The exotic fraction among unassociated Fermi sources

Revealing the nature of unassociated high-energy (> 100 MeV) gamma-ray sources remains a challenge 35 years after their discovery. Of the 934 gamma-ray sources at high Galactic latitude (|b| > 15 degrees) in the First Fermi-LAT catalogue (1FGL), 316 have no obvious associations at other wavelengths. In this paper, we apply the K-means unsupervised classification algorithm to isolate potential counterparts for 18 unassociated Fermi sources contained within a 3000 square degree `overlap region' of the sky intensively covered in radio and optical wavelengths. Combining our results with previous works, we reach potential associations for 119 out of the 128 Fermi sources within said region. If these associations are correct, we estimate that less than 20% of all remaining unassociated 1FGL sources at high Galactic latitude (|b| > 15 degrees) might host `exotic' counterparts distinct from known classes of gamma-ray emitters. Potentially even these outliers could be explained by high-redshift/dust-obscured analogues of the associated sample or by intrinsically faint radio objects. Although such estimate leaves some room for novel discoveries, it severely restricts the possibility of detecting dark matter subhaloes and other unconventional types of gamma-ray emitters in the 1FGL. In closing, we argue that the identification of Fermi sources at the low end of the flux density distribution will be a complex process that might only be achieved through a clever combination of refined classification algorithms, multi-wavelength efforts, and dedicated optical spectroscopy.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Score-Informed Source Separation for Musical Audio Recordings [An overview]

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Enhanced thermoelectric response of hole-doped La2_2NiO4+δ_{4+\delta} by ab initio calculations

Thermoelectric properties of the system La$_2$NiO$_{4+\delta}$ have been studied ab initio. Large Seebeck coefficient values are predicted for the parent compound, and to some extent remain in the hole-doped metallic phase, accompanied of an increase in the conductivity. This system, due to its layered structure would be a suitable candidate for an improvement of its thermoelectric figure of merit by nanostructurization in thin films, that has already been shown to increase the electrical conductivity ($\sigma$). Our calculations show that in the region around La$_2$NiO$_{4.05}$ the system has a large thermopower at high temperatures and also a substantially increased $\sigma$. Films grown with this low-doping concentration will show an optimal relationship between thermopower and $\sigma$. This result is obtained for various exchange-correlation schemes (correlated, uncorrelated and parameter-free) that we use to analyze the electronic structure of the hole-doped compound.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure