41,182 research outputs found
Application of Monte Carlo-based statistical significance determinations to the Beta Cephei stars V400 Car, V401 Car, V403 Car and V405 Car
We have used Lomb-Scargle periodogram analysis and Monte Carlo significance
tests to detect periodicities above the 3-sigma level in the Beta Cephei stars
V400 Car, V401 Car, V403 Car and V405 Car. These methods produce six previously
unreported periodicities in the expected frequency range of excited pulsations:
one in V400 Car, three in V401 Car, one in V403 Car and one in V405 Car. One of
these six frequencies is significant above the 4-sigma level. We provide
statistical significances for all of the periodicities found in these four
stars.Comment: 11 pages, 17 figure
KAT-7 Science Verification: Using HI Observations of NGC 3109 to Understand its Kinematics and Mass Distribution
HI observations of the Magellanic-type spiral NGC 3109, obtained with the
seven dish Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7), are used to analyze its mass
distribution. Our results are compared to what is obtained using VLA data.
KAT-7 is the precursor of the SKA pathfinder MeerKAT, which is under
construction. The short baselines and low system temperature of the telescope
make it sensitive to large scale low surface brightness emission. The new
observations with KAT-7 allow the measurement of the rotation curve of NGC 3109
out to 32', doubling the angular extent of existing measurements. A total HI
mass of 4.6 x 10^8 Msol is derived, 40% more than what was detected by the VLA
observations.
The observationally motivated pseudo-isothermal dark matter (DM) halo model
can reproduce very well the observed rotation curve but the cosmologically
motivated NFW DM model gives a much poorer fit to the data. While having a more
accurate gas distribution has reduced the discrepancy between the observed RC
and the MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) models, this is done at the expense
of having to use unrealistic mass-to-light ratios for the stellar disk and/or
very large values for the MOND universal constant a0. Different distances or HI
contents cannot reconcile MOND with the observed kinematics, in view of the
small errors on those two quantities. As for many slowly rotating gas-rich
galaxies studied recently, the present result for NGC 3109 continues to pose a
serious challenge to the MOND theory.Comment: 25 pages, 20 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomical
Journa
Suprathermal plasma observed on STS-3 Mission by plasma diagnostics package
Artificially produced electron beams were used extensively during the past decade as a means of probing the magnetosphere, and more recently as a means of actively controlling spacecraft potential. Experimentation in these areas has proven valuable, yet at times confusing, due to the interaction of the electron beam with the ambient plasma. The OSS-1/STS-3 Mission in March 1982 provided a unique opportunity to study beam-plasma interactions at an altitude of 240 km. On board for this mission was a Fast Pulse Electron Generator (FPEG). Measurements made by the Plasma Diagnostics Package (PDP) while extended on the Orbiter RMS show modifications of the ion and electron energy distributions during electron beam injection. Observations made by charged particle detectors are discussed and related to measurements of Orbiter potential. Several of the PDP instruments, the joint PDP/FPEG experiment, and observations made during electron beam injection are described
Thermal States as Convex Combinations of Matrix Product States
We study thermal states of strongly interacting quantum spin chains and prove
that those can be represented in terms of convex combinations of matrix product
states. Apart from revealing new features of the entanglement structure of
Gibbs states our results provide a theoretical justification for the use of
White's algorithm of minimally entangled typical thermal states. Furthermore,
we shed new light on time dependent matrix product state algorithms which yield
hydrodynamical descriptions of the underlying dynamics.Comment: v3: 10 pages, 2 figures, final published versio
Identifying influential spreaders and efficiently estimating infection numbers in epidemic models: a walk counting approach
We introduce a new method to efficiently approximate the number of infections
resulting from a given initially-infected node in a network of susceptible
individuals. Our approach is based on counting the number of possible infection
walks of various lengths to each other node in the network. We analytically
study the properties of our method, in particular demonstrating different forms
for SIS and SIR disease spreading (e.g. under the SIR model our method counts
self-avoiding walks). In comparison to existing methods to infer the spreading
efficiency of different nodes in the network (based on degree, k-shell
decomposition analysis and different centrality measures), our method directly
considers the spreading process and, as such, is unique in providing estimation
of actual numbers of infections. Crucially, in simulating infections on various
real-world networks with the SIR model, we show that our walks-based method
improves the inference of effectiveness of nodes over a wide range of infection
rates compared to existing methods. We also analyse the trade-off between
estimate accuracy and computational cost, showing that the better accuracy here
can still be obtained at a comparable computational cost to other methods.Comment: 6 page
The Importance of Broad Emission-Line Widths in Single Epoch Black Hole Mass Estimates
Estimates of the mass of super-massive black holes (BHs) in distant active
galactic nuclei (AGNs) can be obtained efficiently only through single-epoch
spectra, using a combination of their broad emission-line widths and continuum
luminosities. Yet the reliability and accuracy of the method, and the resulting
mass estimates, M_BH, remain uncertain. A recent study by Croom using a sample
of SDSS, 2QZ and 2SLAQ quasars suggests that line widths contribute little
information about the BH mass in these single-epoch estimates and can be
replaced by a constant value without significant loss of accuracy. In this
Letter, we use a sample of nearby reverberation-mapped AGNs to show that this
conclusion is not universally applicable. We use the bulge luminosity (L_Bulge)
of these local objects to test how well the known M_BH - L_Bulge correlation is
recovered when using randomly assigned line widths instead of the measured ones
to estimate M_BH. We find that line widths provide significant information
about M_BH, and that for this sample, the line width information is just as
significant as that provided by the continuum luminosities. We discuss the
effects of observational biases upon the analysis of Croom and suggest that the
results can probably be explained as a bias of flux-limited, shallow quasar
samples.Comment: 10 text pages + 4 Figures + 1 Table. Accepted for publication in ApJ
Letter
Meta-model Pruning
Large and complex meta-models such as those of Uml and its profiles are growing due to modelling and inter-operability needs of numerous\ud
stakeholders. The complexity of such meta-models has led to coining\ud
of the term meta-muddle. Individual users often exercise only a small\ud
view of a meta-muddle for tasks ranging from model creation to construction\ud
of model transformations. What is the effective meta-model that represents\ud
this view? We present a flexible meta-model pruning algorithm and\ud
tool to extract effective meta-models from a meta-muddle. We use\ud
the notion of model typing for meta-models to verify that the algorithm\ud
generates a super-type of the large meta-model representing the meta-muddle.\ud
This implies that all programs written using the effective meta-model\ud
will work for the meta-muddle hence preserving backward compatibility.\ud
All instances of the effective meta-model are also instances of the\ud
meta-muddle. We illustrate how pruning the original Uml metamodel\ud
produces different effective meta-models
Self-Interacting Dark Matter Halos and the Gravothermal Catastrophe
We study the evolution of an isolated, spherical halo of self-interacting
dark matter (SIDM) in the gravothermal fluid formalism. We show that the
thermal relaxation time, , of a SIDM halo with a central density and
velocity dispersion of a typical dwarf galaxy is significantly shorter than its
age. We find a self-similar solution for the evolution of a SIDM halo in the
limit where the mean free path between collisions, , is everywhere
longer than the gravitational scale height, . Typical halos formed in this
long mean free path regime relax to a quasistationary gravothermal density
profile characterized by a nearly homogeneous core and a power-law halo where
. We solve the more general time-dependent problem and
show that the contracting core evolves to sufficiently high density that
inevitably becomes smaller than in the innermost region. The core
undergoes secular collapse to a singular state (the ``gravothermal
catastrophe'') in a time , which is longer than the
Hubble time for a typical dark matter-dominated galaxy core at the present
epoch. Our model calculations are consistent with previous, more detailed,
N-body simulations for SIDM, providing a simple physical interpretation of
their results and extending them to higher spatial resolution and longer
evolution times. At late times, mass loss from the contracting, dense inner
core to the ambient halo is significantly moderated, so that the final mass of
the inner core may be appreciable when it becomes relativistic and radially
unstable to dynamical collapse to a black hole.Comment: ApJ in press (to appear in April), 12 pages. Extremely minor changes
to agree with published versio
Modeling the power flow in normal conductor-insulator-superconductor junctions
Normal conductor-insulator-superconductor (NIS) junctions promise to be interesting for x-ray and phonon sensing applications, in particular due to the expected self-cooling of the N electrode by the tunneling current. Such cooling would enable the operation of the active element of the sensor below the cryostat temperature and at a correspondingly higher sensitivity. It would also allow the use of MS junctions as microcoolers. At present, this cooling has not been realized in large area junctions (suitable for a number of detector applications). In this article, we discuss a detailed modeling of the heat flow in such junctions; we show how the heat flow into the normal electrode by quasiparticle back-tunneling and phonon absorption from quasiparticle pair recombination can overcompensate the cooling power. This provides a microscopic explanation of the self-heating effects we observe in our large area NIS junctions. The model suggests a number of possible solutions
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