Rubin-LSST

Abstract:

We report a measurement of the top quark mass, mt, obtained from pp̄ collisions at s=1.96TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron using the CDF II detector. We analyze a sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.9fb-1. We select events with an electron or muon, large missing transverse energy, and exactly four high-energy jets in the central region of the detector, at least one of which is tagged as coming from a b quark. We calculate a signal likelihood using a matrix element integration method, where the matrix element is modified by using effective propagators to take into account assumptions on event kinematics. Our event likelihood is a function of mt and a parameter JES (jet energy scale) that determines in situ the calibration of the jet energies. We use a neural network discriminant to distinguish signal from background events. We also apply a cut on the peak value of each event likelihood curve to reduce the contribution of background and badly reconstructed events. Using the 318 events that pass all selection criteria, we find mt=172.7±1.8(stat+JES) ±1.2(syst)GeV/c2. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We present a measurement of the top quark mass in the all hadronic channel (tt̄→bb̄q1q̄2q3q̄4) using 943pb-1 of pp̄ collisions at s=1.96TeV collected at the CDF II detector at Fermilab (CDF). We apply the standard model production and decay matrix element (ME) to tt̄ candidate events. We calculate per-event probability densities according to the ME calculation and construct template models of signal and background. The scale of the jet energy is calibrated using additional templates formed with the invariant mass of pairs of jets. These templates form an overall likelihood function that depends on the top quark mass and on the jet energy scale (JES). We estimate both by maximizing this function. Given 72 observed events, we measure a top quark mass of 171.1±3.7(stat+JES)±2.1(syst)GeV/c2. The combined uncertainty on the top quark mass is 4.3GeV/c2. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

Using images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope, we confirmed the disappearance of the progenitors of two type II supernovae (SNe) and evaluated the presence of other stars associated with them. We found that the progenitor of SN 2003gd, an M-supergiant star, is no longer observed at the SN location and determined its intrinsic brightness using image subtraction techniques. The progenitor of SN 1993J, a K-supergiant star, is also no longer present, but its B-supergiant binary companion is still observed. The disappearance of the progenitors confirms that these two supernovae were produced by red supergiants.

Abstract:

Following the study of Darg et al. (2009; hereafter D09a) we explore the environments, optical colours, stellar masses, star formation and AGN activity in a sample of 3003 pairs of merging galaxies drawn from the SDSS using visual classifications from the Galaxy Zoo project. While D09a found that the spiral-to-elliptical ratio in (major) mergers appeared higher than that of the global galaxy population, no significant differences are found between the environmental distributions of mergers and a randomly selected control sample. This makes the high occurrence of spirals in mergers unlikely to be an environmental effect and must, therefore, arise from differing time-scales of detectability for spirals and ellipticals. We find that merging galaxies have a wider spread in colour than the global galaxy population, with a significant blue tail resulting from intense star formation in spiral mergers. Galaxies classed as star-forming using their emission-line properties have average star-formation rates approximately doubled by the merger process though star formation is negligibly enhanced in merging elliptical galaxies. We conclude that the internal properties of galaxies significantly affect the time-scales over which merging systems can be detected (as suggested by recent theoretical studies) which leads to spirals being `over-observed' in mergers. We also suggest that the transition mass $3\times10^{10}{M}_{\astrosun}$, noted by \citet{kauffmann1}, below which ellipticals are rare could be linked to disc survival/destruction in mergers.