Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Reprocessing”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,225 records · Page 68

Long fading mid-infrared emission in transient coronal line emitters: dust echo of a tidal disruption flare

The sporadic accretion following the tidal disruption of a star by a super-massive black hole (TDE) leads to a bright UV and soft X-ray flare in the galactic nucleus. The gas and dust surrounding the black hole responses to such a flare with an echo in emission lines and infrared emission. In this paper, we report the detection of long fading mid-IR emission lasting up to 14 years after the flare in four TDE candidates with transient coronal lines using the WISE public data release. We estimate that the reprocessed mid-IR luminosities are in the range between 4×10{sup 42} and 2×10{sup 43} erg s{sup −1} and dust temperature in the range of 570–800 K when WISE first detected these sources three to five years after the flare. Both luminosity and dust temperature decrease with time. We interpret the mid-IR emission as the infrared echo of the tidal disruption flare. We estimate the UV luminosity at the peak flare to be 1 to 30 times 10{sup 44} erg s{sup −1} and that for warm dust masses to be in the range of 0.05–1.3 M{sub ⊙} within a few parsecs. Our results suggest that the mid-infrared echo is a general signature of TDE in the gas-rich environment.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Role of Outflows, Radiation Pressure, and Magnetic Fields in Massive Star Formation

Stellar feedback in the form of radiation pressure and magnetically driven collimated outflows may limit the maximum mass that a star can achieve and affect the star formation efficiency of massive prestellar cores. Here we present a series of 3D adaptive mesh refinement radiation–magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the collapse of initially turbulent, massive prestellar cores. Our simulations include radiative feedback from both the direct stellar and dust-reprocessed radiation fields, and collimated outflow feedback from the accreting stars. We find that protostellar outflows punch holes in the dusty circumstellar gas along the star’s polar directions, thereby increasing the size of optically thin regions through which radiation can escape. Precession of the outflows as the star’s spin axis changes due to the turbulent accretion flow further broadens the outflow, and causes more material to be entrained. Additionally, the presence of magnetic fields in the entrained material leads to broader entrained outflows that escape the core. We compare the injected and entrained outflow properties and find that the entrained outflow mass is a factor of ∼3 larger than the injected mass and the momentum and energy contained in the entrained material are ∼25% and ∼5% of the injected momentum and energy, respectively. As a result, we find that, when one includes both outflows and radiation pressure, the former are a much more effective and important feedback mechanism, even for massive stars with significant radiative outputs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Data Release 1 of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

In 2021 May the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration began a 5 yr spectroscopic redshift survey to produce a detailed map of the evolving three-dimensional structure of the Universe between z = 0 and z ≈ 4. DESI’s principal scientific objectives are to place precise constraints on the equation of state of dark energy, the gravitationally driven growth of large-scale structure, and the sum of the neutrino masses, and to explore the observational signatures of primordial inflation. We present DESI DR1, which consists of all data acquired during the first 13 months of the DESI main survey, as well as a uniform reprocessing of the DESI Survey Validation data, which were previously made public in the DESI Early Data Release. The DR1 main survey includes high-confidence redshifts for 18.7M objects, of which 13.1M are spectroscopically classified as galaxies, 1.6M as quasars, and 4M as stars, making DR1 the largest sample of extragalactic redshifts ever assembled. We summarize the DR1 observations, the spectroscopic data-reduction pipeline and data products, large-scale structure catalogs, value-added catalogs, and describe how to access and interact with the data. In addition to fulfilling its core cosmological objectives with unprecedented precision, we expect DR1 to enable a wide range of transformational astrophysical studies and discoveries.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Revisiting the structure and spectrum of the magnetic-reconnection-heated corona in luminous AGNs

It is believed that the hard X-ray emission in the luminous active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is from the hot corona above the cool accretion disk. However, the formation of the corona is still debated. Liu et al. investigated the spectrum of the corona heated by the reconnection of the magnetic field generated by dynamo action in the thin disk and emerging into the corona as a result of buoyancy instability. In the present paper, we improve this model to interpret the observed relation of the hard X-ray spectrum becoming softer at higher accretion rate in luminous AGNs. The magnetic field is characterized by β{sub 0}, i.e., the ratio of the sum of gas pressure and radiation pressure to the magnetic pressure in the disk (β{sub 0}=(P{sub g,d}+P{sub r,d})/P{sub B}). Besides, both the intrinsic disk photons and reprocessed photons by the disk are included as the seed photons for inverse Compton scattering. These improvements are crucial for investigating the effect of magnetic field on the accretion disk corona when it is not clear whether the radiation pressure or gas pressure dominates in the thin disk. We change the value of β{sub 0} in order to constrain the magnetic field in the accretion disk in luminous AGNs. We find that the energy fraction released in the corona (f) gradually increases with the decrease of β{sub 0} for the same accretion rate. When β{sub 0} decreases to less than 50, the structure and spectrum of the disk corona are independent of accretion rate, which is similar to the hard spectrum found in Liu et al. Comparing with the observational results of the hard X-ray bolometric correction factor in a sample of luminous AGNs, we suggest that the value of β{sub 0} is about 100–200 for α = 0.3, and the energy fraction f should be larger than 30% for hard X-ray emission.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The role of star formation and AGN in dust heating of z = 0.3-2.8 galaxies. II. Informing IR AGN fraction estimates through simulations

A key question in extragalactic studies is the determination of the relative roles of stars and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in powering dusty galaxies at z ∼ 1–3 where the bulk of star formation and AGN activity took place. In Paper I, we present a sample of 336 24 μm selected (Ultra)Luminous Infrared Galaxies, (U)LIRGs, at z∼0.3–2.8, where we focus on determining the AGN contribution to the IR luminosity. Here, we use hydrodynamic simulations with dust radiative transfer of isolated and merging galaxies to investigate how well the simulations reproduce our empirical IR AGN fraction estimates and determine how IR AGN fractions relate to the UV-mm AGN fraction. We find that: (1) IR AGN fraction estimates based on simulations are in qualitative agreement with the empirical values when host reprocessing of the AGN light is considered; (2) for star-forming galaxy (SFG)–AGN composites our empirical methods may be underestimating the role of AGN, as our simulations imply >50% AGN fractions, ∼3× higher than previous estimates; (3) 6% of our empirically classified SFGs have AGN fractions ≳50%. While this is a small percentage of SFGs, if confirmed it would imply that the true number density of AGNs may be underestimated; (4) this comparison depends on the adopted AGN template—those that neglect the contribution of warm dust lower the empirical fractions by up to two times; and (5) the IR AGN fraction is only a good proxy for the intrinsic UV-mm AGN fraction when the extinction is high (A{sub V}≳1 or up to and including coalescence in a merger).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

IC 3639—a new bona fide compton-thick AGN unveiled by NuSTAR

We analyze high-quality NuSTAR observations of the local (z = 0.011) Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus (AGN) IC 3639, in conjunction with archival Suzaku and Chandra data. This provides the first broadband X-ray spectral analysis of the source, spanning nearly two decades in energy (0.5–30 keV). Previous X-ray observations of the source below 10 keV indicated strong reflection/obscuration on the basis of a pronounced iron fluorescence line at 6.4 keV. The hard X-ray energy coverage of NuSTAR, together with self-consistent toroidal reprocessing models, enables direct broadband constraints on the obscuring column density of the source. We find the source to be heavily Compton-thick (CTK) with an obscuring column in excess of 3.6×10{sup 24} cm{sup −2}, unconstrained at the upper end. We further find an intrinsic 2–10 keV luminosity of log{sub 10}(L{sub 2--10keV} [erg s{sup −1}])=43.4{sub −1.1}{sup +0.6} to 90% confidence, almost 400 times the observed flux, and consistent with various multiwavelength diagnostics. Such a high ratio of intrinsic to observed flux, in addition to an Fe-Kα fluorescence line equivalent width exceeding 2 keV, is extreme among known bona fide CTK AGNs, which we suggest are both due to the high level of obscuration present around IC 3639. Our study demonstrates that broadband spectroscopic modeling with NuSTAR enables large corrections for obscuration to be carried out robustly and emphasizes the need for improved modeling of AGN tori showing intense iron fluorescence.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DETERMINING THE LARGE-SCALE ENVIRONMENTAL DEPENDENCE OF GAS-PHASE METALLICITY IN DWARF GALAXIES

We study how the cosmic environment affects galaxy evolution in the universe by comparing the metallicities of dwarf galaxies in voids with dwarf galaxies in more dense regions. Ratios of the fluxes of emission lines, particularly those of the forbidden [O iii] and [S ii] transitions, provide estimates of a region’s electron temperature and number density. From these two quantities and the emission line fluxes [O ii] λ 3727, [O iii] λ 4363, and [O iii] λλ 4959, 5007, we estimate the abundance of oxygen with the direct T{sub e} method. We estimate the metallicity of 42 blue, star-forming void dwarf galaxies and 89 blue, star-forming dwarf galaxies in more dense regions using spectroscopic observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, as reprocessed in the MPA-JHU value-added catalog. We find very little difference between the two sets of galaxies, indicating little influence from the large-scale environment on their chemical evolution. Of particular interest are a number of extremely metal-poor dwarf galaxies that are less prevalent in voids than in the denser regions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

A NEW GENERATION OF PARSEC-COLIBRI STELLAR ISOCHRONES INCLUDING THE TP-AGB PHASE

We introduce a new generation of PARSEC–COLIBRI stellar isochrones that includes a detailed treatment of the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) phase, covering a wide range of initial metallicities (0.0001 < Z {sub i} < 0.06). Compared to previous releases, the main novelties and improvements are use of new TP-AGB tracks and related atmosphere models and spectra for M and C-type stars; inclusion of the surface H+He+CNO abundances in the isochrone tables, accounting for the effects of diffusion, dredge-up episodes and hot-bottom burning; inclusion of complete thermal pulse cycles, with a complete description of the in-cycle changes in the stellar parameters; new pulsation models to describe the long-period variability in the fundamental and first-overtone modes; and new dust models that follow the growth of the grains during the AGB evolution, in combination with radiative transfer calculations for the reprocessing of the photospheric emission. Overall, these improvements are expected to lead to a more consistent and detailed description of properties of TP-AGB stars expected in resolved stellar populations, especially in regard to their mean photometric properties from optical to mid-infrared wavelengths. We illustrate the expected numbers of TP-AGB stars of different types in stellar populations covering a wide range of ages and initial metallicities, providing further details on the “C-star island” that appears at intermediate values of age and metallicity, and about the AGB-boosting effect that occurs at ages close to 1.6-Gyr for populations of all metallicities. The isochrones are available through a new dedicated web server.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

3D Radiation Nonideal Magnetohydrodynamical Simulations of the Inner Rim in Protoplanetary Disks

Many planets orbit within 1 au of their stars, raising questions about their origins. Particularly puzzling are the planets found near the silicate sublimation front. We investigate conditions near the front in the protostellar disk around a young intermediate-mass star, using the first global 3D radiation nonideal MHD simulations in this context. We treat the starlight heating; the silicate grains’ sublimation and deposition at the local, time-varying temperature and density; temperature-dependent ohmic dissipation; and various initial magnetic fields. The results show magnetorotational turbulence around the sublimation front at 0.5 au. The disk interior to 0.8 au is turbulent, with velocities exceeding 10% of the sound speed. Beyond 0.8 au is the dead zone, cooler than 1000 K and with turbulence orders of magnitude weaker. A local pressure maximum just inside the dead zone concentrates solid particles, favoring their growth. Over many orbits, a vortex develops at the dead zone’s inner edge, increasing the disk’s thickness locally by around 10%. We synthetically observe the results using Monte Carlo transfer calculations, finding that the sublimation front is near-infrared bright. The models with net vertical magnetic fields develop extended, magnetically supported atmospheres that reprocess extra starlight, raising the near-infrared flux 20%. The vortex throws a nonaxisymmetric shadow on the outer disk. At wavelengths >2 μm, the flux varies several percent on monthly timescales. The variations are more regular when the vortex is present. The vortex is directly visible as an arc at ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, given sub-au spatial resolution.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

An ALMA Survey of DCN/H{sup 13}CN and DCO{sup +}/H{sup 13}CO{sup +} in Protoplanetary Disks

The deuterium enrichment of molecules is sensitive to their formation environment. Constraining patterns of deuterium chemistry in protoplanetary disks is therefore useful for probing how material is inherited or reprocessed throughout the stages of star and planet formation. We present ALMA observations at ∼0.″6 resolution of DCO{sup +}, H{sup 13}CO{sup +}, DCN, and H{sup 13}CN in the full disks around T Tauri stars AS 209 and IM Lup, in the transition disks around T Tauri stars V4046 Sgr and LkCa 15, and in the full disks around Herbig Ae stars MWC 480 and HD 163296. We also present ALMA observations of HCN in the IM Lup disk. DCN, DCO{sup +}, and H{sup 13}CO{sup +} are detected in all disks, and H{sup 13}CN in all but the IM Lup disk. We find efficient deuterium fractionation for the sample, with estimates of disk-averaged DCO{sup +}/HCO{sup +} and DCN/HCN abundance ratios ranging from ∼0.02–0.06 and ∼0.005–0.08, respectively, which is comparable to values reported for other interstellar environments. The relative distributions of DCN and DCO{sup +} vary between disks, suggesting that multiple formation pathways may be needed to explain the diverse emission morphologies. In addition, gaps and rings observed in both H{sup 13}CO{sup +} and DCO{sup +} emission provide new evidence that DCO{sup +} bears a complex relationship with the location of the midplane CO snowline.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

A Long Look at MCG-5-23-16 with NuSTAR . I. Relativistic Reflection and Coronal Properties

MCG-5-23-16 was targeted in early 2015 with a half mega-second observing campaign using NuSTAR . Here we present the spectral analysis of these data sets along with an earlier observation and study the relativistic reflection and the primary coronal source. The data show strong reflection features in the form of both narrow and broad iron lines plus a Compton reflection hump. A cutoff energy is significantly detected in all exposures. The shape of the reflection spectrum does not change in the two years spanned by the observations, suggesting a stable geometry. A strong positive correlation is found between the cutoff energy and both the hard X-ray flux and spectral index. The measurements imply that the coronal plasma is not at the runaway electron–positron pair limit, and instead contains mostly electrons. The observed variability in the coronal properties is driven by a variable optical depth. A constant heating-to-cooling ratio is measured, implying that there is a feedback mechanism in which a significant fraction of the photons cooling the corona are due to reprocessed hard X-rays.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

High-resolution X-Ray Spectroscopy of the Seyfert 1 Galaxy Mrk 1040. Revealing the Failed Nuclear Wind with Chandra

High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy of the warm absorber in the nearby X-ray bright Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 1040 is presented. The observations were carried out in the 2013–2014 timeframe using the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating with a total exposure of 200 ks. A multitude of absorption lines from Ne, Mg, and Si are detected from a wide variety of ionization states. In particular, the detection of inner K-shell absorption lines from Ne, Mg, and Si, from charge states ranging from F-like to Li-like ions, suggests the presence of a substantial amount of low-ionization absorbing gas, illuminated by a steep soft X-ray continuum. The observations reveal at least three warm absorbing components ranging in ionization parameter from log(ξ/erg cm s{sup −1})=0--2 and with column densities of N{sub H}=1.5--4.0×10{sup 21} cm{sup −2}. The velocity profiles imply that the outflow velocities of the absorbing gas are low and within ±100 km s{sup −1} of the systemic velocity of Mrk 1040, which suggests that any outflowing gas may have stalled in this AGN on large enough scales. The warm absorber is likely located far from the black hole, within 300 pc of the nucleus, and is spatially coincident with emission from an extended narrow-line region as seen in the Hubble Space Telescope images. The iron K-band spectrum reveals only narrow emission lines, with Fe Kα at 6.4 keV consistent with originating from reflection off Compton-thick pc-scale reprocessing gas.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Improvement in the Accuracy of Flux Measurement of Radio Sources by Exploiting an Arithmetic Pattern in Photon Bunching Noise

A hierarchy of statistics of increasing sophistication and accuracy is proposed to exploit an interesting and fundamental arithmetic structure in the photon bunching noise of incoherent light of large photon occupation number, with the purpose of suppressing the noise and rendering a more reliable and unbiased measurement of the light intensity. The method does not require any new hardware, rather it operates at the software level with the help of high-precision computers to reprocess the intensity time series of the incident light to create a new series with smaller bunching noise coherence length. The ultimate accuracy improvement of this method of flux measurement is limited by the timing resolution of the detector and the photon occupation number of the beam (the higher the photon number the better the performance). The principal application is accuracy improvement in the signal-limited bolometric flux measurement of a radio source.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Periodic Accretion-powered Flares from Colliding EMRIs as TDE Imposters

When a main-sequence star undergoes Roche lobe overflow onto a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a circular extreme mass ratio inspiral (EMRI), a phase of steady mass transfer ensues. Over millions of years, the binary evolves to a period minimum before reversing course and migrating outward as a brown dwarf. Because the time interval between consecutive EMRIs is comparable to the mass-transfer timescale, the semimajor axes of two consecutive mass-transferring EMRIs will cross on a radial scale of less than a few au. We show that such EMRI crossing events are inevitably accompanied by a series of mildly relativistic, grazing physical collisions between the stars. Each collision strips a small quantity of mass, primarily from the more massive star, which generally increases their radial separation to set up the next collision after a delay of decades to centuries (or longer) set by further gravitational radiation. Depending on the mass of the SMBH, this interaction can result in N{sub c}∼1--10{sup 4} gas production events of mass ∼M{sub ⊙}/N{sub c}, thus powering a quasi-periodic sequence of SMBH accretion-powered flares over a total duration of thousands of years or longer. Although the EMRI rate is 2–3 orders of magnitude lower than the rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs), the ability of a single interacting EMRI pair to produce a large number of luminous flares—and to make more judicious use of the available stellar fuel—could make their observed rate competitive with the TDE rate, enabling them to masquerade as “TDE imposters.” Gas produced by EMRI collisions is easier to circularize than the highly eccentric debris streams produced in TDEs. We predict flares with bolometric luminosities that decay both as power laws shallower than t{sup −5/3} and as decaying exponentials in time. Viscous spreading of the gaseous disks produced by the accumulation of previous mass-stripping events will place a substantial mass of gas on radial scales ≳10--100 au at the time of a given flare, providing a possible explanation for the “reprocessing blanket” required to explain the unexpectedly high optical luminosities of some candidate TDE flares.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Numerical Simulations of Collisional Cascades at the Roche Limits of White Dwarf Stars

We consider the long-term collisional and dynamical evolution of solid material orbiting in a narrow annulus near the Roche limit of a white dwarf. With orbital velocities of 300 km s{sup −1}, systems of solids with initial eccentricity e≳10{sup −3} generate a collisional cascade where objects with radii r ≲100--300 km are ground to dust. This process converts 1–100 km asteroids into 1 μm particles in 10{sup 2}−10{sup 6} yr. Throughout this evolution, the swarm maintains an initially large vertical scale height H. Adding solids at a rate M-dot enables the system to find an equilibrium where the mass in solids is roughly constant. This equilibrium depends on M-dot and r{sub 0}, the radius of the largest solid added to the swarm. When r{sub 0} ≲ 10 km, this equilibrium is stable. For larger r{sub 0}, the mass oscillates between high and low states; the fraction of time spent in high states ranges from 100% for large M-dot to much less than 1% for small M-dot . During high states, the stellar luminosity reprocessed by the solids is comparable to the excess infrared emission observed in many metallic line white dwarfs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Probing the EBL Evolution at High Redshift Using GRBs Detected with the Fermi -LAT

The extragalactic background light (EBL), from ultraviolet to infrared wavelengths, is predominantly due to emission from stars, accreting black holes and reprocessed light due to Galactic dust. The EBL can be studied through the imprint it leaves, via γ–γ absorption of high-energy photons, in the spectra of distant γ-ray sources. The EBL has been probed through the search for the attenuation it produces in the spectra of BL Lacertae (BL Lac) objects and individual γ-ray bursts (GRBs). GRBs have significant advantages over blazars for the study of the EBL especially at high redshifts. Here we analyze a combined sample of 22 GRBs, detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope between 65 MeV and 500 GeV. We report a marginal detection (at the ~2.8σ level) of the EBL attenuation in the stacked spectra of the source sample. This measurement represents a first constraint of the EBL at an effective redshift of ~1.8. Here, we combine our results with prior EBL constraints and conclude that Fermi -LAT is instrumental to constrain the UV component of the EBL. We discuss the implications on existing empirical models of EBL evolution.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Continuum Reverberation Mapping of the Accretion Disks in Two Seyfert 1 Galaxies

We present optical continuum lags for two Seyfert 1 galaxies, MCG+08-11-011 and NGC 2617, using monitoring data from a reverberation mapping campaign carried out in 2014. Our light curves span the ugriz filters over four months, with median cadences of 1.0 and 0.6 days for MCG+08-11-011 and NGC 2617, respectively, combined with roughly daily X-ray and near-UV data from Swift for NGC 2617. We find lags consistent with geometrically thin accretion-disk models that predict a lag-wavelength relation of τ ∝ λ 4/3 . However, the observed lags are larger than predictions based on standard thin-disk theory by factors of 3.3 for MCG+08-11-011 and 2.3 for NGC 2617. Furthermore, these differences can be explained if the mass accretion rates are larger than inferred from the optical luminosity by a factor of 4.3 in MCG+08-11-011 and a factor of 1.3 in NGC 2617, although uncertainty in the SMBH masses determines the significance of this result. While the X-ray variability in NGC 2617 precedes the UV/optical variability, the long (2.6 day) lag is problematic for coronal reprocessing models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Kepler Light Curves of AGN: A Detailed Analysis

Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of 21 light curves of Type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN) from the Kepler spacecraft. First, we describe the necessity and development of a customized pipeline for treating Kepler data of stochastically variable sources like AGN. We then present the light curves, power spectral density functions (PSDs), and flux histograms. The light curves display an astonishing variety of behaviors, many of which would not be detected in ground-based studies, including switching between distinct flux levels. Six objects exhibit PSD flattening at characteristic timescales that roughly correlate with black hole mass. These timescales are consistent with orbital timescales or free-fall accretion timescales. We check for correlations of variability and high-frequency PSD slope with accretion rate, black hole mass, redshift, and luminosity. We find that bolometric luminosity is anticorrelated with both variability and steepness of the PSD slope. We do not find evidence of the linear rms–flux relationships or lognormal flux distributions found in X-ray AGN light curves, indicating that reprocessing is not a significant contributor to optical variability at the 0.1%–10% level.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗