We consider a simplifed model for self-induced flavor
I describe a new, open-source astronomical image-fitting program called Imfit, specialized for galaxies but potentially useful for other sources, which is fast, flexible, and highly extensible. A key characteristic of the program is an object-oriente
d design which allows new types of image components (2D surface-brightness functions) to be easily written and added to the program. Image functions provided with Imfit include the usual suspects for galaxy decompositions (Sersic, exponential, Gaussian), along with Core-Sersic and broken-exponential profiles, elliptical rings, and three components which perform line-of-sight integration through 3D luminosity-density models of disks and rings seen at arbitrary inclinations. Available minimization algorithms include Levenberg-Marquardt, Nelder-Mead simplex, and Differential Evolution, allowing trade-offs between speed and decreased sensitivity to local minima in the fit landscape. Minimization can be done using the standard chi^2 statistic (using either data or model values to estimate per-pixel Gaussian errors, or else user-supplied error images) or Poisson-based maximum-likelihood statistics; the latter approach is particularly appropriate for cases of Poisson data in the low-count regime. I show that fitting low-S/N galaxy images using chi^2 minimization and individual-pixel Gaussian uncertainties can lead to significant biases in fitted parameter values, which are avoided if a Poisson-based statistic is used; this is true even when Gaussian read noise is present.
The Galactic bulge is now considered to be the inner three-dimensional part of the Milky Ways bar. It has a peanut shape and is characterized by cylindrical rotation. In N-body simulations, box/peanut bulges arise from disks through bar and buckling
instabilities. Models of this kind explain much of the structure and kinematics of the Galactic bulge and, in principle, also its vertical metallicity gradient. Cosmological disk galaxy formation models with high resolution and improved feedback models are now able to generate late-type disk galaxies with disk-like or barred bulges. These bulges often contain an early collapse stellar population and a population driven by later disk instabilities. Due to the inside-out disk formation, these bulges can be predominantly old, similar to the Milky Way bulge.
This volume contains the proceedings of the Ninth Workshop on Model-Based Testing (MBT 2014), which was held in Grenoble, France on April 6, 2014 as a satellite workshop of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS 2014).
In principle, the MID-infrared Interferometric instrument (MIDI) at the Very Large Telescope Array (VLTI) should always measure the same calibrated total flux spectrum for a specific source, independent of the instrument settings and the baseline geo
metry. In the data on the Circinus galaxy, however, there is (a) a general offset of the flux values for 2009 and (b) a slow drift of the total fluxes at short wavelengths during two nights (2008-04-17 and 2009-04-14). The latter seems to depend on the hour angle of the observation. In this document, a more detailed analysis of these two effects is carried out and summarised. The goal is to find an explanation for these variations in the photometry.
We present compact Q-balls in an (Anti-)de Sitter background in D dimensions, obtained with a V-shaped potential of the scalar field. Beyond critical values of the cosmological constant compact Q-shells arise. By including the gravitational back-reac
tion, we obtain boson stars and boson shells with (Anti-)de Sitter asymptotics. We analyze the physical properties of these solutions and determine their domain of existence. In four dimensions we address some astrophysical aspects.
The stability of black holes and solitons in d-dimensional Anti-de Sitter space-time against scalar field condensation is discussed. The resulting solutions are hairy black holes and solitons, respectively. In particular, we will discuss static black
hole solutions with hyperbolic, flat and spherical horizon topology and emphasize that two different type of instabilities exist depending on whether the scalar field is charged or uncharged, respectively. We will also discuss the influence of Gauss-Bonnet curvature terms. The results have applications within the AdS/CFT correspondence and describe e.g. holographic insulator/conductor/superconductor phase transitions.
We present a graphical and dynamic framework for binding and execution of business) process models. It is tailored to integrate 1) ad hoc processes modeled graphically, 2) third party services discovered in the (Inter)net, and 3) (dynamically) synthe
sized process chains that solve situation-specific tasks, with the synthesis taking place not only at design time, but also at runtime. Key to our approach is the introduction of type-safe stacked second-order execution contexts that allow for higher-order process modeling. Tamed by our underlying strict service-oriented notion of abstraction, this approach is tailored also to be used by application experts with little technical knowledge: users can select, modify, construct and then pass (component) processes during process execution as if they were data. We illustrate the impact and essence of our framework along a concrete, realistic (business) process modeling scenario: the development of Springers browser-based Online Conference Service (OCS). The most advanced feature of our new framework allows one to combine online synthesis with the integration of the synthesized process into the running application. This ability leads to a particularly flexible way of implementing self-adaption, and to a particularly concise and powerful way of achieving variability not only at design time, but also at runtime.
Recent observations of the diffuse Galactic gr emission (DGE) by the {it Fermi} Large Area Telescope ({it Fermi}-LAT) have shown significant deviations, above a few GeV until about 100 GeV, from DGE models that use the GALPROP code for the propagatio
n of cosmic ray (CR) particles outside their sources in the Galaxy and their interaction with the target distributions of the interstellar gas and radiation fields. The surplus of radiation observed is most pronounced in the inner Galaxy, where the concentration of CR sources is strongest. The present study investigates this {it Fermi}-LAT Galactic Plane Surplus by estimating the gr emission from the sources themselves, which is disregarded in the above DGE models. It is shown that indeed the expected hard spectrum of CRs, still confined in their sources (SCRs), can explain this surplus. The method is based on earlier studies regarding the so-called EGRET GeV excess which by now is generally interpreted as an instrumental effect. The contribution from SCRs is predicted to increasingly exceed the DGE models also above 100 GeV, up to gr energies of about ten TeV, where the corresponding surplus exceeds the hadronic part of the DGE by about one order of magnitude. Above such energies the emission surplus should decrease again with energy due to the finite life-time of the assumed supernova remnant sources. Observations of the DGE in the inner Galaxy at 15 TeV with the Milagro gr detector and, at TeV energies, with the ARGO-YBJ detector are interpreted to provide confirmation of a significant SCR contribution to the DGE.
We construct boson stars in (4+1)-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We study the properties of the solutions in dependence on the coupling constants and investigate these in detail. While the thick wall limit is independent of the value of the Gauss-
Bonnet coupling, we find that the spiraling behaviour characteristic for boson stars in standard Einstein gravity disappears for large enough values of the Gauss-Bonnet coupling. Our results show that in this case the scalar field can not have arbitrarily high values at the center of the boson star and that it is hence impossible to reach the thin wall limit. Moreover, for large enough Gauss-Bonnet coupling we find a unique relation between the mass and the radius (qualitatively similar to those of neutron stars) which is not present in the Einstein gravity limit.
