Day 100

100th day, Thursday!  I still haven't found a way to set the default font on this blog.  Oh, and I also got officially involved in Euclid last night, after talking to Peter.  For the next 13 years (Euclid goes online at the end of 2019).  Who's Jean-Luc anyhow?  And I'm not German; while the WP distribution was meant to "strike a balance between country contribution" (Munich gets the cluster validation WP).  Oh well, I'll do my best.


1110.0827
Influence of the ambient solar wind flow on the propagation behavior of interplanetary CMEs
Temmer, Rollett, Möstl, Veronig, Vrsnak, Odstrcil


* CME = coronal mass ejection


Study 3 CME events tracked from Sun to 1AU in remote-sensing observaitons of STEREO Heliospheric imagers and in situ plasma and magnetic field measurements.  At which heliospheric distance range does the drag become dominant and the CME gets adjusted to the solar wind flow?  Analyze speed differences between IMEs and the ambient solar wind flow as a function of distance.  Evolution of ambient solar wind flow derevied from MHD model runds using different solar wind models.  Comparing CME kinematics with the solar wind models find that the CME speed gets adjusted to the solar wind speed at very different heliospheric distances in the three events under study: from below 30R to beyond 1AU depending on the CME and ambient solar wind characteristics.  


1110.0833
Elliptical galaxy masses out to five effective radii: the realm of DM
Deason, Belokurov, Evans, McCarthy


Use planetary nebulae and globular clusters are tracers of mass of elliptical galaxies out to five effective radii.  Sample: 15 elliptical galaxies, broad variation in mass.  Used ML analysis to get overall potential slope, normalization, and velocity anisotropy of the tracers.  Assume power-law for the potential and tracer density and constant velocity anisotropy.  Power law indicies lie in between the isothermal and Keplerian regime, and vary with mass:  tentative evidence that less massive galaxies have steeper potential profiles than more massive galaxies.  Use M*/L ratio from Chabrier/KTG or Salpeter IMF to disentangle stellar and DM components.  The fraction of DM within 5 effective radii increases with mass [smaller mass elliptical galaxies have more stars], in agreement with other studies.  Combination of star formation efficiency and baryon extent are able to account for this trend.  SLACS measure out to 1 effective radii.  Both agree with Chabrier/KTG IMF calculations.


1110.0834
The Fermi Bubbles II: The potential roles of viscosity and cosmic ray diffusion in jet models
Guo, Mathews, Dobler, Oh


Fermi bubble can be produced by a recent powerful AGN jet event (Paper I).  Study potential roles of shear viscosity and cosmic ray diffusion on the morphology and CR distribution of the bubbles.  Small viscosities can smooth bubble edges, as observed; also reduces circulating motions within the bubbles, which would otherwise mix the CR-carrying jet backflow near bubble edges with the bubble interior.  Viscosity naturally produces an edge-favored CR distribution.  Strengthens previous result in Paper I that the Fermi bubbles were produced by a recent AGN jet event.  


Astronomisches Kolloquium
The cosmological impact of Blazars: from Plasma Instabilities to structure formation
Christoph Pfrommer


The TeV gamma rays from blazars are commonly assumed to lose energy primarily through inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons, down to GeV energies.  However, argue that powerful plasma instabilities driven by the highly anisotropic nature of the ultra-relativistic pair distribution provide a plausible way to dissipate the kinetic energy of the TeV-generated pairs locally, heating the intergalactic medium.  Implications for origin of the extragalactic gamma-ray background and recent estimates of intergalactic magnetic field strengths from blazar spectra; significantly alters the thermal history of the IGM.  Heated IGM may suppress small galaxy formation ("missing satellite problem" in MW and "void phenomenon" in low observed abundances of dwarf satellites compared to LCDM).  


1110.0887
Effects of supermassive binary black holes on gravitational lenses
Li, Mao, Loeb, Di Stefano


Influence of SMBinaryBHs on their actions on gravitational lenses.