Astronomical instrumentation

Abstract:

We present high-spatial resolution imaging obtained with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) at 880 μm and the Keck adaptive optics (AO) system at the K S-band of a gravitationally lensed submillimeter galaxy (SMG) at z = 4.243 discovered in the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey. The SMA data (angular resolution 06) resolve the dust emission into multiple lensed images, while the Keck AO K S-band data (angular resolution 01) resolve the lens into a pair of galaxies separated by 03. We present an optical spectrum of the foreground lens obtained with the Gemini-South telescope that provides a lens redshift of z lens = 0.595 ± 0.005. We develop and apply a new lens modeling technique in the visibility plane that shows that the SMG is magnified by a factor of μ = 4.1 ± 0.2 and has an intrinsic infrared (IR) luminosity of L IR = (2.1 ± 0.2) × 1013 L ⊙. We measure a half-light radius of the background source of r s = 4.4 ± 0.5kpc which implies an IR luminosity surface density of ΣIR = (3.4 ± 0.9) × 1011 L ⊙kpc-2, a value that is typical of z > 2 SMGs but significantly lower than IR luminous galaxies at z 0. The two lens galaxies are compact (r lens 0.9kpc) early-types with Einstein radii of θE1 = 0.57 ± 0.01 and θE2 = 0.40 ± 0.01 that imply masses of M lens1 = (7.4 ± 0.5) × 1010 M ⊙ and M lens2 = (3.7 ± 0.3) × 10 10 M ⊙. The two lensing galaxies are likely about to undergo a dissipationless merger, and the mass and size of the resultant system should be similar to other early-type galaxies at z 0.6. This work highlights the importance of high spatial resolution imaging in developing models of strongly lensed galaxies discovered by Herschel. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

A search for a fermiophobic Higgs boson using diphoton events produced in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7 TeV is performed using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4. 9 fb-1 collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. A specific benchmark model is considered where all the fermion couplings to the Higgs boson are set to zero and the bosonic couplings are kept at the Standard Model values (fermiophobic Higgs model). The largest excess with respect to the background-only hypothesis is found at 125. 5 GeV, with a local significance of 2. 9 standard deviations, which reduces to 1. 6 standard deviations when taking into account the look-elsewhere effect. The data exclude the fermiophobic Higgs model in the ranges 110. 0-118. 0 GeV and 119. 5-121. 0 GeV at 95 % confidence level. © 2012 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.

Abstract:

The 4MOST consortium is currently halfway through a Conceptual Design study for ESO with the aim to develop a wide-field ( < 3 square degree, goal < 5 square degree), high-multiplex ( < 1500 fibres, goal 3000 fibres) spectroscopic survey facility for an ESO 4m-class telescope (VISTA). 4MOST will run permanently on the telescope to perform a 5 year public survey yielding more than 20 million spectra at resolution R∼5000 (λ=390–1000 nm) and more than 2 million spectra at R~20,000 (395–456.5 nm and 587–673 nm). The 4MOST design is especially intended to complement three key all-sky, space-based observatories of prime European interest: Gaia, eROSITA and Euclid. Initial design and performance estimates for the wide-field corrector concepts are presented. Two fibre positioner concepts are being considered for 4MOST. The first one is a Phi-Theta system similar to ones used on existing and planned facilities. The second one is a new R-Theta concept with large patrol area. Both positioner concepts effectively address the issues of fibre focus and pupil pointing. The 4MOST spectrographs are fixed configuration two-arm spectrographs, with dedicated spectrographs for the high- and low-resolution fibres. A full facility simulator is being developed to guide trade-off decisions regarding the optimal field-of-view, number of fibres needed, and the relative fraction of high-to-low resolution fibres. The simulator takes mock catalogues with template spectra from Design Reference Surveys as starting point, calculates the output spectra based on a throughput simulator, assigns targets to fibres based on the capabilities of the fibre positioner designs, and calculates the required survey time by tiling the fields on the sky. The 4MOST consortium aims to deliver the full 4MOST facility by the end of 2018 and start delivering high-level data products for both consortium and ESO community targets a year later with yearly increments.