The faint source population at 15.7 GHz – I. The radio properties

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 429:3 (2012) 2080-2097

Authors:

IH Whittam, JM Riley, DA Green, Matthew Jarvis, I Prandoni, G Guglielmino, R Morganti, HJA Röttgering, MA Garrett

Abstract:

We have studied a sample of 296 faint (> 0.5 mJy) radio sources selected from an area of the Tenth Cambridge (10C) survey at 15.7 GHz in the Lockman Hole. By matching this catalogue to several lower frequency surveys (e.g. including a deep GMRT survey at 610 MHz, a WSRT survey at 1.4 GHz, NVSS, FIRST and WENSS) we have investigated the radio spectral properties of the sources in this sample; all but 30 of the 10C sources are matched to one or more of these surveys. We have found a significant increase in the proportion of flat spectrum sources at flux densities below approximately 1 mJy - the median spectral index between 15.7 GHz and 610 MHz changes from 0.75 for flux densities greater than 1.5 mJy to 0.08 for flux densities less than 0.8 mJy. This suggests that a population of faint, flat spectrum sources is emerging at flux densities below 1 mJy. The spectral index distribution of this sample of sources selected at 15.7 GHz is compared to those of two samples selected at 1.4 GHz from FIRST and NVSS. We find that there is a significant flat spectrum population present in the 10C sample which is missing from the samples selected at 1.4 GHz. The 10C sample is compared to a sample of sources selected from the SKADS Simulated Sky by Wilman et al. and we find that this simulation fails to reproduce the observed spectral index distribution and significantly underpredicts the number of sources in the faintest flux density bin. It is likely that the observed faint, flat spectrum sources are a result of the cores of FRI sources becoming dominant at high frequencies. These results highlight the importance of studying this faint, high frequency population.

Study of the dijet mass spectrum in pp→W+jets events at √s=7 TeV

Physical Review Letters 109:25 (2012)

Authors:

S Chatrchyan, V Khachatryan, AM Sirunyan, A Tumasyan, W Adam, E Aguilo, T Bergauer, M Dragicevic, J Erö, C Fabjan, M Friedl, R Frühwirth, VM Ghete, J Hammer, N Hörmann, J Hrubec, M Jeitler, W Kiesenhofer, V Knünz, M Krammer, I Krätschmer, D Liko, I Mikulec, M Pernicka, B Rahbaran, C Rohringer, H Rohringer, R Schöfbeck, J Strauss, A Taurok, W Waltenberger, G Walzel, E Widl, CE Wulz, V Mossolov, N Shumeiko, J Suarez Gonzalez, M Bansal, S Bansal, T Cornelis, EA De Wolf, X Janssen, S Luyckx, L Mucibello, S Ochesanu, B Roland, R Rougny, M Selvaggi, Z Staykova, H Van Haevermaet, P Van Mechelen, N Van Remortel, A Van Spilbeeck, F Blekman, S Blyweert, J D'hondt, R Gonzalez Suarez, A Kalogeropoulos, M Maes, A Olbrechts, W Van Doninck, P Van Mulders, GP Van Onsem, I Villella, B Clerbaux, G De Lentdecker, V Dero, APR Gay, T Hreus, A Léonard, PE Marage, T Reis, L Thomas, G Vander Marcken, C Vander Velde, P Vanlaer, J Wang, V Adler, K Beernaert, A Cimmino, S Costantini, G Garcia, M Grunewald, B Klein, J Lellouch, A Marinov, J Mccartin, AA Ocampo Rios, D Ryckbosch, N Strobbe, F Thyssen, M Tytgat, P Verwilligen, S Walsh, E Yazgan, N Zaganidis, S Basegmez, G Bruno, R Castello, L Ceard

Abstract:

We report an investigation of the invariant mass spectrum of the two jets with highest transverse momentum in pp→W+2-jet and W+3-jet events to look for resonant enhancement. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb-1 collected with the CMS detector at √s=7 TeV. We find no evidence for the anomalous structure reported by the CDF Collaboration, and establish an upper limit of 5.0 pb at 95% confidence level on the production cross section for a generic Gaussian signal with mass near 150 GeV. Additionally, we exclude two theoretical models that predict a CDF-like dijet resonance near 150 GeV. © 2012 CERN.

Bright radio emission from an ultraluminous stellar-mass microquasar in M31

(2012)

Authors:

Matthew J Middleton, James CA Miller-Jones, Sera Markoff, Rob Fender, Martin Henze, Natasha Hurley-Walker, Anna MM Scaife, Timothy P Roberts, Dominic Walton, John Carpenter, Jean-Pierre Macquart, Geoffrey C Bower, Mark Gurwell, Wolfgang Pietsch, Frank Haberl, Jonathan Harris, Michael Daniel, Junayd Miah, Chris Done, John Morgan, Hugh Dickinson, Phil Charles, Vadim Burwitz, Massimo Della Valle, Michael Freyberg, Jochen Greiner, Margarita Hernanz, Dieter H Hartmann, Despina Hatzidimitriou, Arno Riffeser, Gloria Sala, Stella Seitz, Pablo Reig, Arne Rau, Marina Orio, David Titterington, Keith Grainge

Conditions and configuration metadata for the ATLAS experiment

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/396/5/052033 (2012)

Authors:

EJ Gallas, KE pachal, JCL tseng, F lambert, J fulachier, S albrand, Q zhang

The LOFAR radio environment

Astronomy and Astrophysics 549 (2012)

Authors:

AR Offringa, AG De Bruyn, S Zaroubi, G Van Diepen, O Martinez-Ruby, P Labropoulos, MA Brentjens, B Ciardi, S Daiboo, G Harker, V Jelić, S Kazemi, LVE Koopmans, G Mellema, VN Pandey, RF Pizzo, J Schaye, H Vedantham, V Veligatla, SJ Wijnholds, S Yatawatta, P Zarka, A Alexov, J Anderson, A Asgekar, M Avruch, R Beck, M Bell, MR Bell, M Bentum, G Bernardi, P Best, L Birzan, A Bonafede, F Breitling, JW Broderick, M Brüggen, H Butcher, J Conway, M De Vos, RJ Dettmar, J Eisloeffel, H Falcke, R Fender, W Frieswijk, M Gerbers, JM Griessmeier, AW Gunst, TE Hassall, G Heald, J Hessels, M Hoeft, A Horneffer, A Karastergiou, V Kondratiev, Y Koopman, M Kuniyoshi, G Kuper, P Maat, G Mann, J McKean, H Meulman, M Mevius, JD Mol, R Nijboer, J Noordam, M Norden, H Paas, M Pandey, A Polatidis, D Rafferty, S Rawlings, W Reich, HJA Röttgering, AP Schoenmakers, J Sluman, O Smirnov, C Sobey, B Stappers, M Steinmetz, J Swinbank, M Tagger, Y Tang, C Tasse, A Van Ardenne, W Van Cappellen, AP Van Duin, M Van Haarlem, J Van Leeuwen, RJ Van Weeren, R Vermeulen, C Vocks, RAMJ Wijers, M Wise, O Wucknitz

Abstract:

Aims. This paper discusses the spectral occupancy for performing radio astronomy with the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR), with a focus on imaging observations. Methods. We have analysed the radio-frequency interference (RFI) situation in two 24-h surveys with Dutch LOFAR stations, covering 30-78 MHz with low-band antennas and 115-163 MHz with high-band antennas. This is a subset of the full frequency range of LOFAR. The surveys have been observed with a 0.76 kHz/1 s resolution. Results. We measured the RFI occupancy in the low and high frequency sets to be 1.8% and 3.2% respectively. These values are found to be representative values for the LOFAR radio environment. Between day and night, there is no significant difference in the radio environment. We find that lowering the current observational time and frequency resolutions of LOFAR results in a slight loss of flagging accuracy. At LOFAR's nominal resolution of 0.76 kHz and 1 s, the false-positives rate is about 0.5%. This rate increases approximately linearly when decreasing the data frequency resolution. Conclusions. Currently, by using an automated RFI detection strategy, the LOFAR radio environment poses no perceivable problems for sensitive observing. It remains to be seen if this is still true for very deep observations that integrate over tens of nights, but the situation looks promising. Reasons for the low impact of RFI are the high spectral and time resolution of LOFAR; accurate detection methods; strong filters and high receiver linearity; and the proximity of the antennas to the ground. We discuss some strategies that can be used once low-level RFI starts to become apparent. It is important that the frequency range of LOFAR remains free of broadband interference, such as DAB stations and windmills. © 2012 ESO.