We present the discovery of a strongly phase-variable absorption feature in the X-ray spectrum of the nearby, thermally-emitting, isolated neutron star RX J0720.4-3125. The absorption line was detected performing detailed phase-resolved spectroscopy
in 20 XMM-Newton observations, covering the period May 2000 - September 2012. The feature has an energy of ~750eV, an equivalent width of ~30eV, and it is significantly detected for only ~20% of the pulsar rotation. The absorption feature appears to be stable over the timespan covered by the observations. Given its strong dependence on the pulsar rotational phase and its narrow width, a plausible interpretation is in terms of resonant proton cyclotron absorption/scattering in a confined magnetic structure very close to the neutron star surface. The inferred field in such a magnetic loop is B_loop ~ 2 x 10^{14} G, a factor of ~7 higher than the surface dipolar magnetic field.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been suggested as possible sources of the high-energy neutrino flux recently detected by the IceCube telescope. We revisit the fireball emission model and elaborate an analytical prescription to estimate the high-energy n
eutrino prompt emission from pion and kaon decays, assuming that the leading mechanism for the neutrino production is lepto-hadronic. To this purpose, we include hadronic, radiative and adiabatic cooling effects and discuss their relevance for long- (including high- and low-luminosity) and short-duration GRBs. The expected diffuse neutrino background is derived, by requiring that the GRB high-energy neutrino counterparts follow up-to-date gamma-ray luminosity functions and redshift evolutions of the long and short GRBs. Although dedicated stacking searches have been unsuccessful up to now, we find that GRBs could contribute up to a few % to the observed IceCube high-energy neutrino flux for sub-PeV energies, assuming that the latter has a diffuse origin. Gamma-ray bursts, especially low-luminosity ones, could however be the main sources of the IceCube high-energy neutrino flux in the PeV range. While high-luminosity and low-luminosity GRBs have comparable intensities, the contribution from the short-duration component is significantly smaller. Our findings confirm the most-recent IceCube results on the GRB searches and suggest that larger exposure is mandatory to detect high-energy neutrinos from high-luminosity GRBs in the near future.
We present an analysis of archival Chandra observations of the mixed-morphology remnant 3C400.2. We analysed spectra of different parts of the remnant to observe if the plasma properties provide hints on the origin of the mixed-morphology class. Thes
e remnants often show overionization, which is a sign of rapid cooling of the thermal plasma, and super-solar abundances of elements which is a sign of ejecta emission. Our analysis shows that the thermal emission of 3C400.2 can be well explained by a two component non-equilibrium ionization model, of which one component is underionized, has a high temperature ($kT approx 3.9$ keV) and super-solar abundances, while the other component has a much lower temperature ($kT approx 0.14$ keV), solar abundances and shows signs of overionization. The temperature structure, abundance values and density contrast between the different model components suggest that the hot component comes from ejecta plasma, while the cooler component has an interstellar matter origin. This seems to be the first instance of an overionized plasma found in the outer regions of a supernova remnant, whereas the ejecta component of the inner region is underionized. In addition, the non-ionization equilibrium plasma component associated with the ejecta is confined to the central, brighter parts of the remnant, whereas the cooler component is present mostly in the outer regions. Therefore our data can most naturally be explained by an evolutionary scenario in which the outer parts of the remnant are cooling rapidly due to having swept up high density ISM, while the inner parts are very hot and cooling inefficiently due to low density of the plasma. This is also known as the relic X-ray scenario.
The Minimum Quartet Tree Cost problem is to construct an optimal weight tree from the $3{n choose 4}$ weighted quartet topologies on $n$ objects, where optimality means that the summed weight of the embedded quartet topologies is optimal (so it can b
e the case that the optimal tree embeds all quartets as nonoptimal topologies). We present a Monte Carlo heuristic, based on randomized hill climbing, for approximating the optimal weight tree, given the quartet topology weights. The method repeatedly transforms a dendrogram, with all objects involved as leaves, achieving a monotonic approximation to the exact single globally optimal tree. The problem and the solution heuristic has been extensively used for general hierarchical clustering of nontree-like (non-phylogeny) data in various domains and across domains with heterogeneous data. We also present a greatly improved heuristic, reducing the running time by a factor of order a thousand to ten thousand. All this is implemented and available, as part of the CompLearn package. We compare performance and running time of the original and improv
Bisimulation metric is a robust behavioural semantics for probabilistic processes. Given any SOS specification of probabilistic processes, we provide a method to compute for each operator of the language its respective metric compositionality propert
y. The compositionality property of an operator is defined as its modulus of continuity which gives the relative increase of the distance between processes when they are combined by that operator. The compositionality property of an operator is computed by recursively counting how many times the combined processes are copied along their evolution. The compositionality properties allow to derive an upper bound on the distance between processes by purely inspecting the operators used to specify those processes.
This paper is motivated by a conjecture that BPP can be characterized in terms of polynomial-time nonadaptive reductions to the set of Kolmogorov-random strings. In this paper we show that an approach laid out in [Allender et al] to settle this conje
cture cannot succeed without significant alteration, but that it does bear fruit if we consider time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity instead. We show that if a set A is reducible in polynomial time to the set of time-t-bounded Kolmogorov random strings (for all large enough time bounds t), then A is in P/poly, and that if in addition such a reduction exists for any universal Turing machine one uses in the definition of Kolmogorov complexity, then A is in PSPACE.
We report on work in progress on nested term graphs for formalizing higher-order terms (e.g. finite or infinite lambda-terms), including those expressing recursion (e.g. terms in the lambda-calculus with letrec). The idea is to represent the nested s
cope structure of a higher-order term by a nested structure of term graphs. Based on a signature that is partitioned into atomic and nested function symbols, we define nested term graphs both in a functional representation, as tree-like recursive graph specifications that associate nested symbols with usual term graphs, and in a structural representation, as enriched term graph structures. These definitions induce corresponding notions of bisimulation between nested term graphs. Our main result states that nested term graphs can be implemented faithfully by first-order term graphs. keywords: higher-order term graphs, context-free grammars, cyclic lambda-terms, higher-order rewrite systems
We present a new version of the fast star cluster evolution code Evolve Me A Cluster of StarS (EMACSS). While previo
We present some contributions to the theory of infinitary rewriting for weakly orthogonal term rewrite systems, in which critical pairs may occur provided they are trivial. We show that the infinitary unique normal form property fails by an example o
f a weakly orthogonal TRS with two collapsing rules. By translating this example, we show that this property also fails for the infinitary lambda-beta-eta-calculus. As positive results we obtain the following: Infinitary confluence, and hence the infinitary unique normal forms property, holds for weakly orthogonal TRSs that do not contain collapsing rules. To this end we refine the compression lemma. Furthermore, we establish the triangle and diamond properties for infinitary multi-steps (complete developments) in weakly orthogonal TRSs, by refining an earlier cluster-analysis for the finite case.
We study the close connection between rational functions that approximate a given Boolean function, and quantum algorithms that compute the same function using postselection. We show that the minimal degree of the former equals (up to a factor of 2)
the minimal query complexity of the latter. We give optimal (up to constant factors) quantum algorithms with postselection for the Majority function, slightly improving upon an earlier algorithm of Aaronson. Finally we show how Newmans classic theorem about low-degree rational approximation of the absolute-value function follows from these algorithms.
