692665
Discovery of superstrong, fading, iron line emission and double-peaked balmer lines of the galaxy sdss j095209.56+214313.3: The light echo of a huge flare
We report the discovery of superstrong, fading, high-ionization iron line emission in the galaxy SDSS J095209.56+214313.3 (SDSS J0952+2143 hereafter), which must have been caused by an X-ray outburst of large amplitude. SDSS J0952+2143 is unique in its strong multiwavelength variability; such a broadband emission-line and continuum response has not been observed before. The strong iron line emission is accompanied by unusual Balmer line emission with a broad base, narrow core, and double-peaked narrow horns, and strong He II emission. These lines, while strong in the SDSS spectrum taken in 2005, have faded away significantly in new spectra taken in 2007 December. Comparison of SDSS, 2MASS, GALEX, and follow-up GROND photometry reveals variability in the NUV, optical, and NIR band. Taken together, these unusual observations can be explained by a giant outburst in the EUV-X-ray band, detected even in the optical and NIR. The intense and variable iron, helium, and Balmer lines represent the "light echo" of the flare, as it traveled through circumnuclear material. The outburst may have been caused by the tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole. Spectroscopic surveys such as SDSS are well suited to detect emission-line light echoes of such rare flare events. Reverberation-mapping of these light echoes can then be used as a new and efficient probe of the physical conditions in the circumnuclear material in nonactive or active galaxies.
119218213
Four IRAC Sources with an Extremely Red H – [3.6] Color: Passive or Dusty Galaxies at z > 4.5?
We report the detection of four IRAC sources in the GOODS-South field with an extremely red color of H - [3.6] > 4.5. The four sources are not detected in the deep Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 H-band image with H-limit = 28.3 mag. We find that only three types of SED templates can produce such a red H -[3.6] color: a very dusty SED with the Calzetti extinction of A(V) = 16 mag at z = 0.8; a very dusty SED with the SMC extinction of AV = 8 mag at z = 2.0-2.2; and an 1 Gyr SSP with A(V) similar to 0.8 at z = 5.7. We argue that these sources are unlikely dusty galaxies at z 4.5 remains a possible solution for the 4 sources. At z > 4.5, these sources have stellar masses of log(M-*/M-circle dot) = 10.6-11.2. One source, ERS-1, is also a type-II X-ray QSO with L2-8 (keV) = 1.6 x 10(44) er gs(-1). One of the four sources is an X-ray QSO and another one is a HyperLIRG, suggesting a galaxy-merging scenario for the formation of these massive galaxies at high redshifts.
119247194
ON THE NATURE OF THE PROGENITOR OF THE Type Ia SN2011fe IN M101
The explosion of a Type Ia supernova, SN2011fe, in the nearby Pinwheel galaxy (M101 at 6.4 Mpc) provides an opportunity to study pre-explosion images and search for the progenitor, which should consist of a white dwarf (WD), possibly surrounded by an accretion disk, in orbit with another star. We report on our use of deep Chandra observations and Hubble Space Telescope observations to limit the luminosity and temperature of the pre-explosion WD. It is found that if the spectrum was a blackbody, then pre-SN WDs with steady nuclear burning of the highest possible temperatures and luminosities are excluded assuming moderate n{sub H} values, but values of kT between roughly 10 eV and 60 eV are permitted even if the WD was emitting at the Eddington luminosity. This allows the progenitor to be an accreting nuclear-burning WD with an expanded photosphere 4-100 times the WD itself, or a super-critically accreting WD blowing off an optically thick strong wind, or possibly a recurrent nova with luminosities an order of magnitude lower than Eddington. The observations are also consistent with a double degenerate scenario, or a spinning down WD that has been spun up by accretion from the donor.
16941003
From N M2's to N D2's
In this short note, we reduce the N=6, U(N)xU(N) Chern-Simons gauge theories to N=8, U(N) Yang-Mills gauge theories. This process corresponds to recovering the world-volume theory of N D2-branes from that of N M2-branes in an intermediate energy range. The supersymmetries are enhanced because in this limit the branes localize far away from the orbifold singularity. Our main scheme is exactly in accordance with Mukhi and Papageorgakis's earlier work, although the Higgs mechanism becomes trickier in the present case. We also speculate on applying the scheme to a large class of new Bagger-Lambert models more generally.
119235960
Note on Non-Gaussianities in Two-field Inflation
Two-field slow-roll inflation is the most conservative modification of a single-field model. The main motivations to study it are its entropic mode and non-Gaussianity. Several years ago, for a two-field model with additive separable potentials, Vemizzi and Wands invented an analytic method to estimate its non-Gaussianities. Later on, Choi et al. applied this method to the model with multiplicative separable potentials. In this note, we design a larger class of models whose non-Gaussianity can be estimated by the same method. Under some simplistic assumptions, roughly these models are unlikely able to generate a large non-Gaussianity. We look over some specific models of this class by scanning the full parameter space, but still no large non-Gaussianity appears in the slow-roll region. These models and scanning techniques would be useful for a future model hunt if observational evidence shows up for two-field inflation.
119300428
Why X(3915) is so narrow as a $\chi_{c0}(2P)$ state
New resonance X(3915) was identified as the charmonium $\chi_{c0}(2P)$ by BABAR Collaboration, but there seems still open question of this assignment: why its full width is so narrow? To answer this question, we calculate the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka (OZI) allowed strong decays $X(3915)\to D \bar D$, where X(3915) is assigned as a $\chi_{c0}(2P)$ state, and estimate its full width in the cooperating framework of $^3/!P_0^{}$ model and the Bethe-Salpeter (BS) method using the Mandelstam Formalism, during which non-perturbative QCD effects of the hadronic matrix elements are well considered by overlapping integral over the relativistic Salpeter wave functions of the initial and finial states. We find the node structure of $\chi_{c0}(2P)$ wave function resulting in the narrow width of X(3915) and show the dependence of the decay width on the variation of the initial mass of X(3915). We point out that the rate of $\frac{\Gamma(X(3915)\to D^+ D^-)}{\Gamma(X(3915)\to D^0 \bar D^0)}$ is crucial to confirm whether X(3915) is the $\chi_{c0}(2P)$ state or not.
118388877
Lepton-number violating four-body decays of heavy mesons
A bstractNeutrinoless hadron Lepton Number Violating (LNV) decays can be induced by virtual Majorana neutrino, which in turn indubitably show the Majorana nature of neutrinos. Many three-body LNV processes and Lepton Flavour Violating (LFV) processes have been studied extensively in theory and by experiment. As a supplement, we here study 75 four-body LNV (LFV) processes from heavy pseudoscalar B and D decays. Most of these processes have not been studied in theory and searched for in experiment, while they may have sizable decay rates. Since the four-body decay modes have the same vertexes and mixing parameters with three-body cases, so their branching fractions are comparable with the corresponding three-body decays. We calculate their decay widths and branching fractions with current bounds on heavy Majorana neutrino mixing parameters, and estimate some channels’ reconstruction events using the current experimental data from Belle.
119186452
Curvature and entropy perturbations in generalized gravity
We investigate the cosmological perturbations in generalized gravity, where the Ricci scalar and a scalar field are nonminimally coupled via an arbitrary function f({phi},R). In the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker background, by studying the linear perturbation theory, we separate the scalar-type perturbations into the curvature perturbation and the entropy perturbation, whose evolution equations are derived. Then we apply this framework to inflation. We consider the generalized slow-roll conditions and the quantization initial condition. Under these conditions, two special examples are studied analytically. One example is the case with no entropy perturbation. The other example is a model with the entropy perturbation large initially but decaying significantly after crossing the horizon.