Engineering topics

Lindner, Robert R.

Publications and source records attributed to Lindner, Robert R..

5 records

DOE OSTI2017

Recovering Interstellar Gas Properties with Hi Spectral Lines: A Comparison between Synthetic Spectra and 21-SPONGE

We analyze synthetic neutral hydrogen (H i) absorption and emission spectral lines from a high-resolution, three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulation to quantify how well observational methods recover the physical properties of interstellar gas. We present a new method for uniformly decomposing H i spectral lines and estimating the properties of associated gas using the Autonomous Gaussian Decomposition (AGD) algorithm. We find that H i spectral lines recover physical structures in the simulation with excellent completeness at high Galactic latitude, and this completeness declines with decreasing latitude due to strong velocity-blending of spectral lines. The temperature and column density inferred from our decomposition and radiative transfer method agree with the simulated values within a factor of <2 for the majority of gas structures. We next compare synthetic spectra with observations from the 21-SPONGE survey at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array using AGD. We find more components per line of sight in 21-SPONGE than in synthetic spectra, which reflects insufficient simulated gas scale heights and the limitations of local box simulations. In addition, we find a significant population of low-optical depth, broad absorption components in the synthetic data which are not seen in 21-SPONGE. This population is not obvious in integrated or per-channel diagnostics, and reflects the benefit of studying velocity-resolved components. The discrepant components correspond to the highest spin temperatures (1000<T{sub s}<4000 K), which are not seen in 21-SPONGE despite sufficient observational sensitivity. We demonstrate that our analysis method is a powerful tool for diagnosing neutral interstellar medium conditions, and future work is needed to improve observational statistics and implementation of simulated physics.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2015

First detection of HCO{sup +} absorption in the Magellanic System

We present the first detection of HCO{sup +} absorption in the Magellanic System. Using the ATCA, we observed nine extragalactic radio continuum sources behind the Magellanic System and detected HCO{sup +} absorption toward one source located behind the leading edge of the Magellanic Bridge. The detection is located at an LSR velocity of v=214.0±0.4 km s{sup −1}, with an FWHM of Δv=4.5±1.0 km s{sup −1}, and an optical depth of τ(HCO{sup +})=0.10±0.02. Although there is abundant neutral hydrogen (H i) surrounding the sight line in position–velocity space, at the exact location of the absorber the H i column density is low, <10{sup 20} cm{sup −2}, and there is little evidence for dust or CO emission from Planck observations. While the origin and survival of molecules in such a diffuse environment remain unclear, dynamical events such as H i flows and cloud collisions in this interacting system likely play an important role.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2015

The 21-SPONGE H i absorption survey. I. Techniques and initial results

We present methods and results from “21 cm Spectral Line Observations of Neutral Gas with the EVLA” (21-SPONGE), a large survey for Galactic neutral hydrogen (H i) absorption with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). With the upgraded capabilities of the VLA, we reach median rms noise in optical depth of σ{sub τ}=9×10{sup −4} per 0.42 km s{sup −1} channel for the 31 sources presented here. Upon completion, 21-SPONGE will be the largest H i absorption survey with this high sensitivity. We discuss the observations and data reduction strategies, as well as line fitting techniques. We prove that the VLA bandpass (BP) is stable enough to detect broad, shallow lines associated with warm H i, and we show that BP observations can be combined in time to reduce spectral noise. In combination with matching H i emission profiles from the Arecibo Observatory (∼3.′5 angular resolution), we estimate excitation (or spin) temperatures (T{sub s}) and column densities for Gaussian components fitted to sightlines along which we detect H i absorption (30/31). We measure temperatures up to T{sub s}∼1500 K for individual lines, showing that we can probe the thermally unstable interstellar medium (ISM) directly. However, we detect fewer of these thermally unstable components than expected from previous observational studies. We probe a wide range in column density between ∼10{sup 16} and >10{sup 21} cm{sup −2} for individual H i clouds. In addition, we reproduce the trend between cold gas fraction and average T{sub s} found by the Kim et al. synthetic observations of a hydrodynamic ISM simulation. Finally, we compare methods for estimating T{sub s} using H i observations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2015

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The LABOCA/ACT survey of clusters at all Redshifts

We present a multi-wavelength analysis of 11 Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect (SZE)-selected galaxy clusters (10 with new data) from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) southern survey. We have obtained new imaging from the Large APEX Bolometer Camera (345 GHz; LABOCA) on the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope, the Australia Telescope Compact Array (2.1 GHz; ATCA), and the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (250, 350, and 500 μm; SPIRE) on the Herschel Space Observatory.{sup 24} Spatially resolved 345 GHz SZE increments with integrated signal-to-noise ratio (S/N)>5 are found in six clusters. We compute 2.1 GHz number counts as a function of cluster-centric radius and find significant enhancements in the counts of bright sources at projected radii θ<θ{sub 2500c}. By extrapolating in frequency, we predict that the combined signals from 2.1 GHz-selected radio sources and 345 GHz-selected submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) contaminate the 148 GHz SZE decrement signal by ∼5% and the 345 GHz SZE increment by ∼18%. After removing radio source and SMG emission from the SZE signals, we use ACT, LABOCA, and (in some cases) new Herschel SPIRE imaging to place constraints on the clusters’ peculiar velocities. The sample’s average peculiar velocity relative to the cosmic microwave background is 〈v{sub p}〉=153±383 km s{sup −1}.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2015

AUTONOMOUS GAUSSIAN DECOMPOSITION

We present a new algorithm, named Autonomous Gaussian Decomposition (AGD), for automatically decomposing spectra into Gaussian components. AGD uses derivative spectroscopy and machine learning to provide optimized guesses for the number of Gaussian components in the data, and also their locations, widths, and amplitudes. We test AGD and find that it produces results comparable to human-derived solutions on 21 cm absorption spectra from the 21 cm SPectral line Observations of Neutral Gas with the EVLA (21-SPONGE) survey. We use AGD with Monte Carlo methods to derive the H i line completeness as a function of peak optical depth and velocity width for the 21-SPONGE data, and also show that the results of AGD are stable against varying observational noise intensity. The autonomy and computational efficiency of the method over traditional manual Gaussian fits allow for truly unbiased comparisons between observations and simulations, and for the ability to scale up and interpret the very large data volumes from the upcoming Square Kilometer Array and pathfinder telescopes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗