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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2013

COMPACT BINARY PROGENITORS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

In recent years, detailed observations and accurate numerical simulations have provided support to the idea that mergers of compact binaries containing either two neutron stars (NSs) or an NS and a black hole (BH) may constitute the central engine of short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs). The merger of such compact binaries is expected to lead to the production of a spinning BH surrounded by an accreting torus. Several mechanisms can extract energy from this system and power the SGRBs. Here we connect observations and numerical simulations of compact binary mergers, and use the current sample of SGRBs with measured energies to constrain the mass of their powering tori. By comparing the masses of the tori with the results of fully general-relativistic simulations, we are able to infer the properties of the binary progenitors that yield SGRBs. By assuming a constant efficiency in converting torus mass into jet energy, {epsilon}{sub jet} = 10%, we find that most of the tori have masses smaller than 0.01 M{sub Sun }, favoring 'high-mass' binary NSs mergers, i.e., binaries with total masses {approx}> 1.5 the maximum mass of an isolated NS. This has important consequences for the gravitational wave signals that may be detected in association with SGRBs, since 'high-mass' systems do not form a long-lived hypermassive NS after the merger. While NS-BH systems cannot be excluded to be the engine of at least some of the SGRBs, the BH would need to have an initial spin of {approx}0.9 or higher.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2013

Compact Binary Progenitors of Short Gamma-Ray Bursts

In recent years, detailed observations and accurate numerical simulations have provided support to the idea that mergers of compact binaries containing either two neutron stars (NSs) or an NS and a black hole (BH) may constitute the central engine of short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs). The merger of such compact binaries is expected to lead to the production of a spinning BH surrounded by an accreting torus. Several mechanisms can extract energy from this system and power the SGRBs. Here we connect observations and numerical simulations of compact binary mergers, and use the current sample of SGRBs with measured energies to constrain the mass of their powering tori. By comparing the masses of the tori with the results of fully general-relativistic simulations, we are able to infer the properties of the binary progenitors that yield SGRBs. By assuming a constant efficiency in converting torus mass into jet energy epsilon(sub jet) = 10%, we find that most of the tori have masses smaller than 0.01 Solar M, favoring "high-mass" binary NSs mergers, i.e., binaries with total masses approx >1.5 the maximum mass of an isolated NS. This has important consequences for the gravitational wave signals that may be detected in association with SGRBs, since "high-mass" systems do not form a long-lived hypermassive NS after the merger. While NS-BH systems cannot be excluded to be the engine of at least some of the SGRBs, the BH would need to have an initial spin of approx. 0.9 or higher.

accretion disks↗
NASA NTRS2016

Manufacturing Challenges and Benefits when Scaling the HIAD Stacked-Torus Aeroshell to a 15m Class System

Over a decade of work has been conducted in the development of NASA's Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) deployable aeroshell technology. This effort has included multiple ground test campaigns and flight tests culminating in the HIAD project's second generation (Gen-2) aeroshell system. The HIAD project team has developed, fabricated, and tested stacked-torus inflatable structures (IS) with flexible thermal protection systems (F-TPS) ranging in diameters from 3-6m, with cone angles of 60 and 70 deg. To meet NASA and commercial near term objectives, the HIAD team must scale the current technology up to 12-15m in diameter. The HIAD project's experience in scaling the technology has reached a critical juncture. Growing from a 6m to a 15m class system will introduce many new structural and logistical challenges to an already complicated manufacturing process. Although the general architecture and key aspects of the HIAD design scale well to larger vehicles, details of the technology will need to be reevaluated and possibly redesigned for use in a 15m-class HIAD system. These include: layout and size of the structural webbing that transfers load throughout the IS, inflatable gas barrier design, torus diameter and braid construction, internal pressure and inflation line routing, adhesives used for coating and bonding, and F-TPS gore design and seam fabrication. The logistics of fabricating and testing the IS and the F-TPS also become more challenging with increased scale. Compared to the 6m aeroshell (the largest HIAD built to date), a 12m aeroshell has four times the cross-sectional area, and a 15m one has over six times the area. This means that fabrication and test procedures will need to be reexamined to account for the sheer size and weight of the aeroshell components. This will affect a variety of steps in the manufacturing process, such as: stacking the tori during assembly, stitching the structural webbing, initial inflation of tori, and stitching of F-TPS gores. Additionally, new approaches and hardware will be required for handling and ground testing of both individual tori and the fully assembled HIADs. There are also noteworthy benefits of scaling up the HIAD aeroshell to 15m-class system. Two complications in working with handmade textiles structures are the non-linearity of the materials and the role of human accuracy during fabrication. Larger, more capable, HIAD structures should see much larger operational loads, potentially bringing the structural response of the materials out of the non-linear regime and into the preferred linear response range. Also, making the reasonable assumption that the magnitude of fabrication accuracy remains constant as the structures grow, the relative effect of fabrication errors should decrease as a percentage of the textile component size. Combined, these two effects improve the predictive capability and the uniformity of the structural response for a 12-15m class HIAD. In this paper, the challenges and associated mitigation plans related to scaling up the HIAD stacked-torus aeroshell to a 15m class system will be discussed. In addition, the benefits of enlarging the structure will be further explored.

Decellerators↗
NASA NTRS2016

Manufacturing Challenges and Benefits When Scaling the HIAD Stacked-Torus Aeroshell to a 15 Meter Class System

Over a decade of work has been conducted in the development of NASA's Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) deployable aeroshell technology. This effort has included multiple ground test campaigns and flight tests culminating in the HIAD project's second generation (Gen-2) aeroshell system. The HIAD project team has developed, fabricated, and tested stacked-torus inflatable structures (IS) with flexible thermal protection systems (F-TPS) ranging in diameters from 3-6 meters, with cone angles of 60 and 70 degrees. To meet NASA and commercial near-term objectives, the HIAD team must scale the current technology up to 12-15 meters in diameter. Therefore, the HIAD project's experience in scaling the technology has reached a critical juncture. Growing from a 6-meter to a 15-meter class system will introduce many new structural and logistical challenges to an already complicated manufacturing process. Although the general architecture and key aspects of the HIAD design scale well to larger vehicles, details of the technology will need to be reevaluated and possibly redesigned for use in a 15-meter-class HIAD system. These include: layout and size of the structural webbing that transfers load throughout the IS, inflatable gas barrier design, torus diameter and braid construction, internal pressure and inflation line routing, adhesives used for coating and bonding, and F-TPS gore design and seam fabrication. The logistics of fabricating and testing the IS and the F-TPS also become more challenging with increased scale. Compared to the 6-meter aeroshell (the largest HIAD built to date), a 12-meter aeroshell has four times the cross-sectional area, and a 15-meter one has over six times the area. This means that fabrication and test procedures will need to be reexamined to account for the sheer size and weight of the aeroshell components. This will affect a variety of steps in the manufacturing process, such as: stacking the tori during assembly, stitching the structural webbing, initial inflation of tori, and stitching of F-TPS gores. Additionally, new approaches and hardware will be required for handling and ground testing of both individual tori and the fully assembled HIADs. There are also noteworthy benefits of scaling up the HIAD aeroshell to a 15m-class system. Two complications in working with handmade textile structures are the non-linearity of the material components and the role of human accuracy during fabrication. Larger, more capable, HIAD structures should see much larger operational loads, potentially bringing the structural response of the material components out of the non-linear regime and into the preferred linear response range. Also, making the reasonable assumption that the magnitude of fabrication accuracy remains constant as the structures grow, the relative effect of fabrication errors should decrease as a percentage of the textile component size. Combined, these two effects improve the predictive capability and the uniformity of the structural response for a 12-15-meter HIAD. In this presentation, a handful of the challenges and associated mitigation plans will be discussed, as well as an update on current manufacturing and testing that addressing these challenges.

Infatables↗
NASA NTRS2016

Manufacturing Challenges and Benefits when Scaling the HIAD Stacked-Torus Aeroshell to a 15m-Class System

Over a decade of work has been conducted in the development of NASAs Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) deployable aeroshell technology. This effort has included multiple ground test campaigns and flight tests culminating in the HIAD projects second generation (Gen-2) aeroshell system. The HIAD project team has developed, fabricated, and tested stacked-torus inflatable structures (IS) with flexible thermal protection systems (F-TPS) ranging in diameters from 3-6m, with cone angles of 60 and 70 deg. To meet NASA and commercial near term objectives, the HIAD team must scale the current technology up to 12-15m in diameter. Therefore, the HIAD projects experience in scaling the technology has reached a critical juncture. Growing from a 6m to a 15m-class system will introduce many new structural and logistical challenges to an already complicated manufacturing process.Although the general architecture and key aspects of the HIAD design scale well to larger vehicles, details of the technology will need to be reevaluated and possibly redesigned for use in a 15m-class HIAD system. These include: layout and size of the structural webbing that transfers load throughout the IS, inflatable gas barrier design, torus diameter and braid construction, internal pressure and inflation line routing, adhesives used for coating and bonding, and F-TPS gore design and seam fabrication. The logistics of fabricating and testing the IS and the F-TPS also become more challenging with increased scale. Compared to the 6m aeroshell (the largest HIAD built to date), a 12m aeroshell has four times the cross-sectional area, and a 15m one has over six times the area. This means that fabrication and test procedures will need to be reexamined to ac-count for the sheer size and weight of the aeroshell components. This will affect a variety of steps in the manufacturing process, such as: stacking the tori during assembly, stitching the structural webbing, initial inflation of tori, and stitching of F-TPS gores. Additionally, new approaches and hardware will be required for handling and ground testing of both individual tori and the fully assembled HIADs.There are also noteworthy benefits of scaling up the HIAD aeroshell to a 15m-class system. Two complications in working with handmade textile structures are the non-linearity of the material components and the role of human accuracy during fabrication. Larger, more capable, HIAD structures should see much larger operational loads, potentially bringing the structural response of the material components out of the non-linear regime and into the preferred linear response range. Also, making the reasonable assumption that the magnitude of fabrication accuracy remains constant as the structures grow, the relative effect of fabrication errors should decrease as a percentage of the textile component size. Combined, these two effects improve the predictive capability and the uniformity of the structural response for a 12-15m HIAD.In this presentation, a handful of the challenges and associated mitigation plans will be discussed, as well as an update on current 12m aeroshell manufacturing and testing that is addressing these challenges

Infatables↗
DOE OSTI2015

Generation of multiple toroidal dust vortices by a non-monotonic density gradient in a direct current glow discharge plasma

Observation of two well-separated dust vortices in an unmagnetized parallel plate DC glow discharge plasma is reported in this paper. A non-monotonic radial density profile, achieved by an especially designed cathode structure using a concentric metallic disk and ring of different radii, is observed to produce double dust tori between cathode and anode. PIV analysis of the still images of the double tori shows oppositely rotating dust structures between the central disk and the ring. Langmuir probe measurements of background plasma shows a non-uniform plasma density profile between the disk and the ring. Location and sense of rotation of the dust vortices coincides with the location and direction of the radial gradient in the ion drag force caused by the radial density gradient. The experimentally observed dust vorticity matches well with the calculated one using hydrodynamic formulations with shear in ion drag dominating over the dust charge gradient. These results corroborate that a radial gradient in the ion drag force directed towards cathode is the principal cause of dust rotation.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2011

Zero-dimensional solenoidal base sets

We study the dynamics of the Smale-Vietoris (SV) diffeomorphisms concentrated in base solid tori is studied, and describe possible base sets in base solid tori. We also look at the topological structure of 3-manifolds admitting diffeomorphisms of class SV. Bibliography: 26 titles.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2011

TORUS AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS PROPERTIES OF NEARBY SEYFERT GALAXIES: RESULTS FROM FITTING INFRARED SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS AND SPECTROSCOPY

We used the CLUMPY torus models and a Bayesian approach to fit the infrared spectral energy distributions and ground-based high angular resolution mid-infrared spectroscopy of 13 nearby Seyfert galaxies. This allowed us to put tight constraints on torus model parameters such as the viewing angle i, the radial thickness of the torus Y, the angular size of the cloud distribution {sigma}{sub torus}, and the average number of clouds along radial equatorial rays N{sub 0}. We found that the viewing angle i is not the only parameter controlling the classification of a galaxy into type 1 or type 2. In principle, type 2s could be viewed at any viewing angle i as long as there is one cloud along the line of sight. A more relevant quantity for clumpy media is the probability for an active galactic nucleus (AGN) photon to escape unabsorbed. In our sample, type 1s have relatively high escape probabilities, P{sub esc} {approx} 12%-44%, while type 2s, as expected, tend to have very low escape probabilities. Our fits also confirmed that the tori of Seyfert galaxies are compact with torus model radii in the range 1-6 pc. The scaling of the models to the data also provided the AGN bolometric luminosities L{sub bol}(AGN), which were found to be in good agreement with estimates from the literature. When we combined our sample of Seyfert galaxies with a sample of PG quasars from the literature to span a range of L{sub bol}(AGN) {approx} 10{sup 43}-10{sup 47} erg s{sup -1}, we found plausible evidence of the receding torus. That is, there is a tendency for the torus geometrical covering factor to be lower (f{sub 2} {approx} 0.1-0.3) at high AGN luminosities than at low AGN luminosities (f{sub 2} {approx} 0.9-1 at {approx}10{sup 43}-10{sup 44} erg s{sup -1}). This is because at low AGN luminosities the tori appear to have wider angular sizes (larger {sigma}{sub torus}) and more clouds along radial equatorial rays. We cannot, however, rule out the possibility that this is due to contamination by extended dust structures not associated with the dusty torus at low AGN luminosities, since most of these in our sample are hosted in highly inclined galaxies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Kowalevski top in quantum mechanics

The quantum mechanical Kowalevski top is studied by the direct diagonalization of the Hamiltonian. The spectra show different behaviors depending on the region divided by the bifurcation sets of the classical invariant tori. Some of these spectra are nearly degenerate due to the multiplicity of the invariant tori. The Kowalevski top has several symmetries and symmetry quantum numbers can be assigned to the eigenstates. We have also carried out the semiclassical quantization of the Kowalevski top by the EBK formulation. It is found that the semiclassical spectra are close to the exact values, thus the eigenstates can be also labeled by the integer quantum numbers. The symmetries of the system are shown to have close relations with the semiclassical quantum numbers and the near-degeneracy of the spectra. -- Highlights: •Quantum spectra of the Kowalevski top are calculated. •Semiclassical quantization is carried out by the EBK formulation. •Quantum states are labeled by the semiclassical integer quantum numbers. •Multiplicity of the classical torus makes the spectra nearly degenerate. •Symmetries, quantum numbers and near-degenerate spectra are closely related.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

An isogeometric finite element formulation for phase transitions on deforming surfaces

This paper presents a general theory and isogeometric finite element implementation for studying mass conserving phase transitions on deforming surfaces. The mathematical problem is governed by two coupled fourth-order nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) that live on an evolving two-dimensional manifold. For the phase transitions, the PDE is the Cahn–Hilliard equation for curved surfaces, which can be derived from surface mass balance in the framework of irreversible thermodynamics. For the surface deformation, the PDE is the (vector-valued) Kirchhoff–Love thin shell equation. Both PDEs can be efficiently discretized using C 1 -continuous interpolations without derivative degrees-of-freedom (dofs). Structured NURBS and unstructured spline spaces with pointwise C 1 -continuity are utilized for these interpolations. The resulting finite element formulation is discretized in time by the generalized-α scheme with adaptive time-stepping, and it is fully linearized within a monolithic Newton–Raphson approach. A curvilinear surface parameterization is used throughout the formulation to admit general surface shapes and deformations. The behavior of the coupled system is illustrated by several numerical examples exhibiting phase transitions on deforming spheres, tori and double-tori.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Selective Photodimerization in a Cyclodextrin Metal–Organic Framework

For the most part, enzymes contain one active site wherein they catalyze in a serial manner chemical reactions between substrates both efficiently and rapidly. Imagine if a situation could be created within a chiral porous crystal containing trillions of active sites where substrates can reside in vast numbers before being converted in parallel into products. Here, we report how it is possible to incorporate 1-anthracenecarboxylate (1-AC – ) as a substrate into a γ-cyclodextrin-containing metal–organic framework (CD-MOF-1), where the metals are K + cations, prior to carrying out [4+4] photodimerizations between pairs of substrate molecules, affording selectively one of four possible regioisomers. One of the high-yielding regioisomers exhibits optical activity as a result of the presence of an 8:1 ratio of the two enantiomers following separation by high-performance liquid chromatography. The solid-state superstructure of 1-anthracenecarboxylate potassium salt (1-ACK), which is co-crystallized with γ-cyclodextrin, reveals that pairs of substrate molecules are not only packed inside tunnels between spherical cavities present in CD-MOF-1, but also stabilized—in addition to hydrogen-bonding to the C-2 and C-3 hydroxyl groups on the d-glucopyranosyl residues present in the γ-cyclodextrin tori—by combinations of hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions between the carboxyl groups in 1-AC– and four K + cations on the waistline between the two γ-cyclodextrin tori in the tunnels. Here, these non-covalent bonding interactions result in preferred co-conformations that account for the highly regio- and enantioselective [4+4] cycloaddition during photoirradiation. Theoretical calculations, in conjunction with crystallography, support the regio- and stereochemical outcome of the photodimerization.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2013

Preparation of new morphological ZnO and Ce-doped ZnO

ZnO micro-tori and cerium doped hexangulars ZnO have been prepared by the sol-gel method under methanol hypercritical conditions of temperature and pressure. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement has revealed the high crystalline quality and the nanometric size of the samples. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has shown that the ZnO powder has a torus-like shape while that of ZnO:Ce has a hexangular-like shape, either standing free or inserted into the cores of ZnO tori. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has revealed that the ZnO particles have sizes between 25 and 30 nm while Ce-doped ZnO grains have diameters ranging from 75 nm to 100 nm. Photoluminescence spectra at room temperature of the samples have revealed that the introduction of cerium in ZnO reduces the emission intensity lines, particularly the ZnO red and green ones.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2011

ON PROBING THE PROPERTIES OF QSOs THROUGH THEIR PROXIMITY EFFECTS ON THE INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM

The proximity effect (PE) of QSOs is believed to be useful in constraining the QSO lifetime. Observations of the PE so far, however, give apparently contradictory results-some are consistent with a long QSO lifetime ({approx}> a few 10{sup 7} yr), but others appear to be only consistent with a short QSO lifetime ({approx}< 10{sup 6} yr). In this paper, we show that this apparent contradiction may be solved by simultaneously taking into account both the effect due to the density enhancement in the QSO near zones and that due to the obscuration of the tori associated with the QSOs, using a large number of Monte Carlo generated synthetic Ly{alpha} forest spectra. We demonstrate that the QSO properties and environment can be constrained simultaneously by the transverse PE (TPE) and the line-of-sight PE of bright type 1 QSOs together. The current available measurements on the PEs of type 1 QSOs suggest that (1) the density is significantly enhanced in the vicinity of the QSOs; (2) the QSO lifetime is consistent with being as large as a few 10{sup 7} yr, and a substantially shorter lifetime (e.g., {approx}< 10{sup 6} yr) is not required; and (3) the half opening angle of the tori associated with QSOs is {approx}60{sup 0}, consistent with some other independent estimates. Our simulations also show that the TPE of type 2 QSOs can be significantly different from that of type 1 QSOs, which may be useful to put further constraints on the QSO properties and the QSO environment.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

OBSCURING FRACTION OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI: IMPLICATIONS FROM RADIATION-DRIVEN FOUNTAIN MODELS

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are believed to be obscured by an optical thick “torus” that covers a large fraction of solid angles for the nuclei. However, the physical origin of the tori and the differences in the tori among AGNs are not clear. In a previous paper based on three-dimensional radiation-hydorodynamic calculations, we proposed a physics-based mechanism for the obscuration, called “radiation-driven fountains,” in which the circulation of the gas driven by central radiation naturally forms a thick disk that partially obscures the nuclear emission. Here, we expand this mechanism and conduct a series of simulations to explore how obscuration depends on the properties of AGNs. We found that the obscuring fraction f{sub obs} for a given column density toward the AGNs changes depending on both the AGN luminosity and the black hole mass. In particular, f{sub obs} for N{sub H} ≥ 10{sup 22} cm{sup −2} increases from ∼0.2 to ∼0.6 as a function of the X-ray luminosity L{sub X} in the L{sub X} = 10{sup 42–44} erg s{sup −1} range, but f{sub obs} becomes small (∼0.4) above a luminosity (∼10{sup 45} erg s{sup −1}). The behaviors of f{sub obs} can be understood by a simple analytic model and provide insight into the redshift evolution of the obscuration. The simulations also show that for a given L{sub AGN}, f{sub obs} is always smaller (∼0.2–0.3) for a larger column density (N{sub H} ≥ 10{sup 23} cm{sup −2}). We also found cases that more than 70% of the solid angles can be covered by the fountain flows.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

THE DUST SUBLIMATION RADIUS AS AN OUTER ENVELOPE TO THE BULK OF THE NARROW Fe Kα LINE EMISSION IN TYPE 1 AGNs

The Fe Kα emission line is the most ubiquitous feature in the X-ray spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), but the origin of its narrow core remains uncertain. Here, we investigate the connection between the sizes of the Fe Kα core emission regions and the measured sizes of the dusty tori in 13 local Type 1 AGNs. The observed Fe Kα emission radii (R{sub Fe}) are determined from spectrally resolved line widths in X-ray grating spectra, and the dust sublimation radii (R{sub dust}) are measured either from optical/near-infrared (NIR) reverberation time lags or from resolved NIR interferometric data. This direct comparison shows, on an object-by-object basis, that the dust sublimation radius forms an outer envelope to the bulk of the Fe Kα emission. R{sub Fe} matches R{sub dust} well in the AGNs, with the best constrained line widths currently. In a significant fraction of objects without a clear narrow line core, R{sub Fe} is similar to, or smaller than, the radius of the optical broad line region. These facts place important constraints on the torus geometries for our sample. Extended tori in which the solid angle of fluorescing gas peaks at well beyond the dust sublimation radius can be ruled out. We also test for luminosity scalings of R{sub Fe}, finding that the Eddington ratio is not a prime driver in determining the line location in our sample. We also discuss in detail potential caveats of data analysis and instrumental limitations, simplistic line modeling, uncertain black hole masses, and sample selection, showing that none of these is likely to bias our core result. The calorimeter on board Astro-H will soon vastly increase the parameter space over which line measurements can be made, overcoming many of these limitations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Poloidal and toroidal plasmons and fields of multilayer nanorings

Composite and janus type metallodielectric nanoparticles are increasingly considered as a means to control the spatial and temporal behavior of electromagnetic fields in diverse applications such as coupling to quantum emitters, achieving invisibility cloaks, and obtaining quantum correlations between qubits. We investigate the surface modes of a toroidal nanostructure and obtain the canonical plasmon dispersion relations and resonance modes for arbitrarily layered nanorings. Unlike particle plasmon eigenmodes in other geometries, the amplitudes of the eigenmodes of tori exhibit a distinct forward and backward coupling. We present the plasmon dispersion relations for several relevant toroidal configurations in the quasistatic limit and obtain the dominant retarded dispersion relations of a single ring for comparison, discuss mode complementarity and hybridization, and introduce two new types of toroidal particles in the form of janus nanorings. The resonance frequencies for the first few dominant modes of a ring composed of plasmon supporting materials such as gold, silver, and aluminum are provided and compared to those for a silicon ring. A generalized Green's function is obtained for multilayer tori allowing for calculation of the scattering response to interacting fields. Employing the Green's function, the scalar electric potential distribution corresponding to individual poloidal and toroidal modes in response to an arbitrarily polarized external field and the field of electrons is obtained. The results are applied to obtain the local density of states and decay rate of a dipole near the center of the torus.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Survival of the Obscuring Torus in the Most Powerful Active Galactic Nuclei

Dedicated searches generally find a decreasing fraction of obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN) with increasing AGN luminosity. This has often been interpreted as evidence for a decrease of the covering factor of the AGN torus with increasing luminosity, the so-called receding torus models. Using a complete flux-limited X-ray selected sample of 199 AGN, from the Bright Ultra-hard XMM-Newton Survey, we determine the intrinsic fraction of optical type-2 AGN at 0.05⩽z⩽1 as a function of rest-frame 2–10 keV X-ray luminosity from 10{sup 42} to 10{sup 45} erg s{sup −1}. We use the distributions of covering factors of AGN tori derived from CLUMPY torus models. Since these distributions combined over the total AGN population need to match the intrinsic type-2 AGN fraction, we reveal a population of X-ray undetected objects with high-covering factor tori, which are increasingly numerous at higher AGN luminosities. When these “missing” objects are included, we find that Compton-thick AGN account at most for 37{sub −10}{sup +9}% of the total population. The intrinsic type-2 AGN fraction is 58 ± 4% and has a weak, non-significant (less than 2σ) luminosity dependence. This contradicts the results generally reported by AGN surveys and the expectations from receding torus models. Our findings imply that the majority of luminous rapidly accreting supermassive black holes at z⩽1 reside in highly obscured nuclear environments, but most of them are so deeply embedded that they have so far escaped detection in X-rays in <10 keV wide area surveys.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1994

Ionization cones and radio ejecta in active galaxies

We report radio mapping at three frequencies of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 5252, which is known to exhibit a spectacular pair of 'ionization cones' in optical emission-line images. The radio structure of the galaxy comprises an unresolved (less than 50 pc) source coincident with the optical nucleus, weak, narrow features extending approximately equal to 900 pc to north and south from the nucleus, and an unresolved radio source some 10 kpc from the nucleus. The inner parts of the extended radio structure and the off-nuclear source align well with the axis of the ionization cones. There are currently 11 Seyfert galaxies known to possess an ionization cone or a bi-cone; 8 of these galaxies also contain a linear (double, triple, or jet-like) nuclear radio structure. For this limited, incomplete sample, there is a tight alignment between cone and radi axes: the formal mean difference between the measured projections of these axes on the sky is only 6 deg, and the alignment may well be better than this at the location(s) closer to the nucleus where the collimation occurs. Although the degree of collimation is much worse for the ionizing photons than for the radio plasma, it is clear that they are collimated by the same, or coplanar, nulcear disks or tori. In particular, if the ionization cones result from absorption by dusty tori on the pc scale and the radio ejecta from accretion disks around the central black hole, the absence of differential precession indicates that either the gravitating mass distribution is close to spherical or the dusty torus has settled into a preferred plane. The cones currently known in late-type (but not early-type) spirals show a trend to align with the axis of the galaxy stellar disk. We argue that this alignment is either an observational selection effect or indicates that the gas accreted to power the nuclear activity has an internal origin in late-type spirals, but may have an external origin (e.g., a galaxy merger) in early-types. .

Wilson, A. S.↗