We obtain constraints on the variation of the fundamental constants from the full shape of the redshift-space correlation function of a sample of luminous galaxies drawn from the Data Release 9 of ...the Baryonic Oscillations Spectroscopic Survey. We combine this information with data from recent CMB, BAO and H_0 measurements. We focus on possible variations of the fine structure constant \alpha and the electron mass m_e in the early universe, and study the degeneracies between these constants and other cosmological parameters, such as the dark energy equation of state parameter w_DE, the massive neutrinos fraction f_\nu, the effective number of relativistic species N_eff, and the primordial helium abundance Y_He. When only one of the fundamental constants is varied, our final bounds are \alpha / \alpha_0 = 0.9957_{-0.0042}^{+0.0041} and m_e /(m_e)_0 = 1.006_{-0.013}^{+0.014}. For their joint variation, our results are \alpha / \alpha_0 = 0.9901_{-0.0054}^{+0.0055} and m_e /(m_e)_0 = 1.028 +/- 0.019. Although when m_e is allowed to vary our constraints on w_DE are consistent with a cosmological constant, when \alpha is treated as a free parameter we find w_DE = -1.20 +/- 0.13; more than 1 \sigma away from its standard value. When f_\nu and \alpha are allowed to vary simultaneously, we find f_\nu < 0.043 (95% CL), implying a limit of \sum m_\nu < 0.46 eV (95% CL), while for m_e variation, we obtain f_nu < 0.086 (95% CL), which implies \sum m_\nu < 1.1 eV (95% CL). When N_eff or Y_He are considered as free parameters, their simultaneous variation with \alpha provides constraints close to their standard values (when the H_0 prior is not included in the analysis), while when m_e is allowed to vary, their preferred values are significantly higher. In all cases, our results are consistent with no variations of \alpha or m_e at the 1 or 2 \sigma level.
We are carrying out a large ancillary program with the SDSS-III, using the fiber-fed multi-object NIR APOGEE spectrograph, to obtain high-resolution H-band spectra of more than 1200 M dwarfs. These ...observations are used to measure spectroscopic rotational velocities, radial velocities, physical stellar parameters, and variability of the target stars. Here, we describe the target selection for this survey and results from the first year of scientific observations based on spectra that is publicly available in the SDSS-III DR10 data release. As part of this paper we present RVs and vsini of over 200 M dwarfs, with a vsini precision of ~2 km/s and a measurement floor at vsini = 4 km/s. This survey significantly increases the number of M dwarfs studied for vsini and RV variability (at ~100-200 m/s), and will advance the target selection for planned RV and photometric searches for low mass exoplanets around M dwarfs, such as HPF, CARMENES, and TESS. Multiple epochs of radial velocity observations enable us to identify short period binaries, and AO imaging of a subset of stars enables the detection of possible stellar companions at larger separations. The high-resolution H-band APOGEE spectra provide the opportunity to measure physical stellar parameters such as effective temperatures and metallicities for many of these stars. At the culmination of this survey, we will have obtained multi-epoch spectra and RVs for over 1400 stars spanning spectral types of M0-L0, providing the largest set of NIR M dwarf spectra at high resolution, and more than doubling the number of known spectroscopic vsini values for M dwarfs. Furthermore, by modeling telluric lines to correct for small instrumental radial velocity shifts, we hope to achieve a relative velocity precision floor of 50 m/s for bright M dwarfs. We present preliminary results of this telluric modeling technique in this paper.
We present the first results from an ongoing survey for Damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs) in the spectra of z>2 quasars observed in the course of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), ...which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III. Our full (non-statistical) sample, based on Data Release 9, comprises 12,081 systems with log N(HI)>=20, out of which 6,839 have log N(HI)>=20.3. This is the largest DLA sample ever compiled, superseding that from SDSS-II by a factor of seven. Using a statistical sub-sample and estimating systematics from realistic mock data, we probe the N(HI) distribution at = 2.5. Contrary to what is generally believed, the distribution extends beyond 10^22 cm^-2 with a moderate slope of index\approx-3.5. This result matches surprisingly well the opacity-corrected distribution observed at z = 0. The cosmological mass density of neutral gas in DLAs is found to be Omega_g_DLA~10^-3, evolving only mildly over the past 12 billion years.
We measure the quasar two-point correlation function over the redshift range 2.2<z<2.8 using data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. We use a homogeneous subset of the data consisting ...of 27,129 quasars with spectroscopic redshifts---by far the largest such sample used for clustering measurements at these redshifts to date. The sample covers 3,600 square degrees, corresponding to a comoving volume of 9.7(Gpc/h)^3 assuming a fiducial LambdaCDM cosmology, and it has a median absolute i-band magnitude of -26, k-corrected to z=2. After accounting for redshift errors we find that the redshift space correlation function is fit well by a power-law of slope -2 and amplitude s_0=(9.7\pm 0.5)Mpc/h over the range 3<s<25Mpc/h. The projected correlation function, which integrates out the effects of peculiar velocities and redshift errors, is fit well by a power-law of slope -1 and r_0=(8.4\pm 0.6)Mpc/h over the range 4<R<16Mpc/h. There is no evidence for strong luminosity or redshift dependence to the clustering amplitude, in part because of the limited dynamic range in our sample. Our results are consistent with, but more precise than, previous measurements at similar redshifts. Our measurement of the quasar clustering amplitude implies a bias factor of b~3.5 for our quasar sample. We compare the data to models to constrain the manner in which quasars occupy dark matter halos at z~2.4 and infer that such quasars inhabit halos with a characteristic mass of ~10^{12}Msun/h with a duty cycle for the quasar activity of 1 per cent.
We obtain constraints on cosmological parameters from the spherically averaged redshift-space correlation function of the CMASS Data Release 9 (DR9) sample of the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic ...Survey (BOSS). We combine this information with additional data from recent CMB, SN and BAO measurements. Our results show no significant evidence of deviations from the standard flat-Lambda CDM model, whose basic parameters can be specified by Omega_m = 0.285 +- 0.009, 100 Omega_b = 4.59 +- 0.09, n_s = 0.96 +- 0.009, H_0 = 69.4 +- 0.8 km/s/Mpc and sigma_8 = 0.80 +- 0.02. The CMB+CMASS combination sets tight constraints on the curvature of the Universe, with Omega_k = -0.0043 +- 0.0049, and the tensor-to-scalar amplitude ratio, for which we find r < 0.16 at the 95 per cent confidence level (CL). These data show a clear signature of a deviation from scale-invariance also in the presence of tensor modes, with n_s <1 at the 99.7 per cent CL. We derive constraints on the fraction of massive neutrinos of f_nu < 0.049 (95 per cent CL), implying a limit of sum m_nu < 0.51 eV. We find no signature of a deviation from a cosmological constant from the combination of all datasets, with a constraint of w_DE = -1.033 +- 0.073 when this parameter is assumed time-independent, and no evidence of a departure from this value when it is allowed to evolve as w_DE(a) = w_0 + w_a (1 - a). The achieved accuracy on our cosmological constraints is a clear demonstration of the constraining power of current cosmological observations.
We study the velocity distribution of Milky Way disk stars in a kiloparsec-sized region around the Sun, based on ~ 2 million M-type stars from DR7 of SDSS, which have newly re-calibrated absolute ...proper motions from combining SDSS positions with the USNO-B catalogue. We estimate photometric distances to all stars, accurate to ~ 20 %, and combine them with the proper motions to derive tangential velocities for this kinematically unbiased sample of stars. Based on a statistical de-projection method we then derive the vertical profiles (to heights of Z = 800 pc above the disk plane) for the first and second moments of the three dimensional stellar velocity distribution. We find that = -7 +/- 1 km/s and = -9 +/- 1 km/s, independent of height above the mid-plane, reflecting the Sun's motion with respect to the local standard of rest. In contrast, changes distinctly from -20 +/- 2 km/s in the mid-plane to = -32 km/s at Z = 800 pc, reflecting an asymmetric drift of the stellar mean velocity that increases with height. All three components of the M-star velocity dispersion show a strong linear rise away from the mid-plane, most notably \sigma_{ZZ}, which grows from 18 km/s (Z = 0) to 40 km/s (at Z = 800 pc). We determine the orientation of the velocity ellipsoid, and find a significant vertex deviation of 20 to 25 degrees, which decreases only slightly to heights of Z = 800 pc. Away from the mid-plane, our sample exhibits a remarkably large tilt of the velocity ellipsoid towards the Galactic plane, which reaches 20 deg. at Z = 800 pc and which is not easily explained. Finally, we determine the ratio \sigma^2_{\phi\phi}/\sigma^2_{RR} near the mid-plane, which in the epicyclic approximation implies an almost perfectly flat rotation curve at the Solar radius.
We present reverberation-mapping (RM) lags and black hole mass measurements using the C ivλ1549 broad emission line from a sample of 348 quasars monitored as a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey RM ...Project. Our data span four years of spectroscopic and photometric monitoring for a total baseline of 1300 days, allowing us to measure lags up to ∼750 days in the observed frame (this corresponds to a rest-frame lag of ∼300 days in a quasar at z = 1.5 and ∼190 days at z = 3). We report significant time delays between the continuum and the C ivλ1549 emission line in 48 quasars, with an estimated false-positive detection rate of 10%. Our analysis of marginal lag measurements indicates that there are on the order of ∼100 additional lags that should be recoverable by adding more years of data from the program. We use our measurements to calculate black hole masses and fit an updated C iv radius-luminosity relationship. Our results significantly increase the sample of quasars with C iv RM results, with the quasars spanning two orders of magnitude in luminosity toward the high-luminosity end of the C iv radius-luminosity relation. In addition, these quasars are located at some of the highest redshifts (z 1.4-2.8) of quasars with black hole masses measured with RM. This work constitutes the first large sample of C iv RM measurements in more than a dozen quasars, demonstrating the utility of multiobject RM campaigns.
We present a sample of 723 optically selected BL Lac candidates from the SDSS DR7 spectroscopic database encompassing 8250 deg^2 of sky; our sample constitutes one of the largest uniform BL Lac ...samples yet derived. Each BL Lac candidate has a high-quality SDSS spectrum from which we determine spectroscopic redshifts for ~60% of the objects. Redshift lower limits are estimated for the remaining objects utilizing the lack of host galaxy flux contamination in their optical spectra; we find that objects lacking spectroscopic redshifts are likely at systematically higher redshifts. Approximately 80% of our BL Lac candidates match to a radio source in FIRST/NVSS, and ~40% match to a ROSAT X-ray source. The homogeneous multiwavelength coverage allows subdivision of the sample into 637 radio-loud BL Lac candidates and 86 weak-featured radio-quiet objects. The radio-loud objects broadly support the standard paradigm unifying BL Lac objects with beamed radio galaxies. We propose that the majority of the radio-quiet objects may be lower-redshift (z<2.2) analogs to high-redshift weak line quasars (i.e., AGN with unusually anemic broad emission line regions). These would constitute the largest sample of such objects, being of similar size and complementary in redshift to the samples of high-redshift weak line quasars previously discovered by the SDSS. However, some fraction of the weak-featured radio-quiet objects may instead populate a rare and extreme radio-weak tail of the much larger radio-loud BL Lac population. Serendipitous discoveries of unusual white dwarfs, high-redshift weak line quasars, and broad absorption line quasars with extreme continuum dropoffs blueward of rest-frame 2800 Angstroms are also briefly described.
We have detected stellar halo streams in the solar neighborhood using data from the 7th public data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which includes the directed stellar program SEGUE: ...Sloan Extension For Galactic Understanding and Exploration. In order to derive distances to each star, we used the metallicity-dependent photometric parallax relation from Ivezic et al. (2008) for which we examine and quantify the accuracy. Our final sample consists of 22,321 nearby (d < 2 kpc), metal-poor (Fe/H < -0.5) main-sequence stars with 6D estimates of position and space velocity. We characterize the orbits of these stars through suitable kinematic proxies for their "effective" integrals of motion, angular momentum, eccentricity, and orbital polar angle and compare the observed distribution to expectations from a smooth distribution in four Fe/H bins. On this basis we identify at least five significant "phase-space overdensities" of stars on very similar orbits in the solar neighborhood to which we can assign unambiguously peaked Fe/H distributions. Three of them have been identified previously, including the halo stream discovered by Helmi et al. (1999) at a significance level of 12.0. In addition, we find at least two new genuine halo streams, judged by their kinematics and Fe/H, at significance levels of 2.9 and 4.8, respectively. For one stream the stars even show coherence in configuration space, matching a spatial overdensity of stars found by Juric et al. (2008) at (R,z) \approx (9.5,0.8) kpc. Our results demonstrate the practical power of our search method to detect substructure in the phase-space distribution of nearby stars without making a-priori assumptions about the detailed form of the gravitational potential.
We systematically investigate short-timescale (<10 day rest-frame) C iv broad absorption-line (BAL) variability to constrain quasar-wind properties and provide insights into BAL-variability ...mechanisms in quasars. We employ data taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping project, as the rapid cadence of these observations provides a novel opportunity to probe BAL variability on shorter rest-frame timescales than have previously been explored. In a sample of 27 quasars with a median of 58 spectral epochs per quasar, we have identified 15 quasars ( %), 19 of 37 C iv BAL troughs ( %), and 54 of 1460 epoch pairs (3.7% 0.5%) that exhibit significant C iv BAL equivalent-width variability on timescales of less than 10 days in the quasar rest frame. These frequencies indicate that such variability is common among quasars and BALs, though somewhat rare among epoch pairs. Thus, models describing BALs and their behavior must account for variability on timescales down to less than a day in the quasar rest frame. We also examine a variety of spectral characteristics and find that, in some cases, BAL variability is best described by ionization-state changes, while other cases are more consistent with changes in covering fraction or column density. We adopt a simple model to constrain the density and radial distance of two outflows appearing to vary by ionization-state changes, yielding outflow density lower limits consistent with previous work.
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