919 research outputs found
On Galactic density modeling in the presence of dust extinction
Inferences about the spatial density or phase-space structure of stellar
populations in the Milky Way require a precise determination of the effective
survey volume. The volume observed by surveys such as Gaia or near-infrared
spectroscopic surveys, which have good coverage of the Galactic mid-plane
region, is highly complex because of the abundant small-scale structure in the
three-dimensional interstellar dust extinction. We introduce a novel framework
for analyzing the importance of small-scale structure in the extinction. This
formalism demonstrates that the spatially-complex effect of extinction on the
selection function of a pencil-beam or contiguous sky survey is equivalent to a
low-pass filtering of the extinction-affected selection function with the
smooth density field. We find that the angular resolution of current 3D
extinction maps is sufficient for analyzing Gaia sub-samples of millions of
stars. However, the current distance resolution is inadequate and needs to be
improved by an order of magnitude, especially in the inner Galaxy. We also
present a practical and efficient method for properly taking the effect of
extinction into account in analyses of Galactic structure through an effective
selection function. We illustrate its use with the selection function of
red-clump stars in APOGEE using and comparing a variety of current 3D
extinction maps.Comment: Code available at https://github.com/jobovy/mwdust and at
https://github.com/jobovy/apogee-map
CMB Constraints on WIMP Annihilation: Energy Absorption During the Recombination Epoch
We compute in detail the rate at which energy injected by dark matter
annihilation heats and ionizes the photon-baryon plasma at z ~ 1000, and
provide accurate fitting functions over the relevant redshift range for a broad
array of annihilation channels and DM masses. The resulting perturbations to
the ionization history can be constrained by measurements of the CMB
temperature and polarization angular power spectra. We show that models which
fit recently measured excesses in 10-1000 GeV electron and positron cosmic rays
are already close to the 95% confidence limits from WMAP. The recently launched
Planck satellite will be capable of ruling out a wide range of DM explanations
for these excesses. In models of dark matter with Sommerfeld-enhanced
annihilation, where sigma v rises with decreasing WIMP velocity until some
saturation point, the WMAP5 constraints imply that the enhancement must be
close to saturation in the neighborhood of the Earth.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, v2 extends discussion of constraints on
Sommerfeld-enhanced model
A Broadband Study of Galactic Dust Emission
We have combined infrared data with HI, H2 and HII surveys in order to
spatially decompose the observed dust emission into components associated with
different phases of the gas. An inversion technique is applied. For the
decomposition, we use the IRAS 60 and 100 micron bands, the DIRBE 140 and 240
micron bands, as well as Archeops 850 and 2096 micron wavelengths. In addition,
we apply the decomposition to all five WMAP bands. We obtain longitude and
latitude profiles for each wavelength and for each gas component in carefully
selected Galactic radius bins.We also derive emissivity coefficients for dust
in atomic, molecular and ionized gas in each of the bins.The HI emissivity
appears to decrease with increasing Galactic radius indicating that dust
associated with atomic gas is heated by the ambient interstellar radiation
field (ISRF). By contrast, we find evidence that dust mixed with molecular
clouds is significantly heated by O/B stars still embedded in their progenitor
clouds. By assuming a modified black-body with emissivity law lambda^(-1.5), we
also derive the radial distribution of temperature for each phase of the gas.
All of the WMAP bands except W appear to be dominated by emission from
something other than normal dust, most likely a mixture of thermal
bremstrahlung from diffuse ionized gas, synchrotron emission and spinning dust.
Furthermore, we find indications of an emissivity excess at long wavelengths
(lambda > 850 micron) in the outer Galaxy (R > 8.9 kpc). This suggests either
the existence of a very cold dust component in the outer Galaxy or a
temperature dependence of the spectral emissivity index. Finally, it is shown
that ~ 80% of the total FIR luminosity is produced by dust associated with
atomic hydrogen, in agreement with earlier findings by Sodroski et al. (1997).Comment: accepted for publication by A&
Verification and Control of Partially Observable Probabilistic Real-Time Systems
We propose automated techniques for the verification and control of
probabilistic real-time systems that are only partially observable. To formally
model such systems, we define an extension of probabilistic timed automata in
which local states are partially visible to an observer or controller. We give
a probabilistic temporal logic that can express a range of quantitative
properties of these models, relating to the probability of an event's
occurrence or the expected value of a reward measure. We then propose
techniques to either verify that such a property holds or to synthesise a
controller for the model which makes it true. Our approach is based on an
integer discretisation of the model's dense-time behaviour and a grid-based
abstraction of the uncountable belief space induced by partial observability.
The latter is necessarily approximate since the underlying problem is
undecidable, however we show how both lower and upper bounds on numerical
results can be generated. We illustrate the effectiveness of the approach by
implementing it in the PRISM model checker and applying it to several case
studies, from the domains of computer security and task scheduling
The Flexibility of Nonconsciously Deployed Cognitive Processes: Evidence from Masked Congruence Priming
Background: It is well accepted in the subliminal priming literature that task-level properties modulate nonconscious processes. For example, in tasks with a limited number of targets, subliminal priming effects are limited to primes that are physically similar to the targets. In contrast, when a large number of targets are used, subliminal priming effects are observed for primes that share a semantic (but not necessarily physical) relationship with the target. Findings such as these have led researchers to conclude that task-level properties can direct nonconscious processes to be deployed exclusively over central (semantic) or peripheral (physically specified) representations. Principal Findings: We find distinct patterns of masked priming for "novel" and "repeated" primes within a single task context. Novel primes never appear as targets and thus are not seen consciously in the experiment. Repeated primes do appear as targets, thereby lending themselves to the establishment of peripheral stimulus-response mappings. If the source of the masked priming effect were exclusively central or peripheral, then both novel and repeated primes should yield similar patterns of priming. In contrast, we find that both novel and repeated primes produce robust, yet distinct, patterns of priming. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that nonconsciously elicited cognitive processes can be flexibly deployed over both central and peripheral representations within a single task context. While we agree that task-level properties can influence nonconscious processes, our findings sharply constrain the extent of this influence. Specifically, our findings are inconsistent with extant accounts which hold that the influence of task-level properties is strong enough to restrict the deployment of nonconsciously elicited cognitive processes to a single type of representation (i.e. central or peripheral).13 page(s
Minimal Synthesis of String To String Functions From Examples
We study the problem of synthesizing string to string transformations from a
set of input/output examples. The transformations we consider are expressed
using deterministic finite automata (DFA) that read pairs of letters, one
letter from the input and one from the output. The DFA corresponding to these
transformations have additional constraints, ensuring that each input string is
mapped to exactly one output string.
We suggest that, given a set of input/output examples, the smallest DFA
consistent with the examples is a good candidate for the transformation the
user was expecting. We therefore study the problem of, given a set of examples,
finding a minimal DFA consistent with the examples and satisfying the
functionality and totality constraints mentioned above.
We prove that, in general, this problem (the corresponding decision problem)
is NP-complete. This is unlike the standard DFA minimization problem which can
be solved in polynomial time. We provide several NP-hardness proofs that show
the hardness of multiple (independent) variants of the problem.
Finally, we propose an algorithm for finding the minimal DFA consistent with
input/output examples, that uses a reduction to SMT solvers. We implemented the
algorithm, and used it to evaluate the likelihood that the minimal DFA indeed
corresponds to the DFA expected by the user.Comment: SYNT 201
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