Calibration of LAMOST Stellar Surface Gravities Using the Kepler Asteroseismic Data

Asteroseismology is a powerful tool to precisely determine the evolutionary status and fundamental properties of stars. With the unprecedented precision and nearly continuous photometric data acquired by the NASA Kepler mission, parameters of more than 10$^4$ stars have been determined nearly consistently. However, most studies still use photometric effective temperatures (Teff) and metallicities ([Fe/H]) as inputs, which are not sufficiently accurate as suggested by previous studies. We adopted the spectroscopic Teff and [Fe/H] values based on the LAMOST low-resolution spectra (R~1,800), and combined them with the global oscillation parameters to derive the physical parameters of a large sample of stars. Clear trends were found between {\Delta}logg(LAMOST - seismic) and spectroscopic Teff as well as logg, which may result in an overestimation of up to 0.5 dex for the logg of giants in the LAMOST catalog. We established empirical calibration relations for the logg values of dwarfs and giants. These results can be used for determining the precise distances to these stars based on their spectroscopic parameters.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures and 3 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomical Journal. Table 3 is available at http://lwang.info/research/kepler_lamost

Entanglement and Quantum Phase Transition in Low Dimensional Spin Systems

Entanglement of the ground states in $XXZ$ and dimerized Heisenberg spin chains as well as in a two-leg spin ladder is analyzed by using the spin-spin concurrence and the entanglement entropy between a selected sublattice of spins and the rest of the system. In particular, we reveal that quantum phase transition points/boundaries may be identified based on the analysis on the local extreme of this entanglement entropy, which is illustrated to be superior over the concurrence scenario and may enable us to explore quantum phase transitions in many other systems including higher dimensional ones.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The SVOM gamma-ray burst mission

We briefly present the science capabilities, the instruments, the operations, and the expected performance of the SVOM mission. SVOM (Space-based multiband astronomical Variable Objects Monitor) is a Chinese-French space mission dedicated to the study of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) in the next decade. The SVOM mission encompasses a satellite carrying four instruments to detect and localize the prompt GRB emission and measure the evolution of the afterglow in the visible band and in X-rays, a VHF communication system enabling the fast transmission of SVOM alerts to the ground, and a ground segment including a wide angle camera and two follow-up telescopes. The pointing strategy of the satellite has been optimized to favor the detection of GRBs located in the night hemisphere. This strategy enables the study of the optical emission in the first minutes after the GRB with robotic observatories and the early spectroscopy of the optical afterglow with large telescopes to measure the redshifts. The study of GRBs in the next decade will benefit from a number of large facilities in all wavelengths that will contribute to increase the scientific return of the mission. Finally, SVOM will operate in the era of the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, greatly contributing to searches for the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave triggers at Xray and gamma-ray energies.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, published by PoS, proceedings of the conference Swift: 10 Years of Discovery, 2-5 December 2014, La Sapienza University, Rome, Ital

Testing the viability of the interacting holographic dark energy model by using combined observational constraints

Using the data coming from the new 182 Gold type Ia supernova samples, the shift parameter of the Cosmic Microwave Background given by the three-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe observations, and the baryon acoustic oscillation measurement from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, $H(z)$ and lookback time measurements, we have performed a statistical joint analysis of the interacting holographic dark energy model. Consistent parameter estimations show us that the interacting holographic dark energy model is a viable candidate to explain the observed acceleration of our universe.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in JCA