Search Publications
A strongly truncated inner accretion disc in the Rapid Burster
Degenaar, N.; Fabian, A. C.; van den Eijnden, J. +4 more
The neutron star (NS) low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) the Rapid Burster (RB; MXB 1730-335) uniquely shows both Type I and Type II X-ray bursts. The origin of the latter is ill-understood but has been linked to magnetospheric gating of the accretion flow. We present a spectral analysis of simultaneous Swift, NuSTAR and XMM-Newton observations of the R…
Pressure Profiles of Distant Galaxy Clusters in the Planck Catalogue
Bourdin, H.; Mazzotta, P.; Vikhlinin, A. +2 more
Successive releases of Planck data have demonstrated the strength of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect in detecting hot baryons out to the galaxy cluster peripheries. To infer the hot gas pressure structure from nearby galaxy clusters to more distant objects, we developed a parametric method that models the spectral energy distribution and spatial…
Diffuse Interstellar Bands and the Ultraviolet Extinction Curves: The Missing Link Revisited
Li, Aigen; Xiang, F. Y.; Zhong, J. X.
A large number of interstellar absorption features at ∼4000 Å-1.8 µm, known as the “diffuse interstellar bands” (DIBs), remains unidentified. Most recent works relate them to large polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules or ultrasmall carbonaceous grains which are also thought to be responsible for the 2175 \mathringA extinction bump…
Uniform Contribution of Supernova Explosions to the Chemical Enrichment of Abell 3112 out to R 200
Miller, Eric D.; Bulbul, Esra; Smith, Randall K. +5 more
The spatial distribution of the metals residing in the intra-cluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters records all the information on a cluster’s nucleosynthesis and chemical enrichment history. We present measurements from a total of 1.2 Ms Suzaku XIS and 72 ks Chandra observations of the cool-core galaxy cluster Abell 3112 out to its virial radius…
Star Formation Activity in the Molecular Cloud G35.20-0.74: Onset of Cloud-Cloud Collision
Dewangan, L. K.
To probe star formation (SF) processes, we present results of an analysis of the molecular cloud G35.20-0.74 (hereafter MCG35.2) using multi-frequency observations. The MCG35.2 is depicted in a velocity range of 30-40 km s-1. An almost horseshoe-like structure embedded within the MCG35.2 is evident in the infrared and millimeter images …
Testing predictions of the quantum landscape multiverse 1: the Starobinsky inflationary potential
Di Valentino, Eleonora; Mersini-Houghton, Laura
The 2015 Planck data release has placed tight constraints on the allowed class of inflationary models. The current data favors concave downwards inflationary potentials while offering interesting hints on possible deviations from the standard picture of CMB perturbations. We here test the predictions of the theory of the origin of the universe fro…
Similarity of the Jovian satellite footprints: Spots multiplicity and dynamics
Saur, J.; Badman, S. V.; Bonfond, B. +3 more
In the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, the intense interaction of the satellites Io, Europa, Ganymede and Enceladus with their surrounding plasma environment leaves a signature in the aurora of the planet. Called satellite footprints, these auroral features appear either as a single spot (Europa and Enceladus) or as multiple spots (Io and Ga…
Weighing in on the masses of retired A stars with asteroseismology: K2 observations of the exoplanet-host star HD 212771
Vanderburg, Andrew; Chaplin, William J.; Davies, Guy R. +12 more
Doppler-based planet surveys point to an increasing occurrence rate of giant planets with stellar mass. Such surveys rely on evolved stars for a sample of intermediate-mass stars (so-called retired A stars), which are more amenable to Doppler observations than their main-sequence progenitors. However, it has been hypothesized that the masses of su…
Warm and cold molecular gas conditions modelled in 87 galaxies observed by the Herschel SPIRE Fourier transform spectrometer
Glenn, J.; Kamenetzky, J.; Rangwala, N.
We have conducted two-component, non-local thermodynamic equilibrium modelling of the CO lines from J = 1-0 through J = 13-12 in 87 galaxies observed by the Herschel SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS). We find the average pressure of the cold molecular gas, traced especially by CO J = 1-0, is ∼105.0±0.5 K cm-3. The mi…
Spectral Resolution-linked Bias in Transit Spectroscopy of Extrasolar Planets
Deming, Drake; Sheppard, Kyle
We re-visit the principles of transmission spectroscopy for transiting extrasolar planets, focusing on the overlap between the planetary spectrum and the illuminating stellar spectrum. Virtually all current models of exoplanetary transmission spectra utilize an approximation that is inaccurate when the spectrum of the illuminating star has a compl…