The early reionization with the primordial magnetic fields

The early reionization of the intergalactic medium, which is favored from the WMAP temperature-polarization cross-correlations, contests the validity of the standard scenario of structure formation in the cold dark matter cosmogony. It is difficult to achieve early enough star formation without rather extreme assumptions such as very high escape fraction of ionizing photons from proto-galaxies or a top-heavy initial mass function. Here we propose an alternative scenario that is additional fluctuations on small scales induced by primordial magnetic fields trigger the early structure formation. We found that ionizing photons from Population III stars formed in dark haloes can easily reionize the universe by $z \simeq 15$ if the strength of primordial magnetic fields is larger than $0.6 \times 10^{-9}$Gauss.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. accepted for publication in MNRA

Evidence of non-thermal X-ray emission from radio lobes of Cygnus A

Using deep Chandra ACIS observation data for Cygnus A, we report evidence of non-thermal X-ray emission from radio lobes surrounded by a rich intra-cluster medium (ICM). The diffuse X-ray emission, which are associated with the eastern and western radio lobes, were observed in a 0.7--7 keV Chandra$ ACIS image. The lobe spectra are reproduced with not only a single-temperature Mekal model, such as that of the surrounding ICM component, but also an additional power-law (PL) model. The X-ray flux densities of PL components for the eastern and western lobes at 1 keV are derived as 77.7^{+28.9}_{-31.9} nJy and 52.4^{+42.9}_{-42.4} nJy, respectively, and the photon indices are 1.69^{+0.07}_{-0.13} and 1.84^{+2.90}_{-0.12}, respectively. The non-thermal component is considered to be produced via the inverse Compton (IC) process, as is often seen in the X-ray emission from radio lobes. From a re-analysis of radio observation data, the multiwavelength spectra strongly suggest that the seed photon source of the IC X-rays includes both cosmic microwave background radiation and synchrotron radiation from the lobes. The derived parameters indicate significant dominance of the electron energy density over the magnetic field energy density in the Cygnus A lobes under the rich ICM environment.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Study of systematics effects on the Cross Power Spectrum of 21 cm Line and Cosmic Microwave Background using Murchison Widefield Array Data

Observation of the 21cm line signal from neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionization is challenging due to extremely bright Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds and complicated instrumental calibration. A reasonable approach for mitigating these problems is the cross correlation with other observables. In this work, we present the first results of the cross power spectrum (CPS) between radio images observed by the Murchison Widefield Array and the cosmic microwave background (CMB), measured by the Planck experiment. We study the systematics due to the ionospheric activity, the dependence of CPS on group of pointings, and frequency. The resulting CPS is consistent with zero because the error is dominated by the foregrounds in the 21cm observation. Additionally, the variance of the signal indicates the presence of unexpected systematics error at small scales. Furthermore, we reduce the error by one order of magnitude with application of a foreground removal using a polynomial fitting method. Based on the results, we find that the detection of the 21cm-CMB CPS with the MWA Phase I requires more than 99.95% of the foreground signal removed, 2000 hours of deep observation and 50% of the sky fraction coverage.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, accepted to MNRA

Self-Regulation of Star Formation in Low Metallicity Clouds

We investigate the process of self-regulated star formation via photodissociation of hydrogen molecules in low metallicity clouds. We evaluate the influence region's scale of a massive star in low metallicity gas clouds whose temperatures are between 100 and 10000 Kelvin. A single O star can photodissociate hydrogen molecules in the whole of the host cloud. If metallicity is smaller than about 10^{-2.5} of the solar metallicity, the depletion of coolant of the the host cloud is very serious so that the cloud cannot cool in a free-fall time, and subsequent star formation is almost quenched. On the contrary, if metallicity is larger than about 10^{-1.5} of the solar metallicity, star formation regulation via photodissociation is not efficient. The typical metallicity when this transition occurs is about 1/100 of the solar metallicity. This indicates that stars do not form efficiently before the metallicity becomes larger than about 1/100 of the solar metallicity and we considered that this value becomes the lower limit of the metallicity of luminous objects such as galaxies.Comment: 14 pages, including 5 figures, To appear in ApJ, Vol. 53

Laser Phase and Frequency Stabilization Using Atomic Coherence

We present a novel and simple method of stabilizing the laser phase and frequency by polarization spectroscopy of an atomic vapor. In analogy to the Pound-Drever-Hall method, which uses a cavity as a memory of the laser phase, this method uses atomic coherence (dipole oscillations) as a phase memory of the transmitting laser field. A preliminary experiment using a distributed feedback laser diode and a rubidium vapor cell demonstrates a shot-noise-limited laser linewidth reduction (from 2 MHz to 20 kHz). This method would improve the performance of gas-cell-based optical atomic clocks and magnetometers and facilitate laser-cooling experiments using narrow transitions.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, appendix on the derivation of Eq.(3) (transfer function for a polarization-spectroscopy-based frequency discriminator) has been adde

Electrical interference with pickup coil in induction magnetometer

2011 Fifth International Conference on Sensing Technology took place 28 November - 1 December 2011 in Palmerston North, New ZealandIn this paper, we consider electrical interference with pickup coil in an induction magnetometer. By using a dummy load in place the pickup coil, we confirm that there is no significant electrical interference with a differential-input type current-to-voltage converter. In order to reveal electrical interference with the pickup coil, we investigate the output voltage of the magnetometer as grounding condition parameters. From the number of experimental considerations, we formulate a suitable condition to solve the electrical interference problemArticleSensing Technology (ICST), 2011 Fifth International Conference on : 90-93 (2011)conference pape

Probing Primordial Magnetic Fields with the 21cm Fluctuations

Primordial magnetic fields possibly generated in the very early universe are one of the candidates for the origin of magnetic fields observed in many galaxies and galaxy clusters. After recombination, the dissipation process of the primordial magnetic fields increases the baryon temperature. The Lorentz force acts on the residual ions and electrons to generate density fluctuations. These effects are imprinted on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) brightness temperature fluctuations produced by the neutral hydrogen 21cm line. We calculate the angular power spectrum of brightness temperature fluctuations for the model with the primordial magnetic fields of a several nano Gauss strength and a power-law spectrum. It is found that the overall amplitude and the shape of the brightness temperature fluctuations depend on the strength and the spectral index of the primordial magnetic fields. Therefore, it is expected that the observations of the CMB brightness temperature fluctuations give us a strong constraint on the primordial magnetic fields.Comment: 12 pages, submitted to MNRA

Nonlinear Evolution of Cosmic Magnetic Fields and Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies

In this work we investigate the effects of the primordial magnetic fields on cosmic microwave background anisotropies (CMB). Based on cosmological magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations we calculate the CMB anisotropy spectra and polarization induced by fluid fluctuations (Alfv\'en modes) generated by primordial magnetic fields. The strongest effect on the CMB spectra comes from the transition epoch from a turbulent regime to a viscous regime. The balance between magnetic and kinetic energy until the onset of the viscous regime provides a one to one relation between the comoving coherence length $L$ and the comoving magnetic field strength $B$, such as $L \sim 30 (B/10^{-9}{\rm G})^3 \rm pc$. The resulting CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies are somewhat different from the ones previously obtained by using linear perturbation theory. Our calculation gives a constraint on the magnetic field strength in the intermediate scale of CMB observations. Upper limits are set by WMAP and BOOMERANG results for comoving magnetic field strength of $B < 28 \rm nG$ with a comoving coherence length of $L > 0.7 \rm Mpc$ for the most extreme case, or $B 0.8 \rm Mpc$ for the most conservative case.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.