8,639 research outputs found
Where have all the black holes gone?
We have calculated stationary models for accretion disks around super-massive
black holes in galactic nuclei. Our models show that below a critical mass flow
rate of ~3 10**-3 M_Edd advection will dominate the energy budget while above
that rate all the viscously liberated energy is radiated. The radiation
efficiency declines steeply below that critical rate. This leads to a clear
dichotomy between AGN and normal galaxies which is not so much given by
differences in the mass flow rate but by the radiation efficiency. At very low
mass accretion rates below 5 10**-5 M_Edd synchrotron emission and
Bremsstrahlung dominate the SED, while above 2 10**-4 M Edd the inverse Compton
radiation from synchrotron seed photons produce flat to inverted SEDs from the
radio to X-rays. Finally we discuss the implications of these findings for AGN
duty cycles and the long-term AGN evolution.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Determining the sign of at long baseline neutrino experiments
Recently it is advocated that high intensity and low energy neutrino beams should be built to probe the mixing angle to
a level of a few parts in . Experiments using such beams will have better
signal to background ratio in searches for oscillations. We
propose that such experiments can also determine the sign of even
if the beam consists of {\it neutrinos} only. By measuring the transitions in two different energy ranges, the effects due to
propagation of neutrinos through earth's crust can be isolated and the sign of
can be determined. If the sensitivity of an experiment to
is , then the same experiment is automatically sensitive to matter
effects and the sign of for values of .Comment: Title changed and paper rewritten. 4 pages, 1 figure, revte
The Effect of Poloidal Magnetic Field on Type I Planetary Migration: Significance of Magnetic Resonance
We study the effect of poloidal magnetic field on type I planetary migration
by linear perturbation analysis in the shearing-sheet approximation and the
analytic results are compared with numerical calculations. In contrast to the
unmagnetized case, the basic equations that describe the wake due to the planet
in the disk allow magnetic resonances at which density perturbation diverges.
In order to simplify the problem, we consider the case without
magneto-rotational instability. We perform two sets of analyses:
two-dimensional and three-dimensional. In two-dimensional analysis, we find the
generalization of the torque formula previously known in unmagnetized case. In
three-dimensional calculations, we focus on the disk with very strong magnetic
field and derive a new analytic formula for the torque exerted on the planet.
We find that when Alfven velocity is much larger than sound speed,
two-dimensional torque is suppressed and three-dimensional modes dominate, in
contrast to the unmagnetized case.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figures, typos corrected, discussion added, reference
added, Accepted for publication in Ap
Solar Neutrinos and the Eclipse Effect
The solar neutrino counting rate in a real time detector like
Super--Kamiokanda, SNO, or Borexino is enhanced due to neutrino oscillations in
the Moon during a partial or total solar eclipse. The enhancement is calculated
as a function of the neutrino parameters in the case of three flavor mixing.
This enhancement, if seen, can further help to determine the neutrino
parameters.Comment: 24 Pages Revtex, 8 figures as one ps file. To appear in Phys. Rev. D;
Some typos corrected and a reference adde
Lensing and the Centers of Distant Early-Type Galaxies
Gravitational lensing provides a unique probe of the inner 10-1000 pc of
distant galaxies (z=0.2-1). Lens theory predicts that every strong lens system
should have a faint image near the center of the lens galaxy, which should be
visible in radio lenses but have not been observed. We study these ``core''
images using models derived from the stellar distributions in nearby early-type
galaxies. We find that realistic galaxies predict a remarkably wide range of
core images, with lensing magnifications spanning some six orders of magnitude.
More concentrated galaxies produce fainter core images, although not with any
simple, quantitative, model independent relation. Some real galaxies have
diffuse cores and predict bright core images (magnification mu>~0.1), but more
common are galaxies that predict faint core images (mu<~0.001). Thus, stellar
mass distributions alone are probably concentrated enough to explain the lack
of observed core images, and may require observational sensitivity to improve
by an order of magnitude before detections of core images become common.
Two-image lenses will tend to have brighter core images than four-image lenses,
so they will be the better targets for finding core images and exploiting these
tools for studying the central mass distributions of distant galaxies.Comment: 13 pages, emulateapj; submitted to Ap
String spectra near some null cosmological singularities
We construct cosmological spacetimes with null Kasner-like singularities as
purely gravitational solutions with no other background fields turned on. These
can be recast as anisotropic plane-wave spacetimes by coordinate
transformations. We analyse string quantization to find the spectrum of string
modes in these backgrounds. The classical string modes can be solved for
exactly in these time-dependent backgrounds, which enables a detailed study of
the near singularity string spectrum, (time-dependent) oscillator masses and
wavefunctions. We find that for low lying string modes(finite oscillation
number), the classical near-singularity string mode functions are non-divergent
for various families of singularities. Furthermore, for any infinitesimal
regularization of the vicinity of the singularity, we find a tower of string
modes of ultra-high oscillation number which propagate essentially freely in
the background. The resulting picture suggests that string interactions are
non-negligible near the singularity.Comment: Latex, 30pgs; v2. minor clarifications, references adde
Hybrid Thermal-Nonthermal Synchrotron Emission from Hot Accretion Flows
We investigate the effect of a hybrid electron population, consisting of both
thermal and non-thermal particles, on the synchrotron spectrum, image size, and
image shape of a hot accretion flow onto a supermassive black hole. We find two
universal features in the emitted synchrotron spectrum: (i) a prominent
shoulder at low (< 10^11 Hz) frequencies that is weakly dependent on the shape
of the electron energy distribution, and (ii) an extended tail of emission at
high (> 10^13 Hz) frequencies whose spectral slope depends on the slope of the
power-law energy distribution of the electrons. In the low-frequency shoulder,
the luminosity can be up to two orders of magnitude greater than with a purely
thermal plasma even if only a small fraction (< 1%) of the steady-state
electron energy is in the non-thermal electrons. We apply the hybrid model to
the Galactic center source, Sgr A*. The observed radio and IR spectra imply
that at most 1% of the steady-state electron energy is present in a power-law
tail in this source. This corresponds to no more than 10% of the electron
energy injected into the non-thermal electrons and hence 90% into the thermal
electrons. We show that such a hybrid distribution can be sustained in the flow
because thermalization via Coulomb collisions and synchrotron self-absorption
are both inefficient. The presence of non-thermal electrons enlarges the size
of the radio image at low frequencies and alters the frequency dependence of
the brightness temperature. A purely thermal electron distributions produces a
sharp-edged image while a hybrid distribution causes strong limb brightening.
These effects can be seen up to frequencies ~10^11 Hz and are accessible to
radio interferometers.Comment: 33 pages with figures, to appear in the Astrophysical Journa
The hard to soft spectral transition in LMXBs - affected by recondensation of gas into an inner disk
Soft and hard spectral states of X-ray transient sources reflect two modes of
accretion, accretion via a geometrically thin, optically thick disk or an
advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). The luminosity at transition between
these two states seems to vary from source to source, or even for the same
source during different outbursts, as observed for GX 339-4. We investigate how
the existence of an inner weak disk in the hard state affects the transition
luminosity. We evaluate the structure of the corona above an outer truncated
disk and the resulting disk evaporation rate for different irradiation. In some
cases, recent observations of X-ray transients indicate the presence of an
inner cool disk during the hard state. Such a disk can remain during quiescence
after the last outburst as long as the luminosity does not drop to very low
values (10^-4 to 10^-3 of the Eddington luminosity). Consequently, as part of
the matter accretes via the inner disk, the hard irradiation is reduced. The
hard irradiation is further reduced, occulted and partly reflected by the inner
disk. This leads to a hard-soft transition at a lower luminosity if an inner
disk exists below the ADAF. This seems to be supported by observations for GX
339-4.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
Marginal Release Under Local Differential Privacy
Many analysis and machine learning tasks require the availability of marginal
statistics on multidimensional datasets while providing strong privacy
guarantees for the data subjects. Applications for these statistics range from
finding correlations in the data to fitting sophisticated prediction models. In
this paper, we provide a set of algorithms for materializing marginal
statistics under the strong model of local differential privacy. We prove the
first tight theoretical bounds on the accuracy of marginals compiled under each
approach, perform empirical evaluation to confirm these bounds, and evaluate
them for tasks such as modeling and correlation testing. Our results show that
releasing information based on (local) Fourier transformations of the input is
preferable to alternatives based directly on (local) marginals
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