Discovery of an ancient massive merger event in the For- nax cluster galaxy NGC 1380

Driven by gravity, galaxies are expected to continuously grow through the merging of smaller systems. To derive their past merger history is challenging, as the accreted stars disperse quickly; yet, it is a needed step to test the theory of hierarchical evolution. The merger histories of the most massive Local Group spirals, the Milky Way and M31, have been re- cently uncovered by using the motion and chemistry of their individual stars. On the other hand, the details of the merger history of galaxies at larger distance have so far remained hidden. Here we report the discovery of an ancient, massive merger event in the lenticu- lar galaxy NGC 1380 in the Fornax cluster. By applying a recently developed population-orbital superposition model (Zhu at al 2020) to NGC 1380’s surface brightness as well as stellar kinematic, age, and metallicity maps from VLT/MUSE IFU data (Sarzi et al 2018), we obtain the stellar orbits, age and metallicity distributions of this galaxy. The highly radial orbits which make up an inner stellar halo are ∼ 13 Gyr old with metallicity Z/Z⊙ ∼ 1.2 and comprise a stellar mass of M∗,halo(r<2Re)∼3.4×10^10 M⊙. By comparing to analogues from the cosmological galaxy simulation TNG50 (Pillepich 2019), we find that the formation of the inner stellar halo of NGC 1380 requires a merger with a massive satellite galaxy with stellar mass of ∼ 3 × 10^10 M⊙ that occurred roughly ∼ 10 Gyr ago. Moreover, we infer the total accreted stellar mass of NGC 1380 to be ∼ 6 × 10^10 M⊙. The massive merger in NGC 1380 is the first major merger event found in a normal phase-mixed galaxy beyond the Local Volume, and it is the oldest and most massive one identified in nearby galaxies so far. Our chemo-dynamical method, when applied to extended deep IFU data and in combination with cosmological galaxy simulations, can quantitatively unravel the merger history of a large number of nearby galaxies.

Stereodynamical Control of Nonadiabatic Quenching Dynamics of OH(A2S+) by H2: Full-Dimensional Quantum Dynamics

The breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is omnipresent in chemistry, but our detailed understanding of the nonadiabatic dynamics is still incomplete. In the present work, nonadiabatic quenching of electronically excited OH(A2S+) molecules by H2 molecules is investigated by a full-dimensional quantum dynamical method using a high quality diabatic potential energy matrix. Good agreement with experiment is found for the OH(X2P) ro-vibrational and L-doublet distributions. Furthermore, the nonadiabatic dynamics is shown to be controlled by stereodynamics, namely the orientation of the two reactants. The uncovering of a major (in)elastic channel, neglected in all previous analyses, resolves a long-standing experiment-theory disagreement concerning the branching ratio of the two electronic quenching channels.

Chaotic Behaviors of One-Dimensional Wave Equations with van der Pol Boundary Conditions Containing a Source Term

For one-dimensional wave equations with the van der Pol boundary conditions, there have been several different ways in the literature to characterize the complexity of their solutions. However, if the right-end van der Pol boundary condition contains a source term, then a considerable technical difficulty arises as to how to describe the complexity of the system. In this paper, we take advantage of a topologically dynamical method to characterize the dynamical behaviors of the systems, including sensitivity, transitivity and Li–Yorke chaos. For this end, we consider a system [Formula: see text] induced by a sequence of continuous maps and its functional envelope [Formula: see text], and show that, under some considerable condition, [Formula: see text] is transitive if and only if [Formula: see text] is weakly mixing of order [Formula: see text]; [Formula: see text] is Li–Yorke chaotic and sensitive if [Formula: see text] is strongly mixing. Those abstract results have their own significance and can be applied to such kind of equations.

Improving Air Quality Predictions over the United States with an Analog Ensemble

Air quality forecasts produced by the National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC) help air quality forecasters across the United States in making informed decisions to protect public health from acute air pollution episodes. However, errors in air quality forecasts limit their value in the decision-making process. This study aims to enhance the accuracy of NAQFC air quality forecasts and reliably quantify their uncertainties using a statistical–dynamical method called the analog ensemble (AnEn), which has previously been found to efficiently generate probabilistic forecasts for other applications. AnEn estimates of the probability of the true state of a predictand are based on a current deterministic numerical prediction and an archive of prior analogous predictions paired with prior observations. The method avoids the complexity and real-time computational expense of model-based ensembles and is proposed here for the first time for air quality forecasting. AnEn is applied with forecasts from the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. Relative to CMAQ raw forecasts, deterministic forecasts of surface ozone (O3) and particulate matter of aerodynamic diameter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) based on AnEn’s mean have lower systemic and random errors and are overall better correlated with observations; for example, when computed across all sites and lead times, AnEn’s root-mean-square error is lower than CMAQ’s by roughly 35% and 30% for O3 and PM2.5, respectively, and AnEn improves the correlation by 50% for O3 and PM2.5. Probabilistic forecasts from AnEn are statistically consistent, reliable, and sharp, and they quantify the uncertainty of the underlying prediction.

Dynamical modelling of globular clusters: challenges for the robust determination of IMBH candidates

ABSTRACT The presence or absence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) at the centre of Milky Way globular clusters (GCs) is still an open question. This is due to either observational restrictions or limitations in the dynamical modelling method; in this work, we explore the latter. Using a sample of high-end Monte Carlo simulations of GCs, with and without a central IMBH, we study the limitations of spherically symmetric Jeans models assuming constant velocity anisotropy and mass-to-light ratio. This dynamical method is one of the most widely used modelling approaches to identify a central IMBH in observations. With these models, we are able to robustly identify and recover the mass of the central IMBH in our simulation with a high-mass IMBH ($M_{\rm IMBH}/M_{\rm GC}\sim 4{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$). Simultaneously, we show that it is challenging to confirm the existence of a low-mass IMBH ($M_{\rm IMBH}/M_{\rm GC}\sim 0.3{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$), as both solutions with and without an IMBH are possible within our adopted error bars. For simulations without an IMBH, we do not find any certain false detection of an IMBH. However, we obtain upper limits that still allow for the presence of a central IMBH. We conclude that while our modelling approach is reliable for the high-mass IMBH and does not seem to lead towards a false detection of a central IMBH, it lacks the sensitivity to robustly identify a low-mass IMBH and to definitely rule out the presence of an IMBH when it is not there.

On Syzygy Modules over Laurent Polynomial Rings

In this paper, we present a dynamical method for computing the syzygy module of multivariate Laurent polynomials with coefficients in a Dedekind ring (with zero divisors) by reducing the computation over Laurent polynomial rings to calculations over a polynomial ring via an appropriate isomorphism.

Weak-field polaron dynamics in organic ferromagnets

With a nonadiabatic dynamical method the polaron dynamics in organic ferromagnets with spin radicals is investigated under weak electric fields.