GALAXY DISKS DO NOT NEED TO SURVIVE IN THE ΛCDM PARADIGM: THE GALAXY MERGER RATE OUT TO z ∼ 1.5 FROM MORPHO-KINEMATIC DATA
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: Constraints on the star formation histories of galaxies from z∼ 1 to 0
abstract: We present a new method to estimate the average star formation rate per unit stellar mass (SSFR) of a stacked population of galaxies. We combine the spectra of 600-1000 galaxies with similar stellar masses and parametrize the star formation history of this stacked population using a set of exponentially declining functions. The strength of the hydrogen Balmer absorption-line series in the rest-frame wavelength range 3750-4150 A is used to constrain the SSFR by comparing with a library of models generated using the BC03 stellar population code. Our method, based on a principal component analysis, can be applied in a consistent way to spectra drawn from local galaxy surveys and from surveys at z ∼ 1, and is only weakly influenced by attenuation due to dust. We apply our method to galaxy samples drawn from Sloan Digital Sky Survey and DEEP2 to study the mass-dependent growth of galaxies from z ∼ 1 to 0. We find that (i) high-mass galaxies have lower SSFRs than low-mass galaxies and (ii) the average SSFR has decreased from z = 1 to 0 by a factor of ∼3-4, independent of galaxy mass. Additionally, at z ∼ 1, our average SSFRs are a factor of 2-2.5 lower than those derived from multiwavelength photometry using similar data sets. We then compute the average time [in units of the Hubble time, t H (z)] needed by galaxies of a given mass to form their stars at their current rate. At both z = 0 and 1, this time-scale decreases strongly with stellar mass from values close to unity for galaxies with masses ∼10 10 M ⊙ , to more than 10 for galaxies more massive than 10 11 M ⊙ . Our results are in good agreement with models in which active galactic nuclei feedback is more efficient at preventing gas from cooling and forming stars in high-mass galaxies.

title: International X-Band Linear Collider Accelerator Structure R&D
abstract: For more than fifteen years before the International Technology Recommendation Panel (ITRP) decision in August, 2004, there were intensive R&D activities and broad international collaboration among the groups at SLAC, KEK, FNAL, LLNL and other labs for the room temperature X-Band accelerator structures. The goal was to provide an optimized design of the main linac structure for the NLC (Next Linear Collider) or GLC (Global Linear Collider). There have been two major challenges in developing X-band accelerator structures for the linear colliders. The first is to demonstrate stable, long-term operation at the high gradient (65 MV/m) that is required to optimize the machine cost. The second is to strongly suppress the beam induced long-range wakefields, which is required to achieve high luminosity. More than thirty X-band accelerator structures with various RF parameters, cavity shapes and coupler types have been fabricated and tested since 1989. A summary of the main achievements and experiences are presented in this talk including the structure design, manufacturing techniques, high power performance, and other structure related issues. Also, the new progress in collaborating with the CLIC, high gradient structures and X-Band structure applications for RF deflectors and others are briefly introduced.

title: The population of Milky Way satellites in the LambdaCDM cosmology
abstract: We present a model for the satellites of the Milky Way in which galaxy formation is followed using semi-analytic techniques applied to the six high-resolution N-body simulations of galactic halos of the Aquarius project. The model, calculated using the Galform code, incorporates improved treatments of the relevant physics in the LambdaCDM cosmogony, particularly a self-consistent calculation of reionization by UV photons emitted by the forming galaxy population, including the progenitors of the central galaxy. Along the merger tree of each halo, the model calculates gas cooling (by Compton scattering off cosmic microwave background photons, molecular hydrogen and atomic processes), gas heating (from hydrogen photoionization and supernova energy), star formation and evolution. The evolution of the intergalactic medium is followed simultaneously with that of the galaxies. Star formation in the more massive progenitor subhalos is suppressed primarily by supernova feedback, while for smaller subhalos it is suppressed primarily by photoionization due to external and internal sources. The model is constrained to match a wide range of properties of the present day galaxy population as a whole, but at high redshift it requires an escape fraction of UV photons near unity in order completely to reionize the universe by redshift z ~ 8. In the most successful model the local sources photoionize the pre-galactic region completely by z ~ 10. In addition to the luminosity function of Milky Way satellites, the model matches their observed luminosity-metallicity relation, their radial distribution and the inferred values of the mass within 300 pc, which in the models increase slowly but significantly with luminosity. There is a large variation in satellite properties from halo to halo, with the luminosity function, for example, varying by a factor of ~ 2 among the six simulations.

title: Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in $pp$ collision events at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV
abstract: The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta)<2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.

title: Pairing fluctuation effects in a strongly coupled color superfluid/superconductor
abstract: We investigate the effects of pairing fluctuations in fermionic superfluids/superconductors where pairing occurs among three species (colors) of fermions. Such color superfluids/superconductors can be realized in three-component atomic Fermi gases and in dense quark matter. The superfluidity/superconductivity is characterized by a three-component order parameter which denotes the pairing among the three colors of fermions. Due to the SU$(3)$ symmetry of the Hamiltonian, one color does not participate pairing. This branch of fermionic excitation is gapless in the naive BCS mean-field description. In this paper, we adopt a pairing-fluctuation theory to investigate the pairing fluctuation effects on the unpaired color in strongly coupled atomic color superfluids and quark color superconductors. At low temperature, a large pairing gap of the paired colors suppresses the pairing fluctuation effects for the unpaired color, and the spectral density of the unpaired color shows a single Fermi-liquid peak, which indicates the naive mean-field picture remains valid. As the temperature is increased, the spectral density of the unpaired color generally exhibits a three-peak structure: the Fermi-liquid peak remains but get suppressed, and two pseudogap-like peaks appears. At and above the superfluid transition temperature, the Fermi-liquid peak disappears completely and the all three colors exhibits pseudogap-like spectral density. The coexistence of Fermi liquid and pseudogap behavior is generic for both atomic color superfluids and quark color superconductors.