No Arabic abstract
Time domain astronomy has come of age with astronomers now able to monitor the sky at high cadence both across the electromagnetic spectrum and using neutrinos and gravitational waves. The advent of new observing facilities permits new science, but the ever increasing throughput of facilities demands efficient communication of coincident detections and better subsequent coordination among the scientific community so as to turn detections into scientific discoveries. To discuss the revolution occurring in our ability to monitor the Universe and the challenges it brings, on 2012 April 25-26 a group of scientists from observational and theoretical teams studying transients met with representatives of the major international transient observing facilities at the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, UK. This immediately followed the Royal Society Discussion meeting New windows on transients across the Universe held in London. Here we present a summary of the Kavli meeting at which the participants discussed the science goals common to the transient astronomy community and analysed how to better meet the challenges ahead as ever more powerful observational facilities come on stream.
Axions constituting dark matter (DM) are often considered to form a non-relativistic oscillating field. We explore bursts of relativistic axions from transient astrophysical sources, such as axion star explosions, where the sources are initially non-relativistic. For the QCD axion, bursts from collapsing axion stars lead to potentially detectable signals over a wide range of axion masses $10^{-15} , textrm{eV} lesssim m lesssim 10^{-7} , textrm{eV}$ in future experiments, such as ABRACADABRA, DMRadio and SHAFT. Unlike conventional cold axion DM searches, the sensitivity to axion bursts is not necessarily suppressed as $1/f$ for large decay constants $f$. The detection of axion bursts could provide new insights into the fundamental axion potential, which is challenging to probe otherwise. An ensemble of bursts in the distant past, in direct analogy with neutrinos, would give rise to a diffuse axion background distinct from the usual cold axion DM. Coincidence with other signatures, such as electromagnetic and gravitational-wave emission, would provide a new beyond-the-standard-model window into multi-messenger astronomy.
The SkyMapper 1.3 m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory has now begun regular operations. Alongside the Southern Sky Survey, a comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky, SkyMapper will carry out a search for supernovae and other transients. The search strategy, covering a total footprint area of ~2000 deg2 with a cadence of $leq 5$ days, is optimised for discovery and follow-up of low-redshift type Ia supernovae to constrain cosmic expansion and peculiar velocities. We describe the search operations and infrastructure, including a parallelised software pipeline to discover variable objects in difference imaging; simulations of the performance of the survey over its lifetime; public access to discovered transients; and some first results from the Science Verification data.
At present time Robotic observatory making is of current importance. Having a large field of view and being able to point at anywhere, Robotic astronomical systems are indispensable when they looking for transients like grb, supernovae explosions, novae etc, as its impossible in these cases to foresee what you should point you telescope at and when. In work are described prompt GRB observations received on wide-field chambers MASTER-VWF, and also methods of the images analysis and transients classifications applied in real-time data processing in this experiment. For 7 months of operation 6 synchronous observations of gamma-ray burst had been made by MASTER VWF in Kislovodsk and Irkutsk. In all cases a high upper limits have been received (see tabl ref {tab_grbwf} and fig. ref {allgrb}).
The IceCube neutrino discovery was punctuated by three showers with $E_ u$ ~ 1-2 PeV. Interest is intense in possible fluxes at higher energies, though a marked deficit of $E_ u$ ~ 6 PeV Glashow resonance events implies a spectrum that is soft and/or cutoff below ~few PeV. However, IceCube recently reported a through-going track event depositing 2.6 $pm$ 0.3 PeV. A muon depositing so much energy can imply $E_{ u_mu} gtrsim$ 10 PeV. We show that extending the soft $E_ u^{-2.6}$ spectral fit from TeV-PeV data is unlikely to yield such an event. Alternatively, a tau can deposit this much energy, though requiring $E_{ u_tau}$ ~10x higher. We find that either scenario hints at a new flux, with the hierarchy of $ u_mu$ and $ u_tau$ energies suggesting a window into astrophysical neutrinos at $E_ u$ ~ 100 PeV if a tau. We address implications, including for ultrahigh-energy cosmic-ray and neutrino origins.
We investigate different neutrino signals from the decay of dark matter particles to determine the prospects for their detection, and more specifically if any spectral signature can be disentangled from the background in present and future neutrino observatories. If detected, such a signal could bring an independent confirmation of the dark matter interpretation of the dramatic rise in the positron fraction above 10 GeV recently observed by the PAMELA satellite experiment and offer the possibility of distinguishing between astrophysical sources and dark matter decay or annihilation. In combination with other signals, it may also be possible to distinguish among different dark matter decay channels.