Day 1620

Wednesday.

1908.10045
Possible formation of lowly luminous highly magnetized white dwarfs by accretion leading to SGRs/AXPs
Mukhopadhyay, et al

We sketch a possible evolutionary scenario by which a highly magnetized super-Chandrasekhar white dwarf could be formed by accretion on to a commonly observed magnetized white dwarf. This is an exploratory study, when the physics in cataclysmic variables (CVs) is very rich and complex. Based on this, we also explore the possibility that the white dwarf pulsar AR Sco acquired its high spin and magnetic field due to repeated episodes of accretion and spin-down. We show that strong magnetic field dramatically decreases luminosity of highly magnetized white dwarf (B-WD), letting them below the current detection limit. The repetition of this cycle can eventually lead to a B-WD, recently postulated to be the reason for over-luminous type Ia supernovae. A spinning B-WD could also be an ideal source for continuous gravitational radiation and soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) and anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs). SGRs/AXPs are generally believed to be highly magnetized, but observationally not confirmed yet, neutron stars. Invoking B-WDs does not require the magnetic field to be as high as for neutron star based model, however reproducing other observed properties intact.

1908.10047

Mid-infrared spectroscopy of zodiacal emission with AKARI/IRC

Takahashi, et al

Interplanetary dust (IPD) is thought to be recently supplied from asteroids and comets. Grain properties of the IPD can give us the information about the environment in the proto-solar system, and can be traced from the shapes of silicate features around 10 $\mu$m seen in the zodiacal emission spectra. We analyzed mid-IR slit-spectroscopic data of the zodiacal emission in various sky directions obtained with the Infrared Camera on board AKARI satellite. After we subtracted the contamination due to instrumental artifacts, we have successfully obtained high S/N spectra and have determined detailed shapes of excess emission features in the 9 -- 12 $\mu$m range in all the sky directions. According to a comparison between the feature shapes averaged over all directions and the absorption coefficients of candidate minerals, the IPD was found to typically include small silicate crystals, especially enstatite grains. We also found the variations in the feature shapes and the related grain properties among the different sky directions. From investigations of the correlation between feature shapes and the brightness contributions from dust bands, the IPD in dust bands seems to have the size frequency distribution biased toward large grains and show the indication of hydrated minerals. The spectra at higher ecliptic latitude showed a stronger excess, which indicates an increase in the fraction of small grains included in the line of sight at higher ecliptic latitudes. If we focus on the dependence of detailed feature shapes on ecliptic latitudes, the IPD at higher latitudes was found to have a lower olivine/pyroxene ratio for small amorphous grains. The variation of the mineral composition of the IPD in different sky directions may imply different properties of the IPD from different types of parent bodies, because the spatial distribution of the IPD depends on the type of the parent body.

1908.10114

Weak lensing measurements of the APX-SZ galaxy cluster sample

Klein, Israel, Nagarajan, Bertoldi, Pacaud, Lee, Sommer, Basu

We present a weak lensing analysis for galaxy clusters from the APEX-SZ survey. For $39$ massive galaxy clusters that were observed via the Sunyaev-Zel\textquotesingle dovich effect (SZE) with the APEX telescope, we analyse deep optical imaging data from WFI(@2.2mMPG/ESO) and Suprime-Cam(@SUBARU) in three bands. The masses obtained in this study, including an X-ray selected subsample of 27 clusters, are optimised for and used in studies constraining the mass to observable scaling relations at fixed cosmology. A novel focus of our weak lensing analysis is the multi-colour background selection to suppress effects of cosmic variance on the redshift distribution of source galaxies. We investigate the effects of cluster member contamination through galaxy density, shear profile, and recovered concentrations. We quantify the impact of variance in source redshift distribution on the mass estimate by studying nine sub-fields of the COSMOS survey for different cluster redshift and manitude limits. We measure a standard deviation of $\sim 6$\% on the mean angular diameter distance ratio for a cluster at $z\!=\!0.45$ and shallow imaging data of $R\!\approx\!23$ mag. It falls to $\sim 1$\% for deep, $R=26$ mag, observations. This corresponds to 8.4\% and 1.4\% scatter in $M_{200}$. Our background selection reduces this scatter by $20-40$\%, depending on cluster redshift and imaging depth. We derived cluster masses with and without using a mass concentration relation and find consistent results, and concentrations consistent with the used mass-concentration relation.