Search For Oxygen in Cool DQ White Dwarf Atmospheres

We report new infrared spectroscopic observations of cool DQ white dwarfs by using Coolspec on the 2.7m Harlan-Smith Telescope. DQs have helium-rich atmospheres with traces of molecular carbon thought to be the result of convective dredge-up from their C/O interiors. Recent model calculations predict that oxygen should also be present in DQ atmospheres in detectable amounts. Our synthetic spectra calculations for He-rich white dwarfs with traces of C and O indicate that CO should be easily detected in the cool DQ atmospheres if present in the expected amounts. Determination of the oxygen abundance in the atmosphere will reveal the C/O ratio at the core/envelope boundary, constraining the important and uncertain ^{12}C(alpha,gamma)^{16}O reaction rate.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, to appear in proceedings of the 13th European Workshop on White Dwarf

Wegner bounds for a two-particle tight binding model

We consider a quantum two-particle system on a d-dimensional lattice with interaction and in presence of an IID external potential. We establish Wegner-typer estimates for such a model. The main tool used is Stollmann's lemma

Specific heat of the simple-cubic Ising model

We provide an expression quantitatively describing the specific heat of the Ising model on the simple-cubic lattice in the critical region. This expression is based on finite-size scaling of numerical results obtained by means of a Monte Carlo method. It agrees satisfactorily with series expansions and with a set of experimental results. Our results include a determination of the universal amplitude ratio of the specific-heat divergences at both sides of the critical point.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure

Temperature in One-Dimensional Bosonic Mott insulators

The Mott insulating phase of a one-dimensional bosonic gas trapped in optical lattices is described by a Bose-Hubbard model. A continuous unitary transformation is used to map this model onto an effective model conserving the number of elementary excitations. We obtain quantitative results for the kinetics and for the spectral weights of the low-energy excitations for a broad range of parameters in the insulating phase. By these results, recent Bragg spectroscopy experiments are explained. Evidence for a significant temperature of the order of the microscopic energy scales is found.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

A metal-insulator transition as a quantum glass problem

We discuss a recent mapping of the Anderson-Mott metal-insulator transition onto a random field magnet problem. The most important new idea introduced is to describe the metal-insulator transition in terms of an order parameter expansion rather than in terms of soft modes via a nonlinear sigma model. For spatial dimensions d>6 a mean field theory gives the exact critical exponents. In an epsilon expansion about d=6 the critical exponents are identical to those for a random field Ising model. Dangerous irrelevant quantum fluctuations modify Wegner's scaling law relating the conductivity exponent to the correlation or localization length exponent. This invalidates the bound s>2/3 for the conductivity exponent s in d=3. We also argue that activated scaling might be relevant for describing the AMT in three-dimensional systems.Comment: 10 pp., REvTeX, 1 eps fig., Sitges Conference Proceedings, final version as publishe

Dynamical modelling of luminous and dark matter in 17 Coma early-type galaxies

Dynamical models for 17 Coma early-type galaxies are presented. The galaxy sample consists of flattened, rotating as well as non-rotating early-types including cD and S0 galaxies with luminosities between M=-18.79 and M=-22.56. Kinematical long-slit observations cover at least the major and minor axis and extend to 1-4 effective radii. Axisymmetric Schwarzschild models are used to derive stellar mass-to-light ratios and dark halo parameters. In every galaxy models with a dark matter halo match the data better than models without. The statistical significance is over 95 percent for 8 galaxies, around 90 percent for 5 galaxies and for four galaxies it is not significant. For the highly significant cases systematic deviations between observed and modelled kinematics are clearly seen; for the remaining galaxies differences are more statistical in nature. Best-fit models contain 10-50 percent dark matter inside the half-light radius. The central dark matter density is at least one order of magnitude lower than the luminous mass density. The central phase-space density of dark matter is often orders of magnitude lower than in the luminous component, especially when the halo core radius is large. The orbital system of the stars along the major-axis is slightly dominated by radial motions. Some galaxies show tangential anisotropy along the minor-axis, which is correlated with the minor-axis Gauss-Hermite coefficient H4. Changing the balance between data-fit and regularisation constraints does not change the reconstructed mass structure significantly. Model anisotropies tend to strengthen if the weight on regularisation is reduced, but the general property of a galaxy to be radially or tangentially anisotropic, respectively, does not change. (abridged)Comment: 31 pages, 34 figures; accepted for publication in MNRA

Spectral Properties of Magnetic Excitations in Cuprate Two-Leg Ladder Systems

This article summarizes and extends the recent developments in the microscopic modeling of the magnetic excitations in cuprate two-leg ladder systems. The microscopic Hamiltonian comprises dominant Heisenberg exchange terms plus an additional four-spin interaction which is about five times smaller. We give an overview over the relevant energies like the one-triplon dispersion, the energies of two-triplon bound states and the positions of multi-triplon continua and over relevant spectral properties like spectral weights and spectral densities in the parameter regime appropriate for cuprate systems. It is concluded that an almost complete understanding of the magnetic excitations in undoped cuprate ladders has been obtained as measured by inelastic neutron scattering, inelastic light (Raman) scattering and infrared absorption.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures, review for Mod. Phys. Lett.

The supermassive black hole and double nucleus of the core elliptical NGC5419

We obtained adaptive-optics assisted SINFONI observations of the central regions of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC5419 with a spatial resolution of 0.2 arcsec ($\approx 55$ pc). NGC5419 has a large depleted stellar core with a radius of 1.58 arcsec (430 pc). HST and SINFONI images show a point source located at the galaxy's photocentre, which is likely associated with the low-luminosity AGN previously detected in NGC5419. Both the HST and SINFONI images also show a second nucleus, off-centred by 0.25 arcsec ($\approx 70$ pc). Outside of the central double nucleus, we measure an almost constant velocity dispersion of $\sigma \sim 350$ km/s. In the region where the double nucleus is located, the dispersion rises steeply to a peak value of $\sim 420$ km/s. In addition to the SINFONI data, we also obtained stellar kinematics at larger radii from the South African Large Telescope. While NGC5419 shows low rotation ($v < 50$ km/s), the central regions (inside $\sim 4 \, r_b$) clearly rotate in the opposite direction to the galaxy's outer parts. We use orbit-based dynamical models to measure the black hole mass of NGC5419 from the kinematical data outside of the double nuclear structure. The models imply M$_{\rm BH}=7.2^{+2.7}_{-1.9} \times 10^9$ M$_{\odot}$. The enhanced velocity dispersion in the region of the double nucleus suggests that NGC5419 possibly hosts two supermassive black holes at its centre, separated by only $\approx 70$ pc. Yet our measured M$_{\rm BH}$ is consistent with the black hole mass expected from the size of the galaxy's depleted stellar core. This suggests, that systematic uncertainties in M$_{\rm BH}$ related to the secondary nucleus are small.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Non-perturbative flow equations from continuous unitary transformations

We use a novel parameterization of the flowing Hamiltonian to show that the flow equations based on continuous unitary transformations, as proposed by Wegner, can be implemented through a nonlinear partial differential equation involving one flow parameter and two system specific auxiliary variables. The implementation is non-perturbative as the partial differential equation involves a systematic expansion in fluctuations, controlled by the size of the system, rather than the coupling constant. The method is applied to the Lipkin model to construct a mapping which maps the non-interacting spectrum onto the interacting spectrum to a very high accuracy. This function is universal in the sense that the full spectrum for any (large) number of particles can be obtained from it. In a similar way expectation values for a large class of operators can be obtained, which also makes it possible to probe the stucture of the eigenstates.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figure

On the nature of the FBS blue stellar objects and the completeness of the Bright Quasar Survey. II

In Paper I (Mickaelian et al. 1999), we compared the surface density of QSOs in the Bright Quasar Survey (BQS) and in the First Byurakan Survey (FBS) and concluded that the completeness of the BQS is of the order of 70% rather than 30-50% as suggested by several authors. A number of new observations recently became available, allowing a re-evaluation of this completeness. We now obtain a surface density of QSOs brighter than B = 16.16 in a subarea of the FBS covering ~2250 deg^2, equal to 0.012 deg^-2 (26 QSOs), implying a completeness of 53+/-10%.Comment: LaTeX 2e, 11 pages, 3 tables and 3 figures (included in text). To appear in Astrophysics. Uses a modified aaspp4.sty (my_aaspp4.sty), included in packag