Calibrating AGN Feedback in Clusters

Whether caused by AGN jets, shocks, or mergers, the most definitive evidence for heating in cluster cores comes from X-ray spectroscopy. Unfortunately such spectra are essentially limited to studying the emission spectrum from the cluster as a whole. However since the same underlying emission measure distribution produces both the observed CCD and RGS spectra, X-ray imaging can still provide spatial information on the heating process. Using Chandra archival data for a sample of 9 clusters, we demonstrate how imaging data can be used to constrain departures from a canonical, isobaric cooling flow model as a function of position in a given cluster. The results of this analysis are also shown for the deep archival exposure of the Perseus cluster. Such heating maps can provide constraints on both the location and magnitude of the heating in the cores of clusters. When combined with detections and spectral index maps from low-frequency radio observations, these maps can be used to distinguish between different models for heating in these objects.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the proceedings of "The Monsters' Fiery Breath", Madison, Wisconsin 1-5 June 2009, Eds. Sebastian Heinz & Eric Wilcot

On type I cascaded quadratic soliton compression in lithium niobate: Compressing femtosecond pulses from high-power fiber lasers

The output pulses of a commercial high-power femtosecond fiber laser or amplifier are typically around 300-500 fs with a wavelength around 1030 nm and 10s of $\mu$J pulse energy. Here we present a numerical study of cascaded quadratic soliton compression of such pulses in LiNbO$_3$ using a type I phase matching configuration. We find that because of competing cubic material nonlinearities compression can only occur in the nonstationary regime, where group-velocity mismatch induced Raman-like nonlocal effects prevent compression to below 100 fs. However, the strong group velocity dispersion implies that the pulses can achieve moderate compression to sub-130 fs duration in available crystal lengths. Most of the pulse energy is conserved because the compression is moderate. The effects of diffraction and spatial walk-off is addressed, and in particular the latter could become an issue when compressing in such long crystals (around 10 cm long). We finally show that the second harmonic contains a short pulse locked to the pump and a long multi-ps red-shifted detrimental component. The latter is caused by the nonlocal effects in the nonstationary regime, but because it is strongly red-shifted to a position that can be predicted, we show that it can be removed using a bandpass filter, leaving a sub-100 fs visible component at $\lambda=515$ nm with excellent pulse quality.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, submitted to PR

Start/stop switches for testing detonation velocity of explosives

Printed-circuit process produces ordnance-initiated start/stop switches. Method is faster and less costly than fabriction by hand, and produces switches of uniform quality

Limits to compression with cascaded quadratic soliton compressors

We study cascaded quadratic soliton compressors and address the physical mechanisms that limit the compression. A nonlocal model is derived, and the nonlocal response is shown to have an additional oscillatory component in the nonstationary regime when the group-velocity mismatch (GVM) is strong. This inhibits efficient compression. Raman-like perturbations from the cascaded nonlinearity, competing cubic nonlinearities, higher-order dispersion, and soliton energy may also limit compression, and through realistic numerical simulations we point out when each factor becomes important. We find that it is theoretically possible to reach the single-cycle regime by compressing high-energy fs pulses for wavelengths $\lambda=1.0-1.3 \mu{\rm m}$ in a $\beta$-barium-borate crystal, and it requires that the system is in the stationary regime, where the phase mismatch is large enough to overcome the detrimental GVM effects. However, the simulations show that reaching single-cycle duration is ultimately inhibited by competing cubic nonlinearities as well as dispersive waves, that only show up when taking higher-order dispersion into account.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Optics Expres

X ray opacity in cluster cooling flows

We have calculated the emergent x-ray properties for a set of spherically symmetric, steady-state cluster cooling flow models including the effects of radiative transfer. Opacity due to resonant x-ray lines, photoelectric absorption, and electron scattering have been included in these calculations, and homogeneous and inhomogeneous gas distributions were considered. The effects of photoionization opacity are small for both types of models. In contrast, resonant line optical depths can be quite high in both homogeneous and inhomogeneous models. The presence of turbulence in the gas can significantly lower the line opacity. We find that integrated x-ray spectra for the flow cooling now are only slightly affected by radiative transfer effects. However x-ray line surface brightness profiles can be dramatically affected by radiative transfer. Line profiles are also strongly affected by transfer effects. The combined effects of opacity and inflow cause many of the lines in optically thick models to be asymmetrical