3,173 research outputs found
State-independent experimental test of quantum contextuality in an indivisible system
We report the first state-independent experimental test of quantum
contextuality on a single photonic qutrit (three-dimensional system), based on
a recent theoretical proposal [Yu and Oh, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 030402 (2012)].
Our experiment spotlights quantum contextuality in its most basic form, in a
way that is independent of either the state or the tensor product structure of
the system
Stellar Velocity Dispersion Measurements in High-Luminosity Quasar Hosts and Implications for the AGN Black Hole Mass Scale
We present new stellar velocity dispersion measurements for four luminous
quasars with the NIFS instrument and the ALTAIR laser guide star adaptive
optics system on the Gemini North 8-m telescope. Stellar velocity dispersion
measurements and measurements of the supermassive black hole masses in luminous
quasars are necessary to investigate the coevolution of black holes and
galaxies, trace the details of accretion, and probe the nature of feedback. We
find that higher-luminosity quasars with higher-mass black holes are not offset
with respect to the MBH-sigma relation exhibited by lower-luminosity AGNs with
lower-mass black holes, nor do we see correlations with galaxy morphology. As
part of this analysis, we have recalculated the virial products for the entire
sample of reverberation-mapped AGNs and used these data to redetermine the mean
virial factor hfi that places the reverberation data on the quiescent
M_BH-sigma relation. With our updated measurements and new additions to the AGN
sample, we obtain = 4.31 +/- 1.05, which is slightly lower than, but
consistent with, most previous determinations.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. For a brief video highlighting the
results of this paper, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxx80aOVw1
Environmental Effects on Real-Space and Redshift-Space Galaxy Clustering
Galaxy formation inside dark matter halos, as well as the halo formation
itself, can be affected by large-scale environments. Evaluating the imprints of
environmental effects on galaxy clustering is crucial for precise cosmological
constraints with data from galaxy redshift surveys. We investigate such an
environmental impact on both real-space and redshift-space galaxy clustering
statistics using a semi-analytic model derived from the Millennium Simulation.
We compare clustering statistics from original SAM galaxy samples and shuffled
ones with environmental influence on galaxy properties eliminated. Among the
luminosity-threshold samples examined, the one with the lowest threshold
luminosity (~0.2L_*) is affected by environmental effects the most, which has a
~10% decrease in the real-space two-point correlation function (2PCF) after
shuffling. By decomposing the 2PCF into five different components based on the
source of pairs, we show that the change in the 2PCF can be explained by the
age and richness dependence of halo clustering. The 2PCFs in redshift space are
found to change in a similar manner after shuffling. If the environmental
effects are neglected, halo occupation distribution modeling of the real-space
and redshift-space clustering may have a less than 6.5% systematic uncertainty
in constraining beta from the most affected SAM sample and have substantially
smaller uncertainties from the other, more luminous samples. We argue that the
effect could be even smaller in reality. In the Appendix, we present a method
to decompose the 2PCF, which can be applied to measure the two-point
auto-correlation functions of galaxy sub-samples in a volume-limited galaxy
sample and their two-point cross-correlation functions in a single run
utilizing only one random catalog.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, Accepted by AP
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