Small-scale Density Research Articles

Perturbations of ultralight vector field dark matter

We study the dynamics of cosmological perturbations in models of dark matter based on ultralight coherent vector fields. Very much as for scalar field dark matter, we find two different regimes in the evolution: for modes with {k}^2ll mathrm{mathscr{H}}ma , we have a particle-like behaviour indistinguishable from cold dark matter, whereas for modes with {k}^2gg mathrm{mathscr{H}}ma , we get a wave-like behaviour in which the sound speed is non-vanishing and of order cs2 ≃ k2/m2a2. This implies that, also in these models, structure formation could be suppressed on small scales. However, unlike the scalar case, the fact that the background evolution contains a non-vanishing homogeneous vector field implies that, in general, the evolution of the three kinds of perturbations (scalar, vector and tensor) can no longer be decoupled at the linear level. More specifically, in the particle regime, the three types of perturbations are actually decoupled, whereas in the wave regime, the three vector field perturbations generate one scalar-tensor and two vector-tensor perturbations in the metric. Also in the wave regime, we find that a non-vanishing anisotropic stress is present in the perturbed energy-momentum tensor giving rise to a gravitational slip of order (Φ − Ψ)/Φ ∼ cs2. Moreover in this regime the amplitude of the tensor to scalar ratio of the scalar-tensor modes is also h/Φ ∼ cs2. This implies that small-scale density perturbations are necessarily associated to the presence of gravity waves in this model. We compare their spectrum with the sensitivity of present and future gravity waves detectors.

SCATTER BROADENING OF PULSARS AND IMPLICATIONS ON THE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM TURBULENCE

ABSTRACT Observations reveal a uniform Kolmogorov turbulence throughout the diffuse ionized interstellar medium (ISM) and supersonic turbulence preferentially located in the Galactic plane. Correspondingly, we consider the Galactic distribution of electron density fluctuations consisting of not only a Kolmogorov density spectrum but also a short-wave-dominated density spectrum with the density structure formed at small scales due to shocks. The resulting dependence of the scatter broadening time on the dispersion measure (DM) naturally interprets the existing observational data for both low- and high-DM pulsars. According to the criteria that we derive for a quantitative determination of scattering regimes over wide ranges of DMs and frequencies ν, we find that the pulsars with low DMs are primarily scattered by the Kolmogorov turbulence, while those at low Galactic latitudes with high DMs undergo more enhanced scattering dominated by the supersonic turbulence, where the corresponding density spectrum has a spectral index of . Furthermore, by considering a volume filling factor of the density structures with the dependence on ν as in the supersonic turbulence, our model can also explain the observed shallower ν scaling of the scattering time than the Kolmogorov scaling for the pulsars with relatively large DMs. The comparison between our analytical results and the scattering measurements of pulsars in turn makes a useful probe of the properties of the large-scale ISM turbulence, e.g., an injection scale of ∼100 pc, and also characteristics of small-scale density structures.

P-wave attenuation anisotropy in TI media and its application in fracture parameters inversion

The existence of aligned fractures in fluid-saturated rocks leads to obvious attenuation anisotropy and velocity anisotropy. Attenuation anisotropy analysis can be applied to estimate fracture density and scale, which provide important information for reservoir identification. This paper derives P-wave attenuation anisotropy in the ATI media where the symmetry axis is in the arbitrary direction theoretically and modifies the spectral ratio method to measure attenuation anisotropy in the ATI media, thus avoiding a large measurement error when applied to wide azimuth or full azimuth data. Fracture dip and azimuth can be estimated through attenuation anisotropy analysis. For small-scale fractures, fracture scale and fracture density can be determined with enhanced convergence if velocity and attenuation information are both used. We also apply the modified spectralratio method to microseismic field data from an oilfield in East China and extract the fracture dip through attenuation anisotropy analysis. The result agrees with the microseismic monitoring.

Intense Beam-Plasma Interaction As A Source Of Sub-Millimeter Radiation

Results of experimental and theoretical studies on the spectral content and polarization of submillimeter radiation generated in a dense (1014–1015 cm–3) magnetized plasma by a high-power (~1010 W) relativistic (~106 eV) electron beam are presented. The spectral and polarization characteristics of electromagnetic waves emitted from the plasma are analyzed in the frequency band (0.1– 0.5 THz) corresponding to the vicinity of the plasma frequency and its second harmonic. The observed radiation fluxes escaping from a beam-plasma system in the transverse and longitudinal direction agree with our theoretical insights based on the dominant excitation of upper-hybrid waves and their further conversion to electromagnetic radiation. For a strong turbulence, this conversion is mainly associated with two processes: the direct conversion of long-wavelength upper-hybrid weaves on small-scale density gradients and coalescence of these waves into electromagnetic ones. Theoretical predictions are found to be in quantitative agreement with experimental results.

Magnetorotational Turbulence and Dynamo in a Collisionless Plasma.

We present results from the first 3D kinetic numerical simulation of magnetorotational turbulence and dynamo, using the local shearing-box model of a collisionless accretion disk. The kinetic magnetorotational instability grows from a subthermal magnetic field having zero net flux over the computational domain to generate self-sustained turbulence and outward angular-momentum transport. Significant Maxwell and Reynolds stresses are accompanied by comparable viscous stresses produced by field-aligned ion pressure anisotropy, which is regulated primarily by the mirror and ion-cyclotron instabilities through particle trapping and pitch-angle scattering. The latter endow the plasma with an effective viscosity that is biased with respect to the magnetic-field direction and spatiotemporally variable. Energy spectra suggest an Alfvén-wave cascade at large scales and a kinetic-Alfvén-wave cascade at small scales, with strong small-scale density fluctuations and weak nonaxisymmetric density waves. Ions undergo nonthermal particle acceleration, their distribution accurately described by a κ distribution. These results have implications for the properties of low-collisionality accretion flows, such as that near the black hole at the Galactic center.

THE HYDRODYNAMIC FEEDBACK OF COSMIC REIONIZATION ON SMALL-SCALE STRUCTURES AND ITS IMPACT ON PHOTON CONSUMPTION DURING THE EPOCH OF REIONIZATION

ABSTRACT Density inhomogeneity in the intergalactic medium (IGM) can boost the recombination rate of ionized gas substantially, affecting the growth of H ii regions during reionization. Previous attempts to quantify this effect typically failed to resolve down to the Jeans scale in the preionization IGM, which is important in establishing this effect, along with the hydrodynamical back-reaction of reionization on it. Toward that end, we perform a set of fully coupled, radiation-hydrodynamics simulations from cosmological initial conditions, extending the mass resolution of previous work to the scale of minihalos. Pre-reionization structure is evolved until a redshift z i at which the ionizing radiation from external sources arrives to sweep an R-type ionization front supersonically across the volume in a few million years, until it is trapped on the surfaces of minihalos and converted to D-type, after which the minihalo gas is removed by photoevaporative winds. Small-scale density structures during this time lead to a high (>10) clumping factor for ionized gas, which hugely boosts the recombination rate until the structures are disrupted by the hydrodynamic feedback after ∼10–100 Myr. For incoming stellar radiation with intensity J 21 in a 200 h −1 kpc box with the mean density contrast , the number of extra recombinations per H atom, on top of what is expected from homogeneously distributed gas, is given by . In models in which most of the volume is ionized toward the end of reionization, this can add more than one recombination per H atom to the ionizing photon budget to achieve reionization.

Three Dimensional Crustal Density Structure of Central Asia and its Geological Implications

This paper introduces the scale-depth law of multi-scale wavelet analysis for regional gravity data processing, and presents the results of its application to Central Asia for computation of the 3D crustal density structures. The wavelet analysis method is applied for characterizing 3D crustal density structure, producing five maps of density disturbance corresponding to different depths of equivalent layers in the crust. The results provide important evidence for the study of crustal structures and mass movement in Central Asia: (i) the small-scale and intensive linear density disturbances in the upper crust indicate Phanerozoic orogenic belts; (ii) there exists a horseshoe-shaped low-density belt in the middle crust coinciding with the Kazakhstan orocline; (iii) there is a very low density zone in the lower crust, extending from western Kunlun to Tianshan, probably indicating a lower-crust flow; (iv) there are a few lowdensity spots in the middle crust, which might be caused by low-density mass squeezing upward from the lower crust flows.

Gravitational Instabilities in Circumstellar Disks

Star and planet formation are the complex outcomes of gravitational collapse and angular momentum transport mediated by protostellar and protoplanetary disks. In this review, we focus on the role of gravitational instability in this process. We begin with a brief overview of the observational evidence for massive disks that might be subject to gravitational instability and then highlight the diverse ways in which the instability manifests itself in protostellar and protoplanetary disks: the generation of spiral arms, small-scale turbulence-like density fluctuations, and fragmentation of the disk itself. We present the analytic theory that describes the linear growth phase of the instability supplemented with a survey of numerical simulations that aim to capture the nonlinear evolution. We emphasize the role of thermodynamics and large-scale infall in controlling the outcome of the instability. Despite apparent controversies in the literature, we show a remarkable level of agreement between analytic predictions and numerical results. In the next part of our review, we focus on the astrophysical consequences of the instability. We show that the disks most likely to be gravitationally unstable are young and relatively massive compared with their host star, Md/M*≥0.1. They will develop quasi-stable spiral arms that process infall from the background cloud. Although instability is less likely at later times, once infall becomes less important, the manifestations of the instability are more varied. In this regime, the disk thermodynamics, often regulated by stellar irradiation, dictates the development and evolution of the instability. In some cases the instability may lead to fragmentation into bound companions. These companions are more likely to be brown dwarfs or stars than planetary mass objects. Finally, we highlight open questions related to the development of a turbulent cascade in thin disks and the role of mode-mode coupling in setting the maximum angular momentum transport rate in thick disks.

Disturbance in the Daytime Midlatitude Upper F Region Associated with a Medium Scale Electrodynamic Vortex Motion of Plasma

Under the assumption of the presence of a medium-scale E × B drift vortex of plasma in the daytime midlatitude F region, and using a simplified ionospheric model, we demonstrate that the E × B drift produces noticeable perturbations in the horizontal distribution of the plasma density in the upper F region. The pattern of ion density perturbations shows two separate medium scale domains of enhanced and reduced ion density with respect to the background. The E × B drift does not produce multiple small-scale ion density irregularities through plasma mixing because of the suppression effect of the field-aligned ambipolar plasma diffusion.

Revisiting constraints on small scale perturbations from big-bang nucleosynthesis

We revisit the constraints on the small scale density perturbations ($10^4\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}\lesssim k \lesssim10^5\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$) from the modification of the freeze-out value of the neutron-proton ratio at big-bang nucleosynthesis era. Around the freeze-out temperature $T\sim 0.5\,\mathrm{MeV}$, the universe can be divided into several local patches which have different temperatures since any perturbation which enters the horizon after the neutrino decoupling has not diffused yet. Taking account of this situation, we calculate the freeze-out value in detail. We find that the small scale perturbations decrease the n-p ratio in contrast to previous works. With use of the latest observed $^4$He abundance, we obtain the constraint on the power spectrum of the curvature perturbations as $\Delta^2_\mathcal{R}\lesssim 0.018$ on $10^4\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}\lesssim k \lesssim 10^5\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$.

Ionospheric scintillation observations over Kenyan region – Preliminary results

Ionospheric scintillation refers to the rapid fluctuations in the amplitude and phase of a satellite signal as it passes through small-scale plasma density irregularities in the ionosphere. By analyzing ionospheric scintillation observation datasets from satellite signals such as GPS signals we can study the morphology of ionospheric bubbles. At low latitudes, the diurnal behavior of scintillation is driven by the formation of large-scale equatorial density depletions which form one to two hours after sunset via the Rayleigh–Taylor instability mechanism near the magnetic equator. In this work we present ionospheric scintillation activity over Kenya using data derived from a newly installed scintillation monitor developed by CRIRP at Pwani University (39.78°E, 3.24°S) during the period August to December, 2014. The results reveal the scintillation activity mainly occurs from post-sunset to post-midnight hours, and ceases around 04:00LT. We also found that the ionospheric scintillation tends to appear at the southwest and northwest of the station. These locations coincide with the southern part of the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly crest over Kenya region. The occurrence of post-midnight L-band scintillation events which are not linked to pre-midnight scintillation observations raises fundamental question on the mechanism and source of electric fields driving the plasma depletion under conditions of very low background electron density.

3D model of small-scale density cavities in the auroral magnetosphere with field-aligned current

We propose a 3D model of small-scale density cavities stimulated by an auroral field-aligned current and an oscillating field-aligned current of kinetic Alfvén waves. It is shown that when the field-aligned current increases so that the electron drift velocity exceeds a value of the order of the electron thermal velocity, the plasma becomes unstable to the formation of cavities with low density and strong electric field. The condition of instability is associated with the value of the background magnetic field. In the case of a relatively weak magnetic field (where the electron gyro-radius is greater than the ion acoustic wavelength), the current instability can lead to the formation of one-dimensional cavities along the magnetic field. In the case of a stronger magnetic field (where the ion acoustic wavelength is greater than the electron gyro-radius, but still is less than the ion gyro-radius), the instability can lead to the formation of 3D density cavities. In this case, the spatial scales of the cavity, both along and across the background magnetic field, can be comparable, and at the earlier stage of the cavity formation they are of the order of the ion acoustic wavelength. Rarefactions of the cavity density are accompanied by an increase in the electric field and are limited by the pressure of bipolar electric fields that occur within them. The estimates of typical density cavity characteristics and the results of numerical solutions agree with known experimental data: small-scale structures with a sufficiently strong electric field are observed in the auroral regions with strong field-aligned current.

CAN WE DETECT THE COLOR–DENSITY RELATION WITH PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS?

ABSTRACT A variety of methods have been proposed to define and to quantify galaxy environments. While these techniques work well in general with spectroscopic redshift samples, their application to photometric redshift surveys remains uncertain. To investigate whether galaxy environments can be robustly measured with photo-z samples, we quantify how the density measured with the nearest-neighbor approach is affected by photo-z uncertainties by using the Durham mock galaxy catalogs in which the 3D real-space environments and the properties of galaxies are known exactly. Furthermore, we present an optimization scheme in the choice of parameters used in the 2D projected measurements that yield the tightest correlation with respect to the 3D real-space environments. By adopting the optimized parameters in the density measurements, we show that the correlation between the 2D projected optimized density and the real-space density can still be revealed, and the color–density relation is also visible out to z ∼ 0.8 even for a photo-z uncertainty ( ) up to 0.06. We find that at redshifts 0.3 < z < 0.5 a deep (i ∼ 25) photometric redshift survey with yields a performance in small-scale density measurement that is comparable to a shallower i ∼ 22.5 spectroscopic sample with ∼10% sampling rate. Finally, we discuss the application of the local density measurements to the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey (PS-MDS), one of the largest deep optical imaging surveys. Using data from ∼5 square degrees of survey area, our results show that it is possible to measure local density and to probe the color–density relation with 3σ confidence level out to z ∼ 0.8 in the PS-MDS. The color–density relation, however, quickly degrades for data covering smaller areas.

Dark matter–radiation interactions: the structure of Milky Way satellite galaxies

In the thermal dark matter (DM) paradigm, primordial interactions between DM and Standard Model particles are responsible for the observed DM relic density. In Boehm et al. (2014), we showed that weak-strength interactions between DM and radiation (photons or neutrinos) can erase small-scale density fluctuations, leading to a suppression of the matter power spectrum compared to the collisionless cold DM (CDM) model. This results in fewer DM subhaloes within Milky Way-like DM haloes, implying a reduction in the abundance of satellite galaxies. Here we use very high resolution N-body simulations to measure the dynamics of these subhaloes. We find that when interactions are included, the largest subhaloes are less concentrated than their counterparts in the collisionless CDM model and have rotation curves that match observational data, providing a new solution to the "too big to fail" problem.

Cosmic tidal reconstruction

The gravitational coupling of a long-wavelength tidal field with small-scale density fluctuations leads to anisotropic distortions of the locally measured small-scale matter correlation function. Since the local correlation function is known to be statistically isotropic in the absence of such tidal interactions, the tidal distortions can be used to reconstruct the long-wavelength tidal field and large-scale density field in analogy with the cosmic microwave background lensing reconstruction. In this paper we present the theoretical framework of cosmic tidal reconstruction and test the reconstruction in numerical simulations. We find that the density field on large scales can be reconstructed with good accuracy and the cross-correlation coefficient between the reconstructed density field and the original density field is greater than 0.9 on large scales $(k\lesssim0.1\ h/\mathrm{Mpc})$, with the filter scale $\sim1.25\ \mathrm{Mpc}/h$. This is useful in the 21cm intensity mapping survey, where the long-wavelength radial modes are lost due to a foreground subtraction process.

THE EXTENDED SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF GLOBULAR CLUSTERS IN THE CORE OF THE FORNAX CLUSTER

ABSTRACT We report the discovery of a complex extended density enhancement in the Globular Clusters (GCs) in the central ∼ 0.5 ( ° ) 2 ?> ( ∼ 0.06 ?> Mpc2) of the Fornax cluster, corresponding to ∼ 50 % ?> of the area within 1 core radius. This overdensity connects the GC system of NGC 1399 to most of those of neighboring galaxies within ∼ 0 &fdg; 6 ?> ( ∼ 210 ?> kpc) along the W–E direction. The asymmetric density structure suggests that the galaxies in the core of the Fornax cluster experienced a lively history of interactions that have left a clear imprint on the spatial distribution of GCs. The extended central dominant structure is more prominent in the distribution of blue GCs, while red GCs show density enhancements that are more centrally concentrated on the host galaxies. We propose that the relatively small-scale density structures in the red GCs are caused by galaxy–galaxy interactions, while the extensive spatial distribution of blue GCs is due to stripping of GCs from the halos of core massive galaxies by the Fornax gravitational potential. Our investigations are based on density maps of candidate GCs extracted from the multi-band VLT Survey Telescope (VST) survey of Fornax (FDS), identified in a three-dimensional color space and further selected based on their g-band magnitude and morphology.

Constraints on small-scale cosmological fluctuations from SNe lensing dispersion

We provide predictions on small-scale cosmological density power spectrum from supernova lensing dispersion. Parameterizing the primordial power spectrum with running $\alpha$ and running of running $\beta$ of the spectral index, we exclude large positive $\alpha$ and $\beta$ parameters which induce too large lensing dispersions over current observational upper bound. We ran cosmological N-body simulations of collisionless dark matter particles to investigate non-linear evolution of the primordial power spectrum with positive running parameters. The initial small-scale enhancement of the power spectrum is largely erased when entering into the non-linear regime. For example, even if the linear power spectrum at $k>10h {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ is enhanced by $1-2$ orders of magnitude, the enhancement much decreases to a factor of $2-3$ at late time ($z \leq 1.5$). Therefore, the lensing dispersion induced by the dark matter fluctuations weakly constrains the running parameters. When including baryon-cooling effects (which strongly enhance the small-scale clustering), the constraint is comparable or tighter than the PLANCK constraint, depending on the UV cut-off. Further investigations of the non-linear matter spectrum with baryonic processes is needed to reach a firm constraint.

The dark matter annihilation boost from low-temperature reheating

The evolution of the Universe between inflation and the onset of big bang nucleosynthesis is difficult to probe and largely unconstrained. This ignorance profoundly limits our understanding of dark matter: we cannot calculate its thermal relic abundance without knowing when the Universe became radiation dominated. Fortunately, small-scale density perturbations provide a probe of the early Universe that could break this degeneracy. If dark matter is a thermal relic, density perturbations that enter the horizon during an early matter-dominated era grow linearly with the scale factor prior to reheating. The resulting abundance of substructure boosts the annihilation rate by several orders of magnitude, which can compensate for the smaller annihilation cross sections that are required to generate the observed dark matter density in these scenarios. In particular, thermal relics with masses less than a TeV that thermally and kinetically decouple prior to reheating may already be ruled out by Fermi-LAT observations of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Although these constraints are subject to uncertainties regarding the internal structure of the microhalos that form from the enhanced perturbations, they open up the possibility of using gamma-ray observations to learn about the reheating of the Universe.

Electromotive force due to magnetohydrodynamic fluctuations in sheared rotating turbulence.

This article presents a calculation of the mean electromotive force arising from general small-scale magnetohydrodynamical turbulence, within the framework of the second-order correlation approximation. With the goal of improving understanding of the accretion disk dynamo, effects arising through small-scale magnetic fluctuations, velocity gradients, density and turbulence stratification, and rotation, are included. The primary result, which supplements numerical findings, is that an off-diagonal turbulent resistivity due to magnetic fluctuations can produce large-scale dynamo action-the magnetic analog of the "shear-current" effect. In addition, consideration of α effects in the stratified regions of disks gives the puzzling result that there is no strong prediction for a sign of α, since the effects due to kinetic and magnetic fluctuations, as well as those due to shear and rotation, are each of opposing signs and tend to cancel each other.

Conformal Fermi Coordinates

Fermi Normal Coordinates (FNC) are a useful frame for isolating the locally observable, physical effects of a long-wavelength spacetime perturbation. Their cosmological application, however, is hampered by the fact that they are only valid on scales much smaller than the horizon. We introduce a generalization that we call Conformal Fermi Coordinates (CFC). CFC preserve all the advantages of FNC, but in addition are valid outside the horizon. They allow us to calculate the coupling of long- and short-wavelength modes on all scales larger than the sound horizon of the cosmological fluid, starting from the epoch of inflation until today, by removing the complications of the second order Einstein equations to a large extent, and eliminating all gauge ambiguities. As an application, we present a calculation of the effect of long-wavelength tensor modes on small scale density fluctuations. We recover previous results, but clarify the physical content of the individual contributions in terms of locally measurable effects and ``projection'' terms.