119236452
CONSTRAINING SUB-PARSEC BINARY SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES IN QUASARS WITH MULTI-EPOCH SPECTROSCOPY. II. THE POPULATION WITH KINEMATICALLY OFFSET BROAD BALMER EMISSION LINES*
A small fraction of quasars have long been known to show bulk velocity offsets (of a few hundred to thousands of km s–1) in the broad Balmer lines with respect to the systemic redshift of the host galaxy. Models to explain these offsets usually invoke broad-line region gas kinematics/asymmetry around single black holes (BHs), orbital motion of massive (~sub-parsec (sub-pc)) binary black holes (BBHs), or recoil BHs, but single-epoch spectra are unable to distinguish between these scenarios. The line-of-sight (LOS) radial velocity (RV) shifts from long-term spectroscopic monitoring can be used to test the BBH hypothesis. We have selected a sample of 399 quasars with kinematically offset broad Hβ lines from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Seventh Data Release quasar catalog, and have conducted second-epoch optical spectroscopy for 50 of them. Combined with the existing SDSS spectra, the new observations enable us to constrain the LOS RV shifts of broad Hβ lines with a rest-frame baseline of a few years to nearly a decade. While previous work focused on objects with extreme velocity offset (>103 km s–1), we explore the parameter space with smaller (a few hundred km s–1) yet significant offsets (99.7% confidence). Using cross-correlation analysis, we detect significant (99% confidence) radial accelerations in the broad Hβ lines in 24 of the 50 objects, of ~10-200 km s–1 yr–1 with a median measurement uncertainty of ~10 km s–1 yr–1, implying a high fraction of variability of the broad-line velocity on multi-year timescales. We suggest that 9 of the 24 detections are sub-pc BBH candidates, which show consistent velocity shifts independently measured from a second broad line (either Hα or Mg II) without significant changes in the broad-line profiles. Combining the results on the general quasar population studied in Paper I, we find a tentative anti-correlation between the velocity offset in the first-epoch spectrum and the average acceleration between two epochs, which could be explained by orbital phase modulation when the time separation between two epochs is a non-negligible fraction of the orbital period of the motion causing the line displacement. We discuss the implications of our results for the identification of sub-pc BBH candidates in offset-line quasars and for the constraints on their frequency and orbital parameters.
118404193
Relativistic redshifts in quasar broad lines
The broad emission lines commonly seen in quasar spectra have velocity widths of a few percent of the speed of light, so special- and general-relativistic effects have a significant influence on the line profile. We have determined the redshift of the broad Hβ line in the quasar rest frame (determined from the core component of the [O III] line) for over 20,000 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 quasar catalog. The mean redshift as a function of line width is approximately consistent with the relativistic redshift that is expected if the line originates in a randomly oriented Keplerian disk that is obscured when the inclination of the disk to the line of sight exceeds ~30°-45°, consistent with simple active galactic nucleus unification schemes. This result also implies that the net line-of-sight inflow/outflow velocities in the broad-line region are much less than the Keplerian velocity when averaged over a large sample of quasars with a given line width.
24721947
Development of the Central Task Processing Unit for space-borne Gamma-Ray Burst polarimeter, POLAR
POLAR, a joint European-Chinese experiment, is a novel compact space-borne Compton polarimeter conceived and optimized for detection of the prompt emission of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) and precise measurements of polarization in the hard X-ray energy range 50-500 keV. The complete instrument consists of two parts: internal one, placed inside spacelab and the detector itself, placed outside spacelab, called respectively IBOX and OBOX. The OBOX constitutes of 25 frontend electronic modules (FEE), high voltage and low voltage power supplies and the Central Task Processing Unit. The main functions of Central Task Processing Unit system are defined as follows: communication and transfer of data to IBOX, communication with all frontends, analysis of trigger signals and generation of global trigger signals, data acquisition, synchronizing of all frontends and control of power supplies. The functional requirements are fulfilled by three individual FPGA chips named respectively to their functions: Concentrator, Trigger and CPU. This article presents description of the Central Task Processing Unit hardware design and brief introduction to main components of the firmware developed for this device. Ongoing integration activities of the device with the complete POLAR instrument proved that all basic functions are working correctly. The qualification model of the instrument has been constructed and currently undergoes verification and validation tests in view of planned flight onboard the Chinese spacelab TG-2 scheduled for 2015.
119236887
Revisiting the production of charmonium plus a light meson at PANDA
In this work, we calculate the total cross sections and the center-of-mass frame angular distributions of the charmonium production plus a light meson by the low energy $p\bar{p}$ interaction. The results of $p\bar{p}\to \pi^0 \Psi$ with and without form factor (FF) indicate that the FF contribution in the calculation cannot be ignored. The obtained cross section of $p\bar{p}\to \pi^0 J/\psi$ with FF can fit the E760 data well. We also predict the total cross sections and the center-of-mass frame angular distributions of $p\bar{p}\to \omega \Psi$, which show that these physical quantities are dependent on Pauli ($g_\omega$) and Dirac ($\kappa_\omega$) coupling constants of the $pp\omega$ interaction. Thus, $p\bar{p}\to \omega \Psi$ can be as the ideal channel to test the different theoretical values of $g_\omega$ and $\kappa_\omega$. Applying the formulae of $p\bar{p}\to \pi^0 \Psi$ and $p\bar{p}\to \omega \Psi$, we predict the total cross sections of the $p\bar{p}\to \eta \Psi$ and $p\bar{p}\to \rho \Psi$ reactions. Our results show a common behavior of the charmonium production with a light meson by the $p\bar{p}$ interaction, where the total cross section of the $\eta_c$ production is the largest one among all discussed processes. The above observations can be directly tested at the forthcoming $\bar{P}$ANDA experiment.
118381949
Pseudotensor meson family
The pseudoscalar tensor states, π 2 , η 2 , and K 2 , are systematically studied through the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka- allowed two-body strong decays, including both the observed states reported by the Particle Data Group and the predicted states. Phenomenological analysis combined with the experimental data not only can test the assignments to these discussed states, but it can also predict more abundant information on their partial decay widths, which is helpful in the experimental study of these observed and predicted pseudotensor states.
118584251
Very deep spectroscopy of the bright Saturn nebula NGC 7009 – II. Analysis of the rich optical recombination spectrum
[Abridged] We present a critical analysis of the rich optical recombination spectrum of NGC 7009, in the context of the bi-abundance nebular model proposed by Liu et al. (2000). The observed relative intensities are compared with the theoretical predictions based on high quality effective recombination coefficients, now available for the recombination line spectrum of a number of heavy element ions. The possibility of plasma diagnostics using the optical recombination lines (ORLs) of heavy element ions is discussed in detail. Plasma diagnostics based on the N II and O II recombination spectra both yield electron temperatures close to 1000 K, which is lower than those derived from the collisionally excited line (CEL) ratios by nearly one order of magnitude. The very low temperatures yielded by the O II and N II ORLs indicate that they originate from very cold regions. The C^{2+}/H^+, N^{2+}/H^+, O^{2+}/H^+ and Ne^{2+}/H^+ ionic abundance ratios derived from ORLs are consistently higher, by about a factor of 5, than the corresponding values derived from CELs. In calculating the ORL ionic abundance ratios, we have used the newly available high quality effective recombination coefficients, and adopted an electron temperature of 1000 K, as given by the ORL diagnostics and as a consequence presumably representing the physical conditions prevailing in the regions where the heavy element ORLs arise. A comparison of the results of plasma diagnostics and abundance determinations for NGC 7009 points to the existence of "cold", metal-rich (i.e. H-deficient) inclusions embedded in the hot, diffuse ionized gas, first postulated by Liu et al. (2000).
119194691
Spectroscopic Observations of Planetary Nebulae in the Northern Spur of M31
We present spectroscopy of three planetary nebulae (PNe) in the Northern Spur of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) obtained with the Double Spectrograph on the 5.1m Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory. The samples are selected from the observations of Merrett et al. Our purpose is to investigate formation of the substructures of M31 using PNe as a tracer of chemical abundances. The [O iii] �4363 line is detected in the spectra of two objects, enabling temperature determinations. Ionic abundances are derived from the observed collisionally excited lines, and elemental abundances of nitrogen, oxygen, and neon as well as sulphur and argon are estimated. Correlations between oxygen and �-element abundance ratios are studied, using our sample and the M31 disk and bulge PNe from the literature. In one of the three PNe, we observed relatively higher oxygen abundance compared to the disk sample in M31 at similar galactocentric distances. The results of at least one of the three Northern Spur PNe might be in line with the proposed possible origin of the Northern Spur substructure of M31, i.e. the Northern Spur is connected to the Southern Stream and both substructures comprise the tidal debris of the satellite galaxies of M31. Subject headings: galaxies: abundances – galaxies: formation – galaxies: individual (M31) – ISM: abundances – planetary nebulae: general – stars: evolution
115135292
Resummation of jet-veto logarithms in hadronic processes containing jets
We derive a factorization theorem for production of an arbitrary number of colorsinglet particles accompanied by a xed number of jets at the LHC. The jets are dened with the standard antikT algorithm, and the xed number of jets is obtained by imposing a veto on additional radiation in the nal state. The formalism presented here is useful for current Higgs boson analyses using exclusive jet bins, and for other studies using a similar strategy. The derivation uses the soft-collinear eective theory and assumes that the transverse momenta of the hard jets are larger than the veto scale. We resum the large Sudakov logarithms n log 2n m p J =p veto up to the next-toleading-logarithmic accuracy, and present numerical results for Higgs boson production in association with a jet at the LHC. We comment on the experimentally-interesting parameter region in which we expect our factorization formula to hold.