Possible hard X-ray shortages in bursts from KS 1731-260 and 4U 1705-44
A hard X-ray shortage, implying the cooling of the corona, was observed during bursts of IGR J17473-272, 4U 1636-536, Aql X-1, and GS 1826-238. Apart from these four sources, we investigate here an atoll sample, in which the number of bursts for each source is larger than 5, to explore the possible additional hard X-ray shortage during Rossi X-ray timing explorer (RXTE) era.  According to the source catalog that shows type-I bursts, we analyzed all the available pointing observations of these sources carried out by the RXTE proportional counter array. We grouped and combined the bursts according to their outburst states and searched for the possible hard X-ray shortage while bursting.  We found that the island states of KS 1731-260 and 4U 1705-44 show a hard X-ray shortage at significant levels of 4.5 and 4.7σ and a systematic time lag of 0.9 ± 2.1 s and 2.5 ± 2.0 s with respect to the soft X-rays, respectively. While in their banana branches and other sources, we did not find any consistent shortage.

title: EVOLUTION OF GASEOUS DISK VISCOSITY DRIVEN BY SUPERNOVA EXPLOSIONS IN STAR-FORMING GALAXIES AT HIGH REDSHIFT
abstract: Motivated by Genzel et al.'s observations of high-redshift star-forming galaxies, containing clumpy and turbulent rings or disks, we build a set of equations describing the dynamical evolution of gaseous disks with inclusion of star formation and its feedback. Transport of angular momentum is due to "turbulent" viscosity induced by supernova explosions in the star formation region. Analytical solutions of the equations are found for the initial cases of a gaseous ring and the integrated form for a gaseous disk, respectively. For a ring with enough low viscosity, it evolves in a slow process of gaseous diffusion and star formation near the initial radius. For a high viscosity, the ring rapidly diffuses in the early phase. The diffusion drives the ring into a region with a low viscosity and starts the second phase undergoing pile-up of gas at a radius following the decreased viscosity torque. The third is a sharply decreasing phase because of star formation consumption of gas and efficient transportation of gas inward forming a stellar disk. We apply the model to two z similar to 2 galaxies BX 482 and BzK 6004, and find that they are undergoing a decline in their star formation activity.

title: The afterglows of ultraluminous quasars
abstract: Quasars represent a brief phase in the life cycle of most massive galaxies, but the evolutionary connection between central black holes and their host galaxies remains unclear. While quasars are active and shining brighter than the Compton-limit luminosity, their radiation heats the surrounding medium to the Compton temperature, forming Compton spheres extending to the Stromgren radius of Fe26+/He2+. After the quasars shut off, their "afterglow" can be detected through three signatures: (1) an extended X-ray envelope, with a characteristic temperature of ~3 × 107 K, (2) Lyα and Lyβ lines and the K edge of Fe26+, and (3) nebulosity from hydrogen and helium recombination emission lines. We discuss the possibility of detecting these signatures using Chandra, the planned X-Ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy mission, and ground-based optical telescopes. The luminosity and size of quasar afterglows can be used to constrain the lifetime of quasars.

title: Suppressed star formation in circumnuclear regions in seyfert galaxies
abstract: Feedback from black hole activity is widely believed to play a key role in regulating star formation and black hole growth. A long-standing issue is the relation between star formation and the fueling of the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We compile a sample of 57 Seyfert galaxies to tackle this issue. We estimate the surface densities of gas and star formation rates in circumnuclear regions (CNRs). Comparing them with the well-known Kennicutt-Schmidt (K-S) law, we find that the star formation rates (SFRs) in the CNRs of most Seyfert galaxies are suppressed in this sample. Feedback is suggested to explain the suppressed SFRs.

title: INTEGRAL and RXTE/ASM observations on IGR J17098−3628
abstract: To probe further the possible nature of the unidentified source IGR J17098-3628, we have carried out a detailed analysis of its long-term time variability as monitored by RXTE/ASM, and of its hard X-ray properties as observed by INTEGRAL. INTEGRAL has monitored this sky region over years and significantly detected IGR J17098-3628 only when the source was in this dubbed active state. In particular, at $\ge$ 20 keV, IBIS/ISGRI caught an outburst in March 2005, lasting for $\sim$5 days with detection significance of 73$\sigma$ (20-40 keV) and with the emission at $ $20 keV) outburst by $\sim$2 days. This resembles the behavior of X-ray novae like XN 1124-683, hence it further suggests a LMXB nature for IGR  While the quality of the ASM data prevents us from drawing any definite conclusions, these discoveries are important clues that, coupled with future observations, will help to resolve the as yet unknown nature of IGR J17098-3628.

title: TYPE-I X-RAY BURSTS REVEAL A FAST CO-EVOLVING BEHAVIOR OF THE CORONA IN AN X-RAY BINARY
abstract: The coronae in X-ray binaries (XRBs) still remain poorly understood, although they have been believed for a long time to play a key role in modeling the characteristic outbursts of XRBs. Type-I X-ray bursts, the thermonuclear flashes happening on the surface of a neutron star (NS), can be used as a probe to the innermost region of an NS XRB, where the corona is believed to be located very close to the NS. We report the discovery of a tiny life cycle of the corona that is promptly co-evolved with the type-I bursts superimposed on the outburst of the NS XRB IGR J17473-2721. This finding may serve as the first evidence of directly seeing the rapid disappearance and formation of a corona in an XRB with a cooling/heating timescale of less than a second, which can strongly constrain the accretion models in XRBs at work.

title: Search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with W and Z bosons in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{s}=7 $TeV
abstract: A bstractA search for the Higgs boson produced in association with a W or Z boson in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is performed with the CMS detector at the LHC using the full 2011 data sample, from an integrated luminosity of 5 fb−1. Higgs boson decay modes to ττ and WW are explored by selecting events with three or four leptons in the final state. No excess above background expectations is observed, resulting in exclusion limits on the product of Higgs associated production cross section and decay branching fraction for Higgs boson masses between 110 and 200 GeV in these channels. Combining these results with other CMS associated production searches using the same dataset in the H→ γγ and H→ b$ \overline{\mathrm{b}} $ decay modes, the cross section for associated Higgs boson production 3.3 times the standard model expectation or larger is ruled out at the 95% confidence level for a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV.

title: Probing the X-ray binary populations of the ring galaxy NGC 1291
abstract: We present Chandra studies of the X-ray binary (XRB) populations in the bulge and ring regions of the ring galaxy NGC 1291. We detect 169 X-ray point sources in the galaxy, 75 in the bulge and 71 in the ring, utilizing the four available Chandra observations totaling an effective exposure of 179 ks. We report photometric properties of these sources in a point-source catalog. There are Almost-Equal-To 40% of the bulge sources and Almost-Equal-To 25% of the ring sources showing >3{sigma} long-term variability in their X-ray count rate. The X-ray colors suggest that a significant fraction of the bulge ( Almost-Equal-To 75%) and ring ( Almost-Equal-To 65%) sources are likely low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). The spectra of the nuclear source indicate that it is a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus (AGN) with moderate obscuration; spectral variability is observed between individual observations. We construct 0.3-8.0 keV X-ray luminosity functions (XLFs) for the bulge and ring XRB populations, taking into account the detection incompleteness and background AGN contamination. We reach 90% completeness limits of Almost-Equal-To 1.5 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 37} and Almost-Equal-To 2.2 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 37} erg s{sup -1} for the bulge and ring populations, respectively. Both XLFs can be fit with a brokenmore » power-law model, and the shapes are consistent with those expected for populations dominated by LMXBs. We perform detailed population synthesis modeling of the XRB populations in NGC 1291, which suggests that the observed combined XLF is dominated by an old LMXB population. We compare the bulge and ring XRB populations, and argue that the ring XRBs are associated with a younger stellar population than the bulge sources, based on the relative overdensity of X-ray sources in the ring, the generally harder X-ray color of the ring sources, the overabundance of luminous sources in the combined XLF, and the flatter shape of the ring XLF.« less

title: Relation between Starlight and Nebular Emission Lines of Star-Forming Galaxies
abstract: We present an exercise that intends to establish a relationship between the strength of nebular emission lines and optical stellar features in the spectrum of a galaxy. After accurately subtracting the stellar continuum and the underlying stellar absorption, we made reliable measurements of the emission lines of all the galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 2 (SDSS DR2). More than 4000 star-forming galaxies with high S/N ratio of both the stellar spectrum and the emission lines are selected. These galaxy spectra are fitted with the 10 PCs of Yip et al., after all the emission line regions have been filtered out. We find that the flux of hydrogen Balmer emission lines, H α and H β can be well recovered from the PCs, while the metal lines are not well reproduced. The fluxes of H α and H β measured from the PC-reconstructed spectra and from the observed spectra agree well with an rms scatter of only ~0.1 dex. This result suggests that, with moderate spectral resolution and S/N ratio, the optical stellar spectrum of a galaxy can serve as an indicator of star formation rate.

title: Optical identification of radio-loud active galactic nuclei in the ROSAT-Green-Bank sample with SDSS spectroscopy
abstract: Results of extended and refined optical identification of 181 radio/X-ray sources in the RASS-Green Bank (RGB) catalog are presented (Brinkmann et al. 1997) which have been spectroscopically observed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR5. The SDSS spectra of the optical counterparts are modeled in a careful and self-consistent way by incorporating the host galaxy's starlight. Optical emission line parameters are presented, which are derived accurately and reliably, along with the radio 1.4-5 GHz spectral indices estimated using (non-simultaneous) archival data. For 72 sources, the identifications are presented for the first time. It is confirmed that the majority of strong radio/X-ray emitters are radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs), particularly blazars. Taking advantage of the high spectral quality and resolution and our refined spectral modeling, we are able to disentangle narrow line radio galaxies (NLRGs), as vaguely termed in most previous identification work, into Seyfert II galaxies and LINERs (low-ionization nuclear emission regions), based on the standard emission line diagnostics. The NLRGs in the RGB sample, mostly belonging to 'weak line radio galaxies', are found to have optical spectra consistent predominantly with LINERs, and only a small fraction with Seyfert II galaxies. A small number of LINERs have radio power as high as 10(23)-10(26) W Hz(-1) at 5 GHz, being among the strongest radio emitting LINERs known so far. Two sources are identified with radio-loud narrow line Seyfert I galaxies (NLS1s), a class of rare objects. The presence is also confirmed of flat-spectrum radio quasars whose radio-optical-X-ray effective spectral indices are similar to those of High-energy peaked BL Lacs (HBLs), as suggested by Padovani et al., although it is still a debate as to whether this is the case for their actual spectral energy distributions.

title: The Chandra Deep Field-South: The 1 Million Second Exposure*
abstract: We present the main results from our 940 ks observation of the Chandra Deep Field-South using the source catalog described in an accompanying paper by Giacconi et al. We extend the measurement of source number counts to 5.5 × 10-17 ergs cm-2 s-1 in the soft 0.5-2 keV band and 4.5 × 10-16 ergs cm-2 s-1 in the hard 2-10 keV band. The hard-band log N-log S shows a significant flattening (slope 0.6) below ≈10-14 ergs cm-2 s-1, leaving at most 10%-15% of the X-ray background to be resolved, the main uncertainty lying in the measurement of the total flux of the X-ray background (XRB). On the other hand, the analysis in the very hard 5-10 keV band reveals a relatively steep log N-log S (slope 1.3) down to 10-15 ergs cm-2 s-1. Together with the evidence of a progressive flattening of the average X-ray spectrum near the flux limit, this indicates that there is still a nonnegligible population of faint hard sources to be discovered at energies not well probed by Chandra, which possibly contributes to the 30 keV bump in the spectrum of the XRB. We use optical redshifts and identifications, obtained with the Very Large Telescope, for one-quarter of the sample to characterize the combined optical and X-ray properties of the Chandra Deep Field-South sample. Different source types are well separated in a parameter space that includes X-ray luminosity, hardness ratio, and R-K color. Type II objects, while redder on average than the field population, have colors that are consistent with being hosted by a range of galaxy types. Type II active galactic nuclei are mostly found at z 1, in contrast with predictions based on active galactic nucleus population synthesis models, thus suggesting a revision of their evolutionary parameters.