arXiv subjects

Feng Yuan

Publications and source records attributed to Feng Yuan.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

MACER improved: AGN feedback computed in rotating early-type galaxies at high resolution

Based on our previous modeling of AGN feedback in isolated elliptical galaxies (Gan et al. 2014) using the MACER (Massive AGN Controlled Ellipticals Resolved) code, we extend and improve the model to include rotation, to limit star formation to regions of high density and low temperature, to facilitate angular momentum transfer via the Toomre instability in gaseous disks, and to improve the treatment of hot mode (low accretion rate) AGN feedback. The model galaxy now has an extended dark matter profile that matches with standard observations, but has a resolution of parsecs in the inner region and resolves the Bondi radius. We find that the results agree reasonably well with a panoply of observations: (1) both AGN activity and star formation are primarily in central cold gaseous disks, are bursty and mainly driven by the Toomre instability; (2)AGN duty cycle agrees well with the Soltan argument, i.e., the AGN spends most of its lifetime when it is in low luminosity (half of time with $L/L_{Edd}<7\times10^{-5}$), while emitting most of its energy when it is in high luminosity (half of radiant energy emitted with $L/L_{Edd}>0.06$); (3) the total star formation is $\sim$ few percents of the initial stellar mass, occurring in the bursts that would be associated with the observed E+A phenomenon. Most of the star formation occurs in the circumnuclear disk of a size <1 kpc, which is in agreement with recent observations; (4) the ISM X-ray luminosity varies within a reasonable range (median $L_{\rm X, ISM}=9.1\times10^{39}$ erg/s) in agreement with observations.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2019

SDSS-IV MaNGA: The Roles of AGNs and Dynamical Processes in Star Formation Quenching in Nearby Disk Galaxies

We study how star formation (SF) is quenched in low-redshift disk galaxies with integral-field spectroscopy. We select 131 face-on spiral galaxies with stellar mass greater than $\rm 3\times10^{10}M_\odot$, and with spatially resolved spectrum from MaNGA DR13. We subdivide the sample into four groups based on the offset of their global specific star formation rate (SFR) from the star-forming main sequence and stack the radial profiles of stellar mass and SFR. By comparing the stacked profiles of quiescent and star-forming disk galaxies, we find that the decrease of the global SFR is caused by the suppression of SF at all radii, but with a more significant drop from the center to the outer regions following an inside-out pattern. As the global specific SFR decreases, the central stellar mass, the fraction of disk galaxies hosting stellar bars, and active galactic nuclei (AGNs; including both LINERs and Seyferts) all increase, indicating dynamical processes and AGN feedback are possible contributors to the inside-out quenching of SF in the local universe. However, if we include only Seyferts, or AGNs with ${\rm EW(Hα)>3Å}$, the increasing trend of AGN fraction with decreasing global sSFR disappears. Therefore, if AGN feedback is contributing to quenching, we suspect that it operates in the low-luminosity AGN mode, as indicated by the increasing large bulge mass of the more passive disk galaxies.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2018

Lepton-jet Correlations in Deep Inelastic Scattering at the Electron-Ion Collider

We propose the lepton-jet correlation in deep inelastic scattering as a unique tool for nucleon/nucleus tomography at the electron-ion collider. The azimuthal angular correlation between the final state lepton and jet depends on the transverse momentum dependent quark distributions. We take the example of single transverse spin asymmetries to show the sensitivity to the quark Sivers function. When the correlation is studied in lepton-nucleus collisions, transverse momentum broadening effects can be used to explore cold nuclear matter effects. These features make lepton-jet correlations an important new hard probe at the EIC.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Accretion in Strong Field Gravity with eXTP

In this paper we describe the potential of the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry (eXTP) mission for studies related to accretion flows in the strong field gravity regime around both stellar-mass and supermassive black-holes. eXTP has the unique capability of using advanced 'spectral-timing-polarimetry' techniques to analyze the rapid variations with three orthogonal diagnostics of the flow and its geometry, yielding unprecedented insight into the inner accreting regions, the effects of strong field gravity on the material within them and the powerful outflows which are driven by the accretion process.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

NuSTAR Hard X-ray View of Low-luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei: High-energy Cutoff and Truncated Thin Disk

We report the analysis of simultaneous XMM-Newton+NuSTAR observations of two low-luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei (LLAGN), NGC 3998 and NGC 4579. We do not detect any significant variability in either source over the ~3 day length of the NuSTAR observations. The broad-band 0.5-60 keV spectrum of NGC 3998 is best fit with a cutoff power-law, while the one for NGC 4579 is best fit with a combination of a hot thermal plasma model, a power-law, and a blend of Gaussians to fit an Fe complex observed between 6 and 7 keV. Our main spectral results are the following: (1) neither source shows any reflection hump with a $3σ$ reflection fraction upper-limits $R<0.3$ and $R<0.18$ for NGC 3998 and NGC 4579, respectively; (2) the 6-7 keV line complex in NGC 4579 could either be fit with a narrow Fe K line at 6.4 keV and a moderately broad Fe XXV line, or 3 relatively narrow lines, which includes contribution from Fe XXVI; (3) NGC 4579 flux is 60% brighter than previously detected with XMM-Newton, accompanied by a hardening in the spectrum; (4) we measure a cutoff energy $E_{\rm cut}=107_{-18}^{+27}$ keV in NGC 3998, which represents the lowest and best constrained high-energy cutoff ever measured for an LLAGN; (5) NGC 3998 spectrum is consistent with a Comptonization model with either a sphere ($τ\approx3\pm1$) or slab ($τ\approx1.2\pm0.6$) geometry, corresponding to plasma temperatures between 20 and 150 keV. We discuss these results in the context of hard X-ray emission from bright AGN, other LLAGN, and hot accretion flow models.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2018

Reconciling the Quasar Microlensing Disc Size Problem with a Wind Model of Active Galactic Nucleus

Many analyses have concluded that the accretion disc sizes measured from the microlensing variability of quasars are larger than the expectations from the standard thin disc theory by a factor of $\sim4$. We propose a simply model by invoking a strong wind from the disc to flatten its radial temperature profile, which can then reconcile the size discrepancy problem. This wind model has been successfully applied to several microlensed quasars with a wind strength $s\lesssim1.3$ by only considering the inward decreasing of the mass accretion rate (where $s$ is defined through $\dot{M}(R)\propto({R}/{R_{0}})^{s}$ ). After further incorporating the angular momentum transferred by the wind, our model can resolve the disc size problem with an even lower wind parameter. The corrected disc sizes under the wind model are correlated with black hole masses with a slope in agreement with our modified thin disc model.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

New Clues to Jet Launching: The inner disks in radio loud quasars may be more stable

Jet launching in radio loud (RL) quasars is one of the fundamental problems in astrophysics. Exploring the differences in the inner accretion disk properties between RL and radio quiet (RQ) quasars might yield helpful clues to this puzzle. We previously discovered that the shorter term UV/optical variations of quasars are bluer than the longer term ones, i.e., the so-called timescale-dependent color variation. This is consistent with the scheme that the faster variations come from the inner and hotter disk regions, thus providing a useful tool to map the accretion disk which is otherwise unresolvable. In this work we compare the UV/optical variations of RL quasars in SDSS Stripe 82 to those of several RQ samples, including those matched in redshift-luminosity-black hole mass and/or color-magnitude. We find that while both RL and RQ populations appear bluer when they brighten, RL quasars potentially show a weaker/flatter dependence on timescale in their color variation. We further find that while both RL and RQ populations on average show similar variation amplitudes at long timescales, fast variations of RL sources appear weaker/smaller (at timescales of ~ 25 -- 300 days in the observer's frame), and the difference is more prominent in the g-band than in the r-band. Inhomogeneous disk simulations can qualitatively reproduce these observed differences if the inner accretion disk of RL quasars fluctuates less based on simple toy models. Though the implications are likely model dependent, the discovery points to an interesting diagram that magnetic fields in RL quasars may be prospectively stronger and play a key role in both jet launching and the stabilization of the inner accretion disk.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Acoplanarity of Lepton Pair to Probe the Electromagnetic Property of Quark Matter

We investigate the $P_T$-broadening effects in dilepton production through photon-photon scattering in heavy ion collisions. The QED multiple interaction effects with the medium is found to be consistent with a recent observation of low transverse momentum lepton pair from ATLAS collaboration at the LHC. We further comment on the magnetic effects and point out a number of ways to disentangle these two mechanisms. In particular, the rapidity dependence of the $P_T$-broadening effects provide a unique probe to the magnetic effects.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

An intrinsic link between long-term UV/optical variations and X-ray loudness in quasars

Observations have shown that UV/optical variation amplitude of quasars depend on several physi- cal parameters including luminosity, Eddington ratio, and likely also black hole mass. Identifying new factors which correlate with the variation is essential to probe the underlying physical processes. Combining ~ten years long quasar light curves from SDSS stripe 82 and X-ray data from Stripe 82X, we build a sample of X-ray detected quasars to investigate the relation between UV/optical variation amplitude ($σ_{rms}$) and X-ray loudness. We find that quasars with more intense X-ray radiation (com- pared to bolometric luminosity) are more variable in UV/optical. Such correlation remains highly significant after excluding the effect of other parameters including luminosity, black hole mass, Ed- dington ratio, redshift, rest-frame wavelength (i.e., through partial correlation analyses). We further find the intrinsic link between X-ray loudness and UV/optical variation is gradually more prominent on longer timescales (up to 10 years in the observed frame), but tends to disappear at timescales < 100 days. This suggests a slow and long-term underlying physical process. The X-ray reprocessing paradigm, in which UV/optical variation is produced by a variable central X-ray emission illuminating the accretion disk, is thus disfavored. The discovery points to an interesting scheme that both the X-ray corona heating and UV/optical variation is quasars are closely associated with magnetic disc turbulence, and the innermost disc turbulence (where corona heating occurs) correlates with the slow turbulence at larger radii (where UV/optical emission is produced).

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Transverse Momentum Resummation for $t$-channel single top quark production at the LHC

We study the effect of multiple soft gluon radiation on the kinematical distributions of the $t$-channel single top quark production at the LHC. By applying the transverse momentum dependent factorization formalism, large logarithms (of the ratio of large invariant mass $Q$ and small total transverse momentum $q_\perp$ of the single-top plus one-jet final state system) are resummed to all orders in the expansion of the strong interaction coupling at the accuracy of next-to-leading logarithm, including the complete next-to-leading order corrections. We show that the main difference from PYTHIA prediction lies on the inclusion of the exact color coherence effect between the initial and final states in our resummation calculation, which becomes more important when the final state jet is required to be in the forward region. We further propose a new experimental observable $ϕ^*$ to test the effect of multiple gluon radiation in the single-top events. The effect of bottom quark mass is also discussed.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Stellar and AGN feedback in isolated early-type galaxies: the role in regulating star formation and ISM properties

Understanding how galaxies maintain the inefficiency of star formation with physically self-consistent models is a central problem for galaxy evolution. Although numerous theoretical models have been proposed in recent decades, the debate still exists. By means of high-resolution two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations, we study the three feedback effects (the stellar wind heating, SNe feedback, and AGN feedback) in suppressing star formation activities on the evolution of early-type galaxies with different stellar masses. AGN feedback models are updated based on \citet{Yuan2018}. The gas sources comes exclusively from the mass losses of dying low-mass stars for most of our models. We find that SNe feedback can keep star formation at a significantly low level for low mass elliptical galaxies for a cosmological evolution time. For the high mass galaxies, AGN feedback can efficiently offset the radiative cooling and thus regulate the star formation activities. Such a suppression of star formation is extremely efficient in the inner region of the galaxies. AGB heating cannot account for this suppression for low and high mass galaxies. The X-ray temperature $T_{\rm X}$ and luminosity $L_{\rm X}$ of hot plasma can be in agreement with the observed data with the inclusion of effective feedback processes. These results thus suggest that we can use $T_{\rm X}$ and $L_{\rm X}$ to probe the role of different feedback processes. The inclusion of additional gas sources can make the mass scale between SNe and AGN feedback dominating in suppressing star formation decrease to an observationally inferred value of a few $10^{10}~M_{\odot}$.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Adversarial Collaborative Auto-encoder for Top-N Recommendation

During the past decade, model-based recommendation methods have evolved from latent factor models to neural network-based models. Most of these techniques mainly focus on improving the overall performance, such as the root mean square error for rating predictions and hit ratio for top-N recommendation, where the users' feedback is considered as the ground-truth. However, in real-world applications, the users' feedback is possibly contaminated by imperfect user behaviours, namely, careless preference selection. Such data contamination poses challenges on the design of robust recommendation methods. In this work, to address the above issue, we propose a general adversial training framework for neural network-based recommendation models, which improves both the model robustness and the overall performance. We point out the tradeoffs between performance and robustness enhancement with detailed instructions on how to strike a balance. Specifically, we implement our approach on the collaborative auto-encoder, followed by experiments on three public available datasets: MovieLens-1M, Ciao, and FilmTrust. We show that our approach outperforms highly competitive state-of-the-art recommendation methods. In addition, we carry out a thorough analysis on the noise impacts, as well as the complex interactions between model nonlinearity and noise levels. Through simple modifications, our adversarial training framework can be applied to a host of neural network-based models whose robustness and performance are expected to be both enhanced.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2018

Probing the Weizsäcker-Williams gluon Wigner distribution in pp collisions

We show that the diffractive forward production of two quarkonia, especially the $χ_{cJ}$ and $η_c$ states, in proton-proton or proton-ion collisions can access the Weizsäcker-Williams gluon Wigner distribution of the proton. We use the hybrid factorization approach where the collinear, double gluon PDF is applied for one of the protons and the $k_T$-dependent (Wigner or GTMD) distribution for the other. The production of quarkonia is treated in the NRQCD framework. A particularly concise formula is obtained for double $χ_{J=1}$ production.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Active Galactic Nuclei Feedback in an Elliptical Galaxy with the Most Updated AGN Physics (II): High-Angular Momentum Case

This is the second paper of our series of works of studying the effects of active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback on the cosmological evolution of an isolated elliptical galaxy by performing two-dimensional high-resolution hydrodynamical numerical simulations. In these simulations, the inner boundary is chosen so that the Bondi radius is resolved. Physical processes like star formation, SNe Ia and II are taken into account. Compared to previous works, the main improvements is that we adopt the most updated AGN physics, which is described in detail in the first paper of this series (Yuan et al. 2018, Paper I). These improvements include the discrimination of the two accretion modes of the central AGN and the most updated descriptions of the wind and radiation in the two modes. In Paper I, we consider the case that the specific angular momentum of the gas in the galaxy is very low. In this paper, we consider the case that the specific angular momentum of the gas is high. In the galactic scale, we adopt the gravitational torques raised due to non-axisymmetric structure in the galaxy as the mechanism of the transfer of angular momentum of gas, as proposed in some recent works. Since our simulations are axisymmetric, we make use of a parameterized prescription to mimic this mechanism. Same as Paper I, we investigate the AGN light curve, typical AGN lifetime, growth of the black hole mass, AGN duty-cycle, star formation, and the X-ray surface brightness of the galaxy. Special attention is paid to the effects of specific angular momentum of the galaxy on these properties. We find that some results are qualitatively similar to those shown in Paper I, while some results such as star formation and black hole growth do show a significant difference due to the mass concentration in the galactic disk as a consequence of galactic rotation.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Numerical study of active galactic nucleus feedback in an elliptical galaxy with {\it MACER}

This paper summarizes our recent works of studying AGN feedback in an isolated elliptical galaxy by performing high-resolution hydrodynamical numerical simulations. Bondi radius is resolved and the mass accretion rate of the black hole is calculated. The most updated AGN physics, namely the discrimination of cold and hot accretion modes and the exact descriptions of the AGN radiation and wind for a given accretion rate are adopted and their interaction with the gas in the host galaxy is calculated. Physical processes such as star formation and SNe feedback are taken into account. Consistent with observation, we find the AGN spends most of the time in the low-luminosity regime. AGN feedback overall suppresses the star formation; but depending on location in the galaxy and time, it can also enhance it. The light curve of specific star formation rate is not synchronous with the AGN light curve. We find that wind usually plays a dominant role in controlling the AGN luminosity and star formation, but radiation also cannot be neglected.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

On the Threshold Resummation in Forward pA Collisions

In this paper, using the Higgs production in forward rapidity region in proton-nucleus collisions as an example, we demonstrate that we can construct a systematic formalism for the threshold resummation for forward rapidity particle productions in the saturation formalism. The forward threshold jet function, which satisfies the corresponding renormalization group equation, is introduced into the new factorization formula. This calculation can be easily generalized to other processes, such as single forward hadron productions at forward rapidity region, and have important phenomenological implications.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

On the Dihadron Angular Correlations in Forward $pA$ collisions

Dihadron angular correlations in forward $pA$ collisions have been considered as one of the most sensitive observables to the gluon saturation effects. In general, both parton shower effects and saturation effects are responsible for the back-to-back dihadron angular de-correlations. With the recent progress in the saturation formalism, we can incorporate the parton shower effect by adding the corresponding Sudakov factor in the saturation framework. In this paper, we carry out the first detailed numerical study in this regard, and find a very good agreement with previous RHIC $pp$ and $dAu$ data. This study can help us to establish a baseline in $pp$ collisions which contains little saturation effects, and further make predictions for dihadron angular correlations in $pAu$ collisions, which will allow to search for the signal of parton saturation.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

A Potential Low Cost Remote Sensing Using GPS Derived PWV

In this paper, the Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) content of the atmosphere is derived using the Global Positioning System (GPS) signal delays. The PWV values from GPS are calculated at different elevation cut-off angles. It was found that the significant range of elevation cut-off angles is from 5 degrees to 50 degrees. The PWV values calculated from GPS using varying cut-off angles from this range were then compared to the PWV values calculated using the radiosonde data. The correlation coefficient and the Root Mean Square (RMS) error between the GPS and radiosonde derived PWV decreases with the increasing cut-off angle and the distance between the two. The seasonal parameters also effect the relation between the two.

physics.ao-ph↗