700 research outputs found
The new very small angle neutron scattering spectrometer at Laboratoire Leon Brillouin
The design and characteristics of the new very small angle neutron scattering
spectrometer under construction at the Laboratoire Leon Brillouin is described.
Its goal is to extend the range of scattering vectors magnitudes towards
2x10{-4} /A. The unique feature of this new spectrometer is a high resolution
two dimensional image plate detector sensitive to neutrons. The wavelength
selection is achieved by a double reflection supermirror monochromator and the
collimator uses a novel multibeam design
Photo-z Performance for Precision Cosmology
Current and future weak lensing surveys will rely on photometrically
estimated redshifts of very large numbers of galaxies. In this paper, we
address several different aspects of the demanding photo-z performance that
will be required for future experiments, such as the proposed ESA Euclid
mission. It is first shown that the proposed all-sky near-infrared photometry
from Euclid, in combination with anticipated ground-based photometry (e.g.
PanStarrs-2 or DES) should yield the required precision in individual photo-z
of sigma(z) < 0.05(1+z) at I_AB < 24.5. Simple a priori rejection schemes based
on the photometry alone can be tuned to recognise objects with wildly
discrepant photo-z and to reduce the outlier fraction to < 0.25% with only
modest loss of otherwise usable objects. Turning to the more challenging
problem of determining the mean redshift of a set of galaxies to a
precision of 0.002(1+z) we argue that, for many different reasons, this is best
accomplished by relying on the photo-z themselves rather than on the direct
measurement of from spectroscopic redshifts of a representative subset of
the galaxies. A simple adaptive scheme based on the statistical properties of
the photo-z likelihood functions is shown to meet this stringent systematic
requirement. We also examine the effect of an imprecise correction for Galactic
extinction and the effects of contamination by fainter over-lapping objects in
photo-z determination. The overall conclusion of this work is that the
acquisition of photometrically estimated redshifts with the precision required
for Euclid, or other similar experiments, will be challenging but possible.
(abridged)Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures; submitted to MNRA
Unexpected features of branched flow through high-mobility two-dimensional electron gases
GaAs-based two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) show a wealth of remarkable
electronic states, and serve as the basis for fast transistors, research on
electrons in nanostructures, and prototypes of quantum-computing schemes. All
these uses depend on the extremely low levels of disorder in GaAs 2DEGs, with
low-temperature mean free paths ranging from microns to hundreds of microns.
Here we study how disorder affects the spatial structure of electron transport
by imaging electron flow in three different GaAs/AlGaAs 2DEGs, whose mobilities
range over an order of magnitude. As expected, electrons flow along narrow
branches that we find remain straight over a distance roughly proportional to
the mean free path. We also observe two unanticipated phenomena in
high-mobility samples. In our highest-mobility sample we observe an almost
complete absence of sharp impurity or defect scattering, indicated by the
complete suppression of quantum coherent interference fringes. Also, branched
flow through the chaotic potential of a high-mobility sample remains stable to
significant changes to the initial conditions of injected electrons.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
Global Protected Areas as refuges for amphibians and reptiles under climate change
Protected Areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. Here, we collated distributional data for >14,000 (~70% of) species of amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) to perform a global assessment of the conservation effectiveness of PAs using species distribution models. Our analyses reveal that >91% of herpetofauna species are currently distributed in PAs, and that this proportion will remain unaltered under future climate change. Indeed, loss of species’ distributional ranges will be lower inside PAs than outside them. Therefore, the proportion of effectively protected species is predicted to increase. However, over 7.8% of species currently occur outside PAs, and large spatial conservation gaps remain, mainly across tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, and across non-high-income countries. We also predict that more than 300 amphibian and 500 reptile species may go extinct under climate change over the course of the ongoing century. Our study highlights the importance of PAs in providing herpetofauna with refuge from climate change, and suggests ways to optimize PAs to better conserve biodiversity worldwide
Galaxy clustering and projected density profiles as traced by satellites in photometric surveys: Methodology and luminosity dependence
We develop a new method which measures the projected density distribution
w_p(r_p)n of photometric galaxies surrounding a set of
spectroscopically-identified galaxies, and simultaneously the projected
correlation function w_p(r_p) between the two populations. In this method we
are able to divide the photometric galaxies into subsamples in luminosity
intervals when redshift information is unavailable, enabling us to measure
w_p(r_p)n and w_p(r_p) as a function of not only the luminosity of the
spectroscopic galaxy, but also that of the photometric galaxy. Extensive tests
show that our method can measure w_p(r_p) in a statistically unbiased way. The
accuracy of the measurement depends on the validity of the assumption in the
method that the foreground/background galaxies are randomly distributed and
thus uncorrelated with those galaxies of interest. Therefore, our method can be
applied to the cases where foreground/background galaxies are distributed in
large volumes, which is usually valid in real observations. We applied our
method to data from SDSS including a sample of 10^5 LRGs at z~0.4 and a sample
of about half a million galaxies at z~0.1, both of which are cross-correlated
with a deep photometric sample drawn from the SDSS. On large scales, the
relative bias factor of galaxies measured from w_p(r_p) at z~0.4 depends on
luminosity in a manner similar to what is found at z~0.1, which are usually
probed by autocorrelations of spectroscopic samples. On scales smaller than a
few Mpc and at both z~0.4 and z~0.1, the photometric galaxies of different
luminosities exhibit similar density profiles around spectroscopic galaxies at
fixed luminosity and redshift. This provides clear support for the assumption
commonly-adopted in HOD models that satellite galaxies of different
luminosities are distributed in a similar way, following the dark matter
distribution within their host halos.Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures, published in Ap
Enhancement mode double top gated MOS nanostructures with tunable lateral geometry
We present measurements of silicon (Si) metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS)
nanostructures that are fabricated using a process that facilitates essentially
arbitrary gate geometries. Stable Coulomb blockade behavior free from the
effects of parasitic dot formation is exhibited in several MOS quantum dots
with an open lateral quantum dot geometry. Decreases in mobility and increases
in charge defect densities (i.e. interface traps and fixed oxide charge) are
measured for critical process steps, and we correlate low disorder behavior
with a quantitative defect density. This work provides quantitative guidance
that has not been previously established about defect densities for which Si
quantum dots do not exhibit parasitic dot formation. These devices make use of
a double-layer gate stack in which many regions, including the critical gate
oxide, were fabricated in a fully-qualified CMOS facility.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Reconstructing galaxy fundamental distributions and scaling relations from photometric redshift surveys. Applications to the SDSS early-type sample
Noisy distance estimates associated with photometric rather than
spectroscopic redshifts lead to a mis-estimate of the luminosities, and produce
a correlated mis-estimate of the sizes. We consider a sample of early-type
galaxies from the SDSS DR6 for which both spectroscopic and photometric
information is available, and apply the generalization of the V_max method to
correct for these biases. We show that our technique recovers the true
redshift, magnitude and size distributions, as well as the true size-luminosity
relation. We find that using only 10% of the spectroscopic information randomly
spaced in our catalog is sufficient for the reconstructions to be accurate
within about 3%, when the photometric redshift error is dz = 0.038. We then
address the problem of extending our method to deep redshift catalogs, where
only photometric information is available. In addition to the specific
applications outlined here, our technique impacts a broader range of studies,
when at least one distance-dependent quantity is involved. It is particularly
relevant for the next generation of surveys, some of which will only have
photometric information.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, 1 table, new section 3.1 and appendix added,
MNRAS in pres
Estimating the redshift distribution of photometric galaxy samples – II. Applications and tests of a new method
In Lima et al. we presented a new method for estimating the redshift distribution, N ( z ) , of a photometric galaxy sample, using photometric observables and weighted sampling from a spectroscopic subsample of the data. In this paper, we extend this method and explore various applications of it, using both simulations and real data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). In addition to estimating the redshift distribution for an entire sample, the weighting method enables accurate estimates of the redshift probability distribution, p ( z ) , for each galaxy in a photometric sample. Use of p ( z ) in cosmological analyses can substantially reduce biases associated with traditional photometric redshifts, in which a single redshift estimate is associated with each galaxy. The weighting procedure also naturally indicates which galaxies in the photometric sample are expected to have accurate redshift estimates, namely those that lie in regions of photometric-observable space that are well sampled by the spectroscopic subsample. In addition to providing a method that has some advantages over standard photo- z estimates, the weights method can also be used in conjunction with photo- z estimates e.g. by providing improved estimation of N ( z ) via deconvolution of N ( z phot ) and improved estimates of photo- z scatter and bias. We present a publicly available p ( z ) catalogue for ∼78 million SDSS DR7 galaxies.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75507/1/j.1365-2966.2009.14908.x.pd
The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: The Voronoi-Delaunay Method Catalog of Galaxy Groups
We present a public catalog of galaxy groups constructed from the spectroscopic sample of galaxies in the fourth data release from the Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe 2 (DEEP2) Galaxy Redshift Survey, including the Extended Groth Strip (EGS). The catalog contains 1165 groups with two or more members in the EGS over the redshift range 0 0.6 in the rest of DEEP2. Twenty-five percent of EGS galaxies and fourteen percent of high-z DEEP2 galaxies are assigned to galaxy groups. The groups were detected using the Voronoi-Delaunay method (VDM) after it has been optimized on mock DEEP2 catalogs following similar methods to those employed in Gerke et al. In the optimization effort, we have taken particular care to ensure that the mock catalogs resemble the data as closely as possible, and we have fine-tuned our methods separately on mocks constructed for the EGS and the rest of DEEP2. We have also probed the effect of the assumed cosmology on our inferred group-finding efficiency by performing our optimization on three different mock catalogs with different background cosmologies, finding large differences in the group-finding success we can achieve for these different mocks. Using the mock catalog whose background cosmology is most consistent with current data, we estimate that the DEEP2 group catalog is 72% complete and 61% pure (74% and 67% for the EGS) and that the group finder correctly classifies 70% of galaxies that truly belong to groups, with an additional 46% of interloper galaxies contaminating the catalog (66% and 43% for the EGS). We also confirm that the VDM catalog reconstructs the abundance of galaxy groups with velocity dispersions above ~300 km s^(–1) to an accuracy better than the sample variance, and this successful reconstruction is not strongly dependent on cosmology. This makes the DEEP2 group catalog a promising probe of the growth of cosmic structure that can potentially be used for cosmological tests
Dynamics of Endoreplication during Drosophila Posterior Scutellar Macrochaete Development
Endoreplication is a variant type of DNA replication, consisting only of alternating G1 and S phases. Many types of Drosophila tissues undergo endoreplication. However, the timing and the extent to which a single endocycling macrochaete undergoes temporally programmed endoreplication during development are unclear. Here, we focused on the dynamics of endoreplication during posterior scutellar (pSC) macrochaete development. Quantitative analyses of C values in shaft cells and socket cells revealed a gradual rise from 8C and 4C at 8 hours after pupal formation (APF) to 72C and 24C at 29 hours APF, respectively. The validity of the values was further confirmed by the measurement of DNA content with a confocal laser microscope. BrdU incorporation assays demonstrated that shaft cells undergo four rounds of endoreplication from 18 to 29.5 hours APF. In contrast, socket cells undergo two rounds of endoreplication during the same period. Statistical analyses showed that the theoretical C values, based on BrdU assays, nearly coincide with the actually measured C values in socket cells, but not in shaft cells after 22 hours APF. These analyses suggest that socket cells undergo two rounds of endoreplication. However, the mechanism of endoreplication in the shaft cells may change from 22 hours APF, suggesting the possibility that shaft cells undergo two or four rounds of endoreplication during the periods. We also found that the timing of endoreplication differs, depending on the type of macrochaete. Moreover, endocycling in shaft cells of both the left and right sides of pSC bristle lineages occurs in the same pattern, indicating that the process is synchronized for specific types of macrochaete. Our findings suggest that endocycling in macrochaete cell lineages can be a model for understanding mechanisms of endoreplication at the single-cell level
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