DOES M31 RESULT FROM AN ANCIENT MAJOR MERGER
The M31 haunted halo is likely associated with a rich merger history, currently assumed to be caused by multiple minor mergers. Here we use the GADGET2 simulation code to test whether M31 could have experienced a major merger in its past history. Our results indicate that a (3 ± 0.5):1 gaseous-rich merger with r pericenter = 25 ± 5 kpc and a polar orbit can explain many properties of M31 and of its halo. The interaction and fusion may have begun 8.75 ± 0.35 and 5.5 ± 0.5 Gyr ago, respectively. Observed fractions of the bulge and the thin and thick disks can be retrieved for a star formation history that is almost quiescent before the fusion. This also accords well with the observed relative fractions of intermediate age and old stars in both the thick disk and the Giant Stream. In this model, the Giant Stream is caused by returning stars from a tidal tail which contains material previously stripped from the satellite prior to the fusion. These returning stars are trapped into elliptical orbits or loops for long periods of time which can reach a Hubble time, and belong to a plane that is 45° offset from the M31 disk position angle. Because these streams of stars are permanently fed by new infalling stars with high energy from the tidal tail, we predict large loops which scale rather well with the features recently discovered in the M31 outskirts. We demonstrate that a single merger could explain first-order (intensity and size), morphological, and kinematical properties of the disk, thick disk, bulge, and streams in the halo of M31, as well as the observed distribution of stellar ages, and perhaps metallicities. This challenges the current scenarios assuming that each feature in the disk (the 10 kpc ring) or in its outskirts (thick disk, the Giant Stream, and the numerous streams) is associated with an equivalent number of minor mergers. Given the large number of parameters, further constraints are certainly required to better render the complexity of M31 and of the substructures within its halo which may ultimately lead to a more precise geometry of the encounter. This would allow us, in principle, to evaluate the impact of such a major event on the Andromeda system and the Local Group.

title: Morphology of Luminous Infrared Galaxies in the Local Universe
abstract: We study the morphology, stellar mass and star formation rate of 159 local luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) using multi-color images from Data Release 2 (DR2) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The LIRGs are selected from a cross-correlation analysis between the IRAS survey and SDSS. They are all brighter than 15.9 mag in the r-band and below redshift ∼ 0.1, and can be reliably classified morphologically. The fractions of interacting/merging and normal disk galaxies are 48% and 40% respectively. The normal disk galaxies tend to have lower infrared luminosity than interacting/merging galaxies and hence become an increasingly important population at lower infrared luminosity. Our results complement and confirm the morphology evolution trend of LIRGs found by Melbourne, Koo & Le Floc’h (2005) from z ∼ 1 to z ∼ 0.1. We also find that about 75% of disk galaxies in the local LIRGs are barred, indicating that bars play an important role in triggering star formation rates & 20M⊙ yr −1 in the local universe.

title: GALAXY DISKS DO NOT NEED TO SURVIVE IN THE ΛCDM PARADIGM: THE GALAXY MERGER RATE OUT TO z ∼ 1.5 FROM MORPHO-KINEMATIC DATA
abstract: About two-thirds of present-day, large galaxies are spirals such as the Milky Way or Andromeda, but the way their thin rotating disks formed remains uncertain. Observations have revealed that half of their progenitors, six billion years ago, had peculiar morphologies and/or kinematics, which exclude them from the Hubble sequence. Major mergers, i.e., fusions between galaxies of similar mass, are found to be the likeliest driver for such strong peculiarities. However, thin disks are fragile and easily destroyed by such violent collisions, which creates a critical tension between the observed fraction of thin disks and their survival within the ΛCDM paradigm. Here, we show that the observed high occurrence of mergers among their progenitors is only apparent and is resolved when using morpho-kinematic observations that are sensitive to all the phases of the merging process. This provides an original way of narrowing down observational estimates of the galaxy merger rate and leads to a perfect match with predictions by state-of-the-art ΛCDM semi-empirical models with no particular fine-tuning needed. These results imply that half of local thin disks do not survive but are actually rebuilt after a gas-rich major merger occurring in the past nine billion years, i.e., two-thirds of the lifetime of the universe. This emphasizes the need to study how thin disks can form in halos with a more active merger history than previously considered and to investigate what is the origin of the gas reservoir from which local disks would reform.

title: High-spin states in near-spherical Y-88

title: The Milky Way and other spiral galaxies
abstract: Cosmologists have often considered the Milky Way as a typical spiral galaxy, and its properties have considerably influenced the current scheme of galaxy formation. Here we compare the general properties of the Milky Way disk and halo with those of galaxies selected from the SDSS. Assuming the recent measurements of its circular velocity results in the Milky Way being offset by ∼2 from the fundamental scaling relations. On the basis of their location in the (MK, Rd, Vflat) volume, the fraction of SDSS spirals like the MilkyWay is only 1.2% in sharp contrast with M31, which appears to be quite typical. Comparison of the Milky Way with M31 and with other spirals is also discussed to investigate whether or not there is a fundamental discrepancy between their mass assembly histories. Possibly the Milky Way is one of the very few local galaxies that could be a direct descendant of very distant, z = 2-3 galaxies, thanks to its quiescent history since thick disk formation.

title: Evidence for the 125 GeV Higgs boson decaying to a pair of τ leptons
abstract: A bstractA search for a standard model Higgs boson decaying into a pair of τ leptons is performed using events recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011 and 2012. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.9 fb−1 at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 19.7 fb−1 at 8 TeV. Each τ lepton decays hadronically or leptonically to an electron or a muon, leading to six different final states for the τ -lepton pair, all considered in this analysis. An excess of events is observed over the expected background contributions, with a local significance larger than 3 standard deviations for mH values between 115 and 130 GeV. The best fit of the observed H → τ τ signal cross section times branching fraction for mH = 125 GeV is 0.78 ± 0.27 times the standard model expectation. These observations constitute evidence for the 125 GeV Higgs boson decaying to a pair of τ leptons.

title: DESCRIPTION OF THE BTEV DETECTOR
abstract: BTeV is an experiment being constructed at the Fermilab collider, designed to study mixing, CP violation, and rare decays of beauty and charm hadrons. The detector covers the forward region (10-300 mrad), components include silicon pixels, tracking, RICH, PdWO4 electromagnetic calorimeter, and muon system. Brief description of individual detector elements are presented.

title: Could M31 be the result of a major merger
abstract: We investigated a scenario in which M31 could be the remnant of a gas-rich major merger. Galaxy merger simulations, highly constrained by observations, were run using GADGET 2 in order to reproduce M31. We succeeded in reproducing the global shape of M31, the thin disk and the bulge, and in addition some of the main M31 large-scale features, such as the thick disk, the 10 kpc ring and the Giant Stream. This lead to a new explanation of the Giant Stream which could be caused by tidal tail stars that have been captured by the galaxy potential.

title: Magnetic tuning of the relativistic BCS-BEC crossover
abstract: The effect of an applied magnetic field in the crossover from Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) to Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) pairing regimes is investigated. We use a model of relativistic fermions and bosons inspired by those previously used in the context of cold fermionic atoms and in the magnetic-color-flavor-locking phase of color superconductivity. It turns out that as with cold atom systems, an applied magnetic field can also tune the BCS-BEC crossover in the relativistic case. We find that no matter what the initial state is at B=0, for large enough magnetic fields the system always settles into a pure BCS regime. In contrast to the atomic case, the magnetic field tuning of the crossover in the relativistic system is not connected to a Feshbach resonance, but to the relative numbers of Landau levels with either BEC or BCS type of dispersion relations that are occupied at each magnetic field strength.

title: X-Ray Study of Triggered Star Formation and Protostars in IC 1396N
abstract: The IC 1396N cometary globule (CG) within the large nearby H II region IC 1396 has been observed with the ACIS detector on board the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. We detect 117 X-ray sources, of which ~50-60 are likely members of the young open cluster Trumpler 37 dispersed throughout the H II region, and 25 are associated with young stars formed within the globule. Infrared photometry (2MASS and Spitzer) shows that the X-ray population is very young: 3 older Class III stars, 16 classical T Tauri stars, and 6 protostars including a Class 0/I system. We infer a total T Tauri population of ~30 stars in the globule, including the undetected population, with a star formation efficiency of 1%-4%. An elongated source spatial distribution with an age gradient oriented toward the exciting star is discovered in the X-ray population of IC 1396N, supporting similar findings in other cometary globules. The geometric and age distribution is consistent with the radiation-driven implosion (RDI) model for triggered star formation in CGs by H II region shocks. The inferred velocity of the shock front propagating into the globule is ~0.6 km s-1. The large number of X-ray-luminous protostars in the globule suggests either an unusually high ratio of Class I/0 to Class II/III stars or a nonstandard initial mass function favoring higher mass stars by the triggering process. We find that the Chandra source associated with the luminous Class 0/I protostar IRAS 21391+5802 is one of the youngest stars ever detected in the X-ray band. We also establish for the first time that the X-ray absorption in protostars arises from the local infalling envelopes rather than from ambient molecular cloud material.