Day 43

Sunday.  Need to run SExtractor today.


1107.2904
Extending the effective-one-body Hamiltonian of BH binaries to include next-to-next-to-leading spin-orbit couplings
Barausse, Buonanno


* can't they think of a better title?
* effective one body approach:  two body problem of m1 and m2 reduced to one body of mass mu = (m1 m2)/(m1+m2).
* Kerr metric: geometry of spacetime around a rotating massive body, which should exhibit frame dragging.  Frame dragging predicts that objects coming close to a rotating mass will be entrained to participate in its rotation, because of the curvature of spacetime associated with rotating bodies.  At close enough distances, all objects (even light itself) must rotate with the body (the ergosphere).  


Effective one body approach to two compact binaries of masses m1 and m2, spins S1 and S2, mapped into the dynamics of one test particle mu and spin S* moving in a deformed Kerr metric with mass M=m1+m2 and spin S_kerr.  Compute (1) spin-spin coupling, (2) spin-orbit couplings, and (3) all spin-orbit couplings in the test-particle limit.  Go to higher-order terms ("next-to-next-to...").  Some new classifications depending on equatorial orbis.


1101.2215
SED fitting with MCMC: Metholodogy and application to z=3.1 Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies
Acquaviva, Gawiser, Guaita


GalMC: MCMC algorithm to fit age, stellar mass, dust reddening, metallicity, redshift, and SFR.  Efficiency in MCMC is better than grid by x100 for a 3d parameter space, and increases with number of dimensions.  Use GalMC to Lyman-alpha emitters (LAE) at z=3.1.  Age=0.67Gyr and stellar mass 3.2e9 M_sun if detected in IRAC 3.6 micron band, and 0.06Gyr with stellar mass 2e8 M_sun if not (stacked SED results); both consistent with absence of dust.  SFH neither exponential nor constant preferred.  Constraint on the metallicity found for the first time (Z<Z_sun).  


1104.4500
Generalized slow roll for non-canonical kinetic terms
Hu


Generalized slow-roll approach for calculating power spectrum (where the slow roll parameters are neither small nor slowly varying) can be readily extended to models with non-canonical kinetic terms in the inflaton action.  Ex: rapid sound speed variations in DBI models with features in the warp factor, affecting the power spectrum shape.  Single source function for deviations athat is simply related to the power spectrum exists:  empirical constraints on this source function can be readily interpreted in the context of features in the inflaton potential or sound speed.