1,803 research outputs found
Opacity in compact extragalactic radio sources and its effect on radio-optical reference frame alignment
Accurate alignment of the radio and optical celestial reference frames
requires detailed understanding of physical factors that may cause offsets
between the positions of the same object measured in different spectral bands.
Opacity in compact extragalactic jets (due to synchrotron self-absorption and
external free-free absorption) is one of the key physical phenomena producing
such an offset, and this effect is well-known in radio astronomy ("core
shift"). We have measured the core shifts in a sample of 29 bright compact
extragalactic radio sources observed using very long baseline interferometry
(VLBI) at 2.3 and 8.6 GHz. We report the results of these measurements and
estimate that the average shift between radio and optical positions of distant
quasars would be of the order of 0.1-0.2 mas. This shift exceeds positional
accuracy of GAIA and SIM. We suggest two possible approaches to carefully
investigate and correct for this effect in order to align accurately the radio
and optical positions. Both approaches involve determining a Primary Reference
Sample of objects to be used for tying the radio and optical reference frames
together.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; to appear in IAU Symposium 248 Proceedings, "A
Giant Step: from Milli- to Micro-arcsecond Astrometry", eds. W.-J. Jin, I.
Platais, M. Perryma
H.E.S.S. discovery of very-high-energy gamma-ray emission of PKS 1440-389
Blazars are the most abundant class of known extragalactic very-high-energy
(VHE, E>100 GeV) gamma-ray sources. However, one of the biggest difficulties in
investigating their VHE emission resides in their limited number, since less
than 60 of them are known by now. In this contribution we report on H.E.S.S.
observations of the BL Lac object PKS 1440-389. This source has been selected
as target for H.E.S.S. based on its high-energy gamma-ray properties measured
by Fermi-LAT. The extrapolation of this bright, hard-spectrum gamma-ray blazar
into the VHE regime made a detection on a relatively short time scale very
likely, despite its uncertain redshift. H.E.S.S. observations were carried out
with the 4-telescope array from February to May 2012 and resulted in a clear
detection of the source. Contemporaneous multi-wavelength data are used to
construct the spectral energy distribution of PKS 1440-389 which can be
described by a simple one-zone synchrotron-self Compton model.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference
(ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherland
Metastable precursors during the oxidation of the Ru(0001) surface
Using density-functional theory, we predict that the oxidation of the
Ru(0001) surface proceeds via the accumulation of sub-surface oxygen in
two-dimensional islands between the first and second substrate layer. This
leads locally to a decoupling of an O-Ru-O trilayer from the underlying metal.
Continued oxidation results in the formation and stacking of more of these
trilayers, which unfold into the RuO_2(110) rutile structure once a critical
film thickness is exceeded. Along this oxidation pathway, we identify various
metastable configurations. These are found to be rather close in energy,
indicating a likely lively dynamics between them at elevated temperatures,
which will affect the surface chemical and mechanical properties of the
material.Comment: 11 pages including 9 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. B. Related
publications can be found at http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm
Composition, structure and stability of RuO_2(110) as a function of oxygen pressure
Using density-functional theory (DFT) we calculate the Gibbs free energy to
determine the lowest-energy structure of a RuO_2(110) surface in thermodynamic
equilibrium with an oxygen-rich environment. The traditionally assumed
stoichiometric termination is only found to be favorable at low oxygen chemical
potentials, i.e. low pressures and/or high temperatures. At realistic O
pressure, the surface is predicted to contain additional terminal O atoms.
Although this O excess defines a so-called polar surface, we show that the
prevalent ionic model, that dismisses such terminations on electrostatic
grounds, is of little validity for RuO_2(110). Together with analogous results
obtained previously at the (0001) surface of corundum-structured oxides, these
findings on (110) rutile indicate that the stability of non-stoichiometric
terminations is a more general phenomenon on transition metal oxide surfaces.Comment: 12 pages including 5 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. B. Related
publications can be found at http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm
Feller Processes: The Next Generation in Modeling. Brownian Motion, L\'evy Processes and Beyond
We present a simple construction method for Feller processes and a framework
for the generation of sample paths of Feller processes. The construction is
based on state space dependent mixing of L\'evy processes.
Brownian Motion is one of the most frequently used continuous time Markov
processes in applications. In recent years also L\'evy processes, of which
Brownian Motion is a special case, have become increasingly popular.
L\'evy processes are spatially homogeneous, but empirical data often suggest
the use of spatially inhomogeneous processes. Thus it seems necessary to go to
the next level of generalization: Feller processes. These include L\'evy
processes and in particular Brownian motion as special cases but allow spatial
inhomogeneities.
Many properties of Feller processes are known, but proving the very existence
is, in general, very technical. Moreover, an applicable framework for the
generation of sample paths of a Feller process was missing. We explain, with
practitioners in mind, how to overcome both of these obstacles. In particular
our simulation technique allows to apply Monte Carlo methods to Feller
processes.Comment: 22 pages, including 4 figures and 8 pages of source code for the
generation of sample paths of Feller processe
Spectral dependence of purely-Kerr driven filamentation in air and argon
Based on numerical simulations, we show that higher-order nonlinear indices
(up to and , respectively) of air and argon have a dominant
contribution to both focusing and defocusing in the self-guiding of ultrashort
laser pulses over most of the spectrum. Plasma generation and filamentation are
therefore decoupled. As a consequence, ultraviolet wavelength may not be the
optimal wavelengths for applications requiring to maximize ionization.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures (14 panels
Multi-epoch VLBA observations of 3C 66A
We present the results of six-epoch Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA)
observations of 3C~66A. The high-resolution Very Long Baseline Interferometer
(VLBI) maps obtained at multi-frequency (2.3, 8.4, and 22.2 GHz) simultaneously
enabled us to identify the brightest compact component with the core. We find
that the spectrum of the core can be reasonably fitted by the synchrotron
self-absorption model. Our VLBA maps show that the jet of 3C~66A has two
bendings at about 1.2 and 4 mas from the core. We also give possible
identifications of our jet components with the components in previous VLBA
observations by analysing their proper motions. We find consistent differences
of the position from the core in one component between different frequencies at
six epochs.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, received 30 January 2007, accepted 22 March 200
Influence of Dispersion Interactions on the Thermal Desorption of Nonplanar Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons on HOPG
A combination of low energy ion beam deposition and mass resolved thermal desorption spectroscopy is applied to analyze the binding behavior of two nonplanar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surfaces—also concerning their lateral dispersion interactions. In particular, the fullerene precursor C60H30 (FPC) and rubrene C42H28 are studied. Due to their smaller contact areas, both molecules exhibit significantly weaker binding energies to the HOPG surface compared to planar PAHs of similar size: C60H30 is bound to the surface by 3.04 eV, which is 0.6 eV lower than for a fully planar homologue. For rubrene, an isolated molecule–substrate binding energy of 1.59 eV is found, which is about 1 eV less than that of the corresponding planar homologue hexabenzocoronene C42H18. In contrast to FPC, rubrene shows a significant (intermolecular) lateral dispersion contribution to the binding energy as the submonolayer coverage increases
Matrix biorthogonal polynomials on the unit circle and non-Abelian Ablowitz-Ladik hierarchy
Adler and van Moerbeke \cite{AVM} described a reduction of 2D-Toda hierarchy
called Toeplitz lattice. This hierarchy turns out to be equivalent to the one
originally described by Ablowitz and Ladik \cite{AL} using semidiscrete
zero-curvature equations. In this paper we obtain the original semidiscrete
zero-curvature equations starting directly from the Toeplitz lattice and we
generalize these computations to the matrix case. This generalization lead us
to the semidiscrete zero-curvature equations for the non-abelian (or
multicomponent) version of Ablowitz-Ladik equations \cite{GI}. In this way we
extend the link between biorthogonal polynomials on the unit circle and
Ablowitz-Ladik hierarchy to the matrix case.Comment: 23 pages, accepted on publication on J. Phys. A., electronic link:
http://stacks.iop.org/1751-8121/42/36521
Multiwavelength Observations of the Gamma-Ray Blazar PKS 0528+134 in Quiescence
We present multiwavelength observations of the ultraluminous blazar-type
radio loud quasar PKS 0528+134 in quiescence during the period July to December
2009. Significant flux variability on a time scale of several hours was found
in the optical regime, accompanied by a weak trend of spectral softening with
increasing flux. We suggest that this might be the signature of a contribution
from the accretion disk at the blue end of the optical spectrum. The optical
flux is weakly polarized with rapid variations of the degree and direction of
polarization, while the polarization of the 43 GHz radio core remains steady.
Optical spectropolarimetry suggests a trend of increasing degree of
polarization with increasing wavelength, providing additional evidence for an
accretion disc contribution towards the blue end of the optical spectrum. We
constructed four SEDs indicating that even in the quiescent state, the
bolometric luminosity of PKS 0528+134 is dominated by its gamma-ray emission. A
leptonic single-zone jet model produced acceptable fits to the SEDs with
contributions to the high-energy emission from synchrotron self-Compton
radiation and Comptonization of direct accretion disk emission. Fit parameters
close to equipartition were obtained. The moderate variability on long time
scales implies the existence of on-going particle acceleration, while the
observed optical polarization variability seems to point towards a turbulent
acceleration process. Turbulent particle acceleration at stationary features
along the jet therefore appears to be a viable possibility for the quiescent
state of PKS 0528+134.Comment: Accepted for Publication in The Astrophysical Journal. -
Acknowledgement adde
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