5,579 research outputs found
Optical propagation measurements at Emerson Lake, 1968
Optical propagation measurements in inhomogeneous atmosphere at Emerson Lake, California for optical propagation theory validity testin
A Side of Mercury Not Seen By Mariner 10
More than 60,000 images of Mercury were taken at ~29 deg elevation during two
sunrises, at 820 nm, and through a 1.35 m diameter off-axis aperture on the
SOAR telescope. The sharpest resolve 0.2" (140 km) and cover 190-300 deg
longitude -- a swath unseen by the Mariner 10 spacecraft -- at complementary
phase angles to previous ground-based optical imagery. Our view is comparable
to that of the Moon through weak binoculars. Evident are the large crater
Mozart shadowed on the terminator, fresh rayed craters, and other albedo
features keyed to topography and radar reflectivity, including the putative
huge ``Basin S'' on the limb. Classical bright feature Liguria resolves across
the northwest boundary of the Caloris basin into a bright splotch centered on a
sharp, 20 km diameter radar crater, and is the brightest feature within a
prominent darker ``cap'' (Hermean feature Solitudo Phoenicis) that covers the
northern hemisphere between longitudes 140-250 deg. The cap may result from
space weathering that darkens via a magnetically enhanced flux of the solar
wind, or that reddens low latitudes via high solar insolation.Comment: 7 pages, 4 PDF figures, pdfLaTeX, typos corrected, Fig. 2 modified
slightly to add crater diameters not given in published versio
An Analysis of Fundamental Waffle Mode in Early AEOS Adaptive Optics Images
Adaptive optics (AO) systems have significantly improved astronomical imaging
capabilities over the last decade, and are revolutionizing the kinds of science
possible with 4-5m class ground-based telescopes. A thorough understanding of
AO system performance at the telescope can enable new frontiers of science as
observations push AO systems to their performance limits. We look at recent
advances with wave front reconstruction (WFR) on the Advanced Electro-Optical
System (AEOS) 3.6 m telescope to show how progress made in improving WFR can be
measured directly in improved science images. We describe how a "waffle mode"
wave front error (which is not sensed by a Fried geometry Shack-Hartmann wave
front sensor) affects the AO point-spread function (PSF). We model details of
AEOS AO to simulate a PSF which matches the actual AO PSF in the I-band, and
show that while the older observed AEOS PSF contained several times more waffle
error than expected, improved WFR techniques noticeably improve AEOS AO
performance. We estimate the impact of these improved WFRs on H-band imaging at
AEOS, chosen based on the optimization of the Lyot Project near-infrared
coronagraph at this bandpass.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, 1 table; to appear in PASP, August 200
Stimulated Raman spin coherence and spin-flip induced hole burning in charged GaAs quantum dots
High-resolution spectral hole burning (SHB) in coherent nondegenerate
differential transmission spectroscopy discloses spin-trion dynamics in an
ensemble of negatively charged quantum dots. In the Voigt geometry, stimulated
Raman spin coherence gives rise to Stokes and anti-Stokes sidebands on top of
the trion spectral hole. The prominent feature of an extremely narrow spike at
zero detuning arises from spin population pulsation dynamics. These SHB
features confirm coherent electron spin dynamics in charged dots, and the
linewidths reveal spin spectral diffusion processes.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Two-body effects in the decay rate of atomic levels
Recoil corrections to the atomic decay rate are considered in the order of
Zm/M . The expressions are treated exactly without any expansion over Z alpha.
The expressions obtained are valid both for muonic atoms (for which they
contribute on the level of a few percent in high Z ions) and for electronic
atoms. Explicit results for Lyman-alpha transitions for low-Z of the order
(Zm/M)(Z alpha)^2 are also presented.Comment: 5 pages, 1 table, email: [email protected]
Zenith-Distance Dependence of Chromatic Shear Effect: A Limiting Factor for an Extreme Adaptive Optics System
Consider a perfect AO system with a very fine wavefront sampling interval and
a very small actuator interval. If this AO system senses wavefront at a
wavelength, lambda_{WFS}, and does science imaging at another wavelength,
lambda_{SCI}, the light paths through the turbulent atmosphere at these two
wavelengths are slightly different for a finite zenith distance, z. The error
in wavefront reconstruction of the science channel associated with this
non-common path effect, or so-called chromatic shear, is uncorrectable and sets
an upper bound of the system performance. We evaluate the wavefront variance,
sigma^2(lambda_{WFS},lambda_{SCI},z) for a typical seeing condition at Mauna
Kea and find that this effect is not negligible at a large z. If we require
that the Strehl ratio be greater than 99 or 95%, z must be less than about 50
or 60 deg respectively, for the combination of visible wavefront sensing and
infrared science imaging.Comment: To appear in 2006/12/01 issue of Ap
Quantum shutter approach to tunneling time scales with wave packets
The quantum shutter approach to tunneling time scales (G. Garc\'{\i
}a-Calder\'{o}n and A. Rubio, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{55}, 3361 (1997)), which
uses a cutoff plane wave as the initial condition, is extended in such a way
that a certain type of wave packet can be used as the initial condition. An
analytical expression for the time evolved wave function is derived. The
time-domain resonance, the peaked structure of the probability density (as the
function of time) at the exit of the barrier, originally found with the cutoff
plane wave initial condition, is studied with the wave packet initial
conditions. It is found that the time-domain resonance is not very sensitive to
the width of the packet when the transmission process is in the tunneling
regime.Comment: 6 page
A New Strategy for Deep Wide-Field High Resolution Optical Imaging
We propose a new strategy for obtaining enhanced resolution (FWHM = 0.12
arcsec) deep optical images over a wide field of view. As is well known, this
type of image quality can be obtained in principle simply by fast guiding on a
small (D = 1.5m) telescope at a good site, but only for target objects which
lie within a limited angular distance of a suitably bright guide star. For high
altitude turbulence this 'isokinetic angle' is approximately 1 arcminute. With
a 1 degree field say one would need to track and correct the motions of
thousands of isokinetic patches, yet there are typically too few sufficiently
bright guide stars to provide the necessary guiding information. Our proposed
solution to these problems has two novel features. The first is to use
orthogonal transfer charge-coupled device (OTCCD) technology to effectively
implement a wide field 'rubber focal plane' detector composed of an array of
cells which can be guided independently. The second is to combine measured
motions of a set of guide stars made with an array of telescopes to provide the
extra information needed to fully determine the deflection field. We discuss
the performance, feasibility and design constraints on a system which would
provide the collecting area equivalent to a single 9m telescope, a 1 degree
square field and 0.12 arcsec FWHM image quality.Comment: 46 pages, 22 figures, submitted to PASP, a version with higher
resolution images and other supplementary material can be found at
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~kaiser/wfhr
Stellar Dynamics and the implications on the merger evolution in NGC6240
We report near-infrared integral field spectroscopy of the luminous merging
galaxy NGC 6240. Stellar velocities show that the two K-band peaks separated by
1.6arcsec are the central parts of inclined, rotating disk galaxies with equal
mass bulges. The dynamical masses of the nuclei are much larger than the
stellar mass derived from the K-band light, implying that the progenitor
galaxies were galaxies with massive bulges. The K-band light is dominated by
red supergiants formed in the two nuclei in starbursts, triggered ~2x10^7 years
ago, possibly by the most recent perigalactic approach. Strong feedback effects
of a superwind and supernovae are responsible for a short duration burst
(~5x10^6 years) which is already decaying. The two galaxies form a
prograde-retrograde rotating system and from the stellar velocity field it
seems that one of the two interacting galaxies is subject to a prograde
encounter. Between the stellar nuclei is a prominent peak of molecular gas
(H_2, CO). The stellar velocity dispersion peaks there indicating that the gas
has formed a local, self-gravitating concentration decoupled from the stellar
gravitational potential. NGC 6240 has previously been reported to fit the
paradigm of an elliptical galaxy formed through the merger of two galaxies.
This was based on the near-infrared light distribution which follows a
r^1/4-law. Our data cast strong doubt on this conclusion: the system is by far
not relaxed, rotation plays an important role, as does self-gravitating gas,
and the near-infrared light is dominated by young stars.Comment: 34 pages, 11 figures, using AASTEX 5.0rc3.1, paper submitted to the
Astrophysical Journal, revised versio
Kinetic Enhancement of Raman Backscatter, and Electron Acoustic Thomson Scatter
1-D Eulerian Vlasov-Maxwell simulations are presented which show kinetic
enhancement of stimulated Raman backscatter (SRBS) due to electron trapping in
regimes of heavy linear Landau damping. The conventional Raman Langmuir wave is
transformed into a set of beam acoustic modes [L. Yin et al., Phys. Rev. E 73,
025401 (2006)]. For the first time, a low phase velocity electron acoustic wave
(EAW) is seen developing from the self-consistent Raman physics. Backscatter of
the pump laser off the EAW fluctuations is reported and referred to as electron
acoustic Thomson scatter. This light is similar in wavelength to, although much
lower in amplitude than, the reflected light between the pump and SRBS
wavelengths observed in single hot spot experiments, and previously interpreted
as stimulated electron acoustic scatter [D. S. Montgomery et al., Phys. Rev.
Lett. 87, 155001 (2001)]. The EAW is strongest well below the phase-matched
frequency for electron acoustic scatter, and therefore the EAW is not produced
by it. The beating of different beam acoustic modes is proposed as the EAW
excitation mechanism, and is called beam acoustic decay. Supporting evidence
for this process, including bispectral analysis, is presented. The linear
electrostatic modes, found by projecting the numerical distribution function
onto a Gauss-Hermite basis, include beam acoustic modes (some of which are
unstable even without parametric coupling to light waves) and a strongly-damped
EAW similar to the observed one. This linear EAW results from non-Maxwellian
features in the electron distribution, rather than nonlinearity due to electron
trapping.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, accepted in Physics of Plasmas (2006
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