Thermalization by synchrotron absorption in compact sources: electron and photon distributions     

G. Ghisellini  F. Haardt  & R. Svensson 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》1998,297(2):348-354

The high-energy continuum in Seyfert galaxies and galactic black hole candidates is likely to be produced by a thermal plasma. There are difficulties in understanding what can keep the plasma thermal, especially during fast variations of the emitted flux. Particle–particle collisions are too inefficient in hot and rarefied plasmas, and a faster process is called for. We show that cyclo-synchrotron absorption can be such a process: mildly relativistic electrons thermalize in a few synchrotron cooling times by emitting and absorbing cyclo-synchrotron photons. The resulting equilibrium function is Maxwellian at low energies, with a high-energy tail when Compton cooling is important. Assuming that electrons emit completely self-absorbed synchrotron radiation and at the same time Compton scatter their own cyclo-synchrotron radiation and ambient UV photons, we calculate the time-dependent behaviour of the electron distribution function, and the final radiation spectra. In some cases, the 2–10 keV spectra are found to be dominated by the thermal synchrotron self-Compton process rather than by thermal Comptonization of UV disc radiation.  相似文献   

Evidence of the Link between Broad Emission Line Regions and Accretion Disks in Active Galactic Nuclei     

Yun Xu    Xin-Wu Cao Shanghai Astronomical Observatory  Chinese Academy of Sciences  Shanghai  Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences  Beijing 《中国天文和天体物理学报》2007,7(1):63-70

1 INTRODUCTION Most bright active galactic nuclei (AGNs) exhibit broad emission lines, with full width at half maximum (FWHM ≥ 103 km s?1) (Peterson et al. 1999). Some type 1 AGNs could have very broad emission lines (FWHM≥ 20 000 km s?1). Type 2 AGNs s…  相似文献   

An Annular Gap Acceleration Model for γ-ray Emission of Pulsars     

Guo-Jun Qiao  Ke-Jia Lee  Bing Zhang  Hong-Guang Wang  Ren-Xin Xu 《中国天文和天体物理学报》2007,7(4)

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Assessment of intermediate fine sediment storage in a braided river reach (southern French Prealps)     

O. Navratil  C. Legout  D. Gateuille  M. Esteves  F. Liebault 《水文研究》2010,24(10):1318-1332

This paper presents a field investigation on river channel storage of fine sediments in an unglaciated braided river, the Bès River, located in a mountainous region in the southern French Prealps. Braided rivers transport a very large quantity of bedload and suspended sediment load because they are generally located in the vicinity of highly erosive hillslopes. Consequently, these rivers play an important role because they supply and control the sediment load of the entire downstream fluvial network. Field measurements and aerial photograph analyses were considered together to evaluate the variability of fine sediment quantity stored in a 2·5‐km‐long river reach. This study found very large quantities of fine sediment stored in this reach: 1100 t per unit depth (1 dm). Given that this reach accounts for 17% of the braided channel surface area of the river basin, the quantities of fine sediment stored in the river network were found to be approximately 80% of the mean annual suspended sediment yields (SSYs) (66 200 t year^?1), comparable to the SSYs at the flood event scale: from 1000 t to 12 000 t depending on the flood event magnitude. These results could explain the clockwise hysteretic relationships between suspended sediment concentrations and discharges for 80% of floods. This pattern is associated with the rapid availability of the fine sediments stored in the river channel. This study shows the need to focus on not only the mechanisms of fine sediment production from hillslope erosion but also the spatiotemporal dynamics of fine sediment transfer in braided rivers. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

Compressible turbulence in galaxy clusters: physics and stochastic particle re-acceleration     

G. Brunetti  A. Lazarian 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,378(1):245-275

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Particle distributions and X-ray spectra in single or multiple solar current sheets     

C. Gontikakis  A. Anastasiadis  C. Efthymiopoulos 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,378(3):1019-1030

The acceleration of charged particles in a site of magnetic reconnection is analysed by detailed numerical simulations. Single or multiple encounters of the particles with Harris-type reconnecting current sheets (RCSs) are modelled as an overall stochastic process taking place within an active region. RCS physical parameters are selected in a parameter space relevant to solar flares. Initially, the charged particles form a thermal (Maxwellian) distribution corresponding to coronal temperature  ≃2 × 10⁶ K  . Our main goal is to investigate how the acceleration process changes the shape of the particles' kinetic energy distribution. The evolution of the kinetic energy distribution, calculated numerically after one encounter of the particles with a single RCS, is found to be in good agreement with our previously published analytical formulae. In the case of consecutive encounters, we find that the kinetic distribution tends to converge to a practically invariant form after a relatively small number of encounters. We construct a discrete stochastic process that reproduces the numerical distributions and we provide a theoretical interpretation of the asymptotic convergence of the energy distribution. We finally compute the theoretical X-ray spectra that would be emitted by the simulated particles in a thick target model of radiation.  相似文献   

He Conductivity in Cool White Dwarf Atmospheres     

S. Mazevet  M. Challacombe  P. M. Kowalski  D. Saumon 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2007,307(1-3):273-277

We investigate the conductivity of warm dense helium under conditions found in the atmospheres of cool white dwarfs using ab initio simulations. The calculations performed consist of quantum molecular dynamics simulations where the electronic wavefunction at each time step is obtained using density functional theory, while the ion trajectories are calculated using the resulting quantum mechanical forces. We use both conventional DFT (PW91) and hybrid (PBE0) functionals to calculate the conductivities that provide an estimate of the ionization fraction. While the calculations are in good agreement with the measurements for the equation of state, a significant discrepancy exists with the recently measured conductivity.  相似文献   

Diffusive synchrotron radiation from pulsar wind nebulae     

G. D. Fleishman  M. F. Bietenholz 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,376(2):625-633

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γ-ray burst ultraviolet/optical afterglow polarimetry as a probe of quantum gravity     

Yi-Zhong Fan †  Da-Ming Wei  Dong Xu 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,376(4):1857-1860

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Jet breaks in the X-ray light-curves of Swift gamma-ray burst afterglows     

A. Panaitescu 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,380(1):374-380

In the set of 236 gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows observed by Swift between 2005 January and 2007 March, we identify 30 X-ray light-curves that have power-law fall-offs that exhibit a steepening ('break') at 0.1–10 d after they are triggered, to a decay steeper than t ^−1.5. For most of these afterglows, the X-ray spectral slope and the decay indices before and after the break can be accommodated by the standard jet model although a different origin of the breaks cannot be ruled out. In addition, there are 27 other afterglows which have X-ray light-curves that may also exhibit a late break to a steep decay, but the evidence is not that compelling. The X-ray emissions of 38 afterglows decay slower than t ^−1.5 until after 3 d, half of them exhibiting such a slow decay until after 10 d. Therefore, the fraction of well-monitored Swift afterglows with potential jet breaks is around 60 per cent, whether we count only the strongest cases for each type or all of them. This fraction is comparable to the 75 per cent of pre-Swift afterglows which have optical light-curves that displayed similar breaks at ∼1 d. The peak energy of the GRB spectrum of Swift afterglows with light-curve breaks shows the same correlations with the burst isotropic output (Amati relation) and with the burst collimated output (Ghirlanda relation) as previously found for pre- Swift optical afterglows with light-curve breaks. However, we find that the Ghirlanda relation is largely a consequence of Amati's and that the use of the jet-break time leads to a stronger Ghirlanda correlation only when the few objects that do not satisfy the Amati relation are included.  相似文献