arXiv subjects

Eric Miller

Publications and source records attributed to Eric Miller.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

The Precision nEDM Measurement with UltraCold Neutrons at TRIUMF

The TRIUMF Ultra-Cold Advanced Neutron (TUCAN) collaboration aims at a precision neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) measurement with an uncertainty of $10^{-27}\,e\cdot\mathrm{cm}$, which is an order-of-magnitude better than the current nEDM upper limit and enables us to test Supersymmetry. To achieve this precision, we are developing a new high-intensity ultracold neutron (UCN) source using super-thermal UCN production in superfluid helium (He-II) and a nEDM spectrometer. The current development status of them is reported in this article.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

Independent Evidence for earlier formation epochs of fossil groups of galaxies through the intracluster light: the case for RX J100742.53+380046.6

Fossil groups (FG) of galaxies still present a puzzle to theories of structure formation. Despite the low number of bright galaxies, they have relatively high velocity dispersions and ICM temperatures often corresponding to cluster-like potential wells. Their measured concentrations are typically high, indicating early formation epochs as expected from the originally proposed scenario for their origin as being older undisturbed systems. This is, however, in contradiction with the typical lack of expected well developed cool cores. Here, we apply a cluster dynamical indicator recently discovered in the intracluster light fraction (ICLf) to a classic FG, RX J1000742.53+380046.6, to assess its dynamical state. We also refine that indicator to use as an independent age estimator. We find negative radial temperature and metal abundance gradients, the abundance achieving supersolar values at the hot core. The X-ray flux concentration is consistent with that of cool core systems. The ICLf analysis provides an independent probe of the system's dynamical state and shows that the system is very relaxed, more than all clusters, where the same analysis has been performed. The specific ICLf is more $\sim$5 times higher than any of the clusters previously analyzed, which is consistent with an older non-interactive galaxy system that had its last merging event within the last $\sim$5Gyr. The specific ICLf is predicted to be an important new tool to identify fossil systems and to constrain the relative age of clusters.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Interpretable contrastive word mover's embedding

This paper shows that a popular approach to the supervised embedding of documents for classification, namely, contrastive Word Mover's Embedding, can be significantly enhanced by adding interpretability. This interpretability is achieved by incorporating a clustering promoting mechanism into the contrastive loss. On several public datasets, we show that our method improves significantly upon existing baselines while providing interpretation to the clusters via identifying a set of keywords that are the most representative of a particular class. Our approach was motivated in part by the need to develop Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods for the \textit{novel problem of assessing student work for scientific writing and thinking} - a problem that is central to the area of (educational) Learning Sciences (LS). In this context, we show that our approach leads to a meaningful assessment of the student work related to lab reports from a biology class and can help LS researchers gain insights into student understanding and assess evidence of scientific thought processes.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2021

Detailed Design of the Science Operations for the XRISM mission

XRISM is an X-ray astronomical mission by the JAXA, NASA, ESA and other international participants, that is planned for launch in 2022 (Japanese fiscal year), to quickly restore high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy of astrophysical objects. To enhance the scientific outputs of the mission, the Science Operations Team (SOT) is structured independently from the instrument teams and the Mission Operations Team. The responsibilities of the SOT are divided into four categories: 1) guest observer program and data distributions, 2) distribution of analysis software and the calibration database, 3) guest observer support activities, and 4) performance verification and optimization activities. As the first step, lessons on the science operations learned from past Japanese X-ray missions are reviewed, and 15 kinds of lessons are identified. Among them, a) the importance of early preparation of the operations from the ground stage, b) construction of an independent team for science operations separate from the instrument development, and c) operations with well-defined duties by appointed members are recognized as key lessons. Then, the team structure and the task division between the mission and science operations are defined; the tasks are shared among Japan, US, and Europe and are performed by three centers, the SOC, SDC, and ESAC, respectively. The SOC is designed to perform tasks close to the spacecraft operations, such as spacecraft planning, quick-look health checks, pre-pipeline processing, etc., and the SDC covers tasks regarding data calibration processing, maintenance of analysis tools, etc. The data-archive and user-support activities are covered both by the SOC and SDC. Finally, the science-operations tasks and tools are defined and prepared before launch.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2020

Joint Suzaku and Chandra observations of the MKW4 galaxy group out to the virial radius

We present joint Suzaku and Chandra observations of MKW4. With a global temperature of 1.6 keV, MKW4 is one of the smallest galaxy groups that have been mapped in X-rays out to the virial radius. We measure its gas properties from its center to the virial radius in the north, east, and northeast directions. Its entropy profile follows a power-law of $\propto r^{1.1}$ between R$_{500}$ and R$_{200}$ in all directions, as expected from the purely gravitational structure formation model. The well-behaved entropy profiles at the outskirts of MKW4 disfavor the presence of gas clumping or thermal non-equilibrium between ions and electrons in this system. We measure an enclosed baryon fraction of 11% at R$_{200}$, remarkably smaller than the cosmic baryon fraction of 15%. We note that the enclosed gas fractions at R$_{200}$ are systematically smaller for groups than for clusters from existing studies in the literature. The low baryon fraction of galaxy groups, such as MKW4, suggests that their shallower gravitational potential well may make them more vulnerable to baryon losses due to AGN feedback or galactic winds. We find that the azimuthal scatter of various gas properties at the outskirts of MKW4 is significantly lower than in other systems, suggesting that MKW4 is a spherically symmetric and highly relaxed system.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

Automatic coding of students' writing via Contrastive Representation Learning in the Wasserstein space

Qualitative analysis of verbal data is of central importance in the learning sciences. It is labor-intensive and time-consuming, however, which limits the amount of data researchers can include in studies. This work is a step towards building a statistical machine learning (ML) method for achieving an automated support for qualitative analyses of students' writing, here specifically in score laboratory reports in introductory biology for sophistication of argumentation and reasoning. We start with a set of lab reports from an undergraduate biology course, scored by a four-level scheme that considers the complexity of argument structure, the scope of evidence, and the care and nuance of conclusions. Using this set of labeled data, we show that a popular natural language modeling processing pipeline, namely vector representation of words, a.k.a word embeddings, followed by Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) model for capturing language generation as a state-space model, is able to quantitatively capture the scoring, with a high Quadratic Weighted Kappa (QWK) prediction score, when trained in via a novel contrastive learning set-up. We show that the ML algorithm approached the inter-rater reliability of human analysis. Ultimately, we conclude, that machine learning (ML) for natural language processing (NLP) holds promise for assisting learning sciences researchers in conducting qualitative studies at much larger scales than is currently possible.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2019

Compton scattering tomography in translational geometries

Here we present new $L^2$ injectivity results for 2-D and 3-D Compton scattering tomography (CST) problems in translational geometries. The results are proven through the explicit inversion of a new toric section and apple Radon transform, which describe novel 2-D and 3-D acquisition geometries in CST. The geometry considered has potential applications in airport baggage screening and threat detection. We also present a generalization of our injectivity results in 3-D to Radon transforms which describe the integrals of the charge density over the surfaces of revolution of a class of $C^1$ curves.

math.FA↗

arXiv2019

Energy Loss Due to Defect Formation from $^{206}$Pb Recoils in SuperCDMS Germanium Detectors

The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment (SuperCDMS) at the Soudan Underground Laboratory studied energy loss associated with Frenkel defect formation in germanium crystals at mK temperatures using in situ $^{210}$Pb sources. We examine the spectrum of $^{206}$Pb nuclear recoils near its expected 103 keV endpoint energy and determine an energy loss of $\left(6.08\pm0.18\right)$ %, which we attribute to defect formation. From this result and using TRIM simulations, we extract the first experimentally determined average displacement threshold energy of $\left(19.7^{+0.6}_{-0.5}\right)$ eV for germanium. This has implications for the analysis thresholds of future germanium-based dark matter searches.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2019

On non-parametric density estimation on linear and non-linear manifolds using generalized Radon transforms

Here we present a new non-parametric approach to density estimation and classification derived from theory in Radon transforms and image reconstruction. We start by constructing a "forward problem" in which the unknown density is mapped to a set of one dimensional empirical distribution functions computed from the raw input data. Interpreting this mapping in terms of Radon-type projections provides an analytical connection between the data and the density with many very useful properties including stable invertibility, fast computation, and significant theoretical grounding. Using results from the literature in geometric inverse problems we give uniqueness results and stability estimates for our methods. We subsequently extend the ideas to address problems in manifold learning and density estimation on manifolds. We introduce two new algorithms which can be readily applied to implement density estimation using Radon transforms in low dimensions or on low dimensional manifolds embedded in $\mathbb{R}^d$. We test our algorithms performance on a range of synthetic 2-D density estimation problems, designed with a mixture of sharp edges and smooth features. We show that our algorithm can offer a consistently competitive performance when compared to the state-of-the-art density estimation methods from the literature.

math.NA↗

arXiv2019

Probing Macro-Scale Gas Motions and Turbulence in Diffuse Cosmic Plasmas

Clusters of galaxies, the largest collapsed structures in the Universe, are located at the intersection of extended filaments of baryons and dark matter. Cosmological accretion onto clusters through large scale filaments adds material at cluster outskirts. Kinetic energy in the form of bulk motions and turbulence due to this accretion provides a form of pressure support against gravity, supplemental to thermal pressure. Significant amount of non-thermal pressure support could bias cluster masses derived assuming hydrostatic equilibrium, the primary proxy for cluster cosmology studies. Sensitive measurements of Doppler broadening and shift of astrophysical lines, and the relative fluctuations in thermodynamical quantities (e.g., density, pressure, and entropy) are primary diagnostic tools. Forthcoming planned and proposed X-ray (with large etendue, throughput, and high spectral resolution) and SZ observatories will provide crucial information on the assembly and virialisation processes of clusters, involving turbulent eddies cascading at various spatial scales and larger gas bulk motions in their external regions to the depth or their potential wells.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Searching for the 3.5 keV Line in the Deep Fields with Chandra: the 10 Ms observations

In this paper we report a systematic search for an emission line around 3.5 keV in the spectrum of the Cosmic X-ray Background using a total of $\sim$10 Ms Chandra observations towards the COSMOS Legacy and CDFS survey fields. We find a marginal evidence of a feature at an energy of $\sim$3.51 keV with a significance of 2.5-3 $σ$, depending on the choice of the statistical treatment. The line intensity is best fit at $8.8\ \pm\ {2.9}\times10^{-7}$ ph cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ when using a simple $Δχ^2$ or $10.2\ ^{+0.2}_{-0.4} \times10^{-7}$ ph cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ when MCMC is used. Based on our knowledge of $Chandra$, and the reported detection of the line by other instruments, an instrumental origin for the line remains unlikely. We cannot though rule out a statistical fluctuation and in that case our results provide a 3$σ$ upper limit at 1.85$\times$10$^{-6}$ ph cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$. We discuss the interpretation of this observed line in terms of the iron line background; S {\sc XVI} charge exchange as well as potentially from sterile neutrino decay. We note that our detection is consistent with previous measurements of this line toward the Galactic center, and can be modeled as the result of sterile neutrino decay from the Milky Way for the dark matter distribution modeled as an NFW profile. For this case, we estimate a mass m$_ν\sim$7.01 keV and a mixing angle sin$^2$(2$θ$)= 0.83--2.75 $\times 10^{-10}$. These derived values are in agreement with independent estimates from galaxy clusters; the Galactic center and M31.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Searching for the 3.5 keV Line in the Stacked Suzaku Observations of Galaxy Clusters

We perform a detailed study of the stacked Suzaku observations of 47 galaxy clusters, spanning a redshift range of 0.01-0.45, to search for the unidentified 3.5 keV line. This sample provides an independent test for the previously detected line. We detect only a 2sigma-significant spectral feature at 3.5 keV in the spectrum of the full sample. When the sample is divided into two subsamples (cool-core and non-cool core clusters), cool-core subsample shows no statistically significant positive residuals at the line energy. A very weak (2sigma-confidence) spectral feature at 3.5 keV is permitted by the data from the non-cool core clusters sample. The upper limit on a neutrino decay mixing angle from the full Suzaku sample is consistent with the previous detections in the stacked XMM-Newton sample of galaxy clusters (which had a higher statistical sensitivity to faint lines), M31, and Galactic Center at a 90% confidence level. However, the constraint from the present sample, which does not include the Perseus cluster, is in tension with previously reported line flux observed in the core of the Perseus cluster with XMM-Newton and Suzaku.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

Radial Profile of the 3.55 keV line out to $R_{200}$ in the Perseus Cluster

The recent discovery of the unidentified emission line at 3.55 keV in galaxies and clusters has attracted great interest from the community. As the origin of the line remains uncertain, we study the surface brightness distribution of the line in the Perseus cluster since that information can be used to identify its origin. We examine the flux distribution of the 3.55 keV line in the deep Suzaku observations of the Perseus cluster in detail. The 3.55 keV line is observed in three concentric annuli in the central observations, although the observations of the outskirts of the cluster did not reveal such a signal. We establish that these detections and the upper limits from the non-detections are consistent with a dark matter decay origin. However, absence of positive detection in the outskirts is also consistent with some unknown astrophysical origin of the line in the dense gas of the Perseus core, as well as with a dark matter origin with a steeper dependence on mass than the dark matter decay. We also comment on several recently published analyses of the 3.55 keV line.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Probing the Outskirts of the Early Stage Galaxy Cluster Merger A1750

We present results from recent Suzaku and Chandra X-ray, and MMT optical observations of the strongly merging "double cluster" A1750 out to its virial radius, both along and perpendicular to a putative large-scale structure filament. Some previous studies of individual clusters have found evidence for ICM entropy profiles that flatten at large cluster radii, as compared with the self-similar prediction based on purely gravitational models of hierarchical cluster formation, and gas fractions that rise above the mean cosmic value. Weakening accretion shocks and the presence of unresolved cool gas clumps, both of which are expected to correlate with large scale structure filaments, have been invoked to explain these results. In the outskirts of A1750, we find entropy profiles that are consistent with self-similar expectations, and gas fractions that are consistent with the mean cosmic value, both along and perpendicular to the putative large scale filament. Thus, we find no evidence for gas clumping in the outskirts of A1750, in either direction. This may indicate that gas clumping is less common in lower temperature (kT~4keV), less massive systems, consistent with some (but not all) previous studies of low mass clusters and groups. Cluster mass may therefore play a more important role in gas clumping than dynamical state. Finally, we find evidence for diffuse, cool (<1 keV) gas at large cluster radii (R200) along the filament, which is consistent with the expected properties of the denser, hotter phase of the WHIM.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Summary of the 2015 IACHEC meeting

We summarize the outcome of the 10th meeting of the International Astronomical Consortium for High Energy Calibration (IACHEC), held in Beijing (People's Republic of China) in April 2015. Over 80 scientists directly involved in the calibration of operational and future high-energy missions gathered during 3.5 days to discuss the status of the X-ray payload inter-calibration, as well as possible ways to improve it. A recent study on a large sample of galaxy clusters confirmed that the calibration of the effective area shape above 2 keV between XMM-Newton/EPIC and Chandra/ACIS is consistent, but showed a significant discrepancy at lower energies. Temperatures measured by EPIC are therefore smaller, the difference being largest for the highest temperatures, up to ~20% at kT=10 keV (Schellenberger et al. 2015). The latest multi-mission study of the Crab Nebula above 10 keV shows a +/-13% agreement in the relative normalization of the INTEGRAL, NuSTAR, RXTE, and {\it Suzaku} hard X-ray instruments.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2015

Fast Kalman Filter using Hierarchical-matrices and low-rank perturbative approach

We develop a fast algorithm for Kalman Filter applied to the random walk forecast model. The key idea is an efficient representation of the estimate covariance matrix at each time-step as a weighted sum of two contributions - the process noise covariance matrix and a low rank term computed from a generalized eigenvalue problem, which combines information from the noise covariance matrix and the data. We describe an efficient algorithm to update the weights of the above terms and the computation of eigenmodes of the generalized eigenvalue problem (GEP). The resulting algorithm for the Kalman filter with a random walk forecast model scales as $\bigO(N)$ in memory and $\bigO(N \log N)$ in computational cost, where $N$ is the number of grid points. We show how to efficiently compute measures of uncertainty and conditional realizations from the state distribution at each time step. An extension to the case with nonlinear measurement operators is also discussed. Numerical experiments demonstrate the performance of our algorithms, which are applied to a synthetic example from monitoring CO$_2$ in the subsurface using travel time tomography.

math.NA↗

arXiv2015

Cool Core Bias in Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Galaxy Cluster Surveys

Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) surveys find massive clusters of galaxies by measuring the inverse Compton scattering of cosmic microwave background off of intra-cluster gas. The cluster selection function from such surveys is expected to be nearly independent of redshift and cluster astrophysics. In this work, we estimate the effect on the observed SZ signal of centrally-peaked gas density profiles (cool cores) and radio emission from the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) by creating mock observations of a sample of clusters that span the observed range of classical cooling rates and radio luminosities. For each cluster, we make simulated SZ observations by the South Pole Telescope and characterize the cluster selection function, but note that our results are broadly applicable to other SZ surveys. We find that the inclusion of a cool core can cause a change in the measured SPT significance of a cluster between 0.01% - 10% at z > 0.3, increasing with cuspiness of the cool core and angular size on the sky of the cluster (i.e., decreasing redshift, increasing mass). We provide quantitative estimates of the bias in the SZ signal as a function of a gas density cuspiness parameter, redshift, mass, and the 1.4 GHz radio luminosity of the central AGN. Based on this work, we estimate that, for the Phoenix cluster (one of the strongest cool cores known), the presence of a cool core is biasing the SZ significance high by ~ 6%. The ubiquity of radio galaxies at the centers of cool core clusters will offset the cool core bias to varying degrees.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Summary of the 2014 IACHEC Meeting

We present the main results of the 9th meeting of the International Astronomical Consortium for High Energy Calibration (IACHEC), held in Warrenton (Virginia) in May 2014. Over 50 scientists directly involved in the calibration of operational and future high-energy missions gathered during 3.5 days to discuss the status of the X-ray payloads inter-calibration, as well as possible ways to improve it. Sect.2 of this Report summarises our current understanding of the energy-dependent inter-calibration status.

astro-ph.IM↗