arXiv subjects

Di Li

Publications and source records attributed to Di Li.

At least 199 records · Page 11Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Discovery of a New Molecular Bubble-Outflow Structure in the Taurus B18 Cloud

Star formation can produce bubbles and outflows, as a result of stellar feedback. Outflows and bubbles inject momentum and energy into the surrounding interstellar medium, and so are related to the overall energy balance of the molecular cloud. Molecular bubbles can be resolved by higher-resolution radio telescopes to quantify the effect of star formation on molecular clouds. We report here the identification of a new molecular bubble with an outflow, and an Herbig Haro object, HH319, located at the bubble center. Multi-wavelength data have been utilized to study its spatial structure, energy injection, and dynamical timescale. This bubble has a kinetic energy of $\rm 5.8 \times 10^{43}$ erg within the smallest radius of a bubble in Taurus, 0.077 pc. The bubble formed $\sim$70,000 years ago. According to the proper motion velocities of protostars from $Gaia$ EDR3, the T Tauri binary stars (FY Tau and FZ Tau) at the southwest edge of the bubble may have produced the outflow-bubble structure. This is an unusual new structure found in low- and intermediate-mass star formation regions. Only a bubble in Orion A, driven by V380 Ori, has a similar structure. The bubble-outflow structure provides additional observational evidence for the theory of stellar wind from T Tauri stars. It enhances our understanding of how stellar feedback acts on molecular clouds.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

LGN-Net: Local-Global Normality Network for Video Anomaly Detection

Video anomaly detection (VAD) has been intensively studied for years because of its potential applications in intelligent video systems. Existing unsupervised VAD methods tend to learn normality from training sets consisting of only normal videos and regard instances deviating from such normality as anomalies. However, they often consider only local or global normality in the temporal dimension. Some of them focus on learning local spatiotemporal representations from consecutive frames to enhance the representation for normal events. But powerful representation allows these methods to represent some anomalies and causes miss detection. In contrast, the other methods are devoted to memorizing prototypical normal patterns of whole training videos to weaken the generalization for anomalies, which also restricts them from representing diverse normal patterns and causes false alarm. To this end, we propose a two-branch model, Local-Global Normality Network (LGN-Net), to simultaneously learn local and global normality. Specifically, one branch learns the evolution regularities of appearance and motion from consecutive frames as local normality utilizing a spatiotemporal prediction network, while the other branch memorizes prototype features of the whole videos as global normality by a memory module. LGN-Net achieves a balance of representing normal and abnormal instances by fusing local and global normality. In addition, the fused normality enables LGN-Net to generalize to various scenes more than exploiting single normality. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and superior performance of our method. The code is available online: https://github.com/Myzhao1999/LGN-Net.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2023

Atlas of dynamic spectra of fast radio burst FRB 20201124A

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are highly dispersed millisecond-duration radio bursts, of which the physical origin is still not fully understood. FRB 20201124A is one of the most actively repeating FRBs. In this paper, we present the collection of 1863 burst dynamic spectra of FRB 20201124A measured with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The current collection, taken from the observation during the FRB active phase from April to June 2021, is the largest burst sample detected in any FRB so far. The standard PSRFITs format is adopted, including dynamic spectra of the burst, and the time information of the dynamic spectra, in addition, mask files help readers to identify the pulse positions are also provided.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Distribution of fast radio burst dispersion measures in CHIME/FRB Catalog 1: implications on the origin of FRBs

Recently, CHIME/FRB project published its first fast radio burst (FRB) catalog (hereafter, Catalog 1), which totally contains 536 unique bursts. With the help of the latest set of FRBs in this large-size catalog, we aim to investigate the dispersion measure (DM) or redshift ($z$) distribution of the FRB population, and solution of this problem could be used to clarify the question of FRB origin. In this study, we adopted the M\&E 2018 model, to fit the observed $z$ distribution of FRBs in Catalog 1. In the M\&E 2018 model, we are mostly interested in the $Φ(z)$ function, i.e., number of bursts per proper time per comoving volume, which is represented by the star formation rate (SFR) with a power-law index $n$. Our estimated value of $n$ is $0.0_{-0.0}^{+0.6}$ ($0.0_{-0.0}^{+2.1}$) at the 68 (95) per cent confidence level, implying that the FRB population evolves with redshift consistent with, or faster than, the SFR. Specially, the consistency of the $n$ values estimated by this study and the SFR provides a potential support for the hypothesis of FRBs originating from young magnetars.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

JCMT BISTRO Observations: Magnetic Field Morphology of Bubbles Associated with NGC 6334

We study the HII regions associated with the NGC 6334 molecular cloud observed in the sub-millimeter and taken as part of the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) Survey. In particular, we investigate the polarization patterns and magnetic field morphologies associated with these HII regions. Through polarization pattern and pressure calculation analyses, several of these bubbles indicate that the gas and magnetic field lines have been pushed away from the bubble, toward an almost tangential (to the bubble) magnetic field morphology. In the densest part of NGC 6334, where the magnetic field morphology is similar to an hourglass, the polarization observations do not exhibit observable impact from HII regions. We detect two nested radial polarization patterns in a bubble to the south of NGC 6334 that correspond to the previously observed bipolar structure in this bubble. Finally, using the results of this study, we present steps (incorporating computer vision; circular Hough Transform) that can be used in future studies to identify bubbles that have physically impacted magnetic field lines.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: A Spiral Magnetic Field in a Hub-filament Structure, Monoceros R2

We present and analyze observations of polarized dust emission at 850 $μ$m towards the central 1 pc $\times$ 1 pc hub-filament structure of Monoceros R2 (Mon R2). The data are obtained with SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) as part of the BISTRO (B-fields in Star-forming Region Observations) survey. The orientations of the magnetic field follow the spiral structure of Mon R2, which are well-described by an axisymmetric magnetic field model. We estimate the turbulent component of the magnetic field using the angle difference between our observations and the best-fit model of the underlying large-scale mean magnetic field. This estimate is used to calculate the magnetic field strength using the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, for which we also obtain the distribution of volume density and velocity dispersion using a column density map derived from $Herschel$ data and the C$^{18}$O ($J$ = 3-2) data taken with HARP on the JCMT, respectively. We make maps of magnetic field strengths and mass-to-flux ratios, finding that magnetic field strengths vary from 0.02 to 3.64 mG with a mean value of 1.0 $\pm$ 0.06 mG, and the mean critical mass-to-flux ratio is 0.47 $\pm$ 0.02. Additionally, the mean Alfvén Mach number is 0.35 $\pm$ 0.01. This suggests that in Mon R2, magnetic fields provide resistance against large-scale gravitational collapse, and magnetic pressure exceeds turbulent pressure. We also investigate the properties of each filament in Mon R2. Most of the filaments are aligned along the magnetic field direction and are magnetically sub-critical.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Circular Polarization in two Active Repeating Fast Radio Bursts

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright millisecond radio bursts at cosmological distances. Only a small fraction of FRBs apparently repeat. Polarization, a fundamental property of electromagnetic signals, often carries critical information about the radiation processes, the environment, and the intervening medium of FRBs. Here we report circular polarization detections of two active repeating FRBs, namely FRBs 20121102A and 20190520B, with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope. We detect circular polarization in both active repeating FRBs, which increases the number of repeating FRBs with circular polarization to three. In one of the bursts of FRB 20121102A, we detect 64% degree of circular polarization. The observed circular polarization is unlikely induced by multipath propagation. Our observations favor circular polarization induced by Faraday conversion or radiation mechanism intrinsic to the FRB source. The conditions to generate circular polarization have to be rare in either case.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Evolution of Spin Period and Magnetic Field of the Crab Pulsar: Decay of the Braking Index by the Particle Wind Flow Torque

The evolutions of a neutron star's rotation and magnetic field (B-field) have remained unsolved puzzles for over half a century. We ascribe the rotational braking torques of pulsar to both components, the standard magnetic dipole radiation (MDR) and particle wind flow ( MDR + Wind, hereafter named MDRW), which we apply to the Crab pulsar (B0531 + 21), the only source with a known age and long-term continuous monitoring by radio telescope. Based on the above presumed simple spin-down torques, we obtain the exact analytic solution on the rotation evolution of the Crab pulsar, together with the related outcomes as described below: (1) unlike the constant characteristic B-field suggested by the MDR model, this value for the Crab pulsar increases by a hundred times in 50~kyr while its real B-field has no change; (2) the rotational braking index evolves from $\sim$3 to 1 in the long-term, however, it drops from 2.51 to 2.50 in $\sim$45 years at the present stage, while the particle flow contributes approximately 25% of the total rotational energy loss rate; (3) strikingly, the characteristic age has the maximum limit of $\sim$10 kyr, meaning that it is not always a good indicator of real age. Furthermore, we discussed the evolutionary path of the Crab pulsar from the MDR to the wind domination by comparing it with the possible wind braking candidate pulsar PSR J1734-3333.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

The JCMT BISTRO-2 Survey: Magnetic Fields of the Massive DR21 Filament

We present 850 $μ$m dust polarization observations of the massive DR21 filament from the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey, using the POL-2 polarimeter and the SCUBA-2 camera on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We detect ordered magnetic fields perpendicular to the parsec-scale ridge of the DR21 main filament. In the sub-filaments, the magnetic fields are mainly parallel to the filamentary structures and smoothly connect to the magnetic fields of the main filament. We compare the POL-2 and Planck dust polarization observations to study the magnetic field structures of the DR21 filament on 0.1--10 pc scales. The magnetic fields revealed in the Planck data are well aligned with those of the POL-2 data, indicating a smooth variation of magnetic fields from large to small scales. The plane-of-sky magnetic field strengths derived from angular dispersion functions of dust polarization are 0.6--1.0 mG in the DR21 filament and $\sim$ 0.1 mG in the surrounding ambient gas. The mass-to-flux ratios are found to be magnetically supercritical in the filament and slightly subcritical to nearly critical in the ambient gas. The alignment between column density structures and magnetic fields changes from random alignment in the low-density ambient gas probed by Planck to mostly perpendicular in the high-density main filament probed by JCMT. The magnetic field structures of the DR21 filament are in agreement with MHD simulations of a strongly magnetized medium, suggesting that magnetic fields play an important role in shaping the DR21 main filament and sub-filaments.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Dependence of Chemical Abundance on the Cosmic Ray Ionization Rate in IC 348

Ions (e.g., H$_3^+$, H$_2$O$^+$) have been used extensively to quantify the cosmic-ray ionization rate (CRIR) in diffuse sightlines. However, measurements of CRIR in low-to-intermediate density gas environments are rare, especially when background stars are absent. In this work, we combine molecular line observations of CO, OH, CH, and HCO$^+$ in the star-forming cloud IC~348, and chemical models to constrain the value of CRIR and study the response of the chemical abundances distribution. The cloud boundary is found to have an $A_{\rm V}$ of approximately 4 mag. From the interior to the exterior of the cloud, the observed $^{13}$CO line intensities drop by an order of magnitude. The calculated average abundance of $^{12}$CO (assuming $^{12}$C/$^{13}$C = 65) is (1.2$\pm$0.9) $\times$10$^{-4}$, which increases by a factor of 6 from the interior to the outside regions. The average abundance of CH (3.3$\pm$0.7 $\times$ 10$^{-8}$) is in good agreement with previous findings in diffuse and translucent clouds ($A_{\rm V}$ $<$ 5 mag). However, we did not find a decline in CH abundance in regions of high extinction ($A_{\rm V}\simeq$8 mag) as previously reported in Taurus. By comparing the observed molecular abundances and chemical models, we find a decreasing trend of CRIR as $A_{\rm V}$ increases. The inferred CRIR of $ζ_{cr}$ = (4.7$\pm$1.5) $\times$ 10$^{-16}$ s$^{-1}$ at low $A_{\rm V}$ is consistent with H$^+_3$ measurements toward two nearby massive stars.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Sciences with Thai National Radio Telescope

This White Paper summarises potential key science topics to be achieved with Thai National Radio Telescope (TNRT). The commissioning phase has started in mid 2022. The key science topics consist of "Pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs)", "Star Forming Regions (SFRs)", "Galaxy and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs)", "Evolved Stars", "Radio Emission of Chemically Peculiar (CP) Stars", and "Geodesy", covering a wide range of observing frequencies in L/C/X/Ku/K/Q/W-bands (1-115 GHz). As a single-dish instrument, TNRT is a perfect tool to explore time domain astronomy with its agile observing systems and flexible operation. Due to its ideal geographical location, TNRT will significantly enhance Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) arrays, such as East Asian VLBI Network (EAVN), Australia Long Baseline Array (LBA), European VLBI Network (EVN), in particular via providing a unique coverage of the sky resulting in a better complete "uv" coverage, improving synthesized-beam and imaging quality with reducing side-lobes. This document highlights key science topics achievable with TNRT in single-dish mode and in collaboration with VLBI arrays.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

FAST observations of an extremely active episode of FRB 20201124A: III. Polarimetry

As the third paper in the multiple-part series, we report the statistical properties of radio bursts detected from the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 20201124A with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio telescope (FAST) during an extremely active episode between the 25th and the 28th of September 2021 (UT). We focus on the polarisation properties of 536 bright bursts with $\mathrm{S/N}>50$. We found that the Faraday rotation measures (RMs) monotonically dropped from $-579 \ {\rm rad \ m^{-2}}$ to $-605 \ {\rm rad \ m^{-2}}$ in the 4-day window. The RM values were compatible with the values ($-300$ to $-900\ {\rm rad \ m^{-2}}$ ) reported 4 month ago (Xu et al. 2022). However, the RM evolution rate in the current observation window was at least an order of magnitude smaller than the one ($\sim 500\ {\rm rad \ m^{-2}\, day^{-1}}$) previously reported during the rapid RM-variation phase, but is still higher than the one ($\le 1\ {\rm rad \ m^{-2} day^{-1}}$ ) during the later RM no-evolution phase. The bursts of FRB 20201124A were highly polarised with the total degree of polarisation (circular plus linear) greater than 90% for more than 90\% of all bursts. The distribution of linear polarisation position angles (PAs), degree of linear polarisation ($L/I$), and degree of circular polarisation ($V/I$) can be characterised with unimodal distribution functions. During the observation window, the distributions became wider with time, i.e. with larger scatter, but the centroids of the distribution functions remained nearly constant. For individual bursts, significant PA variations (confidence level 5-$σ$) were observed in 33% of all bursts. The polarisation of single pulses seems to follow certain complex trajectories on the Poincaré sphere, which may shed light on the radiation mechanism at the source or the plasma properties along the path of FRB propagation.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

FAST observations of an extremely active episode of FRB 20201124A: II. Energy Distribution

We report the properties of more than 800 bursts detected from the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 20201124A with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) during an extremely active episode on UTC September 25-28, 2021 in a series of four papers. In this second paper of the series, we mainly focus on the energy distribution of the detected bursts. The event rate initially increased exponentially but the source activity stopped within 24 hours after the 4th day. The detection of 542 bursts in one hour during the fourth day marked the highest event rate detected from one single FRB source so far. The bursts have complex structures in the time-frequency space. We find a double-peak distribution of the waiting time, which can be modeled with two log-normal functions peaking at 51.22 ms and 10.05 s, respectively. Compared with the emission from a previous active episode of the source detected with FAST, the second distribution peak time is smaller, suggesting that this peak is defined by the activity level of the source. We calculate the isotropic energy of the bursts using both a partial bandwidth and a full bandwidth and find that the energy distribution is not significantly changed. We find that an exponentially connected broken-power-law function can fit the cumulative burst energy distribution well, with the lower and higher-energy indices being $-1.22\pm0.01$ and $-4.27\pm0.23$, respectively. Assuming a radio radiative efficiency of $η_r = 10^{-4}$, the total isotropic energy of the bursts released during the four days when the source was active is already $3.9\times10^{46}$ erg, exceeding $\sim 23\%$ of the available magnetar dipolar magnetic energy. This challenges the magnetar models invoking an inefficient radio emission (e.g. synchrotron maser models).

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

FAST observations of an extremely active episode of FRB 20201124A: IV. Spin Period Search

We report the properties of more than 800 bursts detected from the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 20201124A with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio telescope (FAST) during an extremely active episode on UTC September 25th-28th, 2021 in a series of four papers. In this fourth paper of the series, we present a systematic search of the spin period and linear acceleration of the source object from both 996 individual pulse peaks and the dedispersed time series. No credible spin period was found from this data set. We rule out the presence of significant periodicity in the range between 1 ms to 100 s with a pulse duty cycle $< 0.49\pm0.08$ (when the profile is defined by a von-Mises function, not a boxcar function) and linear acceleration up to $300$ m s$^{-2}$ in each of the four one-hour observing sessions, and up to $0.6$ m s$^{-2}$ in all 4 days. These searches contest theoretical scenarios involving a 1 ms to 100 s isolated magnetar/pulsar with surface magnetic field $<10^{15}$ G and a small duty cycle (such as in a polar-cap emission mode) or a pulsar with a companion star or black hole up to 100 M$_{\rm \odot}$ and $P_b>10$ hours. We also perform a periodicity search of the fine structures and identify 53 unrelated millisecond-timescale "periods" in multi-components with the highest significance of 3.9 $σ$. The "periods" recovered from the fine structures are neither consistent nor harmonically related. Thus they are not likely to come from a spin period. We caution against claiming spin periodicity with significance below $\sim$ 4 $σ$ with multi-components from one-off FRBs. We discuss the implications of our results and the possible connections between FRB multi-components and pulsar micro-structures.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Luminosity distribution of fast radio bursts from CHIME/FRB Catalog 1 by means of the updated Macquart relation

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extremely strong radio flares lasting several micro- to milliseconds and come from unidentified objects at cosmological distances, most of which are only seen once. Based on recently published data in the CHIME/FRB Catalog 1 in the frequency bands 400-800 MHz, we analyze 125 apparently singular FRBs with low dispersion measure (DM) and find that the distribution of their luminosity follows a lognormal form according to statistical tests. In our luminosity measurement, the FRB distance is estimated by using the Macquart relation which was obtained for 8 localized FRBs, and we find it still applicable for 18 sources after adding the latest 10 new localized FRBs. In addition, we test the validity of the luminosity distribution up to the Macquart relation and find that the lognormal form feature decreases as the uncertainty increases. Moreover, we compare the luminosity of these apparent non-repeaters with that of the previously observed 10 repeating FRBs also at low DM, noting that they belong to different lognormal distributions with the mean luminosity of non-repeaters being two times greater than that of repeaters. Therefore, from the two different lognormal distributions, different mechanisms for FRBs can be implied.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Sensitive Multi-beam Targeted SETI Observations towards 33 Exoplanet Systems with FAST

As a major approach to looking for life beyond the Earth, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is committed to detecting technosignatures such as engineered radio signals that are indicative of technologically capable life. In this paper, we report a targeted SETI campaign employing an observation strategy named multi-beam coincidence matching (MBCM) at the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) towards 33 known exoplanet systems, searching for ETI narrow-band drifting signals across 1.05-1.45 GHz in two orthogonal linear polarization directions separately. A signal at 1140.604 MHz detected from the observation towards Kepler-438 originally peaked our interest because its features are roughly consistent with assumed ETI technosignatures. However, evidences such as its polarization characteristics are almost able to eliminate the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin. Our observations achieve an unprecedented sensitivity since the minimum equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) we are able to detect reaches 1.48 x10^9 W.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2022

Interstellar scintillation and polarization of PSR B0656+14 in the Monogem Ring

High sensitivity interstellar scintillation and polarization observations of PSR~B0656+14 made at three epochs over a year using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) show that the scattering is dominated by two different compact regions. We identify the one nearer to the pulsar with the shell of the Monogem Ring, thereby confirming the association. The other is probably associated with the Local Bubble. We find that the observed position angles of the pulsar spin axis and the space velocity are significantly different, with a separation of $19\fdg3\pm$0\fdg8, inconsistent with a previously published near-perfect alignment of $1\degr\pm 2\degr$. The two independent scattering regions are clearly defined in the secondary spectra which show two strong forward parabolic arcs. The arc curvatures imply that the scattering screens corresponding to the outer and inner arcs are located approximately 28~pc from PSR B0656+14 and 185~pc from the Earth, respectively. Comparison of the observed Doppler profiles with electromagnetic simulations shows that both scattering regions are mildly anisotropic. For the outer arc, we estimate the anisotropy $A_R$ to be approximately 1.3, with the scattering irregularities aligned parallel to the pulsar velocity. For the outer arc, we compare the observed delay profiles with delay profiles computed from a theoretical strong-scattering model. Our results suggest that the spatial spectrum of the scattering irregularities in the Monogem Ring is flatter than Kolmogorov, but further observations are required to confirm this.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Design of microstrip-line coupled kinetic inductance detectors for near infrared astronomy

Kinetic inductance detectors (KID) have great potential in astronomical observation, such as searching for exoplanets, because of their low noise, fast response and photon counting characteristics. In this paper, we present the design process and simulation results of a microstrip line coupled KIDs array for near-infrared astronomical observation. Compared with coplanar waveguide (CPW) feedlines, microstrip feedlines do not require air bridges, which simplify fabrication process. In the design part, we mainly focus on the impedance transforming networks, the KID structure, and the frequency crosstalk simulations. The test array has a total of 104 resonators with 8 rows and 13 columns, which ranges from 4.899~GHz to 6.194~GHz. The pitch size is about 200~$μ$m and the frequency crosstalk is less than 50~kHz in simulation.

astro-ph.IM↗