119086181
Geodesic deviation in Regge calculus
Geodesic deviation is the most basic manifestation of the influence of gravitational fields on matter. We investigate geodesic deviation within the framework of Regge calculus, and compare the results with the continuous formulation of general relativity on two different levels. We show that the continuum and simplicial descriptions coincide when the cumulative effect of the Regge contributions over an infinitesimal element of area is considered. This comparison provides a quantitative relation between the curvature of the continuous description and the deficit angles of Regge calculus. The results presented might also be of help in developing generic ways of including matter terms in the Regge equations.
15170029
PANCHROMATIC SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS OF DUSTY GALAXIES WITH RADISHE. I. PREDICTIONS FOR HERSCHEL: CORRELATING COLORS WITH GALACTIC ENERGY SOURCES
We present three-dimensional, self-consistent radiative transfer solutions with a new Monte Carlo radiative equilibrium code. The code RADISHE can be applied to calculate the emergent spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and broadband images from optical to millimeter wavelengths of arbitrary density geometries with distributed sources of radiation. One of the primary uses of this code has been to interface with hydrodynamical codes to calculate emergent SEDs along a simulation time sequence. We focus the applications of this code in this paper on infrared bright dusty galaxies, but RADISHE is also ideal for calculating emission from star clusters or protostellar environments. The primary methodological focus of this paper is on the radiative equilibrium temperature calculation. We find that an iterative calculation of the temperature, which takes the sum of photon flight paths as the Monte Carlo estimator for the mean free intensity, is significantly faster than relaxation temperature calculation methods, particularly when large numbers of grid cells are required (i.e., in modeling three-dimensional geometries such as the dust envelopes of turbulent massive protostellar cores or infrared-bright galaxies). An accurate long-wavelength SED and corresponding temperature calculation will be essential for analyzing upcoming Herschel Space Observatory observations. We present simulated color-color plots for infrared-bright galaxies at a range of redshifts, and unfold these plots as color versus the fractional active galactic nucleus (AGN) luminosity, to demonstrate that Herschel will be able to effectively discriminate between submillimeter galaxies, where the energy source is dominated by AGN, and those where star formation dominates. We demarcate in particular the Class II or energetically active AGN evolutionary phase in Herschel color-color plots.
123616864
Tidal imprints of a dark subhalo on the outskirts of the Milky Way
We study the dynamical evolution of spiral structure in the stellar disks of isolated galaxies using high resolution Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations that treat the evolution of gas, stars, and dark matter self-consistently. We focus this study on the question of self-excited spiral structure in the stellar disk and inves tigate the dynamical coupling between the cold, dissipative gaseous component and the stellar component. We find that angular momentum transport from the gas to the stars inside of corotation leads to a roughly time-steady spiral structure in the stellar disk. To make this point clea r, we contrast these results with otherwise identical simulations that do not include a cold gaseous component that is able to cool radiatively and dissipate energy, and find that spiral struc ture, when it is incipient, dies out more rapidly in simulations that do not include gas. We also employ a standard star formation prescription to convert gas into stars and find that our resul ts hold for typical gas consumption time scales that are in accord with the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation. We therefore attribute the long-lived roughly time steady spiral structure in the stel lar disk to the dynamical coupling between the gas and the stars and the resultant torques that t he self-gravitating gaseous disk is able to exert on the stars due to an azimuthal phase shift be tween the collisionless and dissipative components. Spiral galaxies present two faces to observers. When seen in blue light, these galaxies look disordered, with spurs, branche s and feather-like structures seen even in grand design galaxies , while K-band images show that these galaxies possess smooth, usually two-armed spiral patterns. We study here the dynamical interaction between the Population I component seen in blue light and the older Population II component revealed in the longer wavelengths, specifically with the intent of understanding how the intera ction between the gas and the stars affects the time evolution of spiral
118956575
Simulating Merging Galaxies: The Infrared View
We calculate multi-wavelength spectral energy distributions (SEDs) (spanning optical to millimeter wavelengths) from simulations of major galaxy mergers using a three-dimensional radiative transfer code, which treats the absorption and scattering of radiation as well as the reemission from dust grains self-consistently. These calculations allow us to deduce correlations from the X-rays to millimeter wavelengths. We confirm observed correlations for Spitzer Space Telescope’s IRAC bands, as well as correlations observed in the IRAS era. We also make predictions that should be testable by future instruments. The power of the dynamical approach afforded by calculating fluxes from the merger simulations is that we can directly correlate observed clustering in the data as seen in IRAC color-color plots with the relative amount of time the system spends in a region of color-color space. We also present photo albums spanning the lifetime of SMGs, from its infancy in the pre-merger phase to its final stage as an elliptical galaxy, as seen in various bands. Finally, we compare the SEDs from the simulations to recent observations of SMGs. Our calculations, which match observed correlations both for local ULIRGs and higher redshift systems, suggest that simulations of major mergers with black hole feedback provide an excellent framework within which to understand the emission from local ULIRGs, and their high redshift cousins, the submillimeter galaxies.
16317166
Far-Infrared Spectral Energy Distributions and Photometric Redshifts of Dusty Galaxies
We infer the large-scale source parameters of dusty galaxies from their observed spectral energy distributions (SEDs) using the analytic radiative transfer methodology presented by Chakrabarti and McKee. For local ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs), we show that the millimeter to far-infrared (FIR) SEDs can be well fit using the standard dust opacity index of 2 when self-consistent radiative transfer solutions are employed, indicating that the cold dust in local ULIRGs can be described by a single-grain model. We develop a method for determining photometric redshifts of ULIRGs and submillimeter galaxies from the millimeter-FIR SED; the resulting value of 1 + z is typically accurate to about 10% . As such, it is comparable to the accuracy of near-IR photometric redshifts and provides a complementary means of deriving redshifts from far-IR data, such as those from the upcoming Herschel Space Observatory. Since our analytic radiative transfer solution is developed for homogeneous, spherically symmetric, centrally heated, dusty sources, it is relevant for infrared bright galaxies that are primarily powered by compact sources of luminosity that are embedded in a dusty envelope. We discuss how deviations from spherical symmetry may affect the applicability of our solution, and we contrast our self-consistent analytic solution with standard approximations to demonstrate the main differences.
118984787
A NEW PROBE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF DARK MATTER IN GALAXIES
The scale radius of dark matter halos is a critical parameter for specifying the density distribution of dark matter, and is therefore a fundamental parameter for modeling galaxies. We develop here a novel, observationally motivated probe to quantitatively infer its value within the context of the Navarro, Frenk, & White profile. We demonstrate that disturbances in the extended atomic hydrogen gas disks of galaxies can be analyzed to infer the scale radius of the dark matter halo. Our primary metric is the phase (i.e., the shape of the spiral) of the m = 1 mode of the disturbance in the outskirts of the gas disk, which we take to be produced by a tidal interaction. We apply the method to the Whirlpool galaxy, which has an optically visible satellite. We infer a scale radius of ~17 kpc for M51, which is consistent with expectations from dissipationless cosmological simulations. We explore potential degeneracies due to orbital inclination, initial conditions, satellite mass, and pericenter approach distance, and find our results to be relatively insensitive to these considerations. Our method of tracing the dark potential well through observed disturbances in outer gas disks is complementary to gravitational lensing.
474602
Universal near-horizon conformal structure and black hole entropy
It is shown that a massless scalar probe reveals a universal near-horizon conformal structure for a wide class of black holes, including the BTZ. The central charge of the corresponding Virasoro algebra contains information about the black hole. With a suitable quantization condition on the central charge, the CFT associated with the black hole in our approach is consistent with the recent observation of Witten, where the dual theory for the BTZ in the AdS/CFT framework has been identified with the construction of Frenkel, Lepowsky and Meurman. This CFT admits the Fischer–Griess monster group as its symmetry. The logarithm of the dimension of a specific representation of the monster group has been identified by Witten as the entropy of the BTZ black hole. Our algebraic approach shows that a wide class of black holes share the same near-horizon conformal structure as that for the BTZ. With a suitable quantization condition, the CFT's for all these black holes in our formalism can be identified with the FLM model, although not through the AdS/CFT correspondence. The corresponding entropy for the BTZ provides a lower bound for the entropy of this entire class of black holes.
124097243
GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DAMPING FROM A SELF GRAVITATING VIBRATING RING OF MATTER AROUND A BLACK HOLE
118709858
Viscosity to entropy ratio at extremality
Assuming gauge theory realization at the boundary, we show that the viscosity to entropy ratio is 1/(4π) where the bulk is represented by a large class of extremal black holes in anti-deSitter space. In particular, this class includes multiple R-charged black holes in various dimensions.
10835186
A comparative study of Dirac quasinormal modes of charged black holes in higher dimensions
In this work we study the Dirac quasinormal modes of higher dimensional charged black holes. Higher dimensional Reissner–Nordström type black holes as well as charged black holes in Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet theories are studied for fermionic perturbations using WKB method. A comparative study of the quasinormal modes in the two different theories of gravity has been performed. The behavior of the frequencies with the variation of black hole parameters as well as with the variation of space-time dimensions is studied. We also study the large multipole number limit of the black hole potential in order to look for an analytic expression for the frequencies.
119208028
BLACK HOLE PHASE TRANSITIONS VIA BRAGG–WILLIAMS
We argue that a convenient way to analyze instabilities of black holes in AdS space is via Bragg–Williams construction of a free energy function. Starting with a pedagogical review of this construction in condensed matter systems and also its implementation to Hawking–Page transition, we study instabilities associated with hairy black holes and also with the R-charged black holes. For the hairy black holes, an analysis of thermal quench is presented.