Found 62 talks archived in Particle astrophysics, physical data and processes

The Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO) Space Program on the International Space Station (ISS) is the first space-based mission worldwide in the field of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) and Extremely High Energy Cosmic Rays (EHECR) and will contribute to consolidate a new window in the astronomical observation at the highest energies never observed neither with ground-based nor space-based experiments. Currently the international groups working on ground-based UHECR experiments are organized in the Pierre Auger Collaboration (Argentina, South Hemisphere) and the
Telescope Array Collaboration (Utah, North Hemisphere). JEM-EUSO will pioneer from Space the observation from ISS (North & South Hemispheres) of the non thermal Universe and will provide a real breakthrough toward the understanding of the Extreme Universe at the highest energies never detected from Space. In this Severo Ochoa Seminar an overview of the JEM-EUSO Space Mission and the pathfinders currently being developed, EUSO-BALLOON of the French Space Agency (CNES) and MINI-EUSO (ISS) of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) will be presented. Moreover the Spanish Contribution to this EUSO Program under a Coordinated Proposal of MINECO, that involves Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aerospacial (INTA), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Univesidad de Leon (ULE) and Universidad de Alcalá (UAH) will be reviewed as well.

I will discuss recent development in low noise amplifiers for astrophysical applications.
I will describe the fundamental quantum limits of linear amplifiers and then I will show how a
promising new class of amplifiers - superconducting parametric amplifiers - might be able to  (apparently) violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Because of the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning, the Earth's atmosphere and oceans are warming through what is known as the "greenhouse effect". Big changes are on their way which we have not yet seen because of the time taken for the oceans to warm. It is essential that human communities prepare to adapt to these changes e.g. in sea level rise, severe heat waves, and a greater frequency of climate extremes.

The challenge to scientists is to learn enough about the complexities of the world's climate system to be able to project the climate's likely future.

The nations and peoples of the world need to recognise the urgency of the many actions that can - and must be taken.

Neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries (NS-LMXBs) are unique laboratories of accretion physics, strong gravity and ultra-dense matter. I will give an overview of what we have learned in recent years by studying accretion flows and thermonuclear bursts in these systems.

I will first present and discuss the main result of a systematic study of their different accretion states: the discovery of a correlation between luminosity and spectral hardness. I will also show ongoing work on the connection between active (1-100% of the Eddington luminosity) and quiescent (down to 10^-6 times Eddington) phases of NS-LMXBs.

In the second part I will focus on the relation between mass accretion rate and the recurrence time of thermonuclear bursts (explosive nuclear burning on the neutron star surface), presenting results at the lowest and highest mass accretion rates. In particular, I will argue that rotation plays a larger role than we thought in setting the nuclear burning regimes on an accreting neutron star.

As astrophysicists, we are used to extracting physical information from the observations. The usual procedure is to propose a parametric physical model to explain the observations and use the observations to infer the values of the parameters. However, in our noisy and ambiguous universe, the solution to the inference problem is usually non-unique or diffuse. For this reason, it is important that our inversion techniques give reliable results. In this talk I present a few recent results (dusty tori of AGN, magnetic fields in central stars of planetary nebulae, oscillations of coronal loops, signal detection) in which our group is applying Bayesian ideas to extract information from the observations.

Long Gamma-Ray Bursts are flashes of high-energy radiation and are linked to the death of massive stars. I will first summarize the main aspects of GRB astronomy, ranging from gamma to infrared frequencies, and secondly I will show how long GRBs pinpoint star-forming galaxies. Afterwards, I will present recent results which indicate as the GRB host population resembles all kind of star-forming galaxies, even the most dusty ones, almost invisible in optical-dedicated surveys.

The anomalous microwave emission (AME) is an additional diffuse foreground component, originated by an emission mechanism in the ISM different from the well-known synchrotron, free-free and thermal dust emissions. It was first discovered at the end of the nineties as a correlated signal between microwave CMB maps and infrared maps tracing the dust emission. Ever since several detections have been found in individual clouds in our Galaxy. This emission is an important contaminant for current and future CMB experiments, and therefore its characterization (both in temperature and in polarization) and understanding is mandatory. So far different theoretical models have been proposed to explain the physical mechanism that give rise to this emission. In this talk we will review these models and will present the current observational status of the AME, with particular emphasis on some recent studies that have been performed by our group in the IAC in the Perseus molecular complex and in the Pleiades reflection nebula.

Relativistic jets in AGN in general, and in blazars in particular, are the most energetic and among the most powerful astrophysical objects known so far. Their relativistic nature provides them the ability to emit profusely in all spectral ranges from radio wavelengths to gamma-rays, as well as abrupt variability in all time scales (from hours to years). Since the birth of gamma-ray astronomy, locating the origin of gamma-ray emission has been a fundamental problem for the knowledge of the emission processes involved. Deep and densely time sampled monitoring programs with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and several other facilities at most of the available spectral ranges (including polarization measurements where possible) are starting to shed light for the case of blazars. After a short review of the status of the problem, some of the latest results locating the GeV emission in the jets of some blazars, at >10 parsec from the central AGN engine, will be presented together with their implications about the gamma-ray emission mechanisms involved

We have selected the Galactic HII region M43, a close-by apparently spherical nebula ionized by a single star (HD37061, B0.5V) to investigate several topics of recent interest in the field of HII regions and massive stars. We perform a combined, comprehensive study
of the nebula and its ionizing star by using as many observational constraints as possible. For this study we collected a set of high-quality observations, including the optical spectrum of HD3706, along with nebular optical imaging and long-slit spatially resolved spectroscopy. On the one hand, we have carried out a quantitative spectroscopic analysis of the ionizing star from which we have determined the stellar parameters of HD37061 and the total number of ionizing photons emitted by the star; on the other hand, we have done a
empirical analysis of the nebular images and spectroscopy from which we have find observational evidence of scattered light from the Huygens region (the brightest part of the Orion nebula) in the M43 region. We show the importance of an adequate correction of this scattered light in both the imagery and spectroscopic observations of M43 in accurately determining the total nebular Halpha luminosity, the nebular physical
conditions. and chemical abundances. We have computed total abundances for three of the analyzed elements (O, S, and N), directly from
observable ions (no ionization correction factors are needed). The comparison of these abundances with those derived from the spectrum of the Orion nebula indicates the importance of the atomic data and, specially in the case of M42, the considered ionization correction factors.

Teleportation of physical objects, transferring from one place to another without passing through intermediate locations, is not possible. However, teleportation of quantum states (the full information of quantum objects) is possible. Quantum teleportation is the faithful transfer of quantum states between systems, relying on the prior establishment of entanglement and using only classical communication during the transmission. In this talk I will first give an introduction of quantum teleportation and then present our on?going free?space quantum teleportation experiment between the two Canary Islands La Palma and Tenerife, separated by 144 km. Our scheme combines a Bell?state measurement, capable to identify two of the four Bell?states, with an actively triggered unitary transformation depending on its outcome. The scheme achieves the optimal teleportation efficiency achievable with linear optical elements. Our work is essential for showing the feasibility of satellite?based experiments and is an important step towards quantum?communication applications on a global scale.