32,133 research outputs found
Strong GeV Emission Accompanying TeV Blazar H1426+428
For High frequency BL Lac objects (HBLs) like H1426+428, a significant
fraction of their TeV gamma-rays emitted are likely to be absorbed in
interactions with the diffuse IR background, yielding pairs. The
resulting pairs generate one hitherto undiscovered GeV emission by
inverse Compton scattering with the cosmic microwave background photons
(CMBPs). We study such emission by taking the 1998-2000 CAT data, the
reanalyzed 1999 & 2000 HEGRA data and the corresponding intrinsic spectra
proposed by Aharonian et al. (2003a). We numerically calculate the scattered
photon spectra for different intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF) strengths. If
the IGMF is about or weaker, there comes very strong GeV
emission, whose flux is far above the detection sensitivity of the upcoming
satellite GLAST! Considered its relatively high redshift (), the
detected GeV emission in turn provides us a valuable chance to calibrate the
poor known spectral energy distribution of the intergalactic infrared
background, or provides us some reliable constraints on the poorly known IGMF
strength.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. A&A in Pres
Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows from Realistic Fireballs
A GRB afterglow has been commonly thought to be due to continuous
deceleration of a postburst fireball. Many analytical models have made
simplifications for deceleration dynamics of the fireball and its radiation
property, although they are successful at explaining the overall features of
the observed afterglows. We here propose a model for a GRB afterglow in which
the evolution of a postburst fireball is in an intermediate case between the
adiabatic and highly radiative expansion. In our model, the afterglow is both
due to the contribution of the adiabatic electrons behind the external
blastwave of the fireball and due to the contribution of the radiative
electrons. In addition, this model can describe evolution of the fireball from
the extremely relativistic phase to the non-relativistic phase. Our
calculations show that the fireball will go to the adiabatic expansion phase
after about a day if the accelerated electrons are assumed to occupy the total
internal energy. In all cases considered, the fireball will go to the mildly
relativistic phase about seconds later, and to the non-relativistic
phase after several days. These results imply that the relativistic adiabatic
model cannot describe the deceleration dynamics of the several-days-later
fireball. The comparison of the calculated light curves with the observed
results at late times may imply the presence of impulsive events or energy
injection with much longer durations.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, plain latex file, submitted to Ap
Understanding the white-light flare on 2012 March 9 : Evidence of a two-step magnetic reconnection
We attempt to understand the white-light flare (WLF) that was observed on
2012 March 9 with a newly constructed multi-wavelength solar telescope called
the Optical and Near-infrared Solar Eruption Tracer (ONSET). We analyzed WLF
observations in radio, H-alpha, white-light, ultraviolet, and X-ray bands. We
also studied the magnetic configuration of the flare via the nonlinear
force-free field (NLFFF) extrapolation and the vector magnetic field observed
by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics
Observatory (SDO). Continuum emission enhancement clearly appeared at the 3600
angstrom and 4250 angstrom bands, with peak contrasts of 25% and 12%,
respectively. The continuum emission enhancement closely coincided with the
impulsive increase in the hard X-ray emission and a microwave type III burst at
03:40 UT. We find that the WLF appeared at one end of either the sheared or
twisted field lines or both. There was also a long-lasting phase in the H-alpha
and soft X-ray bands after the white-light emission peak. In particular, a
second, yet stronger, peak appeared at 03:56 UT in the microwave band. This
event shows clear evidence that the white-light emission was caused by
energetic particles bombarding the lower solar atmosphere. A two-step magnetic
reconnection scenario is proposed to explain the entire process of flare
evolution, i.e., the first-step magnetic reconnection between the field lines
that are highly sheared or twisted or both, and the second-step one in the
current sheet, which is stretched by the erupting flux rope. The WLF is
supposed to be triggered in the first-step magnetic reconnection at a
relatively low altitude.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, published in A&A Lette
Gamma-ray bursts: postburst evolution of fireballs
The postburst evolution of fireballs that produce -ray bursts is
studied, assuming the expansion of fireballs to be adiabatic and relativistic.
Numerical results as well as an approximate analytic solution for the evolution
are presented. Due to adoption of a new relation among , and
(see the text), our results differ markedly from the previous studies.
Synchrotron radiation from the shocked interstellar medium is attentively
calculated, using a convenient set of equations. The observed X-ray flux of GRB
afterglows can be reproduced easily. Although the optical afterglows seem much
more complicated, our results can still present a rather satisfactory approach
to observations. It is also found that the expansion will no longer be highly
relativistic about 4 days after the main GRB. We thus suggest that the
marginally relativistic phase of the expansion should be investigated so as to
check the afterglows observed a week or more later.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, MNRAS in pres
Who Said What: Modeling Individual Labelers Improves Classification
Data are often labeled by many different experts with each expert only
labeling a small fraction of the data and each data point being labeled by
several experts. This reduces the workload on individual experts and also gives
a better estimate of the unobserved ground truth. When experts disagree, the
standard approaches are to treat the majority opinion as the correct label or
to model the correct label as a distribution. These approaches, however, do not
make any use of potentially valuable information about which expert produced
which label. To make use of this extra information, we propose modeling the
experts individually and then learning averaging weights for combining them,
possibly in sample-specific ways. This allows us to give more weight to more
reliable experts and take advantage of the unique strengths of individual
experts at classifying certain types of data. Here we show that our approach
leads to improvements in computer-aided diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy. We
also show that our method performs better than competing algorithms by Welinder
and Perona (2010), and by Mnih and Hinton (2012). Our work offers an innovative
approach for dealing with the myriad real-world settings that use expert
opinions to define labels for training.Comment: AAAI 201
Neutrino emission from a GRB afterglow shock during an inner supernova shock breakout
The observations of a nearby low-luminosity gamma-ray burst (GRB) 060218
associated with supernova SN 2006aj may imply an interesting astronomical
picture where a supernova shock breakout locates behind a relativistic GRB jet.
Based on this picture, we study neutrino emission for early afterglows of GRB
060218-like GRBs, where neutrinos are expected to be produced from photopion
interactions in a GRB blast wave that propagates into a dense wind.
Relativistic protons for the interactions are accelerated by an external shock,
while target photons are basically provided by the incoming thermal emission
from the shock breakout and its inverse-Compton scattered component. Because of
a high estimated event rate of low-luminosity GRBs, we would have more
opportunities to detect afterglow neutrinos from a single nearby GRB event of
this type by IceCube. Such a possible detection could provide evidence for the
picture described above.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Semileptonic B decays into excited charmed mesons from QCD sum rules
Exclusive semileptonic decays into excited charmed mesons are studied
with QCD sum rules in the leading order of heavy quark effective theory. Two
universal Isgur-Wise functions \tau and \zeta for semileptonic B decays into
four lowest lying excited mesons (, , , and ) are
determined. The decay rates and branching ratios for these processes are
calculated.Comment: RevTeX, 17 pages including 2 figure
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