Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Tests Of Lorentz Symmetry In The Gravitational Sector, Aurélien Hees, Quentin G. Bailey, Adrien Bourgoin, Hélène Pihan-Le Bars, Christine Guerlin, Christophe Le Poncin-Lafitte Dec 2016

Tests Of Lorentz Symmetry In The Gravitational Sector, Aurélien Hees, Quentin G. Bailey, Adrien Bourgoin, Hélène Pihan-Le Bars, Christine Guerlin, Christophe Le Poncin-Lafitte

Publications

Lorentz symmetry is one of the pillars of both General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics. Motivated by ideas about quantum gravity, unification theories and violations of CPT symmetry, a significant effort has been put the last decades into testing Lorentz symmetry. This review focuses on Lorentz symmetry tests performed in the gravitational sector. We briefly review the basics of the pure gravitational sector of the Standard-Model Extension (SME) framework, a formalism developed in order to systematically parametrize hypothetical violations of the Lorentz invariance. Furthermore, we discuss the latest constraints obtained within this formalism including analyses of the …


Perturbations Of Spherical Stellar Systems During Flyby Encounters, E Vesperini, Md Weinberg Jan 2000

Perturbations Of Spherical Stellar Systems During Flyby Encounters, E Vesperini, Md Weinberg

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

We study the internal response of a galaxy to an unbound encounter and present a survey of orbital parameters covering typical encounters in different galactic environments. Overall, we conclude that relatively weak encounters by low-mass interloping galaxies can cause observable distortions in the primaries. The resulting asymmetries may persist long after the interloper is evident. We focus our attention on the production of structure in dark halos and in cluster elliptical galaxies. Any distortion produced in a dark halo can distort the embedded stellar disk, possibly leading to the formation of lopsided and warped disks. We show that distant encounters …


Effect Of The Milky Way On Magellanic Cloud Structure, Md Weinberg Jan 2000

Effect Of The Milky Way On Magellanic Cloud Structure, Md Weinberg

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

A combination of analytic models and n-body simulations implies that the structural evolution of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is dominated by its dynamical interaction with the Milky Way. Although expected at some level, the scope of the involvement has significant observational consequences. First, LMC disk orbits are torqued out of the disk plane, thickening the disk and populating a spheroid. The torque results from direct forcing by the Milky Way tide and, indirectly, from the drag between the LMC disk and its halo resulting from the induced precession of the LMC disk. The latter is a newly reported mechanism …


An Adaptive Algorithm For N-Body Field Expansions, Md Weinberg Jan 1999

An Adaptive Algorithm For N-Body Field Expansions, Md Weinberg

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

An expansion of a density field or particle distribution in basis functions that solve the Poisson equation both provides an easily parallelized N-body force algorithm and simplifies perturbation theories. The expansion converges quickly and provides the highest computational advantage if the lowest order potential-density pair in the basis looks like the unperturbed galaxy or stellar system. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of such bases in the literature that limit this advantage. This paper presents an algorithm for deriving these bases to match a wide variety of galaxy models. The method is based on efficient numerical solution of the Sturm-Liouville …


Fluctuations In Finite-N Equilibrium Stellar Systems, Md Weinberg Jan 1998

Fluctuations In Finite-N Equilibrium Stellar Systems, Md Weinberg

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

Gravitational amplification of Poisson noise in stellar systems is important on large scales. For example, it increases the dipole noise power by roughly a factor of 6 and the quadrupole noise by 50 per cent for a King model profile. The dipole noise is amplified by a factor of 15 for the core-free Hernquist model. The predictions are computed by summing over the wakes caused by each star in the system — the dressed-particle formalism of Rostoker & Rosenbluth — and are demonstrated by N-body simulation. This result implies that a collisionless N-body simulation is impossible; the fluctuation noise which …


The Peculiar Motions Of Early‐Type Galaxies In Two Distant Regions. Iv. The Photometric Fitting Procedure, R. P. Saglia, Edmund Bertschinger, G. Baggley, David Burstein, Matthew Colless, Roger L. Davies, Robert K. Mcmahan Jr., Gary Wegner Mar 1997

The Peculiar Motions Of Early‐Type Galaxies In Two Distant Regions. Iv. The Photometric Fitting Procedure, R. P. Saglia, Edmund Bertschinger, G. Baggley, David Burstein, Matthew Colless, Roger L. Davies, Robert K. Mcmahan Jr., Gary Wegner

Dartmouth Scholarship

The EFAR project is a study of 736 candidate early-type galaxies in 84 clusters lying in two regions toward Hercules-Corona Borealis and Perseus-Cetus at distances cz ≈ 6000-15,000 km s-1. In this paper we describe a new method of galaxy photometry adopted to derive the photometric parameters of the EFAR galaxies. The algorithm fits the circularized surface brightness profiles as the sum of two seeing-convolved components, an R1/4 and an exponential law. This approach allows us to fit the large variety of luminosity profiles displayed by the EFAR galaxies homogeneously and to derive (for at least a …


The Effect Of The Galactic Spheroid On Globular Cluster Evolution, C Murali, Md Weinberg Jan 1997

The Effect Of The Galactic Spheroid On Globular Cluster Evolution, C Murali, Md Weinberg

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

We study the combined effects of relaxation, tidal heating and binary heating on globular cluster evolution, exploring the physical consequences of external effects and examining evolutionary trends in the MilkyWay population. Our analysis demonstrates that heating on circular and low-eccentricity orbits can dominate cluster evolution. The results also predict rapid evolution on eccentric orbits either due to strong relaxation caused by the high densities needed for tidal limitation or due to efficient bulge shocking of low density clusters. The combination of effects leads to strong evolution of the population as a whole. For example, within the solar circle, tidally-limited 105M⊙ …


Basic Astronomy Labs, Terry L. Smith, Michael D. Reynolds, Jay S. Huebner Jan 1996

Basic Astronomy Labs, Terry L. Smith, Michael D. Reynolds, Jay S. Huebner

Physics Faculty Research and Scholarship

Providing the tools and know-how to apply the principles of astronomy first-hand, these 43 laboratory exercises each contain an introduction that clearly shows budding astronomers why the particular topic of that lab is of interest and relevant to astronomy. About one-third of the exercises are devoted solely to observation, and no mathematics is required beyond simple high school algebra and trigonometry.Organizes exercises into six major topics—sky, optics and spectroscopy, celestial mechanics, solar system, stellar properties, and exploration and other topics—providing clear outlines of what is involved in the exercise, its purpose, and what procedures and apparatus are to be used. …