118305953
Accretion, growth of supermassive black holes, and feedback in galaxy mergers
Super-Eddington accretion is very efficient in growing the mass of a black hole: in a fraction of the Eddington time its mass can grow to an arbitrary large value if the feedback effect is not taken into account. However, since super-Eddington accretion has a very low radiation efficiency, people have argued against it as a major process for the growth of the black holes in quasars since observations have constrained the average accretion efficiency of the black holes in quasars to be >rsim0.1. In this paper, we show that the observational constraint does not need to be violated if the black holes in quasars have undergone a two-phase growing process: with a short super-Eddington accretion process they get their masses inflated by a very large factor until the feedback process becomes important, then with a prolonged sub-Eddington accretion process they have their masses increased by a factor of >rsim 2. The overall average efficiency of this two-phase process is then >rsim 0.1, and the existence of black holes of masses ∼109 M⊙ by redshift 6 is easily explained. An observational test of the existence of the super-Eddington accretion phase is briefly discussed.
11909154
The X‐ray transient 080109 in NGC 2770: an X‐ray flash associated with a normal core‐collapse supernova
Although it is generally thought that long-duration gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) are associated with core-collapse supernovae (SNe), so far only four pairs of GRBs and SNe with firmly established connection have been found. All the four GRB-SNe belong to special class of Type Ic – called the broad-lined SNe indicative of a large explosion energy, suggesting that only a small fraction of SNe Ibc have GRBs associated with them. This scheme has been refreshed by the discovery of a bright X-ray transient in NGC 2770 on 2008 January 9, which was followed by a rather normal Type Ib SN 2008D. In this paper, I argue that the transient 080109 is an X-ray flash (XRF, the soft version of a GRB) because of the following evidence. (1) The transient cannot be interpreted as a SN shock breakout event. (2) The GRB X-ray flare interpretation is not supported by the high-energy observation. I then show that XRF 080109 satisfies the well-known relation between the isotropic-equivalent energy and the peak spectral energy for LGRBs, which highly strengthens the XRF interpretation. Finally, I point out that the peak spectral energy of XRF 080109 and the maximum bolometric luminosity of SN 2008D agree with the E γ, peak–LSN,max relationship of Li, strengthening the validity of the relationship. I speculate that events like XRF 080109 may occur at a rate comparable to SNe Ibc, and a soft X-ray telescope devoted to surveying for nearby X-ray flares will be very fruitful in discovering them.
11692409
Electromagnetic energy for a charged Kerr black hole in a uniform magnetic field
With the Komar mass formula we calculate the electromagnetic energy for a charged Kerr black hole in a uniform magnetic field. We find that the total electromagnetic energy takes the minimum when the Kerr black hole possesses a nonzero net charge $Q=2\ensuremath{\xi}{B}_{0}{J}_{H}$ where ${B}_{0}$ is the strength of the magnetic field, ${J}_{H}$ is the angular momentum of the black hole, and $\ensuremath{\xi}$ is a dimensionless parameter determined by the spin of the black hole. However, the Wald state with ${Q=2B}_{0}{J}_{H}$ does not minimize the electromagnetic energy.
10326293
New light on time machines: Against the chronology protection conjecture.
I construct a spacetime with closed timelike curves and without closed causal geodesics. There is a noncompactly generated Cauchy horizon separating the region with closed timelike curves from that without closed causal curves. This spacetime might be stable against the vacuum fluctuation of matter fields. Whether such a spacetime is stable against the vacuum fluctuation of a gravitational field is an open question.
39373169
Can the universe create itself
The question of first-cause has troubled philosophers and cosmologists alike. Now that it is apparent that our universe began in a Big Bang explosion, the question of what happened before the Big Bang arises. Inflation seems like a very promising answer, but as Borde and Vilenkin have shown, the inflationary state preceding the Big Bang must have had a beginning also. Ultimately, the difficult question seems to be how to make something out of nothing. This paper explores the idea that this is the wrong question --- that that is not how the Universe got here. Instead, we explore the idea of whether there is anything in the laws of physics that would prevent the Universe from creating itself. Because spacetimes can be curved and multiply connected, general relativity allows for the possibility of closed timelike curves (CTCs). Thus, tracing backwards in time through the original inflationary state we may eventually encounter a region of CTCs giving no first-cause. This region of CTCs, may well be over by now (being bounded toward the future by a Cauchy horizon). We illustrate that such models --- with CTCs --- are not necessarily inconsistent by demonstrating self-consistent vacuums for Misner space and a multiply connected de Sitter space in which the renormalized energy-momentum tensor does not diverge as one approaches the Cauchy horizon and solves Einstein's equations. We show such a Universe can be classically stable and self-consistent if and only if the potentials are retarded, giving a natural explanation of the arrow of time. Some specific scenarios (out of many possible ones) for this type of model are described. For example: an inflationary universe gives rise to baby universes, one of which turns out to be itself. Interestingly, the laws of physics may allow the Universe to be its own mother.
118518653
Constraining fast radio burst progenitors with gravitational lensing
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are new transient radio sources discovered recently. Because of the angular resolution restriction in radio surveys, no optical counter part has been identified yet so it is hard to determine the progenitor of FRBs. In this paper we propose to use radio lensing survey to constrain FRB progenitors. We show that, different types of progenitors lead to different probabilities for a FRB to be gravitationally lensed by dark matter halos in foreground galaxies, since different type progenitors result in different redshift distributions of FRBs. For example, the redshift distribution of FRBs arising from double stars shifts toward lower redshift than of the FRBs arising from single stars, because double stars and single stars have different evolution timescales. With detailed calculations, we predict that the FRB sample size for producing one lensing event varies significantly for different FRB progenitor models. We argue that this fact can be used to distinguish different FRB models and also discuss the practical possibility of using lensing observation in radio surveys to constrain FRB progenitors.
121764664
The DIRC prototype for the WASA experiment at COSY
The implementation of a DIRC (Detector or Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) was planned for the WASA-at-COSY experiment, located at the Forschungszentrum Julich and is a major project for the future PANDA experiment at FAIR. In order to study the components and the behavior of the detector under experimental conditions, a large scale demonstrator made of acrylic glass was built and tested at the external proton beam of the COSY accelerator. The main properties of the components, especially of the newly developed front end electronics and the results of the first tests are presented.
119285015
P-V criticality in the extended phase space of Gauss-Bonnet black holes in AdS space
A bstractWe study the P − V criticality and phase transition in the extended phase space of charged Gauss-Bonnet black holes in anti-de Sitter space, where the cosmological constant appears as a dynamical pressure of the system and its conjugate quantity is the thermodynamic volume of the black holes. The black holes can have a Ricci flat (k = 0), spherical (k = 1), or hyperbolic (k = −1) horizon. We find that for the Ricci flat and hyperbolic Gauss-Bonnet black holes, no P − V criticality and phase transition appear, while for the black holes with a spherical horizon, even when the charge of the black hole is absent, the P − V criticality and the small black hole/large black hole phase transition will appear, but it happens only in d = 5 dimensions; when the charge does not vanish, the P − V criticality and the small black hole/large phase transition always appear in d = 5 dimensions; in the case of d ≥ 6, to have the P − V criticality and the small black hole/large black hole phase transition, there exists an upper bound for the parameter $ b=\widetilde{\alpha }{{\left| Q \right|}^{{{-2 \left/ {{\left( {d-3} \right)}} \right.}}}} $, where $ \widetilde{\alpha } $ is the Gauss-Bonnet coefficient and Q is the charge of the black hole. We calculate the critical exponents at the critical point and find that for all cases, they are the same as those in the van der Waals liquid-gas system.
2369252
Effects of large field cutoffs in scalar and gauge models
We discuss the notion of a large field cutoff for LGT with compact groups. We propose and compare gauge invariant and gauge dependent (in the Landau gauge) criteria to sort the configurations into “large-field” and “small-field” configurations. We show that the correlations between volume average of field size indicators and the behavior of the tail of the distribution are very different in the gauge and scalar cases. We show that the effect of discarding the large field configurations on the plaquette average is very different above, below and near β = 5.6 for a pure SU (3) LGT.
119185282
Yunnan-III models for evolutionary population synthesis
We build the Yunnan-III evolutionary population synthesis (EPS) models by using the stellar evolution code, BaSeL stellar spectra library and the initial mass functions (IMFs) of Kroupa and Salpeter, and present colours and integrated spectral energy distributions (ISEDs) of solar-metallicity stellar populations (SPs) in the range of 1Myr-15Gyr. The main characteristic of the Yunnan-III EPS models is the usage of a set of self-consistent solar-metallicity stellar evolutionary tracks (the masses of stars are from 0.1 to 100M⊙). This set of tracks is obtained by using the state-of-the-art code. code can evolve stellar models through thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) phase for low- and intermediate-mass stars. By comparisons, we confirm that the inclusion of TP-AGB stars make the V K, V J and V R colours of SPs redder and the infrared flux larger at ages log(t/yr) > 7.6 (the differences reach the maximum at log(t/yr)�8.6, �0.5-0.2mag for colours, � 2 times for K band flux). We also find that the colour-evolution trends of Model with-TPAGB at intermediate and large ages are similar to those from the code, which employs the Padova-AGB stellar library, BaSeL spectral library and the Kroupa IMF. At last, we compare the colours with the other EPS models comprising TP-AGB stars (such as CB07, M05, V10 and POPSTAR), and find that the B V colour agrees with each other but the V K colour exists larger discrepancy among these EPS models (�1mag when 8< log(t/yr)< 9). The stellar evolutionary tracks, isochrones, colours and ISEDs can be obtained on request from the first author or from our website (http://www1.ynao.ac.cn/�zhangfh/). Using the isochrones, you can build your EPS models. Now the format of stellar evolutionary tracks is the same as that in the code, you can put them into the code and get the SP’s results. Moreover, the colours involving other passbands or on other systems (for example, HST F439W F555W colour on AB system) can also be obtained on request.
120641266
$K^-$-Nuclear Bound States in Relativistic Mean-Field Theory