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At least 847 records · Page 47
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

A comprehensive archival search for counterparts to ultra-compact high-velocity clouds: Five Local Volume dwarf galaxies

We report five Local Volume dwarf galaxies (two of which are presented here for the first time) uncovered during a comprehensive archival search for optical counterparts to ultra-compact high-velocity clouds (UCHVCs). The UCHVC population of HI clouds are thought to be candidate gas-rich, low-mass halos at the edge of the Local Group and beyond, but no comprehensive search for stellar counterparts to these systems has been presented. Careful visual inspection of all publicly available optical and ultraviolet imaging at the position of the UCHVCs revealed six blue, diffuse counterparts with a morphology consistent with a faint dwarf galaxy beyond the Local Group. Optical spectroscopy of all six candidate dwarf counterparts show that five have an Hα-derived velocity consistent with the coincident HI cloud, confirming their association; the sixth diffuse counterpart is likely a background object. The size and luminosity of the UCHVC dwarfs is consistent with other known Local Volume dwarf irregular galaxies. The gas fraction (M{sub HI}/M{sub star}) of the five dwarfs are generally consistent with that of dwarf irregular galaxies in the Local Volume, although ALFALFA-Dw1 (associated with ALFALFA UCHVC HVC274.68+74.70–123) has a very high M{sub HI}/M{sub star} ∼ 40. Despite the heterogenous nature of our search, we demonstrate that the current dwarf companions to UCHVCs are at the edge of detectability due to their low surface brightness, and that deeper searches are likely to find more stellar systems. If more sensitive searches do not reveal further stellar counterparts to UCHVCs, then the dearth of such systems around the Local Group may be in conflict with ΛCDM simulations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

DOUBLE COMPACT OBJECTS. III. GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE DETECTION RATES

The unprecedented range of second-generation gravitational-wave (GW) observatories calls for refining the predictions of potential sources and detection rates. The coalescence of double compact objects (DCOs)—i.e., neutron star–neutron star (NS–NS), black hole–neutron star (BH–NS), and black hole–black hole (BH–BH) binary systems—is the most promising source of GWs for these detectors. We compute detection rates of coalescing DCOs in second-generation GW detectors using the latest models for their cosmological evolution, and implementing inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveform models in our signal-to-noise ratio calculations. We find that (1) the inclusion of the merger/ringdown portion of the signal does not significantly affect rates for NS–NS and BH–NS systems, but it boosts rates by a factor of ∼1.5 for BH–BH systems; (2) in almost all of our models BH–BH systems yield by far the largest rates, followed by NS–NS and BH–NS systems, respectively; and (3) a majority of the detectable BH–BH systems were formed in the early universe in low-metallicity environments. We make predictions for the distributions of detected binaries and discuss what the first GW detections will teach us about the astrophysics underlying binary formation and evolution.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

NON-THERMAL RADIATION FROM COLLISIONS OF COMPACT OBJECTS WITH INTERMEDIATE-SCALE JETS IN ACTIVE GALAXIES

Massive black holes in active galaxies are immersed in huge concentrations of late-type stars in the galactic bulges and also early-type massive stars in the nuclear stellar clusters, which are additionally surrounded by quasi-spherical halos on a scale of several kpc that contain from a few hundred up to several thousand globular clusters (GCs). It is expected that significant numbers of red giant stars, massive stars, and also GCs can move through the jet expelled from the central engine of the active galaxy. We consider collisions of stars from the galactic bulge, nuclear cluster, and GCs with the jet plasma. As a result of such collisions, multiple shocks are expected to appear in the jet around these compact objects. Therefore, the plasma in the kpc-scale jet can be significantly disturbed. We show that particles can be accelerated on these shocks up to multi-TeV energies. TeV leptons emit synchrotron radiation, extending up to X-ray energies, and also comptonize radiation produced in a stellar cluster and also the microwave background radiation to TeV γ-ray energies. We show that such non-thermal radiation is likely to be detectable from the intermediate-scale jets of nearby active galaxies for a reasonable number of stars and GCs immersed within the jet. As an example, we calculate the expected non-thermal emission in X-ray and gamma-ray energies from the nearby radio galaxy Cen A, from which steady gamma-ray emission with a complex spectrum has recently been reported by Fermi and the HESS Observatories.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Hunting for orphaned central compact objects among radio pulsars

Central compact objects (CCOs) are a handful of young neutron stars found at the center of supernova remnants (SNRs). They show high thermal X-ray luminosities but no radio emission. Spin-down rate measurements of three CCOs with X-ray pulsations indicate surface dipole fields much weaker than those of typical young pulsars. To investigate if CCOs and known radio pulsars are objects at different evolutionary stages, we carried out a census of all weak-field (<10{sup 11} G) isolated radio pulsars in the Galactic plane to search for CCO-like X-ray emission. None of the 12 candidates are detected at X-ray energies, with luminosity limits of 10{sup 32}−10{sup 34} erg s{sup −1}. We consider a scenario in which the weak surface fields of CCOs are due to a rapid accretion of supernova materials and show that as the buried field diffuses back to the surface, a CCO descendant is expected to leave the P– P-dot parameter space of our candidates at a young age of a few ×10 kyr. Hence, the candidates are likely to just be old ordinary pulsars in this case. We suggest that further searches for orphaned CCOs, which are aged CCOs with parent SNRs that have dissipated, should include pulsars with stronger magnetic fields.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Compact radio sources within 30″ of SGR A*: Proper motions, stellar winds, and the accretion rate onto SGR A*

Recent broadband 34 and 44 GHz radio continuum observations of the Galactic center have revealed 41 massive stars identified with near-IR (NIR) counterparts, as well as 44 proplyd candidates within 30″ of Sgr A*. Radio observations obtained in 2011 and 2014 have been used to derive proper motions of eight young stars near Sgr A*. The accuracy of proper motion estimates based on NIR observations by Lu et al. and Paumard et al. have been investigated by using their proper motions to predict the 2014 epoch positions of NIR stars and comparing the predicted positions with those of radio counterparts in the 2014 radio observations. Predicted positions from Lu et al. show an rms scatter of 6 mas relative to the radio positions, while those from Paumard et al. show rms residuals of 20 mas. We also determine the mass-loss rates of 11 radio stars, finding rates that are on average ∼2 times smaller than those determined from model atmosphere calculations and NIR data. Clumpiness of ionized winds would reduce the mass loss rate of WR and O stars by additional factors of 3 and 10, respectively. One important implication of this is a reduction in the expected mass accretion rate onto Sgr A* from stellar winds by nearly an order of magnitude to a value of a few ×10{sup −7} M{sub ⊙} yr{sup −1}. Finally, we present the positions of 318 compact radio sources within 30″ of Sgr A*, 45 of which have stellar counterparts in the NIR K{sub s} (2.18 μm) and L′ (3.8 μm) bands.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

DEEP HE ii AND C iv SPECTROSCOPY OF A GIANT LYα NEBULA: DENSE COMPACT GAS CLUMPS IN THE CIRCUMGALACTIC MEDIUM OF A z ∼ 2 QUASAR

The recent discovery by Cantalupo et al. of the largest (∼500 kpc) luminous (L ≃ 1.43 × 10{sup 45} erg s{sup −1}) Lyα nebula associated with the quasar UM287 (z = 2.279) poses a great challenge to our current understanding of the astrophysics of the halos hosting massive z ∼ 2 galaxies. Either an enormous reservoir of cool gas is required M ≃ 10{sup 12} M{sub ⊙}, exceeding the expected baryonic mass available, or one must invoke extreme gas clumping factors not present in high-resolution cosmological simulations. However, observations of Lyα emission alone cannot distinguish between these two scenarios. We have obtained the deepest ever spectroscopic integrations in the He ii λ1640 and C iv λ1549 emission lines with the goal of detecting extended line emission, but detect neither line to a 3σ limiting SB ≃ 10{sup −18} erg s{sup −1} cm{sup −2} arcsec{sup −2}. We construct simple models of the expected emission spectrum in the highly probable scenario that the nebula is powered by photoionization from the central hyper-luminous quasar. The non-detection of He ii implies that the nebular emission arises from a mass M{sub c} ≲ 6.4 × 10{sup 10} M{sub ⊙} of cool gas on ∼200 kpc scales, distributed in a population of remarkably dense (n{sub H} ≳ 3 cm{sup −3}) and compact (R ≲ 20 pc) clouds, which would clearly be unresolved by current cosmological simulations. Given the large gas motions suggested by the Lyα line (v ≃ 500 km s{sup −1}), it is unclear how these clouds survive without being disrupted by hydrodynamic instabilities. Our work serves as a benchmark for future deep integrations with current and planned wide-field IFU spectrographs such as MUSE, KCWI, and KMOS. Our observations and models suggest that a ≃10 hr exposure would likely detect ∼10 rest-frame UV/optical emission lines, opening up the possibility of conducting detailed photoionization modeling to infer the physical state of gas in the circumgalactic medium.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

DISTINGUISHING COMPACT BINARY POPULATION SYNTHESIS MODELS USING GRAVITATIONAL WAVE OBSERVATIONS OF COALESCING BINARY BLACK HOLES

The coalescence of compact binaries containing neutron stars or black holes is one of the most promising signals for advanced ground-based laser interferometer gravitational-wave (GW) detectors, with the first direct detections expected over the next few years. The rate of binary coalescences and the distribution of component masses is highly uncertain, and population synthesis models predict a wide range of plausible values. Poorly constrained parameters in population synthesis models correspond to poorly understood astrophysics at various stages in the evolution of massive binary stars, the progenitors of binary neutron star and binary black hole systems. These include effects such as supernova kick velocities, parameters governing the energetics of common envelope evolution and the strength of stellar winds. Observing multiple binary black hole systems through GWs will allow us to infer details of the astrophysical mechanisms that lead to their formation. Here we simulate GW observations from a series of population synthesis models including the effects of known selection biases, measurement errors and cosmology. We compare the predictions arising from different models and show that we will be able to distinguish between them with observations (or the lack of them) from the early runs of the advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors. This will allow us to narrow down the large parameter space for binary evolution models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

THE NEXT GENERATION VIRGO CLUSTER SURVEY. X. PROPERTIES OF ULTRA-COMPACT DWARFS IN THE M87, M49, AND M60 REGIONS

We use imaging from the Next Generation Virgo cluster Survey (NGVS) to present a comparative study of ultra-compact dwarf (UCD) galaxies associated with three prominent Virgo sub-clusters: those centered on the massive red-sequence galaxies M87, M49, and M60. We show how UCDs can be selected with high completeness using a combination of half-light radius and location in color–color diagrams (u*iK{sub s} or u*gz). Although the central galaxies in each of these sub-clusters have nearly identical luminosities and stellar masses, we find large differences in the sizes of their UCD populations, with M87 containing ∼3.5 and 7.8 times more UCDs than M49 and M60, respectively. The relative abundance of UCDs in the three regions scales in proportion to sub-cluster mass, as traced by X-ray gas mass, total gravitating mass, number of globular clusters (GCs), and number of nearby galaxies. We find that the UCDs are predominantly blue in color, with ∼85% of the UCDs having colors similar to blue GCs and stellar nuclei of dwarf galaxies. We present evidence that UCDs surrounding M87 and M49 may follow a morphological sequence ordered by the prominence of their outer, low surface brightness envelope, ultimately merging with the sequence of nucleated low-mass galaxies, and that envelope prominence correlates with distance from either galaxy. Our analysis provides evidence that tidal stripping of nucleated galaxies is an important process in the formation of UCDs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

DISTRIBUTION OF FAINT ATOMIC GAS IN HICKSON COMPACT GROUPS

We present 21 cm H i observations of four Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs) with evidence for a substantial intragroup medium using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). By mapping H i emission in a region of 25′ × 25′ (140–650 kpc) surrounding each HCG, these observations provide better estimates of H i masses. In particular, we detected 65% more H i than that detected in the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) imaging of HCG 92. We also identify whether the diffuse gas has the same spatial distribution as the high surface brightness (HSB) H i features detected in the VLA maps of these groups by comparing the H i strengths between the observed and modeled masses based on VLA maps. We found that the H i observed with the GBT has a similar spatial distribution to the HSB structures in HCG 31 and HCG 68. Conversely, the observed H i distributions in HCG 44 and HCG 92 were extended and showed significant offsets from the modeled masses. Most of the faint gas in HCG 44 lies to the northeast–southwest region and in HCG 92 lies in the northwest region of their respective groups. The spatial and dynamical similarities between the total (faint+HSB) and the HSB H i indicate that the faint gas is of tidal origin. We found that the gas will survive ionization by the cosmic UV background and the escaping ionizing photons from the star-forming regions and stay primarily neutral for at least 500 Myr.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Star formation suppression in compact group galaxies: A new path to quenching?

We present CO(1–0) maps of 12 warm H{sub 2}-selected Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs), covering 14 individually imaged warm H{sub 2} bright galaxies, with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter Astronomy. We found a variety of molecular gas distributions within the HCGs, including regularly rotating disks, bars, rings, tidal tails, and possibly nuclear outflows, though the molecular gas morphologies are more consistent with spirals and early-type galaxies than mergers and interacting systems. Our CO-imaged HCG galaxies, when plotted on the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation, shows star formation (SF) suppression of 〈 S 〉=10±5, distributed bimodally, with five objects exhibiting suppressions of S ≳ 10 and depletion timescales ≳10 Gyr. This SF inefficiency is also seen in the efficiency per freefall time of Krumholz et al. We investigate the gas-to-dust ratios of these galaxies to determine if an incorrect L{sub CO}–M(H{sub 2}) conversion caused the apparent suppression and find that HCGs have normal gas-to-dust ratios. It is likely that the cause of the apparent suppression in these objects is associated with shocks injecting turbulence into the molecular gas, supported by the fact that the required turbulent injection luminosity is consistent with the bright H{sub 2} luminosity reported by Cluver et al. Galaxies with high SF suppression (S ≳ 10) also appear to be those in the most advanced stages of transition across both optical and infrared color space. This supports the idea that at least some galaxies in HCGs are transitioning objects, where a disruption of the existing molecular gas in the system suppresses SF by inhibiting the molecular gas from collapsing and forming stars efficiently. These observations, combined with recent work on poststarburst galaxies with molecular reservoirs, indicates that galaxies do not need to expel their molecular reservoirs prior to quenching SF and transitioning from blue spirals to red early-type galaxies. This may imply that SF quenching can occur without the need to starve a galaxy of cold gas first.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

KINETIC THEORY OF EQUILIBRIUM AXISYMMETRIC COLLISIONLESS PLASMAS IN OFF-EQUATORIAL TORI AROUND COMPACT OBJECTS

The possible occurrence of equilibrium off-equatorial tori in the gravitational and electromagnetic fields of astrophysical compact objects has been recently proved based on non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic theory. These stationary structures can represent plausible candidates for the modeling of coronal plasmas expected to arise in association with accretion disks. However, accretion disk coronae are formed by a highly diluted environment, and so the fluid description may be inappropriate. The question is posed of whether similar off-equatorial solutions can also be determined in the case of collisionless plasmas for which treatment based on kinetic theory, rather than a fluid one, is demanded. In this paper the issue is addressed in the framework of the Vlasov-Maxwell description for non-relativistic, multi-species axisymmetric plasmas subject to an external dominant spherical gravitational and dipolar magnetic field. Equilibrium configurations are investigated and explicit solutions for the species kinetic distribution function are constructed, which are expressed in terms of generalized Maxwellian functions characterized by isotropic temperature and non-uniform fluid fields. The conditions for the existence of off-equatorial tori are investigated. It is proved that these levitating systems are admitted under general conditions when both gravitational and magnetic fields contribute to shaping the spatial profiles of equilibrium plasma fluid fields. Then, specifically, kinetic effects carried by the equilibrium solution are explicitly provided and identified here with diamagnetic energy-correction and electrostatic contributions. It is shown that these kinetic terms characterize the plasma equation of state by introducing non-vanishing deviations from the assumption of thermal pressure.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Compact Muon Production and Collection Scheme for High-Energy Physics Experiments

The relative immunity of muons to synchrotron radiation suggests that they might be used in place of electrons as probes in fundamental high-energy physics experiments. Muons are commonly produced indirectly through pion decay by interaction of a charged particle beam with a target. However, the large angle and energy dispersion of the initial beams as well as the short muon lifetime limits many potential applications. Here, we describe a fast method for manipulating the longitudinal and transverse phase-space of a divergent pion-muon beam to enable efficient capture and downstream transport with minimum losses. We also discuss the design of a handling system for the removal of unwanted secondary particles from the target region and thus reduce activation of the machine. The compact muon source we describe can be used for fundamental physics research in neutrino experiments.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Minimum magnetic curvature for resilient divertors using Compact Toroidal Hybrid geometry

The properties of resilient divertors are explored using equilibria derived from Compact Toroidal Hybrid (CTH) geometries. Resilience is defined here as the robustness of the strike point patterns as the plasma geometry and/or plasma profiles are changed. The addition of plasma current in the CTH configurations significantly alters the shape of the last closed flux surface and the rotational transform profile, however, it does not alter the strike point pattern on the target plates, and hence has resilient divertor features. The limits of when a configuration transforms to a resilient configuration is then explored. New CTH-like configurations are generated that vary from a perfectly circular cross section to configurations with increasing amounts of toroidal shaping. It is found that even small amounts of toroidal shaping lead to strike point localization that is similar to the standard CTH configuration. Lastly, these results show that only a small degree of three-dimensional shaping is necessary to produce a resilient divertor, implying that any highly shaped optimized stellarator will possess the resilient divertor property.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Super-spinning compact objects generated by thick accretion disks

If astrophysical black hole candidates are the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, the value of their spin parameter must be subject to the theoretical bound |a{sub *}| ≤ 1. In this work, we consider the possibility that these objects are either non-Kerr black holes in an alternative theory of gravity or exotic compact objects in General Relativity. We study the accretion process when their accretion disk is geometrically thick with a simple version of the Polish doughnut model. The picture of the accretion process may be qualitatively different from the one around a Kerr black hole. The inner edge of the disk may not have the typical cusp on the equatorial plane any more, but there may be two cusps, respectively above and below the equatorial plane. We extend previous work on the evolution of the spin parameter and we estimate the maximum value of a{sub *} for the super-massive black hole candidates in galactic nuclei. Since measurements of the mean radiative efficiency of AGNs require η > 0.15, we infer the ''observational'' bound |a{sub *}|∼<1.3, which seems to be quite independent of the exact nature of these objects. Such a bound is only slightly weaker than |a{sub *}|∼<1.2 found in previous work for thin disks.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Strong gravitational lensing of gravitational waves from double compact binaries—perspectives for the Einstein Telescope

Gravitational wave (GW) experiments are entering their advanced stage which should soon open a new observational window on the Universe. Looking into this future, the Einstein Telescope (ET) was designed to have a fantastic sensitivity improving significantly over the advanced GW detectors. One of the most important astrophysical GW sources supposed to be detected by the ET in large numbers are double compact objects (DCO) and some of such events should be gravitationally lensed by intervening galaxies. We explore the prospects of observing gravitationally lensed inspiral DCO events in the ET. This analysis is a significant extension of our previous paper [1]. We are using the intrinsic merger rates of the whole class of DCO (NS-NS,BH-NS,BH-BH) located at different redshifts as calculated by [2] by using StarTrack population synthesis evolutionary code. We discuss in details predictions from each evolutionary scenario. Our general conclusion is that ET would register about 50–100 strongly lensed inspiral events per year. Only the scenario in which nascent BHs receive strong kick gives the predictions of a few events per year. Such lensed events would be dominated by the BH-BH merging binary systems. Our results suggest that during a few years of successful operation ET will provide a considerable catalog of strongly lensed events.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Strongly lensed gravitational waves from intrinsically faint double compact binaries—prediction for the Einstein Telescope

With a fantastic sensitivity improving significantly over the advanced GW detectors, Einstein Telescope (ET) will be able to observe hundreds of thousand inspiralling double compact objects per year. By virtue of gravitational lensing effect, intrinsically unobservable faint sources can be observed by ET due to the magnification by intervening galaxies. We explore the possibility of observing such faint sources amplified by strong gravitational lensing. Following our previous work, we use the merger rates of DCO (NS-NS,BH-NS,BH-BH systems) as calculated by Dominik et al.(2013). It turns out that tens to hundreds of such (lensed) extra events will be registered by ET. This will strongly broaden the ET's distance reach for signals from such coalescences to the redshift range z = 2 − 8. However, with respect to the full inspiral event catalog this magnification bias is at the level of 0.001 and should not affect much cosmological inferences.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Ultra-compact structure in radio quasars as a cosmological probe: a revised study of the interaction between cosmic dark sectors

A new compilation of 012 angular-size/redshift data for compact radio quasars from very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) surveys motivates us to revisit the interaction between dark energy and dark matter with these probes reaching high redshifts z ∼ 3.0. In this paper, we investigate observational constraints on different phenomenological interacting dark energy (IDE) models with the intermediate-luminosity radio quasars acting as individual standard rulers, combined with the newest BAO and CMB observation from Planck results acting as statistical rulers. The results obtained from the MCMC method and other statistical methods including figure of Merit and Information Criteria show that: (1) Compared with the current standard candle data and standard clock data, the intermediate-luminosity radio quasar standard rulers , probing much higher redshifts, could provide comparable constraints on different IDE scenarios. (2) The strong degeneracies between the interaction term and Hubble constant may contribute to alleviate the tension of H {sub 0} between the recent Planck and HST measurements. (3) Concerning the ranking of competing dark energy models, IDE with more free parameters are substantially penalized by the BIC criterion, which agrees very well with the previous results derived from other cosmological probes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2019

PyCBC Inference: A Python-based Parameter Estimation Toolkit for Compact Binary Coalescence Signals

We introduce new modules in the open-source PyCBC gravitational-wave astronomy toolkit that implement Bayesian inference for compact-object binary mergers. We review the Bayesian inference methods implemented and describe the structure of the modules. Here, we demonstrate that the PyCBC Inference modules produce unbiased estimates of the parameters of a simulated population of binary black hole mergers. We show that the parameters' posterior distributions obtained using our new code agree well with the published estimates for binary black holes in the first Advanced LIGO–Virgo observing run.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗