Australia Telescope National Facility

About: Australia Telescope National Facility is a facility organization based out in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Galaxy & Pulsar. The organization has 699 authors who have published 2774 publications receiving 151507 citations. The organization is also known as: ATNF.

H I 21 cm ABSORPTION AND UNIFIED SCHEMES OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

Abstract: In a recent study of z ≥ 0.1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs), we found that 21 cm absorption has never been detected in objects in which the ultraviolet luminosity exceeds L UV ~ 1023 W Hz–1. In this paper, we further explore the implications that this has for the currently popular consensus that it is the orientation of the circumnuclear obscuring torus, invoked by unified schemes of AGNs, which determines whether absorption is present along our sight line. The fact that at L UV 1023 W Hz–1, both type-1 and type-2 objects exhibit a 50% probability of detection, suggests that this is not the case and that the bias against detection of H I absorption in type-1 objects is due purely to the inclusion of the L UV 1023 W Hz–1 sources. Similarly, the ultraviolet luminosities can also explain why the presence of 21 cm absorption shows a preference for radio galaxies over quasars and the higher detection rate in compact sources, such as compact steep spectrum or gigahertz peaked spectrum sources, may also be biased by the inclusion of high-luminosity sources. Being comprised of all 21 cm searched sources at z ≥ 0.1, this is a necessarily heterogeneous sample, the constituents of which have been observed by various instruments. By this same token, however, the dependence on the UV luminosity may be an all encompassing effect, superseding the unified schemes model, although there is the possibility that the exclusive 21 cm non-detections at high UV luminosities could be caused by a bias toward gas-poor ellipticals. Additionally, the high UV fluxes could be sufficiently exciting/ionizing the H I above 21 cm detection thresholds, although the extent to which this is related to the neutral gas deficit in ellipticals is currently unclear. Examining the moderate UV luminosity (L UV 1023 W Hz–1) sample further, from the profile widths and offsets from the systemic velocities, we find no discernible differences between the two AGN types. This may suggest that the bulk of the absorption generally occurs in the galactic disk, which must therefore be randomly orientated with respect to the circumnuclear torus. Furthermore, we see no difference in the reddening between the two AGN types, indicating, like the 21 cm absorption, that the orientation of the torus has little bearing on this. We also find a correlation between 21 cm line strength and the optical-near-infrared color, which suggests that the reddening is caused by dust located in the large-scale, H I absorbing disk which intervenes the sight line to the AGN.

Pulsed Gamma-rays from PSR J2021+3651 with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

Abstract: We report the detection of pulsed gamma-rays from the young, spin-powered radio pulsar PSR J2021+3651 using data acquired with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (formerly GLAST). The light curve consists of two narrow peaks of similar amplitude separated by 0.468 +/- 0.002 in phase. The first peak lags the maximum of the 2 GHz radio pulse by 0.162 +/- 0.004 +/- 0.01 in phase. The integral gamma-ray photon flux above 100 MeV is (56 +/- 3 +/- 11) x 10^{-8} /cm2/s. The photon spectrum is well-described by an exponentially cut-off power law of the form dF/dE = kE^{-\Gamma} e^(-E/E_c) where the energy E is expressed in GeV. The photon index is \Gamma = 1.5 +/- 0.1 +/- 0.1 and the exponential cut-off is E_c = 2.4 +/- 0.3 +/- 0.5 GeV. The first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The integral photon flux of the bridge is approximately 10% of the pulsed emission, and the upper limit on off-pulse gamma-ray emission from a putative pulsar wind nebula is <10% of the pulsed emission at the 95% confidence level. Radio polarization measurements yield a rotation measure of RM = 524 +/- 4 rad/m^2 but a poorly constrained magnetic geometry. Re-analysis of Chandra data enhanced the significance of the weak X-ray pulsations, and the first peak is roughly phase-aligned with the first gamma-ray peak. We discuss the emission region and beaming geometry based on the shape and spectrum of the gamma-ray light curve combined with radio and X-ray measurements, and the implications for the pulsar distance. Gamma-ray emission from the polar cap region seems unlikely for this pulsar.

Milky Way Disk-Halo Transition in H I: Properties of the Cloud Population

Abstract: Using 21 cm H I observations from the Parkes Radio Telescope’s Galactic All-Sky Survey, we measure 255 H I clouds in the lower Galactic halo that are located near the tangent points at 16.9 ◦ ≤ l ≤ 35.3 ◦ and |b| . 20 ◦ . The clouds have a median mass of 700 M⊙ and a median distance from the Galactic plane of 660 pc. This first Galactic quadrant (QI) region is symmetric to a region of the fourth quadrant (QIV) studied previously using the same data set and measurement criteria. The properties of the individual clouds in the two quadrants are quite similar suggesting that they belong to the same population, and both populations have a line of sight cloud-cloud velocity dispersion of �cc ≈ 16 km s −1 . However, there are three times as many disk-halo clouds at the QI tangent points and their scale height, at h = 800 pc, is twice as large as in QIV. Thus the observed line of sight random cloud motions are not connected to the cloud scale height or its variation around the Galaxy. The surface density of clouds is nearly constant over the QI tangent point region but is peaked near R ∼ 4 kpc in QIV. We ascribe all of these differences to the coincidental location of the QI region at the tip of the Milky Way’s bar, where it merges with a major spiral arm. The QIV tangent point region, in contrast, covers only a segment of a minor spiral arm. The disk-halo H I cloud population is thus likely tied to and driven by large-scale star formation processes, possibly through the mechanism of supershells and feedback. Subject headings: galaxies: structure — Galaxy: halo — ISM: clouds — ISM: structure — radio lines: ISM

A survey for redshifted molecular and atomic absorption lines – I. The Parkes half-Jansky flat-spectrum red quasar sample

Abstract: We are currently undertaking a large survey for redshifted atomic and molecular absorption lines at radio frequencies. In this paper, we present the results from the first phase of this survey: the search for Hi 21-cm and OH 18-cm absorption lines in the hosts of reddened quasars and radio galaxies. Although we observed each source for up to several hours with two of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), only one clear and one tentative detection were obtained: H I absorption at z = 0.097 in PKS 1555-140 and OH absorption at z = 0.126 in PKS 2300-189, respectively, with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). For the latter, no H i absorption was detected at the same redshift as the borderline OH detection. In order to determine why no clear molecular absorption was detected in any of the 13 sources searched, we investigate the properties of the five redshifted systems currently known to exhibit OH absorption. In four of these, molecules were first detected via millimetre-wave transitions, and the flat radio spectra indicate compact background continuum sources, which may suggest a high degree of coverage of the background source by the molecular clouds in the absorber. Furthermore, for these systems we find a relationship between the molecular line strength and red optical-near-infrared (V - K) colours, thus supporting the notion that the reddening of these sources is due to dust, which provides an environment conducive to the formation of molecules. Upon comparison with the V - K colours of our sample, this relationship suggests that, presuming the reddening occurs at the host galaxy redshift at least in some of the targets, many of our observations still fall short of the sensitivity required to detect OH absorption, although a confirmation of the 'detection' of OH in 2300-189 could contravene this.

Detection, localization, and characterization of gravitational wave bursts in a pulsar timing array

Abstract: Efforts to detect gravitational waves by timing an array of pulsars have traditionally focused on stationary gravitational waves, e.g., stochastic or periodic signals. Gravitational wave bursts—signals whose duration is much shorter than the observation period—will also arise in the pulsar timing array waveband. Sources that give rise to detectable bursts include the formation or coalescence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), the periapsis passage of compact objects in highly elliptic or unbound orbits about an SMBH, or cusps on cosmic strings. Here, we describe how pulsar timing array data may be analyzed to detect and characterize these bursts. Our analysis addresses, in a mutually consistent manner, a hierarchy of three questions. (1) What are the odds that a data set includes the signal from a gravitational wave burst? (2) Assuming the presence of a burst, what is the direction to its source? (3) Assuming the burst propagation direction, what is the burst waveform's time dependence in each of its polarization states? Applying our analysis to synthetic data sets, we find that we can detect gravitational waves even when the radiation is too weak to either localize the source or infer the waveform, and detect and localize sources even when the radiation amplitude is too weak to permit the waveform to be determined. While the context of our discussion is gravitational wave detection via pulsar timing arrays, the analysis itself is directly applicable to gravitational wave detection using either ground- or space-based detector data.