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Astrophysics and Astronomy

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Dartmouth College

2010

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Trilinear Hamiltonian: A Zero-Dimensional Model Of Hawking Radiation From A Quantized Source, Paul D. Nation, Miles P. Blencowe Sep 2010

The Trilinear Hamiltonian: A Zero-Dimensional Model Of Hawking Radiation From A Quantized Source, Paul D. Nation, Miles P. Blencowe

Dartmouth Scholarship

We investigate a quantum parametric amplifier with dynamical pump mode, viewed as a zero-dimensional model of Hawking radiation from an evaporating black hole. We derive the conditions under which the spectrum of particles generated from vacuum fluctuations deviates from the thermal spectrum predicted for the conventional parametric amplifier. We find that significant deviations arise when the pump mode (black hole) has emitted nearly half of its initial energy into the signal (Hawking radiation) and idler (in-falling particle) modes. As a model of black hole dynamics, this finding lends support to the view that late-time Hawking radiation contains information about the …

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Optical Discovery Of An Apparent Galactic Supernova Remnant G159.6+7.3, Robert A. Fesen, Dan Milisavljevic Sep 2010

Optical Discovery Of An Apparent Galactic Supernova Remnant G159.6+7.3, Robert A. Fesen, Dan Milisavljevic

Dartmouth Scholarship

Deep Hα images of portions of a faint 3° × 4° Hα shell centered at l = 1596, b = 73 seen on the Virginia Tech Spectral Line Survey images revealed the presence of several thin emission filaments along its eastern limb. Low-dispersion optical spectra of two of these filaments covering the wavelength range of 4500-7500 Å show narrow Hα line emissions with velocities around –170 ± 30 km s–1. Both the morphology and spectra of these filaments are consistent with a Balmer-dominated shock interpretation and we propose that these optical filaments indicate that the large Hα emission …

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Long-Lived Time-Dependent Remnants During Cosmological Symmetry Breaking: From Inflation To The Electroweak Scale, Marcelo Gleiser, Noah Graham, Nikitas Stamatopoulos Aug 2010

Long-Lived Time-Dependent Remnants During Cosmological Symmetry Breaking: From Inflation To The Electroweak Scale, Marcelo Gleiser, Noah Graham, Nikitas Stamatopoulos

Dartmouth Scholarship

Through a detailed numerical investigation in three spatial dimensions, we demonstrate that long-lived time-dependent field configurations emerge dynamically during symmetry breaking in an expanding de Sitter spacetime. We investigate two situations: a single scalar field with a double-well potential and an SU(2) non-Abelian Higgs model. For the single scalar, we show that large-amplitude oscillon configurations emerge spontaneously and persist to contribute about 1.2% of the energy density of the Universe. We also show that for a range of parameters, oscillon lifetimes are enhanced by the expansion and that this effect is a result of parametric resonance. For the SU(2) case, …

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Perpendicular Ion Heating By Low-Frequency Alfvén-Wave Turbulence In The Solar Wind, Benjamin D. G. Chandran, Bo Li, Barrett N. Rogers, Eliot Quataert, Kai Germaschewski Aug 2010

Perpendicular Ion Heating By Low-Frequency Alfvén-Wave Turbulence In The Solar Wind, Benjamin D. G. Chandran, Bo Li, Barrett N. Rogers, Eliot Quataert, Kai Germaschewski

Dartmouth Scholarship

We consider ion heating by turbulent Alfvén waves (AWs) and kinetic Alfvén waves (KAWs) with wavelengths (measured perpendicular to the magnetic field) that are comparable to the ion gyroradius and frequencies ω smaller than the ion cyclotron frequency Ω. We focus on plasmas in which β < 1, where β is the ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic pressure. As in previous studies, we find that when the turbulence amplitude exceeds a certain threshold, an ion's orbit becomes chaotic. The ion then interacts stochastically with the time-varying electrostatic potential, and the ion's energy undergoes a random walk. Using phenomenological arguments, we derive an analytic expression for the rates at which different ion species are heated, which we test by simulating test particles interacting with a spectrum of randomly phased AWs and KAWs. We find that the stochastic heating rate depends sensitively on the quantity ε = δv ρ/v ⊥, where v ⊥ (v ∥) is the component of the ion velocity perpendicular (parallel) to the background magnetic field B 0, and δv ρ (δB ρ) is the rms amplitude of the velocity (magnetic-field) fluctuations at the gyroradius scale. In the case …

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On Using The Color-Magnitude Diagram Morphology Of M67 To Test Solar Abundances, Z. Magic, A. Serenelli, A. Weiss, B. Chaboyer Aug 2010

On Using The Color-Magnitude Diagram Morphology Of M67 To Test Solar Abundances, Z. Magic, A. Serenelli, A. Weiss, B. Chaboyer

Dartmouth Scholarship

The open cluster M67 has solar metallicity and an age of about 4 Gyr. The turnoff (TO) mass is close to the minimum mass for which solar metallicity stars develop a convective core during main sequence evolution as a result of the development of hydrogen burning through the CNO cycle. The morphology of the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of M67 around the TO shows a clear hook-like feature, a direct sign that stars close to the TO have convective cores. VandenBerg et al. investigated the possibility of using the morphology of the M67 TO to put constraints on the solar metallicity, …

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The First Vlbi Image Of The Young, Oxygen-Rich Supernova Remnant In Ngc 4449, M. F. Bietenholz, N. Bartel, D. Milisavljevic, R. A. Fesen Jul 2010

The First Vlbi Image Of The Young, Oxygen-Rich Supernova Remnant In Ngc 4449, M. F. Bietenholz, N. Bartel, D. Milisavljevic, R. A. Fesen

Dartmouth Scholarship

We report on sensitive 1.4-GHz VLBI radio observations of the unusually luminous supernova remnant SNR 4449-1 in the galaxy NGC 4449, which gave us the first well-resolved image of this object. The remnant's radio morphology consists of two approximately parallel bright ridges, suggesting similarities to the barrel shape seen for many older Galactic supernova remnants or possibly to SN 1987A. The angular extent of the remnant is 65 × 40 mas, corresponding to (3.7 × 2.3) × 1018 (D/3.8 Mpc) cm. We also present a new, high signal-to-noise ratio optical spectrum. By comparing the remnant's linear size …

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Sn 2010u: A Luminous Nova In Ngc 4214, Roberta M. Humphreys, José L. Prieto, Philip Rosenfield, L. Andrew Helton, Christopher S. Kochanek, K. Z. Stanek, Rubab Khan, Dorota Szczygiel, Karen Mogren, Robert A. Fesen Jul 2010

Sn 2010u: A Luminous Nova In Ngc 4214, Roberta M. Humphreys, José L. Prieto, Philip Rosenfield, L. Andrew Helton, Christopher S. Kochanek, K. Z. Stanek, Rubab Khan, Dorota Szczygiel, Karen Mogren, Robert A. Fesen

Dartmouth Scholarship

The luminosity, light curve, post-maximum spectrum, and lack of a progenitor on deep pre-outburst images suggest that SN 2010U was a luminous, fast nova. Its outburst magnitude is consistent with that for a fast nova using the maximum magnitude-rate of decline relationship for classical novae.

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Colours Of Bulges And Discs Within Galaxy Clusters And The Signature Of Disc Fading On Infall, Michael J. Hudson, Jeffrey B. Stevenson, Russell J. Smith, Gary A. Wegner Jul 2010

Colours Of Bulges And Discs Within Galaxy Clusters And The Signature Of Disc Fading On Infall, Michael J. Hudson, Jeffrey B. Stevenson, Russell J. Smith, Gary A. Wegner

Dartmouth Scholarship

The origins of the bulge and disc components of galaxies are of primary importance to understanding galaxy formation. Here bulge–disc decomposition is performed simultaneously in B and R bands for 922 bright galaxies in eight nearby (z < 0.06) clusters with deep redshift coverage using photometry from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) Fundamental Plane Survey. The total galaxy colours follow a universal colour–magnitude relation (CMR). The discs of L* galaxies are 0.24 mag bluer in B−R than bulges. Bulges have a significant CMR slope while the CMR slope of discs is flat. Thus the slope of the CMR of the total light is driven primarily (60 per cent) by the bulge CMR, and to a lesser extent (40 per cent) by the change in the bulge‐to‐total ratio …

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Stirring Up The Pot: Can Cooling Flows In Galaxy Clusters Be Quenched By Gas Sloshing?, J. A. A. Zuhone, M. Markevitch, R. E. Johnson Jun 2010

Stirring Up The Pot: Can Cooling Flows In Galaxy Clusters Be Quenched By Gas Sloshing?, J. A. A. Zuhone, M. Markevitch, R. E. Johnson

Dartmouth Scholarship

X-ray observations of clusters of galaxies reveal the presence of edges in surface brightness and temperature, known as "cold fronts." In relaxed clusters with cool cores, these commonly observed edges have been interpreted as evidence for the "sloshing" of the core gas in the cluster's gravitational potential. Such sloshing may provide a source of heat to the cluster core by mixing hot gas from the cluster outskirts with the cool-core gas. Using high-resolution N-body/Eulerian hydrodynamic simulations, we model gas sloshing in galaxy clusters initiated by mergers with subclusters. The simulations include merger scenarios with gas-filled and gasless subclusters. The …

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Testing General Relativity With Current Cosmological Data, Scott F. Daniel, Eric V. Linder, Tristan L. Smith, Robert R. Caldwell Jun 2010

Testing General Relativity With Current Cosmological Data, Scott F. Daniel, Eric V. Linder, Tristan L. Smith, Robert R. Caldwell

Dartmouth Scholarship

Deviations from general relativity, such as could be responsible for the cosmic acceleration, would influence the growth of large-scale structure and the deflection of light by that structure. We clarify the relations between several different model-independent approaches to deviations from general relativity appearing in the literature, devising a translation table. We examine current constraints on such deviations, using weak gravitational lensing data of the CFHTLS and COSMOS surveys, cosmic microwave background radiation data of WMAP5, and supernova distance data of Union2. A Markov chain Monte Carlo likelihood analysis of the parameters over various redshift ranges yields consistency with general relativity …

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On Arc-Polarized Structures In The Solar Wind, B U. Sonnerup, S E. Haaland, G Paschmann Jun 2010

On Arc-Polarized Structures In The Solar Wind, B U. Sonnerup, S E. Haaland, G Paschmann

Dartmouth Scholarship

A theoretical model is proposed to account for some of the behavior of arc-polarized magnetic structures seen in the solar wind. To this end, an exact analytical solu- tion is developed that describes infinite plane wave trains of arbitrary amplitude in a plasma governed by ideal Hall MHD. The main focus is on intermediate-mode wave trains, which display double-branched magnetic hodogram signatures sim- ilar to those seen in the solar wind. The theoretically derived hodograms have field rotation in the ion-polarized sense at a slightly depressed field magnitude on one branch and an electron-polarized rotation at a slightly enhanced field …

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The Nature Of The Strong 24 Μmspitzersource J222557+601148: Not A Young Galactic Supernova Remnant, Robert A. Fesen, Dan Milisavljevic May 2010

The Nature Of The Strong 24 Μmspitzersource J222557+601148: Not A Young Galactic Supernova Remnant, Robert A. Fesen, Dan Milisavljevic

Dartmouth Scholarship

The nebula J222557+601148, tentatively identified by Morris et al. as a young Galactic supernova remnant (SNR) from Spitzer Galactic First Look Survey images and a follow-up mid-infrared spectrum, is unlikely to be an SNR remnant based on Hα, [O III], [S II] images, and low-dispersion optical spectra. The object is seen in Hα and [O III] λ5007 images as a faint, roughly circular ring nebula with dimensions matching that seen in 24 μm Spitzer images. Low-dispersion optical spectra show it to have narrow Hα and [N II] λλ6548,6583 line emissions with no evidence of broad or high-velocity (v ≥ …

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Studying The Small Scale Ism Structure With Supernovae, F. Patat, N. L. J. Cox, J. Parrent, D. Branch Mar 2010

Studying The Small Scale Ism Structure With Supernovae, F. Patat, N. L. J. Cox, J. Parrent, D. Branch

Dartmouth Scholarship

In this work we explore the possibility of using the fast expansion of a Type Ia supernova photosphere to detect extra-galactic ISM column density variations on spatial scales of ∼100 AU on time scales of a few months. We constructed a simple model which describes the expansion of the photodisk and the effects of a patchy interstellar cloud on the observed equivalent width of Nai D lines. Using this model we derived the behavior of the equivalent width as a function of time, spatial scale and amplitude of the column density fluctuation

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Core Gas Sloshing In Abell 1644, Ryan E. Johnson, Maxim Markevitch, Gary A. Wegner, Christine Jones, William R. Forman Feb 2010

Core Gas Sloshing In Abell 1644, Ryan E. Johnson, Maxim Markevitch, Gary A. Wegner, Christine Jones, William R. Forman

Dartmouth Scholarship

We present an analysis of a 72 ks Chandra observation of the double cluster Abell 1644 (z = 0.047). The X-ray temperatures indicate that the masses are M 500 = (2.6 ± 0.4) × 1014 h –1 M ☉ for the northern sub-cluster and M 500 = (3.1 ± 0.4) × 1014 h –1 M ☉ for the southern, main cluster. We identify a sharp edge in the radial X-ray surface brightness of the main cluster, which we find to be a cold front, with a jump in temperature of a factor of ~3. This edge possesses …

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The Determination Of Reddening From Intrinsic Vr Colors Of Rr Lyrae Stars, Andrea Kunder, Brian Chaboyer, Andrew Layden Jan 2010

The Determination Of Reddening From Intrinsic Vr Colors Of Rr Lyrae Stars, Andrea Kunder, Brian Chaboyer, Andrew Layden

Dartmouth Scholarship

New R-band observations of 21 local field RR Lyrae variable stars are used to explore the reliability of minimum light (V – R) colors as a tool for measuring interstellar reddening. For each star, R-band intensity mean magnitudes and light amplitudes are presented. Corresponding V-band light curves from the literature are supplemented with the new photometry, and (V – R) colors at minimum light are determined for a subset of these stars as well as for other stars in the literature. Two different definitions of minimum light color are examined, one which uses …

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The Acs Survey Of Galactic Globular Clusters. Viii. Effects Of Environment On Globular Cluster Global Mass Functions, Nathaniel E. Q. Paust, I. Neill Reid, Giampaolo Piotto, Antonio Aparicio, Jay Anderson, Ata Sarajedini, Luigi R. Bedin, Brian Chaboyer Jan 2010

The Acs Survey Of Galactic Globular Clusters. Viii. Effects Of Environment On Globular Cluster Global Mass Functions, Nathaniel E. Q. Paust, I. Neill Reid, Giampaolo Piotto, Antonio Aparicio, Jay Anderson, Ata Sarajedini, Luigi R. Bedin, Brian Chaboyer

Dartmouth Scholarship

We have used observations obtained as part of the Hubble Space Telescope/ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters to construct global present-day mass functions for 17 globular clusters utilizing multi-mass King models to extrapolate from our observations to the global cluster behavior. The global present-day mass functions for these clusters are well matched by power laws from the turnoff, ≈0.8 M ☉, to 0.2-0.3 M ☉ on the lower main sequence. The slopes of those power-law fits, α, have been correlated with an extensive set of intrinsic and extrinsic cluster properties to investigate which parameters may influence the form …

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Deriving An X-Ray Luminosity Function Of Dwarf Novae Based On Parallax Measurements, K. Byckling, K. Mukai, J. R. Thorstensen, J. P. Osborne Jan 2010

Deriving An X-Ray Luminosity Function Of Dwarf Novae Based On Parallax Measurements, K. Byckling, K. Mukai, J. R. Thorstensen, J. P. Osborne

Dartmouth Scholarship

We have derived an X-ray luminosity function using parallax-based distance measurements of a set of 12 dwarf novae, consisting of Suzaku, XMM-Newton and ASCA observations. The shape of the X-ray luminosity function obtained is the most accurate to date, and the luminosities of our sample are concentrated between ~10^{30}-10^{31} erg s^{-1}, lower than previous measurements of X-ray luminosity functions of dwarf novae. Based on the integrated X-ray luminosity function, the sample becomes more incomplete below ~3 x 10^{30} erg s^{-1} than it is above this luminosity limit, and the sample is dominated by X-ray bright dwarf novae. The total integrated …

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