2,768 research outputs found
The extended halo of NGC 2682 (M 67) from Gaia DR2
Context: NGC 2682 is a nearby open cluster, approximately 3.5 Gyr old.
Dynamically, most open clusters should dissolve on shorter timescales, of ~ 1
Gyr. Having survived until now, NGC 2682 was likely much more massive in the
past, and is bound to have an interesting dynamical history. Aims: We
investigate the spatial distribution of NGC 2682 stars to constrain its
dynamical evolution, especially focusing on the marginally bound stars in the
cluster outskirts. Methods: We use Gaia DR2 data to identify NGC 2682 members
up to a distance of ~150 pc (10 degrees). Two methods (Clusterix and UPMASK)
are applied to this end. We estimate distances to obtain three-dimensional
stellar positions using a Bayesian approach to parallax inversion, with an
appropriate prior for star clusters. We calculate the orbit of NGC 2682 using
the GRAVPOT16 software. Results: The cluster extends up to 200 arcmin (50 pc)
which implies that its size is at least twice as previously believed. This
exceeds the cluster Hill sphere based on the Galactic potential at the distance
of NGC 2682. Conclusions: The extra-tidal stars in NGC 2682 may originate from
external perturbations such as disk shocking or dynamical evaporation from
two-body relaxation. The former origin is plausible given the orbit of NGC
2682, which crossed the Galactic disk ~40 Myr ago.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication on A&
Detection of solar-like oscillations in relics of the Milky Way: asteroseismology of K giants in M4 using data from the NASA K2 mission
Asteroseismic constraints on K giants make it possible to infer radii, masses
and ages of tens of thousands of field stars. Tests against independent
estimates of these properties are however scarce, especially in the metal-poor
regime. Here, we report the detection of solar-like oscillations in 8 stars
belonging to the red-giant branch and red-horizontal branch of the globular
cluster M4. The detections were made in photometric observations from the K2
Mission during its Campaign 2. Making use of independent constraints on the
distance, we estimate masses of the 8 stars by utilising different combinations
of seismic and non-seismic inputs. When introducing a correction to the Delta
nu scaling relation as suggested by stellar models, for RGB stars we find
excellent agreement with the expected masses from isochrone fitting, and with a
distance modulus derived using independent methods. The offset with respect to
independent masses is lower, or comparable with, the uncertainties on the
average RGB mass (4-10%, depending on the combination of constraints used). Our
results lend confidence to asteroseismic masses in the metal poor regime. We
note that a larger sample will be needed to allow more stringent tests to be
made of systematic uncertainties in all the observables (both seismic and
non-seismic), and to explore the properties of RHB stars, and of different
populations in the cluster.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Ultrafast amplification and non-linear magneto-elastic coupling of coherent magnon modes in an antiferromagnet
We study the magnon dynamics of an antiferromagnetic NiO single crystal in a
pump-probe experiment with variable pump photon energy. Analysing the amplitude
of the energy-dependent photo-induced ultrafast spin dynamics, we detect a yet
unreported coupling between the material's characteristic THz- and a GHz-magnon
modes. We explain this unexpected coupling between two orthogonal eigenstates
of the corresponding Hamiltonian by modelling the magneto-elastic interaction
between spins in different domains. We find that such interaction, in the
non-linear regime, couples the two different magnon modes via the domain walls
and it can be optically exploited via the exciton-magnon resonance.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Age determination for 269 DR2 Open Clusters
. Gaia Second Data Release provides precise astrometry and
photometry for more than 1.3 billion sources. This catalog opens a new era
concerning the characterization of open clusters and test stellar models,
paving the way for a better understanding of the disc properties. . The
aim of the paper is to improve the knowledge of cluster parameters, using only
the unprecedented quality of the Gaia photometry and astrometry. . We
make use of the membership determination based on the precise Gaia astrometry
and photometry. We apply anautomated Bayesian tool, BASE-9, to fit stellar
isochrones on the observed G, GBP, GRP magnitudes of the high probability
member stars. . We derive parameters such as age, distance modulus and
extinction for a sample of 269 open clusters, selecting only low reddening
objects and discarding very young clusters, for which techniques other than
isochrone-fitting are more suitable for estimating ages.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures. Submitte
Development of FTK architecture: a fast hardware track trigger for the ATLAS detector
The Fast Tracker (FTK) is a proposed upgrade to the ATLAS trigger system that
will operate at full Level-1 output rates and provide high quality tracks
reconstructed over the entire detector by the start of processing in Level-2.
FTK solves the combinatorial challenge inherent to tracking by exploiting the
massive parallelism of Associative Memories (AM) that can compare inner
detector hits to millions of pre-calculated patterns simultaneously. The
tracking problem within matched patterns is further simplified by using
pre-computed linearized fitting constants and leveraging fast DSP's in modern
commercial FPGA's. Overall, FTK is able to compute the helix parameters for all
tracks in an event and apply quality cuts in approximately one millisecond. By
employing a pipelined architecture, FTK is able to continuously operate at
Level-1 rates without deadtime. The system design is defined and studied using
ATLAS full simulation. Reconstruction quality is evaluated for single muon
events with zero pileup, as well as WH events at the LHC design luminosity. FTK
results are compared with the tracking capability of an offline algorithm.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of DPF-2009, Detroit, MI, July
2009, eConf C09072
Determining stellar parameters of asteroseismic targets: Going beyond the use of scaling relations
Asteroseismic parameters allow us to measure the basic stellar properties of field giants observed far across the Galaxy. Most of such determinations are, up to now, based on simple scaling relations involving the large-frequency separation, \u394\u3bd, and the frequency of maximum power, \u3bdmax. In this work, we implement \u394\u3bd and the period spacing, \u394P, computed along detailed grids of stellar evolutionary tracks, into stellar isochrones and hence in a Bayesian method of parameter estimation. Tests with synthetic data reveal that masses and ages can be determined with typical precision of 5 and 19 per cent, respectively, provided precise seismic parameters are available. Adding independent on the stellar luminosity, these values can decrease down to 3 and 10 per cent, respectively. The application of these methods to NGC 6819 giants produces a mean age in agreement with those derived from isochrone fitting, and no evidence of systematic differences between RGB and RC stars. The age dispersion of NGC 6819 stars, however, is larger than expected, with at least part of the spread ascribable to stars that underwent mass-transfer events
Kepler red-clump stars in the field and in open clusters: Constraints on core mixing
Convective mixing in helium-core-burning (HeCB) stars is one of the outstanding issues in stellar modelling. The precise asteroseismic measurements of gravity-mode period spacing (&dela;σ1) have opened the door to detailed studies of the near-core structure of such stars, which had not been possible before. Here, we provide stringent tests of various core-mixing scenarios against the largely unbiased population of red-clump stars belonging to the old-open clusters monitored by Kepler, and by coupling the updated precise inference on &dela;σ1 in thousands of field stars with spectroscopic constraints. We find that models with moderate overshooting successfully reproduce the range observed of &dela;σ1 in clusters. In particular, we show that there is no evidence for the need to extend the size of the adiabatically stratified core, at least at the beginning of the HeCB phase. This conclusion is based primarily on ensemble studies of &dela;σ1 as a function of mass and metallicity. While &dela;σ1 shows no appreciable dependence on the mass, we have found a clear dependence of &dela;σ1 on metallicity, which is also supported by predictions from models
Combined photometric and asteroseismic constraints on the properties of NGC 6791
We compare a grid of isochrones with observational constraints on NGC 6791 considering photometric and asteroseismic data, both together and separately. We apply a method, based on Bayesian statistics, to identify the best-fit solutions and the uncertainties on the estimated global properties of the cluster
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