

Candidate Brown-dwarf Microlensing Events with Very Short Timescales and Small Angular Einstein Radii

Short-timescale microlensing events are likely to be produced by substellar brown dwarfs (BDs), but it is difficult to securely identify BD lenses based on only event timescales t_E because short-timescale events can also be produced by stellar lenses with high relative lens-source proper motions. In this paper, we report three strong candidate BD-lens events found from the search for lensing events not only with short timescales (t_E ≲ 6 days) but also with very small angular Einstein radii (θ_E ≲ 0.05 mas) among the events that have been found in the 2016–2019 observing seasons. These events include MOA-2017-BLG-147, MOA-2017-BLG-241, and MOA-2019-BLG-256, in which the first two events are produced by single lenses and the last event is produced by a binary lens. From the Monte Carlo simulations of Galactic events conducted with the combined t_E and θ_E constraint, it is estimated that the lens masses of the individual events are 0.051^(+0.100)_(−0.027) M⊙, 0.044^(+0.090)_(−0.023) M⊙, and 0.046^(+0.067)_(−0.023) M⊙/0.038^(+0.056)_(−0.019) M⊙ and the probability of the lens mass smaller than the lower limit of stars is ~80% for all events. We point out that routine lens mass measurements of short-timescale lensing events require survey-mode space-based observations