Dynamics and Merger Rate of Primordial Black Holes in a Cluster

The PBH clusters can be sources of gravitational waves, and the merger rate depends on the spatial distribution of PBHs in the cluster which changes over time. It is well known that gravitational collisional systems experience the core collapse that leads to significant increase of the central density and shrinking of the core. After core collapse, the cluster expands almost self-similarly (i.e., density profile extends in size without changing its shape). These dynamic processes affect the merger rate of PBHs. In this paper, the dynamics of the PBH cluster is considered using the Fokker–Planck equation. We calculate the merger rate of PBHs on cosmic time scales and show that its time dependence has a unique signature. Namely, it grows by about an order of magnitude at the moment of core collapse which depends on the characteristics of the cluster, and then decreases according to the dependence R∝t−1.48. It was obtained for monochromatic and power-law PBH mass distributions with some fixed parameters. Obtained results can be used to test the model of the PBH clusters via observation of gravitational waves at high redshift.

Molecular interpretation of the LHCb pentaquarks from an analysis of J/ψp spectrum

A coupled-channel approach including the ΛcD¯(*) and ηcp channels in addition to the Σc(*)D¯(*) and J/ψp channels, as required by unitarity and heavy quark spin symmetry (HQSS), is applied to the hidden-charm pentaquark Pc states, i.e., Pc(4312), Pc(4440) and Pc(4457), discovered by LHCb Collaboration. It is demonstrated that to obtain cutoff independent results, the one-pion exchange potential in the multichannel systems is to be supplemented with next-leading order counter terms responsible for the S-wave-to-D-wave transitions. We show that the experimental data for the J/ψp mass distributions are fully in line with the ΣcD¯ and ΣcD¯* hadronic molecular interpretation of the Pc(4312) and Pc(4440)/Pc(4457), respectively. A narrow Σc*D¯ molecule around 4.38 GeV is required by the HQSS with the evidence for its existence seen in the J/ψp spectrum. Moreover, we predict the line shapes for the elastic and inelastic channels.

Analyzing Oxygen Ionization in the Circumgalactic Medium

Galaxies are surrounded by low-density, highly-ionized clouds of gas, called the Circumgalactic Medium (CGM), which provides insight into galaxy evolution. CGM observations are sensitive to ionization levels, which requires studying ionization types: photoionization (PI), more density-dependent and associated with cooler gas, and collisional ionization (CI), more temperature-dependent and associated with hotter gas. We analyzed PI and CI components for oxygen ionization states using cosmological galaxy simulations. For each ion, we plotted mass distributions into PI and CI phases and created 2D covering-fraction projections of column density at different thresholds. We analyzed changes for different mass-bin galaxies. Our results are: O vii and O ix are the only predominantly-CI ion states. O vi is a local minimum in both PI and CI gas. Column density distributions greatly emphasize higher ion states. Shapes of covering-fraction plots at higher thresholds resemble the 3D-plots. CI gas dominates more in higher mass galaxy simulations.

Systematic errors induced by the elliptical power-law model in galaxy-galaxy strong lens modeling

The elliptical power-law (EPL) mass model of the mass in a galaxy is widely used in strong gravitational lensing analyses. However, the distribution of mass in real galaxies is more complex. We quantify the biases due to this model mismatch by simulating and then analysing mock {\it Hubble Space Telescope} imaging of lenses with mass distributions inferred from SDSS-MaNGA stellar dynamics data. We find accurate recovery of source galaxy morphology, except for a slight tendency to infer sources to be more compact than their true size. The Einstein radius of the lens is also robustly recovered with 0.1\% accuracy, as is the global density slope, with 2.5\% relative systematic error, compared to the 3.4\% intrinsic dispersion. However, asymmetry in real lenses also leads to a spurious fitted `external shear' with typical strength, $\gamma_{\rm ext}=0.015$. Furthermore, time delays inferred from lens modelling without measurements of stellar dynamics are typically underestimated by $\sim$5\%. Using such measurements from a sub-sample of 37 lenses would bias measurements of the Hubble constant $H_0$ by $\sim$9\%. The next generation cosmography must use more complex lens mass models.

SELCIE: a tool for investigating the chameleon field of arbitrary sources

The chameleon model is a modified gravity theory that introduces an additional scalar field that couples to matter through a conformal coupling. This `chameleon field' possesses a screening mechanism through a nonlinear self-interaction term which allows the field to affect cosmological observables in diffuse environments whilst still being consistent with current local experimental constraints. Due to the self-interaction term the equations of motion of the field are nonlinear and therefore difficult to solve analytically. The analytic solutions that do exist in the literature are either approximate solutions and or only apply to highly symmetric systems. In this work we introduce the software package SELCIE (https://github.com/C-Briddon/SELCIE.git). This package equips the user with tools to construct an arbitrary system of mass distributions and then to calculate the corresponding solution to the chameleon field equation. It accomplishes this by using the finite element method and either the Picard or Newton nonlinear solving methods. We compared the results produced by SELCIE with analytic results from the literature including discrete and continuous density distributions. We found strong (sub-percentage) agreement between the solutions calculated by SELCIE and the analytic solutions.

Masses and strong decays of open charm hexaquark states $$\Sigma _{c}^{(*)}{\Sigma }_{c}^{(*)}$$

Inspired by the recent discovery of the doubly charmed tetraquark state $$T_{cc}^{+}$$ T cc + by the LHCb Collaboration, we perform a systematic study of masses and strong decays of open charm hexaquark states $${\Sigma }_{c}^{(*)}\Sigma _{c}^{(*)}$$ Σ c ( ∗ ) Σ c ( ∗ ) . Taking into account heavy quark spin symmetry breaking, we predict several bound states of isospin $$I=0$$ I = 0 , $$I=1$$ I = 1 , and $$I=2$$ I = 2 in the one boson exchange model. Moreover, we adopt the effective Lagrangian approach to estimate the decay widths of $${\Sigma }_{c}^{(*)}\Sigma _{c}^{(*)} \rightarrow \Lambda _{c}\Lambda _{c}$$ Σ c ( ∗ ) Σ c ( ∗ ) → Λ c Λ c and their relevant ratios via the triangle diagram mechanism, which range from a few MeV to a few tens of MeV. We strongly recommend future experimental searches for the $${\Sigma }_{c}^{(*)}\Sigma _{c}^{(*)}$$ Σ c ( ∗ ) Σ c ( ∗ ) hexaquark states in the $$\Lambda _c\Lambda _c$$ Λ c Λ c invariant mass distributions.

Effect of Bow Camber and Mass Distribution on Violinists' Preferences and Performance

Little is known about how bow mechanical characteristics objectively and quantitatively influence violinists' preferences and performance. Hypothesizing that the bow shape (i.e., camber) and mass distribution modifications would alter both violinists' appreciations of a bow and objective assessments of their performance, we recruited 10 professional violinists to play their own violin using 18 versions of a single bow, modified by combining three cambers and six mass distributions, in random order. A musical phrase, composed for this study, was played legato and spiccato at three octaves and two tempi. Each violinist scored all 18 bows. Then, experts assessed the recorded performances according to criteria inspired by basic musical analysis. Finally, 12 audio-descriptors were calculated on the same note from each trial, to objectivise potential acoustic differences. Statistical analysis (ANOVA) reveals that bow camber impacted the violinists' appreciations (p < 0.05), and that heavier bow tips gave lower scores for spiccato playing (p < 0.05). The expert evaluations reveal that playing with a lighter bow (tip or frog), or with a bow whose camber's maximum curvature is close to the frog, had a positive impact on some violinists' performance (NS to p < 0.001). The “camber-participant” interaction had significant effects on the violinists' appreciations (p < 0.01 to p < 0.001), on the expert's evaluation and on almost all the audio-descriptors (NS to p < 0.001). While trends were identified, multiple camber-participant interactions suggest that bow makers should provide a variety of cambers to satisfy different violinists.