118660680
Canny Algorithm: A New Estimator for Primordial Non-Gaussianities
We utilize the Canny edge detection algorithm as an estimator for primordial non-Gaussianities. In preliminary tests on simulated sky patches with a window size of 57 degrees and multipole moments $l$ up to 1024, we find a $3\sigma$ distinction between maps with local non-Gaussianity $f_{NL}=350$ (or $f_{NL}=-700$) and Gaussian maps. We present evidence that high resolution CMB studies will strongly enhance the sensitivity of the Canny algorithm to non-Gaussianity, making it a promising technique to estimate primordial non-Gaussianity.
2921220
Non-Gaussianity, isocurvature perturbation, gravitational waves, and a no-go theorem for the isocurvaton
We investigate the isocurvaton model, in which the isocurvature perturbation plays a role in suppressing the curvature perturbation, and large non-Gaussianity and gravitational waves can be produced with no isocurvature perturbation for dark matter. We show that in the slow-roll noninteracting multifield theory, the isocurvaton mechanism cannot be realized. This result can also be generalized to most of the studied models with generalized kinetic terms. We also study the implications for the curvaton model. We show that there is a combined constraint for curvaton on non-Gaussianity, gravitational waves, and isocurvature perturbation. The technique used in this paper can also help to simplify some calculations in the mixed inflaton and curvaton models. We also investigate the possibility of producing large negative non-Gaussianity and nonlocal non-Gaussianity in the curvaton model.
17457342
Curvaton dynamics and the non-linearity parameters in the curvaton model
We investigate the curvaton dynamics and the non-linearity parameters in the curvaton model with a potential slightly deviating from the quadratic form in detail. The non-linearity parameter gNL will show up due to the curvaton self-interaction. We also point out that the leading order of the non-quadratic term in the curvaton potential can be negative, for example in the axion-type curvaton model. If a large positive gNL is detected, the axion-type curvaton model will be preferred.
119270914
Quadra-Spectrum and Quint-Spectrum from Inflation and Curvaton Models
We calculate the quadra-spectrum and quint-spectrum, corresponding to five and six point correlation functions of the curvature perturbation. For single field inflation with standard kinetic term, the quadra-spectrum and quint-spectrum are small, which are suppressed by slow roll parameters. The calculation can be generalized to multiple fields. When there is no entropy perturbation, the quadra-spectrum and quint-spectrum are suppressed as well. With the presence of entropy perturbation, the quadra-spectrum and quint-spectrum can get boosted. We illustrate this boost in the multi-brid inflation model. For the curvaton scenario, the quadra-spectrum and quint-spectrum are also large in the small r limit. We also calculate representative terms of quadra-spectrum and quint-spectrum for inflation with generalized kinetic terms, and estimate their order of magnitude for quasi-single field inflation.
118533325
Quasi-Single Field Inflation and Non-Gaussianities
In quasi-single field inflation models, massive isocurvature modes, that are coupled to the inflaton and have mass of order the Hubble parameter, can have nontrivial impacts on density perturbations, especially non-Gaussianities. We study a simple example of quasi-single field inflation in terms of turning inflaton trajectory. Large bispectra with a one-parameter family of novel shapes arise, lying between the well-known local and equilateral shape. The trispectra can also be very large and its magnitude tNL can be much larger than fNL2.
119112752
CMB statistical anisotropies of classical and quantum origins
We examine the impact of different anisotropic relics on inflation, in particular the predictions on the density perturbations. These relics can be the source of the large scale anomalies in the cosmic microwave background. There are two different types of background relics, one from the matter sector and the other purely from the metric. Although the angular-dependence of the statistical anisotropy in both cases are degenerate, the scale-dependence are observationally distinctive. In addition, we demonstrate that non-Bunch-Davies vacuum states can extend the statistical anisotropy to much shorter scales, and leave a scale-dependence that is insensitive to the different backgrounds but sensitive to the initial quantum state.
55280473
Cosmic-ray energy spectrum around the knee observed with the Tibet air-shower experiment
The energy spectrum of cosmic rays around the knee measured by Tibet air-shower experiment is summarized and its characteristic features are discussed under two possible scenarios. The result of Tibet experiment measured over wide range of10−10 eV with high statistics provided details of the knee at the energy around 4×10 eV. The study of the chemical composition based on measurements of proton and helium spectra obtained from airshower core detection indicates the dominance of heavy nuclei around the knee. Such feature can be explained either by contribution of nearby sources with source composition dominated by heavy nuclei or by nonlinear effect in diffusive shock acceleration mechanism. 1 Tibet Air-shower array and core detector The Tibet air-shower (AS) experiment is characterized by high altitude of the observation site (4300 m a.s.l., 606 g/cm), which enables us to determine the primary energy less dependent upon the primary mass and models of hadronic interactions in the energy range over PeV because of the observation of the shower size at nearly maximum development irrespective of the primary mass. The second merit of the high altitude is that it is possible to select the shower events of light nuclei origin such as protons and helium through the detection of high-energy secondary particles (electromagnetic component) located at the AS core, because the probability of association of high energy secondaries depends on primary mass by the difference of the interaction cross section in the atmosphere. The study of the primary mass composition is made by simultaneous operation of the AS array and the core detector. The AS array consists of 761 fast timing (FT) counters, surrounded by 28 density (D) counters with 36 900 m coverage as shown schematically in Fig. 1. The AS array is used to measure the energy and arrival direction of each AS. The details of the installation are described in ( Amenomori et al. , 2008a). The primary energy of each event is determined by the shower size Ne, which is calculated by fitting the lateral particle density distribution to the modified NKG structure function. The energy resolution is less than 20% for the knee energy range. The arrival direction of an air shower is determined as follows. The direction cosine of the shower axis is determined using a least square method in which the difference is minimized between the arrival time signals of each FT counter and the expected values on the assumed cone with a given direction cosine. This procedure determines the arrival angle with an accuracy smaller than 0.2◦ at energies above 10 eV, which is calibrated by observing the Moon’s shadow ( Amenomori et al., 2000a, 2003). The core detector was designed to detect the high-energy particles at the AS core by converting them into electromagnetic cascade showers (burst) using lead absorber of 160 cm×50 cm in area and 7 cm (in Phase I) or 3.5 cm (in Phase II) in thickness. The burst size under the lead plate was measured by scintillation counters of the same size as the lead plate in area and 2 cm in thickness. Four photodiodes were attached to the each corner of the scintillator whose attenuation length for the scintillation light was calibrated with electron beam. From the 4 photo-diode signals, we can estimate the burst size and the position of the burst center with spatial resolution of 10 cm. One hundred core detectors were used (total area is 80 m ) to detect burst size greater than5×10. The study of the primary mass composition was made through two experimental phases. In the first phase, 6 layers of X-ray films were placed between lead plates with 1 cm depth interval to register the development of shower spots induced by high-energy γ and electrons (hereafter abbreviated as γ-rays) over a few TeV which are incident upon the detector, and detailed analysis on the structure of the high energy core has been made with use of image scanner ( Ozawa et al. , 2004) to obtain proton and helium spectra ( Amenomori et al. , 2006). The energy determination of the individualγ-rays was made by the comparison of the transition curve of the optical density of the shower spots with electromagnetic shower theory. Such procedure of the energy determination using X-ray films was calibrated using 200 GeV electron beam at FNAL ( Hotta et al. , 1980). A bundle of the high energy γ-rays originating from successive nuclear interactions of the primary cosmic rays in the atmosphere is called γ-family, which can be detected by spatial reconstruction of the shower spots registered on X-ray films with angular resolution of 2.5◦. They are reconstructed as groups of parallel tracks with typical lateral spread of at most several cm among uncorrelated single tracks, which are reduced as background. The assignment of a γ f mily to an accompanied AS was made through the positional correlation between the X-ray film and the scintillator, and the correlation between the burst and AS was made by their time stamps. The arrival directions obtained from AS and the reconstruction of the shower spots were also used to uniquely determine the AS candidate. Suchγ-family events are more efficiently generated by light primaries than the case of heavy primaries because of the penetrating nature in the atmosphere. Hence, the AS core detector can select the air showers of light primary origin naturally. The contamination of the events of heavy nuclei origin was estimated using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based on extensive Monte Carlo simulation of air showers (MC) assuming interaction models and primary models using CORSIKA code. Two interaction models of QGSJET and SIBYLL are used in estimating the efficiency of the γ family generation, and also two mass composition models of proton dominant (PD) and heavy dominant (HD) are used to appreciate the contamination rate of heavy primaries. The efficiency of the family generation for various primary nuclei and its energy dependence is calculated by MC and used for obtaining the primary proton and helium fluxes. For exAstrophys. Space Sci. Trans., 7, 15– 20, 2011 www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/15/2011/ M. Amenomori et al.: Cosmic-ray energy spectrum with the Tibet air-shower experiment 17 Fig. 1. Air-shower array located at Tibet, Yangbajing (4300 m a.s.l.) ample, the efficiencies by protons at the knee energy 4 PeV in phase I experiment are about 7% and 10% by QGSJET model and SIBYLL model, respectively. ANN is also used in procedures to obtain proton and helium spectra. Phase I experiment selected 177 γ family events with core energy ∑ Eγ >20 TeV and AS sizeNe>2×10. In the second phase experiment, X-ray films were not used and proton+helium (P+He) spectrum was studied without separating them but with higher statistics than that of phase I. The core detector was tuned to decrease the detection threshold energy of the AS core to have several times higher efficiency. The details of the analysis are described in (Amenomori et al. , 2007, 2010). 2 Experimental results The energy spectrum of all particles was obtained as shown in Fig. 2 together with other data (Cited data: Grigorov (Grigorov et al. , 1971), JACEE (Asakimori et al. , 1998), KASCADE (Antoni et al., 2005), BASJE (Ogio et al. , 2004), CASA (Fowler et al. , 2001), Akeno (Nagano et al. , 1984), Akeno array1 and Akeno array20 ( Nagano et al. , 1992)). The uncertainty of the absolute intensity due to the interaction models used in the analysis is shown by QGSJET and SIBYLL (10% difference at most). The uncertainty due to the assumed primary mass composition is also shown by HD and PD. Although the composition is fairly different between HD and PD models at energies above 10 eV, the difference of the absolute intensity is 20% at most between the two models and it decreases with increasing primary energy. Note that the shapes of the spectra from different models are almost the same and the position of the knee is clearly found at the energy around 4 PeV. From the second phase experiment of AS core observation, the energy spectrum of P+He was obtained with high statistics and in good agreement with phase I as shown in Fig. 3, in which QGSJET model was used for the analysis. Use of 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 4 10 5 10 6 10 7 10 8 10 9 E 2 .5 d J /d E [ G e V 1 .5 m − 2 s e c − 1 s r − 1 ] Primary Energy [GeV/particle] Grigorov JACEE KASCADE-QGS KASCADE-SIB BASJE2004 CASA/MIA Akeno Akeno array1 Akeno array20 Tibet3-QGSJET+HD Tibet3-QGSJET+PD Tibet3-SIBYLL+HD Fig. 2. All particle spectrum obtained by Tibet 3 array. The results from three models of QGSJET+HD, QGSJET+PD, and SIBYLL+HD used in the analysis are shown. SIBYLL model results in about 30% lower intensity than that of the QGSJET analysis There is a problem of discrepancy between Tibet and KASCADE data as shown in Fig. 3, e.g., the flux of the light nuclei by KADCADE is higher than Tibet by more than factor 2. However, if SIBYLL model is used in the analysis of KASCADE, the difference between two data is much reduced. This fact does not necessarily mean that SIBYLL model is more preferable to explain the data at this energy range. KASCADE reported that QGSJET model explains high energy data better than SIBYLL, on the other hand, SIBYLL model is better at lower energies. This problem is related to the interaction model dependence of MC calculations and also to the different experimental methods used in two experiments. Tibet experiment observes high energy part of the air showers, namely, the most forward region of the center of momentum system (CMS) of interacting particles, while KASCADE experiment observes Ne−Nμ correlation, in which muon component is sensitive to the central region of the CMS. The model dependence in forward region www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/15/2011/ Astrophys. Space Sci. Trans., 7, 15– 20, 2011 18 M. Amenomori et al.: Cosmic-ray energy spectrum with the Tibet air-shower experiment 10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 5 10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 5 10 6 10 
118378831
Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) Interim Report
The New Worlds, New Horizons (NWNH) in Astronomy and Astrophysics 2010 Decadal Survey prioritized the community consensus for ground-based and space-based observatories. Recognizing that many of the community s key questions could be answered with a wide-field infrared survey telescope in space, and that the decade would be one of budget austerity, WFIRST was top ranked in the large space mission category. In addition to the powerful new science that could be accomplished with a wide-field infrared telescope, the WFIRST mission was determined to be both technologically ready and only a small fraction of the cost of previous flagship missions, such as HST or JWST. In response to the top ranking by the community, NASA formed the WFIRST Science Definition Team (SDT) and Project Office. The SDT was charged with fleshing out the NWNH scientific requirements to a greater level of detail. NWNH evaluated the risk and cost of the JDEM-Omega mission design, as submitted by NASA, and stated that it should serve as the basis for the WFIRST mission. The SDT and Project Office were charged with developing a mission optimized for achieving the science goals laid out by the NWNH re-port. The SDT and Project Office opted to use the JDEM-Omega hardware configuration as an initial start-ing point for the hardware implementation. JDEM-Omega and WFIRST both have an infrared imager with a filter wheel, as well as counter-dispersed moderate resolution spectrometers. The primary advantage of space observations is being above the Earth's atmosphere, which absorbs, scatters, warps and emits light. Observing from above the atmosphere enables WFIRST to obtain precision infrared measurements of the shapes of galaxies for weak lensing, infrared light-curves of supernovae and exoplanet microlensing events with low systematic errors, and infrared measurements of the H hydrogen line to be cleanly detected in the 1<z<2 redshift range important for baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) dark energy measurements. The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), Herschel, Spitzer, and Wide-field Infrared Sur-vey Explorer (WISE) are all space missions that have produced stunning new scientific advances by going to space to observe in the infrared. This interim report describes progress as of June 2011 on developing a requirements flowdown and an evaluation of scientific performance. An Interim Design Reference Mission (IDRM) configuration is presented that is based on the specifications of NWNH with some refinements to optimize the design in accordance with the new scientific requirements. Analysis of this WFIRST IDRM concept is in progress to ensure the capability of the observatory is compatible with the science requirements. The SDT and Project will continue to refine the mission concept over the coming year as design, analysis and simulation work are completed, resulting in the SDT s WFIRST Design Reference Mission (DRM) by the end of 2012.
18759679
Primordial power spectrum reconstruction
In order to reconstruct the initial conditions of the universe it is important to devise a method that can efficiently constrain the shape of the power spectrum of primordial matter density fluctuations in a model-independent way from data. In an earlier paper we proposed a method based on the wavelet expansion of the primordial power spectrum. The advantage of this method is that the orthogonality and multiresolution properties of wavelet basis functions enable information regarding the shape of Pin(k) to be encoded in a small number of non-zero coefficients. Any deviation from scale invariance can then be easily picked out. Here we apply this method to simulated data to demonstrate that it can accurately reconstruct an input Pin(k), and present a prescription for how this method should be used on future data.
115829749
On neutron generation in massive Cu-target at irradiation with 22 and 44 GeV carbon ions
2618144
Looking for Cosmological Alfven Waves in WMAP Data
A primordial cosmological magnetic field induces and supports vorticity or Alfven waves, which in turn generate cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. A homogeneous primordial magnetic field with fixed direction induces correlations between the $a_{l-1,m}$ and $a_{l+1,m}$ multipole coefficients of the CMB temperature anisotropy field. We discuss the constraints that can be placed on the strength of such a primordial magnetic field using CMB anisotropy data from the WMAP experiment. We place 3 $\sigma$ upper limits on the strength of the magnetic field of $B < 15$ nG for vector perturbation spectral index $n=-5$ and $B<1.7$ nG for $n=-7$.