17518170
An Extended Star Formation History for the Galactic Center from Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS Observations
We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Near-Infrared Camera and Multiobject Spectrometer (NICMOS) observations as evidence that continuous star formation has created much of the central stellar cusp of the Galaxy. The data are the deepest ever obtained for a Galactic center population, being more than 50% complete for mF205W < 19.3, or initial stellar masses 2 M☉. We use Geneva and Padova stellar evolution models to produce synthetic luminosity functions for burst and continuous star formation scenarios, finding that the observations are fitted best by continuous star formation at a rate that is consistent with the recent star formation activity that produced the three massive young clusters in the central 50 pc. Further, it is not possible to fit the observations with ancient burst models, such as would be appropriate for an old population like that in Baade's window or NGC 6528.
17473739
Stellar collisions and mergers in the galactic center
Stars are most likely to merge or collide in regions of the highest stellar densities, and our own Galactic Center contains many stars packed into a relatively small volume -- even the ambient stellar number density in the central 50 pc is quite high, ~10^3 stars pc^{-3}. More striking, the three compact young clusters in this region have central densities as high as 10^6 stars pc^{-3}. We discuss these extreme environments and the possibility that stellar mergers and collisions have recently occured there. In particular, we predict that at least one massive star in the Arches cluster has already experienced a stellar merger in its short lifetime. Further, the Pistol Star, in the nearby Quintuplet cluster, might owe its apparent relative youth to a rejuvinating stellar merger. Finally, the apparently young stars in the central arcsecond could be products of either collisions, inducing atmospheric stripping, or mergers.
119489565
Core-Collapse Times of Two-Component Clusters
We examine the corecollapse times of isolated, two-mass-component star clusters using Fokker-Planck models. With initial condition of Plummer models, we find that the corecollapse times of clusters with M_1/M_2 >> 1 are well correlated with (N_1/N_2)^{1/2}(m_1/m_2)^{2} t_{rh}, where M_1/M_2 and m_1/m_2 are the light to heavy component total and individual mass ratios, respectively, N_1/N_2 is the number ratio, and t_{rh} is the initial half-mass relaxation time scale. We also find two-component cluster parameters that best match multi-component (thus more realistic) clusters with power-law mass functions.
119456102
Theoretical isochrones with extinction in the K band. II. J - K versus K
ABSTRACT We calculate theoretical isochrones in a consistent way for five filter pairs near the J and K band atmospheric windows ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $J-K$ \end{document} , \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcom...
118942465
The Arches Cluster Mass Function
We have analyzed H- and Ks-band images of the Arches cluster obtained using the NIRC2 instrument on Keck with the laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO) system. With the help of the LGS AO system, we were able to obtain the deepest ever photometry for this cluster and its neighborhood and derive the background-subtracted present-day mass function down to 1.3 M☉ for the 5''-9'' annulus of the cluster. We find that the previously reported turnover at 6 M☉ is simply due to a local bump in the mass function (MF), and that the MF continues to increase down to our 50% completeness limit (1.3 M☉) with a power-law exponent of Γ = -0.91 for the mass range of 1.3 < M/M☉ < 50. Our numerical calculations for the evolution of the Arches cluster show that the Γ-values for our annulus increase by 0.1-0.2 during the lifetime of the cluster and thus suggest that the Arches cluster initially had Γ of -1.0 to 1.1, which is only slightly shallower than the Salpeter value.
13909300
The Stream-Stream Collision after the Tidal Disruption of a Star around a Massive Black Hole
A star can be tidally disrupted around a massive black hole. It is known that the debris forms a precessing stream, which may collide with itself. The stream collision is a key process in determining the subsequent evolution of the stellar debris: if the orbital energy is efficiently dissipated, the debris will eventually form a circular disk (or torus). In this paper, we have numerically studied such a stream collision resulting from the encounter between a 106 M☉ black hole and a 1 M☉ normal star with a pericenter radius of 100 R☉. A simple treatment for radiative cooling has been adopted for both optically thick and optically thin regions. We have found that approximately 10% to 15% of the initial kinetic energy of the streams is converted into thermal energy during the collision. The spread in angular momentum of the incoming stream is increased by a factor of 2 to 3, and such an increase, together with the decrease in kinetic energy, significantly helps the circularization process. The initial luminosity burst produced by the collision may reach as high as 1041 ergs s-1 in 104 s, after which the luminosity increases again (but slowly this time) to a steady value of a few 1040 ergs s-1 in a few times 105 s. The radiation from the system is expected to be close to Planckian, with an effective temperature of ~105 K.
119231020
Maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills in five dimensions in light-cone superspace
We formulate maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in five dimensions in light-cone superspace. The light-cone Hamiltonian is of the quadratic form and the theory can be understood as an oxidation of the $ \mathcal{N} = 4 $ Super Yang-Mills Theory in four dimensions. We specifically study three-point counterterms and show how these counterterms vanish on-shell. This study is a preliminary to set up the technique in order to study possible four-point counterterms.
119303854
Time and Amplitude of Afterpulse Measured with a Large Size Photomultiplier Tube
Abstract We have studied the afterpulse of a hemispherical photomultiplier tube for an upcoming reactor neutrino experiment. The timing, the amplitude, and the rate of the afterpulse for a 10 in. photomultiplier tube were measured with a 400 MHz FADC up to 16 μ s time window after the initial signal generated by an LED light pulse. The time and amplitude correlation of the afterpulse shows several distinctive groups. We describe the dependencies of the afterpulse on the applied high voltage and the amplitude of the main light pulse. The present data could shed light upon the general mechanism of the afterpulse.
17211178
N-flation: Non-Gaussianity in the horizon-crossing approximation
We analyze the cosmic nongaussianity produced in inflation models with multiple uncoupled fields with monomial potentials, such as Nflation. Using the horizon-crossing approximation to compute the nongaussianity, we show that when each field has the same form of potential, the prediction is independent the number of fields, their initial conditions, and the spectrum of masses/couplings. It depends only on the number of $e$-foldings after the horizon crossing of observable perturbations. We also provide a further generalization to the case where the fields can have monomial potentials with different powers. Unless the horizon-crossing approximation is substantially violated, the predicted nongaussianity is too small to ever be observed.
18632800
Soliton and Domain Wall in the Self-Dual Ferromagnet
We perform the dimensional reduction of a uniaxial planar ferromagnet system coupled to an Abelian Chern-Simons gauge field in the self-dual limit, and investigate the soliton and domain wall solutions of the emerging 1+1 dimensional self-dual system. This self-dual ferromagnet is the usual inhomogeneous Landau-Lifshitz system with an extra non-local term supplementing the anisotropic potential energy. The Hamiltonian is Bogomol’nyi bounded from below and has four adjusting parameters. The Bogomol’nyi equation is described in detail in analogy with the Newtonian equation of motion and its numerical solution is presented. PACS codes: 11.10.Lm, 11.27.+d
33056442
Observation of reactor electron antineutrinos disappearance in the RENO experiment.
The RENO experiment has observed the disappearance of reactor electron antineutrinos, consistent with neutrino oscillations, with a significance of 4.9 standard deviations. Antineutrinos from six 2.8  GW(th) reactors at the Yonggwang Nuclear Power Plant in Korea, are detected by two identical detectors located at 294 and 1383 m, respectively, from the reactor array center. In the 229 d data-taking period between 11 August 2011 and 26 March 2012, the far (near) detector observed 17102 (154088) electron antineutrino candidate events with a background fraction of 5.5% (2.7%). The ratio of observed to expected numbers of antineutrinos in the far detector is 0.920±0.009(stat)±0.014(syst). From this deficit, we determine sin(2)2θ(13)=0.113±0.013(stat)±0.019(syst) based on a rate-only analysis.