Search results for "010303 astronomy & astrophysics"
showing 10 items of 1094 documents
Global Frequency and Geographical Distribution of Nighttime Streamer Corona Discharges (BLUEs) in Thunderclouds
2021
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
The Impact of the Mass Spectrum of Lenses in Quasar Microlensing Studies. Constraints on a Mixed Population of Primordial Black Holes and Stars
2020
We show that quasar microlensing magnification statistics induced by a population of point microlenses distributed according to a mass-spectrum can be very well approximated by that of a single-mass, "monochromatic", population. When the spatial resolution (physically defined by the source size) is small as compared with the Einstein radius, the mass of the monochromatic population matches the geometric mean of the mass-spectrum. Otherwise, the best-fit mass can be larger. Taking into account the degeneracy with the geometric mean, the interpretation of quasar microlensing observations under the hypothesis of a mixed population of primordial black holes and stars, makes the existence of a s…
Studies of Relativistic Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei with SKA
2014
Relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei (AGN) are among the most powerful astrophysical objects discovered to date. Indeed, jetted AGN studies have been considered a prominent science case for SKA, and were included in several different chapters of the previous SKA Science Book (Carilli & Rawlings 2004). Most of the fundamental questions about the physics of relativistic jets still remain unanswered, and await high-sensitivity radio instruments such as SKA to solve them. These questions will be addressed specially through analysis of the massive data sets arising from the deep, all-sky surveys (both total and polarimetric flux) from SKA1. Wide-field very-long-baseline-interferometri…
Neutral hydrogen in galaxy clusters: impact of AGN feedback and implications for intensity mapping
2015
By means of zoom-in hydrodynamic simulations we quantify the amount of neutral hydrogen (HI) hosted by groups and clusters of galaxies. Our simulations, which are based on an improved formulation of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), include radiative cooling, star formation, metal enrichment and supernova feedback, and can be split in two different groups, depending on whether feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is turned on or off. Simulations are analyzed to account for HI self-shielding and the presence of molecular hydrogen. We find that the mass in neutral hydrogen of dark matter halos monotonically increases with the halo mass and can be well described by a power-law of th…
MOJAVE: Monitoring of Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei with VLBA Experiments. VI. Kinematics Analysis of a Complete Sample of Blazar Jets
2009
We discuss the jet kinematics of a complete flux-density-limited sample of 135 radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) resulting from a 13 year program to investigate the structure and evolution of parsec-scale jet phenomena. Our analysis is based on new 2 cm Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) images obtained between 2002 and 2007, but includes our previously published observations made at the same wavelength, and is supplemented by VLBA archive data. In all, we have used 2424 images spanning the years 1994-2007 to study and determine the motions of 526 separate jet features in 127 jets. The data quality and temporal coverage (a median of 15 epochs per source) of this complete AGN jet sample r…
ELDAR, a new method to identify AGN in multi-filter surveys: the ALHAMBRA test case
2017
We present ELDAR, a new method that exploits the potential of medium- and narrow-band filter surveys to securely identify active galactic nuclei (AGN) and determine their redshifts. Our methodology improves on traditional approaches by looking for AGN emission lines expected to be identified against the continuum, thanks to the width of the filters. To assess its performance, we apply ELDAR to the data of the ALHAMBRA (Advance Large Homogeneous Area Medium Band Redshift Astronomical) survey, which covered an effective area of 2.38 deg2 with 20 contiguous medium-band optical filters down to F814W ≃ 24.5. Using two different configurations of ELDAR in which we require the detection of at lea…
Pressure of the hot gas in simulations of galaxy clusters
2016
We analyze the radial pressure profiles, the ICM clumping factor and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) scaling relations of a sample of simulated galaxy clusters and groups identified in a set of hydrodynamical simulations based on an updated version of the TreePM-SPH GADGET-3 code. Three different sets of simulations are performed: the first assumes non-radiative physics, the others include, among other processes, AGN and/or stellar feedback. Our results are analyzed as a function of redshift, ICM physics, cluster mass and cluster cool-coreness or dynamical state. In general, the mean pressure profiles obtained for our sample of groups and clusters show a good agreement with X-ray and SZ observa…
ON the NATURE of HYDROSTATIC EQUILIBRIUM in GALAXY CLUSTERS
2016
In this paper we investigate the level of hydrostatic equilibrium (HE) in the intra-cluster medium of simulated galaxy clusters, extracted from state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamical simulations performed with the Smoothed-Particle-Hydrodynamic code GADGET-3. These simulations include several physical processes, among which stellar and AGN feedback, and have been performed with an improved version of the code that allows for a better description of hydrodynamical instabilities and gas mixing processes. Evaluating the radial balance between the gravitational and hydrodynamical forces, via the gas accelerations generated, we effectively examine the level of HE in every object of the sam…
Limits on the Mass and Abundance of Primordial Black Holes from Quasar Gravitational Microlensing
2017
The idea that dark matter can be made of intermediate-mass primordial black holes in the $10M_\odot \lesssim M \lesssim 200M_\odot$ range has recently been reconsidered, particularly in the light of the detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment. The existence of even a small fraction of dark matter in black holes should nevertheless result in noticeable quasar gravitational microlensing. Quasar microlensing is sensitive to any type of compact objects in the lens galaxy, to their abundance, and to their mass. We have analyzed optical and X-ray microlensing data from 24 gravitationally lensed quasars to estimate the abundance of compact objects in a very wide range of masses. We…
THE MISSING LINK: MERGING NEUTRON STARS NATURALLY PRODUCE JET-LIKE STRUCTURES AND CAN POWER SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS
2011
Short Gamma-Ray Bursts (SGRBs) are among the most luminous explosions in the universe, releasing in less than one second the energy emitted by our Galaxy over one year. Despite decades of observations, the nature of their "central-engine" remains unknown. Considering a binary of magnetized neutron stars and solving Einstein equations, we show that their merger results in a rapidly spinning black hole surrounded by a hot and highly magnetized torus. Lasting over 35 ms and much longer than previous simulations, our study reveals that magnetohydrodynamical instabilities amplify an initially turbulent magnetic field of ~ 10^{12} G to produce an ordered poloidal field of ~ 10^{15} G along the bl…