# Chemical abundances of fast-rotating massive stars. I. Description of the methods and individual results [SSA]

Aims: Recent observations have challenged our understanding of rotational mixing in massive stars by revealing a population of fast-rotating objects with apparently normal surface nitrogen abundances. However, several questions have arisen because of a number of issues, which have rendered a reinvestigation necessary; these issues include the presence of numerous upper limits for the nitrogen abundance, unknown multiplicity status, and a mix of stars with different physical properties, such as their mass and evolutionary state, which are known to control the amount of rotational mixing. Methods: We have carefully selected a large sample of bright, fast-rotating early-type stars of our Galaxy (40 objects with spectral types between B0.5 and O4). Their high-quality, high-resolution optical spectra were then analysed with the stellar atmosphere modelling codes DETAIL/SURFACE or CMFGEN, depending on the temperature of the target. Several internal and external checks were performed to validate our methods; notably, we compared our results with literature data for some well-known objects, studied the effect of gravity darkening, or confronted the results provided by the two codes for stars amenable to both analyses. Furthermore, we studied the radial velocities of the stars to assess their binarity. Results: This first part of our study presents our methods and provides the derived stellar parameters, He, CNO abundances, and the multiplicity status of every star of the sample. It is the first time that He and CNO abundances of such a large number of Galactic massive fast rotators are determined in a homogeneous way.

C. Cazorla, T. Morel, Y. Naze, et. al.
Fri, 17 Mar 17
7/50

Comments: accepted for publication by A&A

# LAGO: the Latin American Giant Observatory [IMA]

The Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) is an extended cosmic ray observatory composed of a network of water-Cherenkov detectors (WCD) spanning over different sites located at significantly different altitudes (from sea level up to more than $5000$\,m a.s.l.) and latitudes across Latin America, covering a wide range of geomagnetic rigidity cut-offs and atmospheric absorption/reaction levels. The LAGO WCD is simple and robust, and incorporates several integrated devices to allow time synchronization, autonomous operation, on board data analysis, as well as remote control and automated data transfer.
This detection network is designed to make detailed measurements of the temporal evolution of the radiation flux coming from outer space at ground level. LAGO is mainly oriented to perform basic research in three areas: high energy phenomena, space weather and atmospheric radiation at ground level. It is an observatory designed, built and operated by the LAGO Collaboration, a non-centralized collaborative union of more than 30 institutions from ten countries.
In this paper we describe the scientific and academic goals of the LAGO project – illustrating its present status with some recent results – and outline its future perspectives.

I. Sidelnik, H. Asorey and LAGO. Collaboration
Fri, 17 Mar 17
8/50

Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Ring Imaging Cherenkov Detectors (RICH 2016), Lake Bled, Slovenia

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# Constraining holographic cosmology using Planck data [CEA]

Holographic cosmology offers a novel framework for describing the very early Universe in which cosmological predictions are expressed in terms of the observables of a three dimensional quantum field theory (QFT). This framework includes conventional slow-roll inflation, which is described in terms of a strongly coupled QFT, but it also allows for qualitatively new models for the very early Universe, where the dual QFT may be weakly coupled. The new models describe a universe which is non-geometric at early times. While standard slow-roll inflation leads to a (near-)power-law primordial power spectrum, perturbative superrenormalizable QFT’s yield a new holographic spectral shape. Here, we compare the two predictions against cosmological observations. We use CosmoMC to determine the best fit parameters, and MultiNest for Bayesian Evidence, comparing the likelihoods. We find that the dual QFT should be non-perturbative at the very low multipoles ($l \lesssim 30$), while for higher multipoles ($l \gtrsim 30$) the new holographic model, based on perturbative QFT, fits the data just as well as the standard power-law spectrum assumed in $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. This finding opens the door to applications of non-perturbative QFT techniques, such as lattice simulations, to observational cosmology on gigaparsec scales and beyond.

N. Afshordi, E. Gould and K. Skenderis
Fri, 17 Mar 17
9/50

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# Quasars as standard candles I: The physical relation between disc and coronal emission [HEAP]

A tight non-linear relation exists between the X-ray and UV emission in quasars (i.e. $L_{\rm X}\propto L_{\rm UV}^{\gamma}$), with a dispersion of $\sim$0.2~dex over \rev{$\sim$3~orders of magnitude in luminosity}. Such observational evidence has two relevant consequences: (1) an ubiquitous physical mechanism must regulate the energy transfer from the accretion disc to the X-ray emitting {\it corona}, and (2) the non-linearity of the relation provides a new, powerful way to estimate the absolute luminosity, turning quasars into a new class of {\it standard candles}.
Here we propose a modified version of this relation which involves the emission line full-width half maximum, $L_{\rm X}\propto L_{\rm UV}^{\hat\gamma}\upsilon_{\rm fwhm}^{\hat\beta}$. We interpret this new relation through a simple, {\it ad-hoc} model of accretion disc corona, derived from the works of Svensson \& Zdziarski (1994) and Merloni \& Fabian (2002), where it is assumed that reconnection and magnetic loops above the accretion disc can account for the production of the primary X-ray radiation.
We find that the monochromatic optical-UV (2500 \AA) and X–ray (2 keV) luminosities depend on the black hole mass and accretion rate as $L_{\rm UV}\propto M_{\rm BH}^{4/3} (\dot{M}/\dot{M}_{\rm Edd})^{2/3}$ and $L_{\rm X}\propto M_{\rm BH}^{19/21} (\dot{M}/\dot{M}_{\rm Edd})^{5/21}$, respectively. Assuming a broad line region size function of the disc luminosity $R_{\rm blr}\propto L_{\rm disc}^{0.5}$ we finally have that $L_{\rm X}\propto L_{\rm UV}^{4/7} \upsilon_{\rm fwhm}^{4/7}$. Such relation is remarkably consistent with the slopes and the normalization obtained from a fit of a sample of 545 optically selected quasars from SDSS DR7 cross matched with the latest XMM–{\it Newton} catalogue 3XMM-DR6.
The homogeneous sample used here has a dispersion of 0.21 dex, which is much lower than previous works in the literature and suggests a tight physical relation between the accretion disc and the X-ray emitting corona. We also obtained a possible physical interpretation of the $L_{\rm X}-L_{\rm UV}$ relation (considering also the effect of $\upsilon_{\rm fwhm}$), which puts the determination of distances based on this relation on a sounder physical grounds. The proposed new relation does not evolve with time, and thus it can be employed as a cosmological indicator to robustly estimate cosmological parameters.

E. Lusso and G. Risaliti
Fri, 17 Mar 17
10/50

Comments: 15 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

# Charged massive scalar field configurations supported by a spherically symmetric charged reflecting shell [CL]

The physical properties of bound-state charged massive scalar field configurations linearly coupled to a spherically symmetric charged reflecting shell are studied {\it analytically}. To that end, we solve the Klein-Gordon wave equation for a static scalar field of proper mass $\mu$, charge coupling constant $q$, and spherical harmonic index $l$ in the background of a charged shell of radius $R$ and electric charge $Q$. It is proved that the dimensionless inequality $\mu R<\sqrt{(qQ)^2-(l+1/2)^2}$ provides an upper bound on the regime of existence of the composed charged-spherical-shell-charged-massive-scalar-field configurations. Interestingly, we explicitly show that the {\it discrete} spectrum of shell radii $\{R_n(\mu,qQ,l)\}_{n=0}^{n=\infty}$ which can support the static bound-state charged massive scalar field configurations can be determined analytically. We confirm our analytical results by numerical computations.

S. Hod
Fri, 17 Mar 17
11/50

# A cross-correlation-based estimate of the galaxy luminosity function [CEA]

We extend existing methods for using cross-correlations to derive redshift distributions for photometric galaxies, without using photometric redshifts. The model presented in this paper simultaneously yields highly accurate and unbiased redshift distributions and, for the first time, redshift-dependent luminosity functions, using only clustering information and the apparent magnitudes of the galaxies as input. In contrast to many existing techniques for recovering unbiased redshift distributions, the output of our method is not degenerate with the galaxy bias b(z), which is achieved by modelling the shape of the luminosity bias. We successfully apply our method to a mock galaxy survey and discuss the potential application of our model to real data.

M. Daalen and M. White
Fri, 17 Mar 17
12/50

Comments: 10 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

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# Narrow phase-dependent features in X-ray Dim Isolated Neutron Stars: a new detection and upper limits [HEAP]

We report on the results of a detailed phase-resolved spectroscopy of archival XMM–Newton observations of X-ray Dim Isolated Neutron Stars (XDINSs). Our analysis revealed a narrow and phase-variable absorption feature in the X-ray spectrum of RX J1308.6+2127. The feature has an energy of $\sim$740 eV and an equivalent width of $\sim$15 eV. It is detected only in $\sim$ 1/5 of the phase cycle, and appears to be present for the entire timespan covered by the observations (2001 December – 2007 June). The strong dependence on the pulsar rotation and the narrow width suggest that the feature is likely due to resonant cyclotron absorption/scattering in a confined high-B structure close to the stellar surface. Assuming a proton cyclotron line, the magnetic field strength in the loop is B$_{loop} \sim 1.7 \times 10^{14}$ G, about a factor of $\sim$5 higher than the surface dipolar magnetic field (B$_{surf} \sim 3.4 \times 10^{13}$ G). This feature is similar to that recently detected in another XDINS, RX J0720.4-3125, showing (as expected by theoretical simulations) that small scale magnetic loops close to the surface might be common to many highly magnetic neutron stars (although difficult to detect with current X-ray instruments). Furthermore, we investigated the available XMM–Newton, data of all XDINSs in search for similar narrow phase-dependent features, but could derive only upper limits for all the other sources.

A. Borghese, N. Rea, F. Zelati, et. al.
Fri, 17 Mar 17
13/50

Comments: 10 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS