arXiv subjects

Jessica R. Lu

Publications and source records attributed to Jessica R. Lu.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Primordial Black Hole Microlensing: The Einstein Crossing Time Distribution

Gravitational microlensing is one of the few means of finding primordial black holes (PBHs), if they exist. Recent LIGO detections of 30 Msun black holes have re-invigorated the search for PBHs in the 10-100 Msun mass regime. Unfortunately, individual PBH microlensing events cannot easily be distinguished from stellar lensing events from photometry alone. However, the distribution of microlensing timescales (tE, the Einstein radius crossing time) can be analyzed in a statistical sense using models of the Milky Way with and without PBHs. While previous works have presented both theoretical models and observational constrains for PBHs (e.g. Calcino et al. 2018; Niikura et al. 2019), surprisingly, they rarely show the observed quantity -- the tE distribution -- for different abundances of PBHs relative to the total dark matter mass (fPBH). We present a simple calculation of how the tE distribution changes between models with and without PBHs.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

"Auxiliary" Science with the WFIRST Microlensing Survey

The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will monitor $\sim 2$ deg$^2$ toward the Galactic bulge in a wide ($\sim 1-2~μ$m) W149 filter at 15-minute cadence with exposure times of $\sim$50s for 6 seasons of 72 days each, for a total $\sim$41,000 exposures taken over $\sim$432 days, spread over the 5-year prime mission. This will be one of the deepest exposures of the sky ever taken, reaching a photon-noise photometric precision of 0.01 mag per exposure and collecting a total of $\sim 10^9$ photons over the course of the survey for a W149$_{\rm AB}\sim 21$ star. Of order $4 \times 10^7$ stars will be monitored with W149$_{\rm AB}$<21, and 10$^8$ stars with W145$_{\rm AB}$<23. The WFIRST microlensing survey will detect $\sim$54,000 microlensing events, of which roughly 1% ($\sim$500) will be due to isolated black holes, and $\sim$3% ($\sim$1600) will be due to isolated neutron stars. It will be sensitive to (effectively) isolated compact objects with masses as low as the mass of Pluto, thereby enabling a measurement of the compact object mass function over 10 orders of magnitude. Assuming photon-noise limited precision, it will detect $\sim 10^5$ transiting planets with sizes as small as $\sim 2~R_\oplus$, perform asteroseismology of $\sim 10^6$ giant stars, measure the proper motions to $\sim 0.3\%$ and parallaxes to $\sim 10\%$ for the $\sim 6 \times 10^6$ disk and bulge stars in the survey area, and directly detect $\sim 5 \times 10^3$ Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with diameters down to $\sim 10$ km, as well as detect $\sim 10^3$ occulations of stars by TNOs during the survey. All of this science will completely serendipitous, i.e., it will not require modifications of the WFIRST optimal microlensing survey design. Allowing for some minor deviation from the optimal design, such as monitoring the Galactic center, would enable an even broader range of transformational science.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2019

Envisioning the next decade of Galactic Center science: a laboratory for the study of the physics and astrophysics of supermassive black holes

As the closest example of a galactic nucleus, the Galactic center (GC) presents an exquisite laboratory for learning about supermassive black holes (SMBH) and their environment. We describe several exciting new research directions that, over the next 10 years, hold the potential to answer some of the biggest scientific questions raised in recent decades: Is General Relativity (GR) the correct description for supermassive black holes? What is the nature of star formation in extreme environments? How do stars and compact objects dynamically interact with the supermassive black hole? What physical processes drive gas accretion in low-luminosity black holes? We describe how the high sensitivity, angular resolution, and astrometric precision offered by the next generation of large ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics will help us answer these questions. First, it will be possible to obtain precision measurements of stellar orbits in the Galaxy's central potential, providing both tests of GR in the unexplored regime near a SMBH and measurements of the extended dark matter distribution that is predicted to exist at the GC. Second, we will probe stellar populations at the GC to significantly lower masses than are possible today, down to brown dwarfs. Their structure and dynamics will provide an unprecedented view of the stellar cusp around the SMBH and will distinguish between models of star formation in this extreme environment. This increase in depth will also allow us to measure the currently unknown population of compact remnants at the GC by observing their effects on luminous sources. Third, uncertainties on the mass of and distance to the SMBH can be improved by a factor of $\sim$10. Finally, we can also study the near-infrared accretion onto the black hole at unprecedented sensitivity and time resolution, which can reveal the underlying physics of black hole accretion.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2019

The Galactic Center: Improved Relative Astrometry for Velocities, Accelerations, and Orbits near the Supermassive Black Hole

We present improved relative astrometry for stars within the central half parsec of our Galactic Center based on data obtained with the 10 m W. M. Keck Observatory from 1995 to 2017. The new methods used to improve the astrometric precision and accuracy include correcting for local astrometric distortions, applying a magnitude dependent additive error, and more carefully removing instances of stellar confusion. Additionally, we adopt jackknife methods to calculate velocity and acceleration uncertainties. The resulting median proper motion uncertainty is 0.05 mas/yr for our complete sample of 1184 stars in the central 10'' (0.4 pc). We have detected 24 accelerating sources, 2.6 times more than the number of previously published accelerating sources, which extend out to 4'' (0.16 pc) from the black hole. Based on S0-2's orbit, our new astrometric analysis has reduced the systematic error of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) by a factor of 2. The linear drift in our astrometric reference frame is also reduced in the North-South direction by a factor of 4. We also find the first potential astrometric binary candidate S0-27 in the Galactic center. These astrometric improvements provide a foundation for future studies of the origin and dynamics of the young stars around the SMBH, the structure and dynamics of the old nuclear star cluster, the SMBH's properties derived from orbits, and tests of General Relativity (GR) in a strong gravitational field.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2019

Stellar Proper Motions in the Orion Nebula Cluster

The Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) is the nearest site of ongoing massive star formation, which allows us to study the kinematics and dynamics of the region in detail and constrain star formation theories. Using HST ACS/WFPC2/WFC3IR and Keck II NIRC2 data, we have measured the proper motions of 701 stars within an $\sim6'\times6'$ field of view around the center of the ONC. We have found more than 10 escaping star candidates, concentrated predominantly at the core of the cluster. The proper motions of the bound stars are consistent with a normal distribution, albeit elongated North-South along the Orion filament, with proper motion dispersions of $(σ_{μ,α^*}, σ_{μ,δ}) = (0.83\pm0.02,\,1.12\pm0.03)$ mas yr$^{-1}$ or intrinsic velocity dispersions of $(σ_{v,α^*}, σ_{v,δ}) = (1.57\pm0.04,\,2.12\pm0.06)$ km s$^{-1}$ assuming a distance of 400 pc to the ONC. The cluster shows no evidence for tangential-to-radial anisotropy. Our velocity dispersion profile agrees with the prediction from the observed stellar + gas density profile from Da Rio et al. (2014), indicating that the ONC is in virial equilibrium. This finding suggests that the cluster was formed with a low star formation efficiency per dynamical timescale based on comparisons with current star formation theories. Our survey also recovered high-velocity IR sources BN, x, and n in the BN/KL region. The estimated location of the first two sources $\sim500$ years ago agrees with that of the radio source I, consistent with their proposed common origin from a multi-stellar disintegration. However, source n appears to have a small proper motion and is unlikely to have been involved in the event.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2019

The Galactic Center: An Improved Astrometric Reference Frame for Stellar Orbits around the Supermassive Black Hole

Precision measurements of the stars in short-period orbits around the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center are now being used to constrain general relativistic effects, such as the gravitational redshift and periapse precession. One of the largest systematic uncertainties in the measured orbits has been errors in the astrometric reference frame, which is derived from seven infrared-bright stars associated with SiO masers that have extremely accurate radio positions, measured in the Sgr A*-rest frame. We have improved the astrometric reference frame within 14'' of the Galactic Center by a factor of 2.5 in position and a factor of 5 in proper motion. In the new reference frame, Sgr A* is localized to within a position of 0.645 mas and proper motion of 0.03 mas/yr. We have removed a substantial rotation (2.25 degrees per decade), that was present in the previous less-accurate reference frame used to measure stellar orbits in the field. With our improved methods and continued monitoring of the masers, we predict that orbital precession predicted by General Relativity will become detectable in the next ~5 years.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2018

Characterizing and Improving the Data Reduction Pipeline for the Keck OSIRIS Integral Field Spectrograph

OSIRIS is a near-infrared (1.0--2.4 $μ$m) integral field spectrograph operating behind the adaptive optics system at Keck Observatory, and is one of the first lenslet-based integral field spectrographs. Since its commissioning in 2005, it has been a productive instrument, producing nearly half the laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO) papers on Keck. The complexity of its raw data format necessitated a custom data reduction pipeline (DRP) delivered with the instrument in order to iteratively assign flux in overlapping spectra to the proper spatial and spectral locations in a data cube. Other than bug fixes and updates required for hardware upgrades, the bulk of the DRP has not been updated since initial instrument commissioning. We report on the first major comprehensive characterization of the DRP using on-sky and calibration data. We also detail improvements to the DRP including characterization of the flux assignment algorithm; exploration of spatial rippling in the reduced data cubes; and improvements to several calibration files, including the rectification matrix, the bad pixel mask, and the wavelength solution. We present lessons learned from over a decade of OSIRIS data reduction that are relevant to the next generation of integral field spectrograph hardware and data reduction software design.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

An Adaptive Optics Survey of Stellar Variability at the Galactic Center

We present a $\approx 11.5$ year adaptive optics (AO) study of stellar variability and search for eclipsing binaries in the central $\sim 0.4$ pc ($\sim 10''$) of the Milky Way nuclear star cluster. We measure the photometry of 563 stars using the Keck II NIRC2 imager ($K'$-band, $λ_0 = 2.124 \text{ } μ\text{m}$). We achieve a photometric uncertainty floor of $Δm_{K'} \sim 0.03$ ($\approx 3\%$), comparable to the highest precision achieved in other AO studies. Approximately half of our sample ($50 \pm 2 \%$) shows variability. $52 \pm 5\%$ of known early-type young stars and $43 \pm 4 \%$ of known late-type giants are variable. These variability fractions are higher than those of other young, massive star populations or late-type giants in globular clusters, and can be largely explained by two factors. First, our experiment time baseline is sensitive to long-term intrinsic stellar variability. Second, the proper motion of stars behind spatial inhomogeneities in the foreground extinction screen can lead to variability. We recover the two known Galactic center eclipsing binary systems: IRS 16SW and S4-258 (E60). We constrain the Galactic center eclipsing binary fraction of known early-type stars to be at least $2.4 \pm 1.7\%$. We find no evidence of an eclipsing binary among the young S-stars nor among the young stellar disk members. These results are consistent with the local OB eclipsing binary fraction. We identify a new periodic variable, S2-36, with a 39.43 day period. Further observations are necessary to determine the nature of this source.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2018

A population of luminous accreting black holes with hidden mergers

Major galaxy mergers are thought to play an important part in fuelling the growth of supermassive black holes. However, observational support for this hypothesis is mixed, with some studies showing a correlation between merging galaxies and luminous quasars and others showing no such association. Recent observations have shown that a black hole is likely to become heavily obscured behind merger-driven gas and dust, even in the early stages of the merger, when the galaxies are well separated (5 to 40 kiloparsecs). Merger simulations further suggest that such obscuration and black-hole accretion peaks in the final merger stage, when the two galactic nuclei are closely separated (less than 3 kiloparsecs). Resolving this final stage requires a combination of high-spatial-resolution infrared imaging and high-sensitivity hard-X-ray observations to detect highly obscured sources. However, large numbers of obscured luminous accreting supermassive black holes have been recently detected nearby (distances below 250 megaparsecs) in X-ray observations. Here we report high-resolution infrared observations of hard-X-ray-selected black holes and the discovery of obscured nuclear mergers, the parent populations of supermassive-black-hole mergers. We find that obscured luminous black holes (bolometric luminosity higher than 2x10^44 ergs per second) show a significant (P<0.001) excess of late-stage nuclear mergers (17.6 per cent) compared to a sample of inactive galaxies with matching stellar masses and star formation rates (1.1 per cent), in agreement with theoretical predictions. Using hydrodynamic simulations, we confirm that the excess of nuclear mergers is indeed strongest for gas-rich major-merger hosts of obscured luminous black holes in this final stage.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2018

Improved Image Quality Over 10' Fields with the `Imaka Ground Layer Adaptive Optics Experiment

`Imaka is a ground layer adaptive optics (GLAO) demonstrator on the University of Hawaii 2.2m telescope with a 24'x18' field-of-view, nearly an order of magnitude larger than previous AO instruments. In 15 nights of observing with natural guide star asterisms ~16' in diameter, we measure median AO-off and AO-on empirical full-widths at half-maximum (FWHM) of 0''95 and 0''64 in R-band, 0''81 and 0''48 in I-band, and 0''76 and 0''44 at 1 micron. This factor of 1.5-1.7 reduction in the size of the point spread function (PSF) results from correcting both the atmosphere and telescope tracking errors. The AO-on PSF is uniform out to field positions ~5' off-axis, with a typical standard deviation in the FWHM of 0''018. Images exhibit variation in FWMM by 4.5% across the field, which has been applied as a correction to the aforementioned quantities. The AO-on PSF is also 10x more stable in time compared to the AO-off PSF. In comparing the delivered image quality to proxy measurements, we find that in both AO-off and AO-on data, delivered image quality is correlated with `imaka's telemetry, with R-band correlation coefficients of 0.68 and 0.70, respectively. At the same wavelength, the data are correlated to DIMM and MASS seeing with coefficients of 0.45 and 0.55. Our results are an essential first step to implementing facility-class, wide-field GLAO on Maunakea telescopes, enabling new opportunities to study extended astronomical sources, such as deep galaxy fields, nearby galaxies or star clusters, at high angular resolution.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

Super-Solar Metallicity Stars in the Galactic Center Nuclear Star Cluster: Unusual Sc, V, and Y Abundances

We present adaptive-optics assisted near-infrared high-spectral resolution observations of late-type giants in the nuclear star cluster of the Milky Way. The metallicity and elemental abundance measurements of these stars offer us an opportunity to understand the formation and evolution of the nuclear star cluster. In addition, their proximity to the supermassive black hole ($\sim 0.5$ pc) offers a unique probe of the star formation and chemical enrichment in this extreme environment. We observed two stars identified by medium spectral-resolution observations as potentially having very high metallicities. We use spectral-template fitting with the PHOENIX grid and Bayesian inference to simultaneously constrain the overall metallicity, [M/H], alpha-element abundance [$α$/Fe], effective temperature, and surface gravity of these stars. We find that one of the stars has very high metallicity ([M/H] $> 0.6$) and the other is slightly above solar metallicity. Both Galactic center stars have lines from scandium (Sc), vanadium (V), and yttrium (Y) that are much stronger than allowed by the PHOENIX grid. We find, using the spectral synthesis code Spectroscopy Made Easy, that [Sc/Fe] may be an order of magnitude above solar. For comparison, we also observed an empirical calibrator in NGC6791, the highest metallicity cluster known ([M/H] $\sim 0.4$). Most lines are well matched between the calibrator and the Galactic center stars, except for Sc, V, and Y, which confirms that their abundances must be anomalously high in these stars. These unusual abundances, which may be a unique signature of nuclear star clusters, offer an opportunity to test models of chemical enrichment in this region.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2018

Confusing binaries: the role of stellar binaries in biasing disk properties in the Galactic Center

The population of young stars near the Supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the Galactic Center (GC) has presented an unexpected challenge to theories of star formation. Kinematics measurements of these stars have revealed a stellar disk structure (with an apparent 20% disk membership) that has provided important clues to the origin of these mysterious young stars. However many of the apparent disk properties are difficult to explain, including the low disk membership fraction and the high eccentricities, given the youth of this population. Thus far, all efforts to derive the properties of this disk have made the simplifying assumption that stars at the GC are single stars. Nevertheless, stellar binaries are prevalent in our Galaxy, and recent investigations suggested that they may also be abundant in the Galactic Center. Here we show that binaries in the disk can largely alter the apparent orbital properties of the disk. The motion of binary members around each other adds a velocity component, which can be comparable to the magnitude of the velocity around the SMBH in the GC. Thus neglecting the contribution of binaries can significantly vary the inferred stars' orbital properties. While the disk orientation is unaffected the apparent disk's 2D width is increased to about 11.2deg, similar to the observed width. For a population of stars orbiting the SMBH with zero eccentricity, unaccounted for binaries will create a wide apparent eccentricity distribution with an average of 0.23.This is consistent with the observed average eccentricity of the stars' in the disk. We suggest that this high eccentricity value, which poses a theoretical challenge, may be an artifact of binary stars. Finally our results suggest that the actual disk membership might be significantly higher than the one inferred by observations that ignore the contribution of binaries, alleviating another theoretical challenge.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2017

Investigating the Binarity of S0-2: Implications for its Origins and Robustness as a Probe of the Laws of Gravity around a Supermassive Black Hole

The star S0-2, which orbits the supermassive black hole (SMBH) in our Galaxy with a period of 16 years, provides the strongest constraint on both the mass of the SMBH and the distance to the Galactic center. S0-2 will soon provide the first measurement of relativistic effects near a SMBH. We report the first limits on the binarity of S0-2 from radial velocity monitoring, which has implications for both understanding its origin and robustness as a probe of the central gravitational field. With 87 radial velocity measurements, which include 12 new observations presented, we have the data set to look for radial velocity variations from S0-2's orbital model. Using a Lomb-Scargle analysis and orbit fitting for potential binaries, we detect no radial velocity variation beyond S0-2's orbital motion and do not find any significant periodic signal. The lack of a binary companion does not currently distinguish between different formation scenarios for S0-2. The upper limit on the mass of a companion star ($M_{\text{comp}}$) still allowed by our results has a median upper limit of $M_{\text{comp}}$ $\sin i \leq$ 1.6 M$_{\odot}$ for periods between 1 and 150 days, the longest period to avoid tidal break up of the binary. We also investigate the impact of the remaining allowed binary system on the measurement of the relativistic redshift at S0-2's closest approach in 2018. While binary star systems are important to consider for this experiment, we find plausible binaries for S0-2 will not alter a 5$σ$ detection of the relativistic redshift.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2017

Individual, Model-Independent Masses of the Closest Known Brown Dwarf Binary to the Sun

At a distance of 2~pc, our nearest brown dwarf neighbor, Luhman 16 AB, has been extensively studied since its discovery 3 years ago, yet its most fundamental parameter -- the masses of the individual dwarfs -- has not been constrained with precision. In this work we present the full astrometric orbit and barycentric motion of Luhman 16 AB and the first precision measurements of the individual component masses. We draw upon archival observations spanning 31 years from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Schmidt Telescope, the Deep Near-Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky (DENIS), public FORS2 data on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and new astrometry from the Gemini South Multiconjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS). Finally, we include three radial velocity measurements of the two components from VLT/CRIRES, spanning one year. With this new data sampling a full period of the orbit, we use a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to fit a 16-parameter model incorporating mutual orbit and barycentric motion parameters and constrain the individual masses to be~$27.9^{+1.1}_{-1.0}$~$M_{J}$ for the T dwarf and~$34.2^{+1.3}_{-1.1}$~$M_{J}$ for the L dwarf. Our measurements of Luhman 16 AB's mass ratio and barycentric motion parameters are consistent with previous estimates in the literature utilizing recent astrometry only. The GeMS-derived measurements of the Luhman 16 AB separation in 2014-2015 agree closely with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) measurements made during the same epoch Bedin et al. 2017, and the derived mutual orbit agrees with those measurements to within the HST uncertainties of $0.3 - 0.4$ milliarcseconds.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2017

The Post-Periapse Evolution of Galactic Center Source G1: The second case of a resolved tidal interaction with a supermassive black hole

We present new Adaptive Optics (AO) imaging and spectroscopic measurements of Galactic Center source G1 from W. M. Keck Observatory. Our goal is to understand its nature and relationship to G2, which is the first example of a spatially-resolved object interacting with the supermassive black hole (SMBH). Both objects have been monitored with AO for the past decade (2003 - 2014) and are comparatively close to the black hole ($a_{\rm{min}} \sim$200-300 AU) on very eccentric orbits ($e_{\rm{G1}}\sim$0.99; $e_{\rm{G2}}\sim$0.96). While G2 has been tracked before and during periapse passage ($T_{0} \sim$ 2014.2), G1 has been followed since soon after emerging from periapse ($T_{0} \sim$ 2001.3). Our observations of G1 double the previously reported observational time baseline, which improves its orbital parameter determinations. G1's orbital trajectory appears to be in the same plane as that of G2, but with a significantly different argument of periapse ($Δω$ = 21$\pm$4 degrees). This suggests that G1 is an independent object and not part of a gas stream containing G2 as has been proposed. Furthermore, we show for the first time that: (1) G1 is extended in the epochs closest to periapse along the direction of orbital motion and (2) G1 becomes significantly smaller over time, (450 AU in 2004 to less than 170 AU in 2009). Based on these observations, G1 appears to be the second example of an object tidally interacting with a SMBH. G1's existence 14 years after periapse, along with its compactness in epochs further from the time of periapse, suggest that this source is stellar in nature.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2016

Constraining the Variability and Binary Fraction of Galactic Center Young Stars

We present constraints on the variability and binarity of young stars in the central 10 arcseconds (~0.4 pc) of the Milky Way Galactic Center (GC) using Keck Adaptive Optics data over a 12 year baseline. Given our experiment's photometric uncertainties, at least 36% of our sample's known early-type stars are variable. We identified eclipsing binary systems by searching for periodic variability. In our sample of spectroscopically confirmed and likely early-type stars, we detected the two previously discovered GC eclipsing binary systems. We derived the likely binary fraction of main sequence, early-type stars at the GC via Monte Carlo simulations of eclipsing binary systems, and find that it is at least 32% with 90% confidence.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2016

The late-type stellar density profile in the Galactic Center: A statistical approach

The late-type stellar population in the Galactic Center was first predicted to reside in a dynamically relaxed cusp (power law slope ranging from 3/2 to 7/4). However, observations - which rely on models to correct for projection effects - have suggested a flat distribution instead. The need for this correction is due to the lack of information regarding the line-of-sight distances. With a two decade long baseline in astrometric measurements, we are now able to measure significant projected radial accelerations, six of which are newly reported here, that directly constrain line-of-sight distances. Here we present a statistical approach to take advantage of this information and more accurately constrain the shape of the radial density profile of the late-type stellar population in the Galactic Center.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2016

The InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) for TMT: latest science cases and simulations

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) first light instrument IRIS (Infrared Imaging Spectrograph) will complete its preliminary design phase in 2016. The IRIS instrument design includes a near-infrared (0.85 - 2.4 micron) integral field spectrograph (IFS) and imager that are able to conduct simultaneous diffraction-limited observations behind the advanced adaptive optics system NFIRAOS. The IRIS science cases have continued to be developed and new science studies have been investigated to aid in technical performance and design requirements. In this development phase, the IRIS science team has paid particular attention to the selection of filters, gratings, sensitivities of the entire system, and science cases that will benefit from the parallel mode of the IFS and imaging camera. We present new science cases for IRIS using the latest end-to-end data simulator on the following topics: Solar System bodies, the Galactic center, active galactic nuclei (AGN), and distant gravitationally-lensed galaxies. We then briefly discuss the necessity of an advanced data management system and data reduction pipeline.

astro-ph.IM↗