HST-FOS Observations of M87: Ly-a Emission from the Active Galactic Nucleus

The Faint Object Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope was used to obtain spectra of the central region of M87. These spectra cover the wavelength range 1140 - 1606 Angstrom and have a resolution of about 1 Angstrom. The nuclear continuum is clearly visible in the spectra. The only strong line that is observed is Ly-alpha, which has a velocity width of about 3000 km/sec. There is also a marginal detection of C IV 1549. The ratio of Ly-alpha to C IV in the nuclear spectrum is at least a factor of 2 higher than in a spectrum taken at a position on the disk about 0.6" away from the nucleus by Dopita et al. This enhancement of Ly-alpha at the nucleus could point to significant differences in the properties of the emitting gas and/or the excitation mechanism between the outer and inner disk regions. The strength of the observed Ly-alpha places limits on the properties of the absorbing gas present within M87. For instance, if the hydrogen column at the systemic velocity of M87 is greater than about 10^18 cm^{-2} then it can cover only a small fraction of the line emitting region. Spectra separated by 5 days show a 60% difference in the Ly-alpha flux, but the same continuum level. This could be due to either a displacement between the aperture positions for the two sets of observations, or it could be due to intrinsic variability of the source. The current observations do not strongly favor either of these alternatives. The observations do show, however, that the Ly-alpha line is a useful tracer of kinematics in the M87 nucleus.Comment: 14 pages + 5 figures. LaTeX uses aaspp4.sty. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

A high excitation HII region in the faint dwarf elliptical galaxy A0951+68

We present the results of BVRI imaging and optical spectroscopy of the dwarf galaxy A0951+68. The images reveal that, although this galaxy is classified as a dwarf elliptical, it has some properties that are similar to dwarf irregular galaxies. It contains two bright knots of emission, one of which is red and unresolved and the other blue and resolved. The blue knot also shows a high excitation emission line spectrum. The observed line ratios indicate that this is an HII region, although with some line ratios that are border-line with those in AGN. The emission line luminosity is consistent with ionisation by a single, very luminous O star, or several smaller O stars, but the extended blue light in the knot shows that this has occurred as part of a substantial recent star formation event. We find that the metal abundance, while low compared to typical large galaxies, actually seems to be high for such a low luminosity dwarf. The position of A0951 in the literature is incorrect and we provide the correct value.Comment: 8 pages, Latex, 4 encapsulated postscript figures included, 1 separate JPEG figure; to be published in Monthly Notice

Symplectic structure for elastic and chiral conducting cosmic string models

This article is based on the covariant canonical formalism and corresponding symplectic structure on phase space developed by Witten, Zuckerman and others in the context of field theory. After recalling the basic principles of this procedure, we construct the conserved bilinear symplectic current for generic elastic string models. These models describe current carrying cosmic strings evolving in an arbitrary curved background spacetime. Particular attention is paid to the special case of the chiral string for which the worldsheet current is null. Different formulations of the chiral string action are discussed in detail, and as a result the integrability property of the chiral string is clarified.Comment: 18 page

Entrainment coefficient and effective mass for conduction neutrons in neutron star crust: II Macroscopic treatment

Phenomena such as pulsar frequency glitches are believed to be attributable to differential rotation of a current of ``free'' superfluid neutrons at densities above the ``drip'' threshold in the ionic crust of a neutron star. Such relative flow is shown to be locally describable by adaption of a canonical two fluid treatment that emphasizes the role of the momentum covectors constructed by differentiation of action with respect to the currents, with allowance for stratification whereby the ionic number current may be conserved even when the ionic charge number Z is altered by beta processes. It is demonstrated that the gauge freedom to make different choices of the chemical basis determining which neutrons are counted as ``free'' does not affect their ``superfluid'' momentum covector, which must locally have the form of a gradient (though it does affect the ``normal'' momentum covector characterising the protons and those neutrons that are considered to be ``confined'' in the nuclei). It is shown how the effect of ``entrainment'' (whereby the momentum directions deviate from those of the currents) is controlled by the (gauge independent) mobility coefficient K, estimated in recent microscopical quantum mechanical investigations, which suggest that the corresponding (gauge dependent) ``effective mass'' m* of the free neutrons can become very large in some layers. The relation between this treatment of the crust layers and related work (using different definitions of ``effective mass'') intended for the deeper core layers is discussed.Comment: 21 pages Latex. Part II of article whose Part I (Simple microscopic models) is given by nucl-th/0402057. New version extended to include figure

Poly-essential and general Hyperelastic World (brane) models

This article provides a unified treatment of an extensive category of non-linear classical field models whereby the universe is represented (perhaps as a brane in a higher dimensional background) in terms of a structure of a mathematically convenient type describable as hyperelastic, for which a complete set of equations of motion is provided just by the energy-momentum conservation law. Particular cases include those of a perfect fluid in quintessential backgrounds of various kinds, as well as models of the elastic solid kind that has been proposed to account for cosmic acceleration. It is shown how an appropriately generalised Hadamard operator can be used to construct a symplectic structure that controles the evolution of small perturbations, and that provides a characteristic equation governing the propagation of weak discontinuities of diverse (extrinsic and extrinsic) kinds. The special case of a poly-essential model - the k-essential analogue of an ordinary polytropic fluid - is examined and shown to be well behaved (like the fluid) only if the pressure to density ratio $w$ is positive.Comment: 16 pages Latex, Contrib. to 10th Peyresq Pysics Meeting, June 2005: Micro and Macro Structures of Spacetim

Principles and Practice of Artificial Insemination in Turkeys

Low fertility is one of the most common and most costly problems in turkey breeder flocks. As a partial solution to this problem, there has been a growing interest in artificial insemination of turkeys. Artificial insemination is a practical solution to infertility due to inactive toms, Inefficient toms and nonreceptive hens, but is not a solution to infertility due to poor management

Geometric scaling in high-energy QCD at nonzero momentum transfer

We show how one can obtain geometric scaling properties from the Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation. We start by explaining how, this property arises for the b-independent BK equation. We show that it is possible to extend this model to the full BK equation including momentum transfer. The saturation scale behaves like max(q,Q_T) where q is the momentum transfer and Q_T a typical scale of the target.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Talk given by G. Soyez at the "Rencontres de Moriond", 12-19 March 2005, La Thuile, Ital