Engineering topics

Perlman, Eric S

Publications and source records attributed to Perlman, Eric S.

3 records

DOE OSTI2011

OPTICAL POLARIZATION AND SPECTRAL VARIABILITY IN THE M87 JET

During the last decade, M87's jet has been the site of an extraordinary variability event, with one knot (HST-1) increasing by over a factor 100 in brightness. Variability has also been seen on timescales of months in the nuclear flux. Here we discuss the optical-UV polarization and spectral variability of these components, which show vastly different behavior. HST-1 shows a highly significant correlation between flux and polarization, with P increasing from {approx}20% at minimum to >40% at maximum, while the orientation of its electric vector stayed constant. HST-1's optical-UV spectrum is very hard ({alpha}{sub UV-O} {approx} 0.5, F{sub {nu}}{proportional_to}{nu}{sup -{alpha}}), and displays 'hard lags' during epochs 2004.9-2005.5, including the peak of the flare, with soft lags at later epochs. We interpret the behavior of HST-1 as enhanced particle acceleration in a shock, with cooling from both particle aging and the relaxation of the compression. We set 2{sigma} upper limits of 0.5{delta} pc and 1.02c on the size and advance speed of the flaring region. The slight deviation of the electric vector orientation from the jet position angle (P.A.) makes it likely that on smaller scales the flaring region has either a double or twisted structure. By contrast, the nucleus displays much more rapid variability, with a highly variable electric vector orientation and 'looping' in the (I, P) plane. The nucleus has a much steeper spectrum ({alpha}{sub UV-O} {approx} 1.5) but does not show UV-optical spectral variability. Its behavior can be interpreted as either a helical distortion to a steady jet or a shock propagating through a helical jet.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2011

DEEP MULTIWAVEBAND OBSERVATIONS OF THE JETS OF 0208-512 AND 1202-262

We present deep Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra, Very Large Array, and Australia Telescope Compact Array images of the jets of PKS 0208-512 and PKS 1202-262, which were found in a Chandra survey of a flux-limited sample of flat-spectrum radio quasars with jets. We discuss in detail their X-ray morphologies and spectra. We find optical emission from one knot in the jet of PKS 1202-262 and two regions in the jet of PKS 0208-512. The X-ray emission of both jets is most consistent with external Comptonization of cosmic microwave background photons by particles within the jet, while the optical emission is most consistent with the synchrotron process. We model the emission from the jet in this context and discuss implications for jet emission models, including magnetic field and beaming parameters.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Limits on spacetime foam

Plausibly spacetime is foamy on small distance scales, due to quantum fluctuations. We elaborate on the proposal to detect spacetime foam by looking for seeing disks in the images of distant quasars and active galactic nuclei. This is a null test in the sense that the continued presence of unresolved point sources at the milliarcsecond level in samples of distant compact sources puts severe constraints on theories of quantized spacetime foam at the Planckian level. We discuss the geometry of foamy spacetime, and the appropriate distance measure for calculating the expected angular broadening. We then deal with recent data and the constraints they put on spacetime foam models. While time lags from distant pulsed sources such as gamma ray bursts have been posited as a possible test of spacetime foam models, we demonstrate that the time-lag effect is rather smaller than has been calculated, due to the equal probability of positive and negative fluctuations in the speed of light inherent in such models. Thus far, images of high-redshift quasars from the Hubble ultra-deep field provide the most stringent test of spacetime foam theories. While random-walk models ({alpha}=1/2) have already been ruled out, the holographic ({alpha}=2/3) model remains viable. Here {alpha}{approx}1 parametrizes the different spacetime foam models according to which the fluctuation of a distance l is given by {approx}l{sup 1-{alpha}l}{sub P}{sup {alpha}} with l{sub P} being the Planck length. Indeed, we see a slight wavelength-dependent blurring in the ultra-deep field images selected for this study. Using existing data in the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive we find it is impossible to rule out the {alpha}=2/3 model, but exclude all models with {alpha}<0.65. By comparison, current gamma ray burst time-lag observations only exclude models with {alpha}<0.3.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗