Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “gravitation”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

A Measurement of Gravitational Lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background by Galaxy Clusters Using Data from the South Pole Telescope

Clusters of galaxies are expected to gravitationally lens the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and thereby generate a distinct signal in the CMB on arcminute scales. Measurements of this effect can be used to constrain the masses of galaxy clusters with CMB data alone. Here we present a measurement of lensing of the CMB by galaxy clusters using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT). We also develop a maximum likelihood approach to extract the CMB cluster lensing signal and validate the method on mock data. We quantify the effects on our analysis of several potential sources of systematic error and find that they generally act to reduce the best-fit cluster mass. It is estimated that this bias to lower cluster mass is roughly 0.85σ in units of the statistical error bar, although this estimate should be viewed as an upper limit. Furthermore, we apply our maximum likelihood technique to 513 clusters selected via their Sunyaev–Zeldovich (SZ) signatures in SPT data, and rule out the null hypothesis of no lensing at 3.1σ. The lensing-derived mass estimate for the full cluster sample is consistent with that inferred from the SZ flux: M 200,lens = 0.83 +0.38 -0.37 M 200,SZ (68% C.L., statistical error only).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

A measurement of the cosmic microwave background gravitational lensing potential from 100 square degrees of SPTPOL data

We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) gravitational lensing potential using data from the first two seasons of observations with SPTpol, the polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope. The observations used in this work cover 100 deg{sup 2} of sky with arcminute resolution at 150 GHz. Using a quadratic estimator, we make maps of the CMB lensing potential from combinations of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We combine these lensing potential maps to form a minimum-variance (MV) map. The lensing potential is measured with a signal-to-noise ratio of greater than one for angular multipoles between 100<L<250. This is the highest signal-to-noise mass map made from the CMB to date and will be powerful in cross-correlation with other tracers of large-scale structure. We calculate the power spectrum of the lensing potential for each estimator, and we report the value of the MV power spectrum between 100<L<2000 as our primary result. We constrain the ratio of the spectrum to a fiducial ΛCDM model to be A{sub MV} = 0.92 ± 0.14 (Stat.) ± 0.08 (Sys.). Restricting ourselves to polarized data only, we find A{sub POL} = 0.92 ± 0.24 (Stat.) ± 0.11 (Sys.). This measurement rejects the hypothesis of no lensing at 5.9σ using polarization data alone, and at 14σ using both temperature and polarization data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Cosmological constraints on the gravitational interactions of matter and dark matter

Although there is overwhelming evidence of dark matter from its gravitational interaction, we still do not know its precise gravitational interaction strength or whether it obeys the equivalence principle. Using the latest available cosmological data and working within the framework of ΛCDM, we first update the measurement of the multiplicative factor of cosmology-relevant Newton’s constant over the standard laboratory-based value and find that it is consistent with one. In general relativity, dark matter equivalence principle breaking can be mimicked by a long-range dark matter force mediated by an ultra light scalar field. Using the Planck three year data, we find that the dark matter “fifth-force” strength is constrained to be weaker than 10{sup −4} of the gravitational force. We also introduce a phenomenological, post-Newtonian two-fluid description to explicitly break the equivalence principle by introducing a difference between dark matter inertial and gravitational masses. Depending on the decoupling time of the dark matter and ordinary matter fluids, the ratio of the dark matter gravitational mass to inertial mass is constrained to be unity at the 10{sup −6} level.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Radio follow-up of gravitational-wave triggers during advanced LIGO O1

We present radio follow-up observations carried out with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array during the first observing run (O1) of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). A total of three gravitational-wave triggers were followed-up during the ≈4 months of O1, from 2015 September to 2016 January. Two of these triggers, GW150914 and GW151226, are binary black hole (BH) merger events of high significance. A third trigger, G194575, was subsequently declared as an event of no interest (i.e., a false alarm). Our observations targeted selected optical transients identified by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory in the Advanced LIGO error regions of the three triggers, and a limited region of the gravitational-wave localization area of G194575 not accessible to optical telescopes due to Sun constraints, where a possible high-energy transient was identified. No plausible radio counterparts to GW150914 and GW151226 were found, in agreement with expectations for binary BH mergers. We show that combining optical and radio observations is key to identifying contaminating radio sources that may be found in the follow-up of gravitational-wave triggers, such as emission associated with star formation and active galactic nuclei. We discuss our results in the context of the theoretical predictions for radio counterparts to gravitational-wave transients, and describe our future plans for the radio follow-up of Advanced LIGO (and Virgo) triggers.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Probing gravitational dark matter

So far all evidences of dark matter (DM) come from astrophysical and cosmological observations, due to the gravitational interactions of DM. It is possible that the true DM particle in the universe joins gravitational interactions only, but nothing else. Such a Gravitational DM (GDM) may act as a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), which is conceptually simple and attractive. In this work, we explore this direction by constructing the simplest scalar GDM particle χ{sub s}. It is a ℤ{sub 2} odd singlet under the standard model (SM) gauge group, and naturally joins the unique dimension-4 interaction with Ricci curvature, ξ{sub s}χ{sub s}{sup 2}R, where ξ{sub s} is the dimensionless nonminimal coupling. We demonstrate that this gravitational interaction ξ{sub s}χ{sub s}{sup 2}R, together with Higgs-curvature nonminimal coupling term ξ{sub h}H{sup †}HR, induces effective couplings between χ{sub s}{sup 2} and SM fields, and can account for the observed DM thermal relic abundance. We analyze the annihilation cross sections of GDM particles and derive the viable parameter space for realizing the DM thermal relic density. We further study the direct/indirect detections and the collider signatures of such a scalar GDM. These turn out to be highly predictive and testable.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

PICS: SIMULATIONS OF STRONG GRAVITATIONAL LENSING IN GALAXY CLUSTERS

Gravitational lensing has become one of the most powerful tools available for investigating the “dark side” of the universe. Cosmological strong gravitational lensing, in particular, probes the properties of the dense cores of dark matter halos over decades in mass and offers the opportunity to study the distant universe at flux levels and spatial resolutions otherwise unavailable. Studies of strongly lensed variable sources offer even further scientific opportunities. One of the challenges in realizing the potential of strong lensing is to understand the statistical context of both the individual systems that receive extensive follow-up study, as well as that of the larger samples of strong lenses that are now emerging from survey efforts. Motivated by these challenges, we have developed an image simulation pipeline, Pipeline for Images of Cosmological Strong lensing (PICS), to generate realistic strong gravitational lensing signals from group- and cluster-scale lenses. PICS uses a low-noise and unbiased density estimator based on (resampled) Delaunay Tessellations to calculate the density field; lensed images are produced by ray-tracing images of actual galaxies from deep Hubble Space Telescope observations. Other galaxies, similarly sampled, are added to fill in the light cone. The pipeline further adds cluster member galaxies and foreground stars into the lensed images. The entire image ensemble is then observed using a realistic point-spread function that includes appropriate detector artifacts for bright stars. Noise is further added, including such non-Gaussian elements as noise window-paning from mosaiced observations, residual bad pixels, and cosmic rays. The aim is to produce simulated images that appear identical—to the eye (expert or otherwise)—to real observations in various imaging surveys.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

iPTF SEARCH FOR AN OPTICAL COUNTERPART TO GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE TRANSIENT GW150914

The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) autonomously responded to and promptly tiled the error region of the first gravitational-wave event GW150914 to search for an optical counterpart. Only a small fraction of the total localized region was immediately visible in the northern night sky, due both to Sun-angle and elevation constraints. Here, we report on the transient candidates identified and rapid follow-up undertaken to determine the nature of each candidate. Even in the small area imaged of 126 deg{sup 2}, after extensive filtering, eight candidates were deemed worthy of additional follow-up. Within two hours, all eight were spectroscopically classified by the Keck II telescope. Curiously, even though such events are rare, one of our candidates was a superluminous supernova. We obtained radio data with the Jansky Very Large Array and X-ray follow-up with the Swift satellite for this transient. None of our candidates appear to be associated with the gravitational-wave trigger, which is unsurprising given that GW150914 came from the merger of two stellar-mass black holes. This end-to-end discovery and follow-up campaign bodes well for future searches in this post-detection era of gravitational waves.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Gravitational waves from individual supermassive black hole binaries in circular orbits: limits from the North American nanohertz observatory for gravitational waves

We perform a search for continuous gravitational waves from individual supermassive black hole binaries using robust frequentist and Bayesian techniques. We augment standard pulsar timing models with the addition of time-variable dispersion measure and frequency variable pulse shape terms. We apply our techniques to the Five Year Data Release from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves. We find that there is no evidence for the presence of a detectable continuous gravitational wave; however, we can use these data to place the most constraining upper limits to date on the strength of such gravitational waves. Using the full 17 pulsar data set we place a 95% upper limit on the strain amplitude of h {sub 0} ≲ 3.0 × 10{sup –14} at a frequency of 10 nHz. Furthermore, we place 95% sky-averaged lower limits on the luminosity distance to such gravitational wave sources, finding that d{sub L} ≳ 425 Mpc for sources at a frequency of 10 nHz and chirp mass 10{sup 10} M {sub ☉}. We find that for gravitational wave sources near our best timed pulsars in the sky, the sensitivity of the pulsar timing array is increased by a factor of ∼four over the sky-averaged sensitivity. Finally we place limits on the coalescence rate of the most massive supermassive black hole binaries.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

A decam search for an optical counterpart to the LIGO gravitational-wave event GW151226

We report the results of a Dark Energy Camera optical follow-up of the gravitational-wave (GW) event GW151226, discovered by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory detectors. Our observations cover 28.8 deg{sup 2} of the localization region in the i and z bands (containing 3% of the BAYESTAR localization probability), starting 10 hr after the event was announced and spanning four epochs at 2–24 days after the GW detection. We achieve 5σ point-source limiting magnitudes of i≈21.7 and z≈21.5, with a scatter of 0.4 mag, in our difference images. Given the two-day delay, we search this area for a rapidly declining optical counterpart with ≳3σ significance steady decline between the first and final observations. We recover four sources that pass our selection criteria, of which three are cataloged active galactic nuclei. The fourth source is offset by 5.8 arcsec from the center of a galaxy at a distance of 187 Mpc, exhibits a rapid decline by 0.5 mag over 4 days, and has a red color of i−z≈0.3 mag. These properties could satisfy a set of cuts designed to identify kilonovae. However, this source was detected several times, starting 94 days prior to GW151226, in the Pan-STARRS Survey for Transients (dubbed as PS15cdi) and is therefore unrelated to the GW event. Given its long-term behavior, PS15cdi is likely a Type IIP supernova that transitioned out of its plateau phase during our observations, mimicking a kilonova-like behavior. We comment on the implications of this detection for contamination in future optical follow-up observations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1980

A report on the gravitational redshift test for non-metric theories of gravitation

The frequencies of two atomic hydrogen masers and of three superconducting cavity stabilized oscillators were compared as the ensemble of oscillators was moved in the Sun's gravitational field by the rotation and orbital motion of the Earth. Metric gravitation theories predict that the gravitational redshifts of the two types of oscillators are identical, and that there should be no relative frequency shift between the oscillators; nonmetric theories, in contrast, predict a frequency shift between masers and SCSOs that is proportional to the change in solar gravitational potential experienced by the oscillators. The results are consistent with metric theories of gravitation at a level of 2%.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2011

Testing Gravitational Physics with Space-based Gravitational-wave Observations

Gravitational wave observations provide exceptional and unique opportunities for precision tests of gravitational physics, as predicted by general relativity (GR). Space-based gravitational wave measurements, with high signal-to-noise ratios and large numbers of observed events may provide the best-suited gravitational-wave observations for testing GR with unprecedented precision. These observations will be especially useful in testing the properties of gravitational waves and strong-field aspects of the theory which are less relevant in other observations. We review the proposed GR test based on observations of massive black hole mergers, extreme mass ratio inspirals, and galactic binary systems.

Baker, John G.↗
DOE OSTI2015

Gravitational wave background from Standard Model physics: qualitative features

Because of physical processes ranging from microscopic particle collisions to macroscopic hydrodynamic fluctuations, any plasma in thermal equilibrium emits gravitational waves. For the largest wavelengths the emission rate is proportional to the shear viscosity of the plasma. In the Standard Model at T>160 GeV, the shear viscosity is dominated by the most weakly interacting particles, right-handed leptons, and is relatively large. We estimate the order of magnitude of the corresponding spectrum of gravitational waves. Even though at small frequencies (corresponding to the sub-Hz range relevant for planned observatories such as eLISA) this background is tiny compared with that from non-equilibrium sources, the total energy carried by the high-frequency part of the spectrum is non-negligible if the production continues for a long time. We suggest that this may constrain (weakly) the highest temperature of the radiation epoch. Observing the high-frequency part directly sets a very ambitious goal for future generations of GHz-range detectors.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Gravitational wave signals from short-lived topological defects in the MSSM

Supersymmetric theories, including the minimal supersymmetric standard model, usually contain many scalar fields whose potentials are absent in the exact supersymmetric limit and within the renormalizable level. Since their potentials are vulnerable to the finite energy density of the Universe through supergravity effects, these flat directions have nontrivial dynamics in the early Universe. Recently, we have pointed out that a flat direction may have a positive Hubble induced mass term during inflation whereas a negative one after inflation. In this case, the flat direction stays at the origin of the potential during inflation and then obtain a large vacuum expectation value after inflation. After that, when the Hubble parameter decreases down to the mass of the flat direction, it starts to oscillate around the origin of the potential. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of the flat direction with and without higher dimensional superpotentials and show that topological defects, such as cosmic strings and domain walls, form at the end of inflation and disappear at the beginning of oscillation of the flat direction. We numerically calculate their gravitational signals and find that the observation of gravitational signals would give us information of supersymmetric scale, the reheating temperature of the Universe, and higher dimensional operators.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Gravitational waves from domain walls in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model

The next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model predicts the formation of domain walls due to the spontaneous breaking of the discrete Z{sub 3}-symmetry at the electroweak phase transition, and they collapse before the epoch of big bang nucleosynthesis if there exists a small bias term in the potential which explicitly breaks the discrete symmetry. Signatures of gravitational waves produced from these unstable domain walls are estimated and their parameter dependence is investigated. It is shown that the amplitude of gravitational waves becomes generically large in the decoupling limit, and that their frequency is low enough to be probed in future pulsar timing observations.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2019

The Era of Gravitational Astronomy and Gravitational Field of Non-Rotating Single Point Particle in General Relativity

Utilizing various gauges of the radial coordinate, we give a General Relativistic (GR) description of static spherically symmetric spacetimes with a massive point source and vacuum outside this singularity. We show that in GR there exists a two-parameter family of such solutions to the Einstein equations which are physically distinguishable and describe the gravitational field of a single massive point particle with positive proper mass M{sub 0} and positive Keplerian mass M < M{sub 0}. In particular, we show that the widespread Hilbert form of the Schwarzschild solution, which depends only on the Keplerian mass M and describes Black Holes (BH), does not solve the Einstein equations with a massive point particle stress-energy tensor. Novel normal coordinates for the gravitational field and a new physical class of gauges are proposed, thus achieving a correct description of a point mass source in GR. We also introduce a gravitational mass defect of a point particle and determine the dependence of the solutions on this mass defect. The result can be described as a change of the Newton potential φ{sub N} = – G{sub N} M / r to a modified one φ{sub G} = – G{sub N} M / (r+G{sub N}M/ c{sup 2}ln ((M{sub 0})/M)) and the corresponding modification of the four-interval. We show that the proper 3D flat space, where these two potentials can be compared, is the tangent space above the position of the massive point source. In addition, we present invariant characteristics of the physically and geometrically different classes of spherically symmetric static spacetimes created by a point mass. Our findings are important for description of Extremely Compact Objects (ECOs) studied in relation with possible echoes in Gravitational Waves (GW) recently discovered by the LIGO/VIRGO collaboration.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

ARRIVAL TIME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GRAVITATIONAL WAVES AND ELECTROMAGNETIC SIGNALS DUE TO GRAVITATIONAL LENSING

In this study we demonstrate that general relativity predicts arrival time differences between gravitational wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) signals caused by the wave effects in gravitational lensing. The GW signals can arrive earlier than the EM signals in some cases if the GW/EM signals have passed through a lens, even if both signals were emitted simultaneously by a source. GW wavelengths are much larger than EM wavelengths; therefore, the propagation of the GWs does not follow the laws of geometrical optics, including the Shapiro time delay, if the lens mass is less than approximately 10{sup 5} M {sub ⊙}( f /Hz){sup −1}, where f is the GW frequency. The arrival time difference can reach ∼0.1 s ( f /Hz){sup −1} if the signals have passed by a lens of mass ∼8000 M {sub ⊙}( f /Hz){sup −1} with the impact parameter smaller than the Einstein radius; therefore, it is more prominent for lower GW frequencies. For example, when a distant supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) in a galactic center is lensed by an intervening galaxy, the time lag becomes of the order of 10 days. Future pulsar timing arrays including the Square Kilometre Array and X-ray detectors may detect several time lags by measuring the orbital phase differences between the GW/EM signals in the SMBHBs. Gravitational lensing imprints a characteristic modulation on a chirp waveform; therefore, we can deduce whether a measured arrival time lag arises from intrinsic source properties or gravitational lensing. Determination of arrival time differences would be extremely useful in multimessenger observations and tests of general relativity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

A Robust Mass Estimator for Dark Matter Subhalo Perturbations in Strong Gravitational Lenses

A few dark matter substructures have recently been detected in strong gravitational lenses through their perturbations of highly magnified images. We derive a characteristic scale for lensing perturbations and show that they are significantly larger than the perturber’s Einstein radius. We show that the perturber’s projected mass enclosed within this radius, scaled by the log-slope of the host galaxy’s density profile, can be robustly inferred even if the inferred density profile and tidal radius of the perturber are biased. We demonstrate the validity of our analytic derivation using several gravitational lens simulations where the tidal radii and the inner log-slopes of the density profile of the perturbing subhalo are allowed to vary. By modeling these simulated data, we find that our mass estimator, which we call the effective subhalo lensing mass, is accurate to within about 10% or smaller in each case, whereas the inferred total subhalo mass can potentially be biased by nearly an order of magnitude. We therefore recommend that the effective subhalo lensing mass be reported in future lensing reconstructions, as this will allow for a more accurate comparison with the results of dark matter simulations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

A DARK ENERGY CAMERA SEARCH FOR MISSING SUPERGIANTS IN THE LMC AFTER THE ADVANCED LIGO GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE EVENT GW150914

The collapse of a stellar core is expected to produce gravitational waves (GWs), neutrinos, and in most cases a luminous supernova. Sometimes, however, the optical event could be significantly less luminous than a supernova and a direct collapse to a black hole, where the star just disappears, is possible. The GW event GW150914 was detected by the LIGO Virgo Collaboration via a burst analysis that gave localization contours enclosing the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Shortly thereafter, we used DECam to observe 102 deg{sup 2} of the localization area, including 38 deg{sup 2} on the LMC for a missing supergiant search. We construct a complete catalog of LMC luminous red supergiants, the best candidates to undergo invisible core collapse, and collected catalogs of other candidates: less luminous red supergiants, yellow supergiants, blue supergiants, luminous blue variable stars, and Wolf–Rayet stars. Of the objects in the imaging region, all are recovered in the images. The timescale for stellar disappearance is set by the free-fall time, which is a function of the stellar radius. Our observations at 4 and 13 days after the event result in a search sensitive to objects of up to about 200 solar radii. We conclude that it is unlikely that GW150914 was caused by the core collapse of a relatively compact supergiant in the LMC, consistent with the LIGO Collaboration analyses of the gravitational waveform as best interpreted as a high mass binary black hole merger. We discuss how to generalize this search for future very nearby core-collapse candidates.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗