Physics Commons^™

An Introduction To The Veritas Observatory, Alexander Biddle, Ian Kuhl, Jingze (Justin) Zhou, Avery Archer

Annual Student Research Poster Session

Located at the base of Mount Hopkins, Arizona, at an elevation of approximately 4200 feet, the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) is a ground-based gamma ray observatory containing four Cherenkov telescopes designed to detect very high energy gamma rays with energies ranging from 100GeV to 10TeV using the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique. In April 2007, VERITAS began successful operations with all four telescopes. As of today, over 15 years of data has been taken by the VERITAS array, stored in an archive of data, and used for a wide variety of research, publications, PhD theses, and conventions …

Analysis Of The Crab Nebula And Pulsar, Alexander Biddle, Ian Kuhl, Jingze (Justin) Zhou, Avery Archer

Annual Student Research Poster Session

Although the Crab Nebula is well understood, the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) still regularly observes the Crab's highest energy emissions. These emissions are used to calibrate the telescopes, further, document the system, and investigate the validity of physical models. Our research this summer is geared to analyze data from 2018-2022 to add to an ongoing research project investigating the long term variability of the Crab Nebula’s emission.

Cross Sections Of The 83rb (P,Γ)84sr And 84kr(P,Γ)85rb Reactions At Energies Characteristic Of The Astrophysical Γ Process, M. Williams, B. Davids, G. Lotay, N. Nishimura, T. Rauscher, S. A. Gillespie, M. Alcorta, Alan M. Amthor, G. C. Ball, S. S. Bhattacharjee, V. Bildstein, W. N. Catford, D. T. Doherty, N. E. Esker, A. B. Garnsworthy, G. Hackman, K. Hudson, A. Lennarz, C. Natzke, B. Olaizola, A. Psaltis, C. E. Svensson, J. Williams, D. Walter, D. Yates

Faculty Journal Articles

We have measured the cross section of the 83 Rb ( p , γ ) 84 Sr radiative capture reaction in inverse kinematics using a radioactive beam of 83 Rb at incident energies of 2.4 and 2.7 A MeV. Prior to the radioactive beam measurement, the 84 Kr ( p , γ ) 85 Rb radiative capture reaction was measured in inverse kinematics using a stable beam of 84 Kr at an incident energy of 2.7 A MeV. The effective relative kinetic energies of these measurements lie within the relevant energy window for the γ process in supernovae. The central …

Electromagnetic Radiation From A Spherical Static Current Source Coupled To Harmonic Axion Field, Railing Chang, Huai-Yi Xie, P. T. Leung

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The electromagnetic fields generated from a static current source on a spherical surface are calculated in the framework of axion electrodynamics to first order in the coupling parameter. Comparisons of the results are made with reference to various results obtained in conventional Maxwell electrodynamics, as well as previous results obtained for point magnetic dipole source coupled to harmonic axion fields. Distinct features from the results so obtained are highlighted for possible experimental probing of the axions via electromagnetic interactions. In particular, electromagnetic radiation from sources with strong magnetic field is studied which may enable the detection of a cosmic …

Dirac Dark Matter, Neutrino Masses, And Dark Baryogenesis, Diego Restrepo, Andrès Rivera, Walter Tangarife

Physics: Faculty Publications and Other Works

We present a gauged baryon number model as an example of models where all new fermions required to cancel out the anomalies help to solve phenomenological problems of the standard model (SM). Dark fermion doublets, along with the isosinglet charged fermions, in conjunction with a set of SM-singlet fermions, participate in the generation of small neutrino masses through the Dirac-dark Zee mechanism. The other SM-singlets explain the dark matter in the Universe, while their coupling to an inert singlet scalar is the source of the CP violation. In the presence of a strong first-order electroweak phase transition, this “dark” CP …

Deep Space And The Quantum Mechanical Case: A Study Of Stars To The First Bsu Direct Measurement Of A Singular Photon, Darius Desnoes

Honors Program Theses and Projects

While it is known that physics can be split into several different fields, it may be foreign to see how different fields of physics operate hand in hand with one another to solve complex problems. For instance, Maxwell’s equations involving E&M for the propagation of electro-magnetic waves can be used to understand light-based interferometry for astrophysics, which directly led to the creation of intensity-based interferometry. Eventually, the measurements and equations made by intensity-based interferometry would produce groundbreaking strides in quantum mechanics through the direct measurement of singular particles. An in-depth analysis of each of these connections and how they involved …

Physical Properties Of Brackett Emitters In The Apogee Dr17 Catalog, Elliott Khilfeh, Hunter Campbell, Kevin R. Covey, Marina Kounkel, Richard Ballentyne

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In the process of accumulating mass (accretion), young stars channel ionized gas from the protoplanetary disk to the stellar surface along magnetic field lines. Upon impacting the photosphere, the gas cools down, recombining and emitting hydrogen spectral lines. Measuring these emission lines allows us to determine the temperature and density of the gas in those accretion streams. This then enables us to test whether those parameters depend on the accretion rate. We present measurements of equivalent widths and line ratios for Brackett (Br) 11 – 20 lines for 3366 observations of 940 pre-main sequence stars observed with APOGEE as of …

Nnetfix: An Artificial Neural Network-Based Denoising Engine For Gravitational-Wave Signals, Kentaro Mogushi, Ryan Quitzow-James, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Instrumental and environmental transient noise bursts in gravitational-wave (GW) detectors, or glitches, may impair astrophysical observations by adversely affecting the sky localization and the parameter estimation of GW signals. Denoising of detector data is especially relevant during low-latency operations because electromagnetic follow-up of candidate detections requires accurate, rapid sky localization and inference of astrophysical sources. NNETFIX is a machine learning, artificial neural network-based algorithm designed to estimate the data containing a transient GW signal with an overlapping glitch as though the glitch was absent. The sky localization calculated from the denoised data may be significantly more accurate than the sky …

All-Sky Search In Early O3 Ligo Data For Continuous Gravitational-Wave Signals From Unknown Neutron Stars In Binary Systems, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, S. Abraham, F. Acernese, Teviet Creighton, Mario C. Diaz, Soma Mukherjee, Volker Quetschke, K. E. Ramirez, W. H. Wang

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Rapidly spinning neutron stars are promising sources of continuous gravitational waves. Detecting such a signal would allow probing of the physical properties of matter under extreme conditions. A significant fraction of the known pulsar population belongs to binary systems. Searching for unknown neutron stars in binary systems requires specialized algorithms to address unknown orbital frequency modulations. We present a search for continuous gravitational waves emitted by neutron stars in binary systems in early data from the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors using the semicoherent, GPU-accelerated, BinarySkyHough pipeline. The search analyzes the most sensitive frequency …

Discovering New Strong Gravitational Lenses In The Desi Legacy Imaging Surveys, Xiaosheng Huang, Christopher Storfer, A. Gu, V. Ravi, A. Pilon, W. Sheu, R. Venguswamy, S. Bankda, A. Dey, M. Landriau, D. Lang, A. Meisner, J. Moustakas, A. D. Myers, R. Sajith, E. F. Schlafly, D. J. Schlegel

Physics and Astronomy

We have conducted a search for new strong gravitational lensing systems in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Legacy Imaging Surveys’ Data Release 8. We use deep residual neural networks, building on previous work presented in Huang et al. (2020). These surveys together cover approximately one third of the sky visible from the northern hemisphere, reaching a z-band AB magnitude of ∼ 22.5. We compile a training sample that consists of known lensing systems as well as non-lenses in the Legacy Surveys and the Dark Energy Survey. After applying our trained neural networks to the survey data, we visually inspect and …

Gw170817: Implications For The Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background From Compact Binary Coalescences, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaborations have announced the event GW170817, the first detection of gravitational waves from the coalescence of two neutron stars. The merger rate of binary neutron stars estimated from this event suggests that distant, unresolvable binary neutron stars create a significant astrophysical stochastic gravitational-wave background. The binary neutron star component will add to the contribution from binary black holes, increasing the amplitude of the total astrophysical background relative to previous expectations. In the Advanced LIGO-Virgo frequency band most sensitive to stochastic backgrounds (near 25 Hz), we predict a total astrophysical background with amplitude Ω_GW( …

Gw170817: Observation Of Gravitational Waves From A Binary Neutron Star Inspiral, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

On August 17, 2017 at 12-41:04 UTC the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors made their first observation of a binary neutron star inspiral. The signal, GW170817, was detected with a combined signal-to-noise ratio of 32.4 and a false-alarm-rate estimate of less than one per 8.0 x 10⁴ years. We infer the component masses of the binary to be between 0.86 and 2.26 M_⊙, in agreement with masses of known neutron stars. Restricting the component spins to the range inferred in binary neutron stars, we find the component masses to be in the range 1.17-1.60 M …

Upper Limits On The Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background From Advanced Ligo's First Observing Run, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

A wide variety of astrophysical and cosmological sources are expected to contribute to a stochastic gravitational-wave background. Following the observations of GW150914 and GW151226, the rate and mass of coalescing binary black holes appear to be greater than many previous expectations. As a result, the stochastic background from unresolved compact binary coalescences is expected to be particularly loud. We perform a search for the isotropic stochastic gravitational-wave background using data from Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory's (aLIGO) first observing run. The data display no evidence of a stochastic gravitational-wave signal. We constrain the dimensionless energy density of gravitational waves …

Binary Black Hole Mergers In The First Advanced Ligo Observing Run, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The first observational run of the Advanced LIGO detectors, from September 12, 2015 to January 19, 2016, saw the first detections of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers. In this paper, we present full results from a search for binary black hole merger signals with total masses up to 100M_⊙ and detailed implications from our observations of these systems. Our search, based on general-relativistic models of gravitational-wave signals from binary black hole systems, unambiguously identified two signals, GW150914 and GW151226, with a significance of greater than 5σ over the observing period. It also identified a third possible signal, …

A Multi-Wavelength Analysis Of Cold Evolving Interstellar Clouds, Mary Spraggs

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The interstellar medium (ISM) is the dynamic system of gas and dust that fills the space between the stars within galaxies. Due to its integral role in star formation and ga-lactic structure, it is important to understand how the ISM itself evolves over time, in-cluding the process of cooling and condensing required to form new stars. This work aims to constrain and better understand the physical properties of the cold ISM with sev-eral different types of data, including large surveys of neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) 21cm spectral line emission and absorption, carbon monoxide (CO) 2.6mm line emission, and multi-band infrared …

The Virtual Atomic And Molecular Data Centre (Vamdc) Consortium, Marie-Lise Dubernet, B. K. Antony, Ernesto Quintas-Sánchez, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Centre (VAMDC) Consortium is a worldwide consortium which federates atomic and molecular databases through an e-science infrastructure and an organisation to support this activity. About 90% of the inter-connected databases handle data that are used for the interpretation of astronomical spectra and for modelling in many fields of astrophysics. Recently the VAMDC Consortium has connected databases from the radiation damage and the plasma communities, as well as promoting the publication of data from Indian institutes. This paper describes how the VAMDC Consortium is organised for the optimal distribution of atomic and molecular data for …

A Determination Of The Gamma-Ray Flux And Photon Spectral Index Distributions Of Blazars From The Fermi-Lat 3lac, Jack Singal

Physics Faculty Publications

We present a determination of the distributions of gamma-ray photon flux – the so-called LogN–LogS relation – and photon spectral index for blazars, based on the third extragalactic source catalogue of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's Large Area Telescope, and considering the photon energy range from 100 MeV to 100 GeV. The data set consists of the 774 blazars in the so-called Clean sample detected with a greater than approximately 7σ detection threshold and located above ±20° Galactic latitude. We use non-parametric methods verified in previous works to reconstruct the intrinsic distributions from the observed ones …

Beam-Spin Asymmetries From Semi-Inclusive Pion Electroproduction, K. P. Adhikari, M. J. Amaryan, C. Hyde, S. Koirala, S. E. Kuhn, L. B. Weinstein, Et Al., The Clas Collaboration

Physics Faculty Publications

We have measured the moment A^{sin ɸ}_LU corresponding to the polarized electron beam-spin asymmetry in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering. A^{sin ɸ}_LU is a twist-3 quantity providing information about quark-gluon correlations. Data were taken with the CLAS Spectrometer at Jefferson Lab using a 5.498 GeV longitudinally polarized electron beam and an unpolarized liquid hydrogen target. All three pion channels (π⁺,π⁰ and π^-) were measured simultaneously over a large range of kinematics within the virtuality range Q² ≈ 1.0- 4.5 GeV². The observable was measured with better than 1% statistical …

Inflation In (Super-)Renormalizable Gravity, Fabio Briscese, Antonino Marcianò, Leonardo Modesto, Emmanuel N. Saridakis

Dartmouth Scholarship

We investigate a (super-)renormalizable and ghost-free theory of gravity, showing that under a natural (exponential) ansatz of the form factor and a suitable truncation it can give rise to the Starobinsky inflationary theory in cosmological frameworks, and thus offering a theoretical justification of its origin. We study the corresponding inflationary evolution and we examine the generation of curvature perturbations, adapting the f(R)-like equations in a symmetry-reduced FLRW metric. Furthermore, we analyze how the ultraviolet regime of a simply renormalizable and unitary theory of gravity is also compatible with the Starobinsky action, and hence we show that such a theory could …

Gauge Field Preheating At The End Of Inflation, J. Tate Deskins, John T. Giblin Jr., Robert R. Caldwell

Dartmouth Scholarship

Here we consider the possibility of preheating the Universe via the parametric amplification of a massless, U(1) abelian gauge field. We assume that the gauge field is coupled to the inflaton via a conformal factor with one free parameter. We present the results of high-resolution three-dimensional simulations of this model and show this mechanism efficiently preheats the Universe to a radiation-dominated final state.

Primordial Black Hole Evaporation And Spontaneous Dimensional Reduction, Jonas R. Mureika

Physics Faculty Works

Several different approaches to quantum gravity suggest the effective dimension of spacetime reduces from four to two near the Planck scale. In light of such evidence, this Letter re-examines the thermodynamics of primordial black holes (PBHs) in specific lower-dimensional gravitational models. Unlike in four dimensions, (1 + 1)-D black holes radiate with power P ∼ M²_BH, while it is known no (2+1)-D (BTZ) black holes can exist in a non-anti-de Sitter universe. This has important relevance to the PBH population size and distribution, and consequently on cosmological evolution scenarios. The number of PBHs that have evaporated to …

Information Content Of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, Marcelo Gleiser, Nikitas Stamatopoulos

Dartmouth Scholarship

We propose a measure of order in the context of nonequilibrium field theory and argue that this measure, which we call relative configurational entropy (RCE), may be used to quantify the emergence of coherent low-entropy configurations, such as time-dependent or time-independent topological and nontopological spatially extended structures. As an illustration, we investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking in three spatial dimensions. In particular, we focus on a model where a real scalar field, prepared initially in a symmetric thermal state, is quenched to a broken-symmetric state. For a certain range of initial temperatures, spatially localized, long-lived structures known …

Light-Bending Tests Of Lorentz Invariance, Quentin G. Bailey, Rhondale Tso

Physics & Astronomy - Prescott

Classical light-bending is investigated for weak gravitational fields in the presence of hypothetical local Lorentz violation. Using an effective field theory framework that describes general deviations from local Lorentz invariance, we derive a modified deflection angle for light passing near a massive body. The results include anisotropic effects not present for spherical sources in General Relativity as well as Weak Equivalence Principle violation. We develop an expression for the relative deflection of two distant stars that can be used to analyze data in past and future solar-system observations. The measurement sensitivities of such tests to coefficients for Lorentz violation are …

A Model Of So-Called "Zebra" Emissions In Solar Flare Radio Burst Continua, R. A. Treumann, R. Nakamura, W. Baumjohann

Dartmouth Scholarship

A simple mechanism for the generation of elec- tromagnetic “Zebra” pattern emissions is proposed. “Zebra” bursts are regularly spaced narrow-band radio emissions on the otherwise broadband radio continuum emitted by the ac- tive solar corona. The mechanism is based on the generation of an ion-ring distribution in a magnetic mirror geometry in the presence of a properly directed field-aligned electric po- tential field. Such ion-rings or ion-conics are well known from magnetospheric observations. Under coronal condi- tions they may become weakly relativistic. In this case the ion-cyclotron maser generates a number of electromagnetic ion-cyclotron harmonics which modulate the electron maser …

The Role Of Llnl's Fast Calibration Facility In Diagnosing Nif Fusion Plasmas, Joshua G. Thompson, Carey Scott, Greg V. Brown

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Fusion and Astrophysics (FAST) Calibration and Diagnostic Facility uses the original Electron Beam Ion Trap (EBIT-I) to profile x-ray filters that are used in the Dante Soft X-Ray Diagnostic at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). FAST has an advantage over any other facility not only for its high accuracy, but also for its proximity to NIF in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). This makes for highly accurate and near-instantaneous filter calibration turnover.

EBIT-I was first constructed to create, trap, and observe static highly charged ions (HCIs) and conduct experimental astrophysics (creating an x-ray spectroscopy catalogue of ions). To …

Laboratory Astrophysics: Using Ebit Measurements To Interpret High Resolution Spectra From Celestial Sources, Carey Scott, Joshua Thompson, N. Hell, Greg V. Brown

STAR Program Research Presentations

Astrophysicists use radiation to investigate the physics controlling a variety of celestial sources, including stellar atmospheres, black holes, and binary systems. By measuring the spectrum of the emitted radiation, astrophysicists can determine a source’s temperature and composition. Accurate atomic data are needed for reliably interpreting these spectra. Here we present an overview of how LLNL’s EBIT facility is used to put the atomic data on sound footing for use by the high energy astrophysics community.

Examining Type Ia Supernova Progenitors From Local Event Rates, Schuyler Wolff

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

We present the recalculation of the rates of supernovae in local, low redshift (z ≤ 0.1) from the Nearby Galaxies Supernovae Search Project (Strolger, 2003) using an improved baseline designed to maximize SNe yield. Approximately 15 additional SNe of various types and ages have been discovered from the dataset and added to the 42 SNe already detected. This sample is sufficient to obtain an accurate rate of SNe in the local universe. The rates are weighted by volume, total light, and host galaxy type. Further spectroscopic data for the progenitor galaxies of each event will allow us to compare the …

Lorentz-Violating Gravitoelectromagnetism, Quentin G. Bailey

Physics & Astronomy - Prescott

The well-known analogy between a special limit of general relativity and electromagnetism is explored in the context of the Lorentz-violating standard-model extension. An analogy is developed for the minimal standard-model extension that connects a limit of the CPT-even component of the electromagnetic sector to the gravitational sector. We show that components of the post-Newtonian metric can be directly obtained from solutions to the electromagnetic sector. The method is illustrated with specific examples including static and rotating sources. Some unconventional effects that arise for Lorentz-violating electrostatics and magnetostatics have an analog in Lorentz-violating post-Newtonian gravity. In particular, we show that even …

Lorentz Violation With An Antisymmetric Tensor, Brett Altschul, Quentin G. Bailey, V. Alan Kostelecký

Physics & Astronomy - Prescott

Field theories with spontaneous Lorentz violation involving an antisymmetric 2-tensor are studied. A general action including nonminimal gravitational couplings is constructed, and features of the Nambu- Goldstone and massive modes are discussed. Minimal models in Minkowski spacetime exhibit dualities with Lorentz-violating vector and scalar theories. The post-Newtonian expansion for nonminimal models in Riemann spacetime involves qualitatively new features, including the absence of an isotropic limit. Certain interactions producing stable Lorentz-violating theories in Minkowski spacetime solve the renormalization-group equations in the tadpole approximation.

Time-Delay And Doppler Tests Of The Lorentz Symmetry Of Gravity, Quentin G. Bailey

Physics & Astronomy - Prescott

Modifications to the classic time-delay effect and Doppler shift in general relativity (GR) are studied in the context of the Lorentz-violating standard-model extension (SME). We derive the leading Lorentz- violating corrections to the time-delay and Doppler shift signals, for a light ray passing near a massive body. It is demonstrated that anisotropic coefficients for Lorentz violation control a time-dependent behavior of these signals that is qualitatively different from the conventional case in GR. Estimates of sensitivities to gravity-sector coefficients in the SME are given for current and future experiments, including the recent Cassini solar conjunction experiment.