3,768 research outputs found
The HEAO-2 Guest Investigator Program: Non-linear growth of instabilities in line-driven stellar winds
The linear instability of line-driven stellar winds to take proper account of the dynamical effect of scattered radiation were analyzed. It is found that: (1) the drag effect of the mean scattered radiation does greatly reduce the contribution of scattering lines to the instability at the very base of the wind, but the instability growth rate associated with such lines rapidly increases as the flow moves outward from the base, reaching more than 50% of the growth rate for pure absorption lines within a stellar radius of the surface, and eventually reaching 80% of that rate at large radii; (2) perturbations in the scattered radiation field may be important for the propagation of wind disturbances, but they have little effect on the wind instability; and (3) the contribution of strongly shadowed lines to the wind instability is often reduced compared to that of unshadowed lines, but their overall effect is not one of damping in the outer parts of the wind. It is concluded that, even when all scattering effects are taken into account, the bulk of the flow in a line-driven stellar wind is still highly unstable
The influence of coronal EUV irradiance on the emission in the He I 10830 A and D3 multiplets
Two of the most attractive spectral windows for spectropolarimetric
investigations of the physical properties of the plasma structures in the solar
chromosphere and corona are the ones provided by the spectral lines of the He I
10830 A and 5876 A (or D3) multiplets, whose polarization signals are sensitive
to the Hanle and Zeeman effects. However, in order to be able to carry out
reliable diagnostics, it is crucial to have a good physical understanding of
the sensitivity of the observed spectral line radiation to the various
competing driving mechanisms. Here we report a series of off-the-limb non-LTE
calculations of the He I D3 and 10830 A emission profiles, focusing our
investigation on their sensitivity to the EUV coronal irradiation and the model
atmosphere used in the calculations. We show in particular that the intensity
ratio of the blue to the red components in the emission profiles of the He I
10830 A multiplet turns out to be a good candidate as a diagnostic tool for the
coronal irradiance. Measurements of this observable as a function of the
distance to the limb and its confrontation with radiative transfer modeling
might give us valuable information on the physical properties of the solar
atmosphere and on the amount of EUV radiation at relevant wavelengths
penetrating the chromosphere from above.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures (pre-print format). Accepted for publication in
Ap
Non-Gaussianity analysis of GW background made by short-duration burst signals
We study an observational method to analyze non-Gaussianity of a
gravitational wave (GW) background made by superposition of weak burst signals.
The proposed method is based on fourth-order correlations of data from four
detectors, and might be useful to discriminate the origin of a GW background.
With a formulation newly developed to discuss geometrical aspects of the
correlations, it is found that the method provides us with linear combinations
of two interesting parameters, I_2 and V_2 defined by the Stokes parameters of
individual GW burst signals. We also evaluate sensitivities of specific
detector networks to these parameters.Comment: 18 pages, to appear in PR
Prospects for direct detection of circular polarization of gravitational-wave background
We discussed prospects for directly detecting circular polarization signal of
gravitational wave background. We found it is generally difficult to probe the
monopole mode of the signal due to broad directivity of gravitational wave
detectors. But the dipole (l=1) and octupole (l=3) modes of the signal can be
measured in a simple manner by combining outputs of two unaligned detectors,
and we can dig them deeply under confusion and detector noises. Around f~0.1mHz
LISA will provide ideal data streams to detect these anisotropic components
whose magnitudes are as small as ~1 percent of the detector noise level in
terms of the non-dimensional energy density \Omega_{GW}(f).Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, PRL in pres
Two-photon transitions in primordial hydrogen recombination
The subject of cosmological hydrogen recombination has received much
attention recently because of its importance to predictions for and
cosmological constraints from CMB observations. While the central role of the
two-photon decay 2s->1s has been recognized for many decades, high-precision
calculations require us to consider two-photon decays from the higher states
ns,nd->1s (n>=3). Simple attempts to include these processes in recombination
calculations have suffered from physical problems associated with sequences of
one-photon decays, e.g. 3d->2p->1s, that technically also produce two photons.
These correspond to resonances in the two-photon spectrum that are optically
thick, necessitating a radiative transfer calculation. We derive the
appropriate equations, develop a numerical code to solve them, and verify the
results by finding agreement with analytic approximations to the radiative
transfer equation. The related processes of Raman scattering and two-photon
recombination are included using similar machinery. Our results show that early
in recombination the two-photon decays act to speed up recombination, reducing
the free electron abundance by 1.3% relative to the standard calculation at
z=1300. However we find that some photons between Ly-alpha and Ly-beta are
produced, mainly by 3d->1s two-photon decay and 2s->1s Raman scattering. At
later times these photons redshift down to Ly-alpha, excite hydrogen atoms, and
act to slow recombination. Thus the free electron abundance is increased by
1.3% relative to the standard calculation at z=900. The implied correction to
the CMB power spectrum is neligible for the recently released WMAP and ACBAR
data, but at Fisher matrix level will be 7 sigma for Planck. [ABRIDGED]Comment: Matches PRD accepted version. 28 pages, 12 figure
Non-LTE treatment of molecules in the photospheres of cool stars
We present a technique to treat systems with very many levels, like
molecules, in non-LTE. This method is based on a superlevel formalism coupled
with rate operator splitting. Superlevels consist of many individual levels
that are assumed to be in LTE relative to each other. The usage of superlevels
reduces the dimensionality of the rate equations dramatically and, thereby,
makes the problem computationally more easily treatable. Our superlevel
formalism retains maximum accuracy by using direct opacity sampling (dOS) when
calculating the radiative transitions and the opacities. We developed this
method in order to treat molecules in cool dwarf model calculations in non-LTE.
Cool dwarfs have low electron densities and a radiation field that is far from
a black body radiation field, both properties may invalidate the conditions for
the common LTE approximation. Therefore, the most important opacity sources,
the molecules, need to be treated in non-LTE. As a case study we applied our
method to carbon monoxide. We find that our method gives accurate results since
the conditions for the superlevel method are very well met for molecules. Due
to very high collisional cross sections with hydrogen, and the high densities
of H_2 the population of CO itself shows no significant deviation from LTE.Comment: AASTeX v50, 35 pages including 12 figures, accepted by Ap
The spectrum of the Broad Line Region and the high-energy emission of powerful blazars
High-energy emission (from the X-ray through the gamma-ray band) of Flat
Spectrum Radio Quasars is widely associated with the inverse Compton (IC)
scattering of ambient photons, produced either by the accretion disk or by the
Broad Line Region, by high-energy electrons in a relativistic jet. In the
modelling of the IC spectrum one usually adopts a simple black-body
approximation for the external radiation field, though the real shape is
probably more complex. The knowledge of the detailed spectrum of the external
radiation field would allow to better characterize the soft-medium X-ray IC
spectrum, which is crucial to address several issues related to the study of
these sources. Here we present a first step in this direction, calculating the
IC spectra expected by considering a realistic spectrum for the external
radiation energy density produced by the BLR, as calculated with the
photoionization code CLOUDY. We find that, under a wide range of the physical
parameters characterizing the BLR clouds, the IC spectrum calculated with the
black-body approximation reproduces quite well the exact spectrum for energies
above few keV. In the soft energy band, instead, the IC emission calculated
using the BLR emission shows a complex shape, with a moderate excess with
respect to the approximate spectrum, which becomes more important for
decreasing values of the peak frequency of the photoionizing continuum. We also
show that the high-energy spectrum shows a marked steepening, due to the energy
dependence of the scattering cross section, above a characteristic energy of
10-20 GeV, quasi independent on the Lorentz factor of the jet.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Parallel Implementation of the PHOENIX Generalized Stellar Atmosphere Program
We describe the parallel implementation of our generalized stellar atmosphere
and NLTE radiative transfer computer program PHOENIX. We discuss the parallel
algorithms we have developed for radiative transfer, spectral line opacity, and
NLTE opacity and rate calculations. Our implementation uses a MIMD design based
on a relatively small number of MPI library calls. We report the results of
test calculations on a number of different parallel computers and discuss the
results of scalability tests.Comment: To appear in ApJ, 1997, vol 483. LaTeX, 34 pages, 3 Figures, uses
AASTeX macros and styles natbib.sty, and psfig.st
Synchrotron Radiation from the Galactic Center in Decaying Dark Matter Scenario
We discuss the synchrotron radiation flux from the Galactic center in
unstable dark matter scenario. Motivated by the anomalous excess of the
positron fraction recently reported by the PAMELA collaboration, we consider
the case that the dark matter particle is unstable (and long-lived), and that
energetic electron and positron are produced by the decay of dark matter. Then,
the emitted electron and positron becomes the source of the synchrotron
radiation. We calculate the synchrotron radiation flux for models of decaying
dark matter, which can explain the PAMELA positron excess. Taking the lifetime
of the dark matter of O(10^26 sec), which is the suggested value to explain the
PAMELA anomaly, the synchrotron radiation flux is found to be O(1 kJy/str) or
smaller, depending on the particle-physics and cosmological parameters.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure
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