118903790
Extent of Excess Far-Infrared Emission around Luminosity Class III Stars
With the Infrared Space Observatory, we conducted 3 ) 3 pixel imaging photometry of 12 luminosity class III stars, which were previously presumed to have dust particles around them, at far-infrared wave- lengths (60 and 90 km). Eleven out of 12 targets show a peak of excess (above photosphere) far-infrared emission at the location of the star, implying that the dust particles are truly associated with stars. To estimate the size of the excess emission source, the —ux ratio of center to boundary pixels of the 3 ) 3 array was examined. The radius of the dust emission is found to be D3000 to D10,000 AU for a thin shell distribution and D5000 to D25,000 AU for a uniform distribution. We consider three models for the origin of the dust: disintegration of comets, sporadic dust ejection from the star, and emission from nearby interstellar cirrus. The data seem to rule out the —rst model (as far as the ii Kuiper beltlike ˇˇ particles are assumed to be large blackbody grains) but do not enable us to choose between the other two models. Subject headings: circumstellar matterinfrared: starsstars: late-type Zuckerman, Kim, & Liu (1995) correlated the Bright Star Catalogue (Hoffleit & Warren 1991) and the Michigan Spectral Catalogue (Houk, Cowley, & Smith-Moore 1975- 1988) with the IRAS catalogs to determine which, if any, luminosity class III giant stars (—rst-ascent red giants) have associated circumstellar dust particles that radiate at far- infrared (far-IR) wavelengths. Of more than 40,000 class III giant stars in the two catalogs, they found that perhaps 300 have associated dust. The presence of particulate material near premain- sequence, main-sequence, asymptotic giant branch, and supergiant stars may be accounted for in rather straight- forward ways (remnants from the star formation for the for- mer two and mass loss for the latter two). But, there is no obvious way to produce and retain large amounts of dust near —rst-ascent giant stars, which are thought to be too old to still possess much leftover material and insufficiently evolved to have lost a signi—cant amount of their mass. However, one may conjecture that the presence of dust around —rst-ascent giants may involve one or more of the following phenomena: mass loss, binarity, planetary sys- tems, and evaporation of Kuiper belt material. Recently, Jura (1999) has analyzed three models for the dust around eight —rst-ascent giant stars: orbiting dust resulting from the disintegration of comets located in extrasolar analogs of the Kuiper belt, dust sporadically ejected from the star, and emission from particles in the interstellar medium that are accidentally near the star, the ii cirrus hot spot.ˇˇ Among the Zuckerman et al. (1995) list of 100, we observed 12 —rst-ascent giant stars with the PHOT instru- ment of the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO)2 to determine if the excess far-IR emission is truly associated with the stars and to estimate the size of the region that produces the excess far-IR emission.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
17174387
N-flation: Observable predictions from the random matrix mass spectrum
We carry out numerical investigations of the perturbations in N-flation models where the mass spectrum is generated by random matrix theory. The tensor-to-scalar ratio and non-Gaussianity are already known to take the single-field values, and so the density perturbation spectral index is the main parameter of interest. We study several types of random field initial conditions and compute the spectral index as a function of mass spectrum parameters. Comparison with microwave anisotropy data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe shows that the model is currently viable in the majority of its parameter space.
119097342
Torsion as a dynamic degree of freedom of quantum gravity
The gauge approach to gravity based on the local Lorentz group with a general independent affine connection A?cd is developed. We consider SO(1, 3) gauge theory with a Lagrangian quadratic in curvature as a simple model of quantum gravity. The torsion is proposed to represent a dynamic degree of freedom of quantum gravity at scales above the Planckian energy. The Einstein?Hilbert theory is induced as an effective theory due to quantum corrections of torsion via generating a stable gravito-magnetic condensate. We conjecture that torsion possesses an intrinsic quantum nature and can be confined.
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.
17082200
N-flation: Multifield inflationary dynamics and perturbations
We carry out numerical investigations of the dynamics and perturbations in the Nflation model of Dimopoulos et al. (2005). This model features large numbers of scalar fields with different masses, which can cooperate to drive inflation according to the assisted inflation mechanism. We extend previous work to include random initial conditions for the scalar fields, and explore the predictions for density perturbations and the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The tensor-to-scalar ratio depends only on the number of e-foldings and is independent of the number of fields, their masses, and their initial conditions. It therefore always has the same value as for a single massive field. By contrast, the scalar spectral index has significant dependence on model parameters. While normally multi-field inflation models make predictions for observable quantities which depend also on the unknown field initial conditions, we find evidence of a ‘thermodynamic’ regime whereby the predicted spectral index becomes independent of initial conditions if there are enough fields. Only in parts of parameter space where the mass spectrum of the fields is extremely densely packed is the model capable of satisfying the tight observational constraints from WMAP3 observations.
9591012
ON THE GAUGED NONCOMPACT SPIN SYSTEM
We examine classical and quantum aspects of the planar noncompact spin system coupled with Chern–Simons gauge field in the presence of background charge. We first define our classical spin system as nonrelativistic nonlinear sigma model in which the order parameter spin takes value in the noncompact manifold ℳ= SU(1, 1)/U(1). Although the naive model does not allow any finite energy self-dual solitons, it is shown that the gauged system admits static Bogomol'nyi solitons with finite energy whose rotationally symmetric soliton solutions are analyzed in detail. We also discuss the large spin limit in which the self-dual equation reduces to the well-known gauged nonlinear Schrodinger model or Abelian Higgs model, depending on the choice of the background charge term. Then, we perform quantization of the model. We find that the spin algebra satisfies anomalous commutation relations, and the system is a field theoretic realization of the anyons.