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At least 451 records · Page 25

THE STATISTICAL MECHANICS OF PLANET ORBITS

The final “giant-impact” phase of terrestrial planet formation is believed to begin with a large number of planetary “embryos” on nearly circular, coplanar orbits. Mutual gravitational interactions gradually excite their eccentricities until their orbits cross and they collide and merge; through this process the number of surviving bodies declines until the system contains a small number of planets on well-separated, stable orbits. In this paper we explore a simple statistical model for the orbit distribution of planets formed by this process, based on the sheared-sheet approximation and the ansatz that the planets explore uniformly all of the stable region of phase space. The model provides analytic predictions for the distribution of eccentricities and semimajor axis differences, correlations between orbital elements of nearby planets, and the complete N-planet distribution function, in terms of a single parameter, the “dynamical temperature,” that is determined by the planetary masses. The predicted properties are generally consistent with N-body simulations of the giant-impact phase and with the distribution of semimajor axis differences in the Kepler catalog of extrasolar planets. A similar model may apply to the orbits of giant planets if these orbits are determined mainly by dynamical evolution after the planets have formed and the gas disk has disappeared.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

ECCENTRIC JUPITERS VIA DISK–PLANET INTERACTIONS

Numerical hydrodynamics calculations are performed to determine the conditions under which giant planet eccentricities can be excited by parent gas disks. Unlike in other studies, Jupiter-mass planets are found to have their eccentricities amplified—provided their orbits start off as eccentric. We disentangle the web of co-rotation, co-orbital, and external resonances to show that this finite-amplitude instability is consistent with that predicted analytically. Ellipticities can grow until they reach of order of the disk's aspect ratio, beyond which the external Lindblad resonances that excite eccentricity are weakened by the planet's increasingly supersonic epicyclic motion. Forcing the planet to still larger eccentricities causes catastrophic eccentricity damping as the planet collides into gap walls. For standard parameters, the range of eccentricities for instability is modest; the threshold eccentricity for growth (∼0.04) is not much smaller than the final eccentricity to which orbits grow (∼0.07). If this threshold eccentricity can be lowered (perhaps by non-barotropic effects), and if the eccentricity driving documented here survives in 3D, it may robustly explain the low-to-moderate eccentricities ≲0.1 exhibited by many giant planets (including Jupiter and Saturn), especially those without planetary or stellar companions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

EVOLUTION OF GALAXIES AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTS AT z = 0.1-3 IN COSMOS

Large-scale structures (LSSs) out to z < 3.0 are measured in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) using extremely accurate photometric redshifts (photoz). The K{sub s} -band-selected sample (from Ultra-Vista) is comprised of 155,954 galaxies. Two techniques-adaptive smoothing and Voronoi tessellation-are used to estimate the environmental densities within 127 redshift slices. Approximately 250 statistically significant overdense structures are identified out to z = 3.0 with shapes varying from elongated filamentary structures to more circularly symmetric concentrations. We also compare the densities derived for COSMOS with those based on semi-analytic predictions for a {Lambda}CDM simulation and find excellent overall agreement between the mean densities as a function of redshift and the range of densities. The galaxy properties (stellar mass, spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and star formation rates (SFRs)) are strongly correlated with environmental density and redshift, particularly at z < 1.0-1.2. Classifying the spectral type of each galaxy using the rest-frame b - i color (from the photoz SED fitting), we find a strong correlation of early-type galaxies (E-Sa) with high-density environments, while the degree of environmental segregation varies systematically with redshift out to z {approx} 1.3. In the highest density regions, 80% of the galaxies are early types at z = 0.2 compared to only 20% at z = 1.5. The SFRs and the star formation timescales exhibit clear environmental correlations. At z > 0.8, the SFR density is uniformly distributed over all environmental density percentiles, while at lower redshifts the dominant contribution is shifted to galaxies in lower density environments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Larmor power limit for cyclotron radiation of relativistic particles in a waveguide

Cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy (CRES) is a modern technique for high-precision energy spectroscopy, in which the energy of a charged particle in a magnetic field is measured via the frequency of the emitted cyclotron radiation. The He6-CRES collaboration aims to use CRES to probe beyond the standard model physics at the TeV scale by performing high-resolution and low-background beta-decay spectroscopy of 6 He and 19 Ne. Having demonstrated the first observation of individual, high-energy (0.1–2.5 MeV) positrons and electrons via their cyclotron radiation, the experiment provides a novel window into the radiation of relativistic charged particles in a waveguide via the time-derivative (slope) of the cyclotron radiation frequency, df c /dt. We show that analytic predictions for the total cyclotron radiation power emitted by a charged particle in circular and rectangular waveguides are approximately consistent with the Larmor formula, each scaling with the Lorentz factor of the underlying e ± as γ 4 . This hypothesis is corroborated with experimental CRES slope data.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Simulating the large-scale structure of HI intensity maps

Intensity mapping of neutral hydrogen (HI) is a promising observational probe of cosmology and large-scale structure. We present wide field simulations of HI intensity maps based on N-body simulations of a 2.6 Gpc / h box with 2048{sup 3} particles (particle mass 1.6 × 10{sup 11} M{sub ⊙} / h). Using a conditional mass function to populate the simulated dark matter density field with halos below the mass resolution of the simulation (10{sup 8} M{sub ⊙} / h < M{sub halo} < 10{sup 13} M{sub ⊙} / h), we assign HI to those halos according to a phenomenological halo to HI mass relation. The simulations span a redshift range of 0.35 ∼< z ∼< 0.9 in redshift bins of width Δ z ≈ 0.05 and cover a quarter of the sky at an angular resolution of about 7'. We use the simulated intensity maps to study the impact of non-linear effects and redshift space distortions on the angular clustering of HI. Focusing on the autocorrelations of the maps, we apply and compare several estimators for the angular power spectrum and its covariance. We verify that these estimators agree with analytic predictions on large scales and study the validity of approximations based on Gaussian random fields, particularly in the context of the covariance. We discuss how our results and the simulated maps can be useful for planning and interpreting future HI intensity mapping surveys.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

On the implementation of the spherical collapse model for dark energy models

In this work we review the theory of the spherical collapse model and critically analyse the aspects of the numerical implementation of its fundamental equations. By extending a recent work by [1], we show how different aspects, such as the initial integration time, the definition of constant infinity and the criterion for the extrapolation method (how close the inverse of the overdensity has to be to zero at the collapse time) can lead to an erroneous estimation (a few per mill error which translates to a few percent in the mass function) of the key quantity in the spherical collapse model: the linear critical overdensity δ{sub c}, which plays a crucial role for the mass function of halos. We provide a better recipe to adopt in designing a code suitable to a generic smooth dark energy model and we compare our numerical results with analytic predictions for the EdS and the ΛCDM models. We further discuss the evolution of δ{sub c} for selected classes of dark energy models as a general test of the robustness of our implementation. We finally outline which modifications need to be taken into account to extend the code to more general classes of models, such as clustering dark energy models and non-minimally coupled models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

An accurate perturbative approach to redshift space clustering of biased tracers in modified gravity

We extend the scale-dependent Gaussian Streaming Model (GSM) to produce analytical predictions for the anisotropic redshift-space correlation function for biased tracers in modified gravity models. Employing the Convolution Lagrangian Perturbation Theory (CLPT) re-summation scheme, with a local Lagrangian bias schema provided by the peak-background split formalism, we predict the necessary ingredients that enter the GSM, the real-space halo pairwise velocity and the pairwise velocity dispersion. We further consider effective field theory contributions to the pairwise velocity dispersion in order to model correctly its large scale behavior. We apply our method on two widely-considered modified gravity models, the chameleon-screened ƒ(R) Hu-Sawicki model and the nDGP Vainshtein model and compare our predictions against state-of-the-art N-body simulations for these models. We demonstrate that the GSM approach to predict the monopole and the quadrupole of the redshift-space correlation function for halos, gives very good agreement with the simulation data, for a wide range of screening mechanisms, levels of screening and halo masses at z = 0.5 and z = 1. Our work shows the applicability of the GSM, for cosmologies beyond GR, demonstrating that it can serve as a powerful predictive tool for the next stage of cosmological surveys like DESI, Euclid, LSST and WFIRST.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Simulations of vertical displacement oscillatory modes and global Alfvén Eigenmodes in JET geometry

Vertical Displacement Oscillatory Modes (VDOM), with frequency in the Alfvén range, are natural modes of oscillation of magnetically confined laboratory plasmas with elongated cross-section. These axisymmetric modes arise from the interaction between the plasma current, which is in equilibrium with currents flowing in external coils, and perturbed currents induced on a nearby conducting wall. The restoring force exerted by these perturbed currents on the vertical motion of the plasma column leads to its oscillatory behavior. An analytic model for VDOM was proposed based on an idealized 'straight tokamak' equilibrium with uniform equilibrium current density. This article introduces the first numerical simulations of VDOM in a realistic JET tokamak configuration, using the extended-MHD code NIMROD and drawing comparisons with Global Alfvén Eigenmodes (GAE). The results show qualitative agreement with analytic predictions regarding mode frequency and radial structure, supporting the identification of VDOM as a fundamental oscillation mode in tokamak plasmas. VDOM and GAE are modeled in a representative JET discharge, where axisymmetric perturbations with toroidal mode number n = 0 driven unstable by fast ions were observed. The two modes are examined separately using a forced oscillator within the NIMROD code, which enables a comparison of their characteristics and helps identify the experimentally observed mode possibly as a GAE.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Development and Evaluation of Occupancy-Aware Model Predictive Control for Residential Building Energy Efficiency and Occupant Comfort

The residential sector accounts for 25% of global primary energy consumption. Two methods have previously been proposed to reduce residential energy use associated with the provision of occupant thermal comfort: 1. Occupancy-based HVAC control, operating systems only during confirmed occupancy, and 2. model predictive control (MPC), harnessing a mathematical model and forecasts to find optimal operating strategies. Previous studies estimate the average energy savings of the two methods individually in the range of 21% and 16%, respectively. The research presented herein was carried out to evaluate the energy savings potential in residential buildings by combining both approaches across different climates, house vintages, and occupancy patterns. Occupancy and eight different physical modalities (e.g. CO2 and VOC) data were collected from five homes for time periods of 4–9 weeks. Collected data sets were used to train occupancy prediction models suggested by an extensive literature survey of occupancy model types. The trained prediction models were combined with MPC and detailed EnergyPlus building simulation models to evaluate residential building performance in terms of annual energy savings and thermal comfort, along with discomfort exceedance metrics. Multiple home types and regions were analyzed to understand regional and climate-dependent potential. Based on actual field data, the occupancy models had a prediction inaccuracy between 8% and 35% across the investigated homes. Average occupancy for the collected data ranged from 56% to 86%, a typical range reported in the literature. Building simulations were conducted for three control scenarios: conventional thermostatic control, occupancy-based, and occupancy-based MPC. The results indicate that all advanced strategies improve upon the conventional control, with some scenarios cutting energy use in half with only occasional incurrence of discomfort. The findings indicate that occupancy-aware model predictive residential building control has the potential to drastically reduce energy use and associated emissions while maintaining occupant comfort for both new and existing buildings.

ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION↗

PROSPECTS FOR JOINT GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE AND ELECTROMAGNETIC OBSERVATIONS OF NEUTRON-STAR-BLACK-HOLE COALESCING BINARIES

Coalescing neutron-star-black-hole (NS-BH) binaries are a promising source of gravitational-wave (GW) signals detectable with large-scale laser interferometers such as the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory and Virgo. They are also one of the main short gamma-ray burst (SGRB) progenitor candidates. If the black hole (BH) tidally disrupts its companion, an SGRB may be ignited when a sufficiently massive accretion disk forms around the remnant BH. Detecting an NS-BH coalescence both in the GW and electromagnetic (EM) spectrum offers a wealth of information about the nature of the source. How much can actually be inferred from a joint detection is unclear, however, as a mass/spin degeneracy may reduce the GW measurement accuracy. To shed light on this problem and on the potential of joint EM+GW observations, we here combine recent semi-analytical predictions for the remnant disk mass with estimates of the parameter-space portion that is selected by a GW detection. We identify cases in which an SGRB ignition is supported, others in which it can be excluded, and finally others in which the outcome depends on the chosen model for the currently unknown NS equation of state. We pinpoint a range of systems that would allow us to place lower bounds on the equation of state stiffness if both the GW emission and its EM counterpart are observed. The methods we develop can broaden the scope of existing GW detection and parameter-estimation algorithms and could allow us to disregard about half of the templates in an NS-BH search following an SGRB trigger, increasing its speed and sensitivity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Controlling electron-ion rescattering in two-color circularly polarized femtosecond laser fields

High-harmonic generation driven by two-color counter-rotating circularly polarized laser fields was recently demonstrated experimentally as a breakthrough source of bright, coherent, circularly polarized beams in the extreme ultraviolet and soft-x-ray regions. However, the conditions for optimizing the single-atom yield are significantly more complex than for linearly polarized driving lasers and are not fully understood. In this study we present a comprehensive study of strong-field ionization—the complementary process to high-harmonic generation—driven by two-color circularly polarized fields. We uncover the conditions that lead to enhanced electron-ion rescattering, which should correspond to the highest single-atom harmonic flux. Using a velocity map imaging photoelectron spectrometer and tomographic reconstruction techniques, we record three-dimensional photoelectron distributions resulting from the strong-field ionization of argon atoms across a broad range of driving laser intensity ratios. In combination with analytical predictions and advanced numerical simulations, we show that “hard” electron-ion rescattering is optimized when the second-harmonic field has an intensity approximately four times higher than that of the fundamental driving field. We also investigate electron-ion rescattering with co-rotating fields, and find that rescattering is significantly suppressed when compared with counter-rotating fields.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Enhanced quantum spin fluctuations in a binary Bose-Einstein condensate

For quantum fluids, the role of quantum fluctuations may be significant in several regimes such as when the dimensionality is low, the density is high, the interactions are strong, or for low particle numbers. In this paper, we propose a fundamentally different regime for enhanced quantum fluctuations without being restricted by any of the above conditions. Instead, our scheme relies on the engineering of an effective attractive interaction in a dilute, two-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) consisting of thousands of atoms. In such a regime, the quantum spin fluctuations are significantly enhanced (atom bunching with respect to the noninteracting limit) since they act to reduce the interaction energy, a remarkable property given that spin fluctuations are normally suppressed (antibunching) at zero temperature. In contrast to the case of true attractive interactions, our approach is not vulnerable to BEC collapse. Here, we numerically demonstrate that these quantum fluctuations are experimentally accessible by either spin or single-component Bragg spectroscopy, offering a useful platform on which to test beyond-mean-field theories. We also develop a variational model and use it to analytically predict the shift of the immiscibility critical point, finding good agreement with our numerics.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Analytical model and dynamical phase-field simulation of terahertz transmission across ferroelectrics

Here, we theoretically investigate the steady-state transmission of continuous terahertz (THz) wave across a freestanding ferroelectric slab. Based on the Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire theory of ferroelectrics and the coupled equations of motion for polarization and electromagnetic (EM) waves, we derive the analytical expressions of the frequency- and thickness-dependent dielectric susceptibility and transmission coefficient at the thin slab limit in the harmonic excitation regime. When the slab thickness is much smaller than the THz wavelength in the ferroelectric, the analytical predictions agree well with the numerical simulations from a dynamical phase-field model that incorporates the coupled dynamics of strain, polarization, and EM wave in multiphase systems. At larger thicknesses, the transmission is mainly determined by the frequency-dependent attenuation of THz waves in the ferroelectric and the formation of a standing polarization/THz wave. Our results advance the understanding of the interaction between THz wave and ferroelectrics and suggest the potential of exploiting ferroelectrics to achieve low-heat-dissipation, nonvolatile voltage modulation of THz transmission for high-data-rate wireless communication.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Scalable qubit representations of neutrino mixing matrices

Oscillating neutrino beams exhibit quantum coherence over distances of thousands of kilometers. Their unambiguously quantum nature suggests an appealing test system for direct quantum simulation. Such techniques may enable presently analytically intractable calculations involving multi-neutrino entanglements, such as collective neutrino oscillations in supernovae, but only once oscillation phenomenology is properly re-expressed in the language of quantum circuits. Here we resolve outstanding conceptual issues regarding encoding of arbitrarily mixed neutrino flavor states in the Hilbert space of an n-qubit quantum computer. We introduce algorithms to encode mixing and oscillation of any number of flavor-mixed neutrinos, both with and without CP-violation, with an efficient number of prescriptive input parameters in terms of sub-rotations of the PMNS matrix in standard form. As a result, examples encoded for an IBM-Q quantum computer are shown to converge to analytic predictions both with and without CP-violation.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

How do axisymmetric black holes grow monopole and dipole hair?

Here, we study the dynamical formation of scalar monopole and dipole hair in scalar Gauss-Bonnet theory and dynamical Chern-Simons theory. We prove that the spherically symmetric mode of the dipole hair is completely determined by the product of the mass of the spacetime and the value of the monopole hair. We then show that the dynamics of the ℓ = 1 mode of the dipole hair is intimately tied to the appearance of the event horizon during axisymmetric collapse, which results in the radiation of certain modes that could have been divergent in the future of the collapse. We confirm these analytical predictions by simulating the gravitational collapse of a rapidly rotating neutron star in the decoupling limit, both in scalar Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons theory. Our results, combined with those provide a clear physical picture of the dynamics of scalar monopole and dipole radiation in axisymmetric and spherical gravitational collapse in these theories.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Effect of non-Gaussian lensing deflections on CMB lensing measurements

We investigate the impact of non-Gaussian lensing deflections on measurements of the CMB lensing power spectrum. We find that the false assumption of their Gaussianity significantly biases these measurements in current and future experiments at the percent level. The bias is detected by comparing CMB lensing reconstructions from simulated CMB data lensed with Gaussian deflection fields to reconstructions from simulations lensed with fully non-Gaussian deflection fields. The non-Gaussian deflections are produced by ray-tracing through snapshots of an N-body simulation and capture both the non-Gaussianity induced by non-linear structure formation and by multiple correlated deflections. We find that the amplitude of the measured bias is in agreement with analytical predictions by Bohm et al. 2016. The bias is largest in temperature-based measurements and we do not find evidence for it in measurements from a combination of polarization fields (EB;EB). We argue that the non-Gaussian bias should be even more important for measurements of cross-correlations of CMB lensing with low-redshift tracers of large-scale structure.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

X-ray amplification by stimulated Brillouin scattering

Plasma-based parametric amplification using stimulated Brillouin scattering offers a route to coherent x-ray pulses orders of magnitude more intense than those of the brightest available sources. Brillouin amplification permits amplification of shorter wavelengths with lower pump intensities than Raman amplification, which Landau and collisional damping limit in the x-ray regime. Analytic predictions, numerical solutions of the three-wave-coupling equations, and particle-in-cell simulations suggest that Brillouin amplification in solid-density plasmas will allow compression of current x-ray free-electron laser pulses to subfemtosecond durations and unprecedented intensities.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Saturation of the Hosing Instability in Quasilinear Plasma Accelerators

The beam hosing instability is analyzed theoretically for a witness beam in the quasilinear regime of plasma accelerators. In this regime, the hosing instability saturates, even for a monoenergetic bunch, at a level much less than standard scalings predict. Analytic expressions are derived for the saturation distance and amplitude and are in agreement with numerical results. Saturation is due to the natural head-to-tail variations in the focusing force, including the self-consistent transverse beam loading.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗