1,631 research outputs found
The Function of the Second Postulate in Special Relativity
Many authors noted that the principle of relativity, together with space-time
symmetries, suffices to derive Lorentz-like coordinate transformations between
inertial frames. These contain a free parameter, , (equal to in
special relativity) which is usually claimed to be empirically determinable, so
that special relativity does not need the postulate of constancy of the speed
of light. I analyze this claim and find that all methods destined to measure
fail without further assumptions, similar to the second postulate.
Specifically, measuring requires a signal that travels identically in
opposite directions (this is unrelated to the conventionality of
synchronization, as the one-postulate program implicitly selects the standard
synchronization convention). Positing such a property about light is logically
weaker than Einstein's second postulate but suffices to recover special
relativity in full
Exact solution of a one-dimensional continuum percolation model
I consider a one dimensional system of particles which interact through a
hard core of diameter \si and can connect to each other if they are closer
than a distance . The mean cluster size increases as a function of the
density until it diverges at some critical density, the percolation
threshold. This system can be mapped onto an off-lattice generalization of the
Potts model which I have called the Potts fluid, and in this way, the mean
cluster size, pair connectedness and percolation probability can be calculated
exactly. The mean cluster size is S = 2 \exp[ \rho (d -\si)/(1 - \rho \si)] -
1 and diverges only at the close packing density \rho_{cp} = 1 / \si . This
is confirmed by the behavior of the percolation probability. These results
should help in judging the effectiveness of approximations or simulation
methods before they are applied to higher dimensions.Comment: 21 pages, Late
Tracing the Mass-Assembly History of Galaxies with Deep Surveys
We use the optical and near-infrared galaxy samples from the Munich
Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS), the FORS Deep Field (FDF) and GOODS-S to
probe the stellar mass assembly history of field galaxies out to z ~ 5.
Combining information on the galaxies' stellar mass with their star-formation
rate and the age of the stellar population, we can draw important conclusions
on the assembly of the most massive galaxies in the universe: These objects
contain the oldest stellar populations at all redshifts probed. Furthermore, we
show that with increasing redshift the contribution of star-formation to the
mass assembly for massive galaxies increases dramatically, reaching the era of
their formation at z ~ 2 and beyond. These findings can be interpreted as
evidence for an early epoch of star formation in the most massive galaxies in
the universe.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures; published in B. Aschenbach, V. Burwitz, G.
Hasinger, B. Leibundgut (eds.): "Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology -
Einstein's Legacy. Proceedings of the Conference held in Munich, 2006", ESO
Astrophysics Symposia, Springer Verlag, 2007, p. 310. Replaced to match final
published versio
Theory of continuum percolation II. Mean field theory
I use a previously introduced mapping between the continuum percolation model
and the Potts fluid to derive a mean field theory of continuum percolation
systems. This is done by introducing a new variational principle, the basis of
which has to be taken, for now, as heuristic. The critical exponents obtained
are , and , which are identical with the mean
field exponents of lattice percolation. The critical density in this
approximation is \rho_c = 1/\ve where \ve = \int d \x \, p(\x) \{ \exp [-
v(\x)/kT] - 1 \}. p(\x) is the binding probability of two particles
separated by \x and v(\x) is their interaction potential.Comment: 25 pages, Late
The stellar-subhalo mass relation of satellite galaxies
We extend the abundance matching technique (AMT) to infer the
satellite-subhalo and central-halo mass relations (MRs) of galaxies, as well as
the corresponding satellite conditional mass functions (CMFs). We use the
observed galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) decomposed into centrals and
satellites and the LCDM halo/subhalo mass functions as inputs. We explore the
effects of defining the subhalo mass at the time of accretion (m_acc) vs. at
the time of observation (m_obs). We test the standard assumption that centrals
and satellites follow the same MRs, showing that this assumption leads to
predictions in disagreement with observations, specially for m_obs. Instead,
when the satellite-subhalo MRs are constrained following our AMT, they are
always different from the central-halo MR: the smaller the stellar mass (Ms),
the less massive is the subhalo of satellites as compared to the halo of
centrals of the same Ms. On average, for Ms<2x10^11Msol, the dark mass of
satellites decreased by 60-65% with respect to their masses at accretion time.
The resulting MRs for both definitions of subhalo mass yield satellite CMFs in
agreement with observations. Also, when these MRs are used in a HOD model, the
predicted correlation functions agree with observations. We show that the use
of m_obs leads to less uncertain MRs than m_acc, and discuss implications of
the obtained satellite-subhalo MR. For example, we show that the tension
between abundance and dynamics of MW satellites in LCDM gives if the slope of
the GSMF faint-end slope upturns to -1.6.Comment: 13, pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. Minor changes
to previous versio
Bulgeless Giant Galaxies Challenge our Picture of Galaxy Formation by Hierarchical Clustering
We dissect giant Sc-Scd galaxies with Hubble Space Telescope photometry and
Hobby-Eberly Telescope spectroscopy. We use HET's High Resolution Spectrograph
(resolution = 15,000) to measure stellar velocity dispersions in the nuclear
star clusters and pseudobulges of the pure-disk galaxies M33, M101, NGC 3338,
NGC 3810, NGC 6503, and NGC 6946. We conclude: (1) Upper limits on the masses
of any supermassive black holes are MBH <= (2.6+-0.5) * 10**6 M_Sun in M101 and
MBH <= (2.0+-0.6) * 10**6 M_Sun in NGC 6503. (2) HST photometry shows that the
above galaxies contain tiny pseudobulges that make up <~ 3 % of the stellar
mass but no classical bulges. We inventory a sphere of radius 8 Mpc centered on
our Galaxy to see whether giant, pure-disk galaxies are common or rare. In this
volume, 11 of 19 galaxies with rotation velocity > 150 km/s show no evidence
for a classical bulge. Four may contain small classical bulges that contribute
5-12% of the galaxy light. Only 4 of the 19 giant galaxies are ellipticals or
have classical bulges that contribute 1/3 of the galaxy light. So pure-disk
galaxies are far from rare. It is hard to understand how they could form as the
quiescent tail of a distribution of merger histories. Recognition of
pseudobulges makes the biggest problem with cold dark matter galaxy formation
more acute: How can hierarchical clustering make so many giant, pure-disk
galaxies with no evidence for merger-built bulges? This problem depends
strongly on environment: the Virgo cluster is not a puzzle, because >2/3 of its
stellar mass is in merger remnants.Comment: 28 pages, 16 Postscript figures, 2 tables; requires emulateapj.sty
and apjfonts.sty; accepted for publication in ApJ; for a version with full
resolution figures, see http://chandra.as.utexas.edu/~kormendy/kdbc.pd
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