arXiv subjects

Quan Guo

Publications and source records attributed to Quan Guo.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Influence of sources with a spectral peak in the detection of Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization

Foreground removal is one of the biggest challenges in the detection of the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Various foreground subtraction techniques have been developed based on the spectral smoothness of foregrounds. However, the sources with a spectral peak (SP) at Megahertz may break down the spectral smoothness at low frequencies (< 1000 MHz). In this paper, we cross-match the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) extragalactic source catalogue with three other radio source catalogues, covering the frequency range from 72 MHz to 1.4 GHz, to search for sources with spectral turnover. 4,423 sources from the GLEAM catalogue are identified as SP sources, representing approximately 3.2 per cent of the GLEAM radio source population. We utilize the properties of SP source candidates obtained from real observations to establish simulations and test the impact of SP sources on the extraction of CD/EoR signals. We statistically compare the differences introduced by SP sources in the residuals after removing the foregrounds with three methods, which are polynomial fitting, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and fast independent component analysis (FastICA). Our results indicate that the presence of SP sources in the foregrounds has a negligible influence on extracting the CD/EoR signal. After foreground subtraction, the contribution from SP sources to the total power in the two-dimensional (2D) power spectrum within the EoR window is approximately 3 to 4 orders of magnitude lower than the CD/EoR signal.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Detecting Cosmic 21 cm Global Signal Using an Improved Polynomial Fitting Algorithm

Detecting the cosmic 21 cm signal from Epoch of Reionization (EoR) has always been a difficult task. Although the Galactic foreground can be regarded as a smooth power-law spectrum, due to the chromaticity of the antenna, additional structure will be introduced into the global spectrum, making the polynomial fitting algorithm perform poorly. In this paper, we introduce an improved polynomial fitting algorithm - the Vari-Zeroth-Order Polynomial (VZOP) fitting and use it to fit the simulation data. This algorithm is developed for the upcoming Low-frequency Anechoic Chamber Experiment (LACE), yet it is a general method suitable for application in any single antenna-based global 21 cm signal experiment. VZOP defines a 24-hour averaged beam model that brings information about the antenna beam into the polynomial model. Assuming that the beam can be measured, VZOP can successfully recover the 21 cm absorption feature, even if the beam is extremely frequency-dependent. In real observations, due to various systematics, the corrected measured beam contains residual errors that are not completely random. Assuming the errors are frequency-dependent, VZOP is capable of recovering the 21 cm absorption feature even when the error reaches 10%. Even in the most extreme scenario where the errors are completely random, VZOP can at least give a fitting result that is not worse than the common polynomial fitting. In conclusion, the fitting effect of VZOP depends on the structure of the error and the accuracy of the beam measurement.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

The Intensity of Diffuse Galactic Emission Reflected by Meteor Trails

We calculate the reflection of diffuse galactic emission by meteor trails and investigate its potential relationship to Meteor Radio Afterglow (MRA). The formula to calculate the reflection of diffuse galactic emission is derived from a simplified case, assuming that the signals are mirrored by the cylindrical over-dense ionization trail of meteors. The overall observed reflection is simulated through a ray tracing algorithm together with the diffuse galactic emission modelled by the GSM sky model. We demonstrate that the spectrum of the reflected signal is broadband and follows a power law with a negative spectral index of around -1.3. The intensity of the reflected signal varies with local sidereal time and the brightness of the meteor and can reach 2000 Jy. These results agree with some previous observations of MRAs. Therefore, we think that the reflection of galactic emission by meteor trails can be a possible mechanism causing MRAs, which is worthy of further research.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

The halo concentration and mass relation traced by satellite galaxies

We study the relation between halo concentration and mass (c-M relation) using the Seventh and Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR7 and DR8) galaxy catalogue. Assuming that the satellite galaxies follow the distribution of dark matter, we derive the halo concentration by fitting the satellite radial profile with a Nararro Frank and White (NFW) format. The derived c-M relation covers a wide halo mass range from $10^{11.6}$ to $10^{14.1} \rm\ M_\odot$. We confirm the anti-correlation between the halo mass and concentration as predicted in cosmological simulations. Our results are in good agreement with those derived using galaxy dynamics and gravitational lensing for halos of $10^{11.6}-10^{12.9} \rm\ M_\odot$, while they are slightly lower for halos of $10^{12.9}-10^{14.1}\rm\ M_\odot$. It is because blue satellite galaxies are less concentrated, especially in the inner regions. Instead of using all satellite galaxies, red satellites could be better tracers of the underlying dark matter distribution in galaxy groups.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

A compact symmetric ejection from the low mass AGN in the LINER galaxy NGC 4293

We conducted a Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observation of the low mass active galactic nucleus (AGN) in galaxy NGC 4293 ($z=0.003$). The object is associated with a low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER). Its black hole mass is estimated as $\sim10^5$ or $\sim10^7 M_\odot$. The VLBA 1.5 GHz image shows an inverse symmetric structure with two discrete radio blobs separated by an angular distance of $\sim120$ mas, corresponding to $\sim7$ parsec. Furthermore, its integrated radio spectrum has a turnover at the frequency of $\sim0.44$ GHz. Based on the compactness and spectrum, the nuclear radio source in NGC 4293 belongs to a sample of (megahertz) peaked spectrum (PS/MPS) radio sources with compact symmetric morphologies. NGC 4293 has 1.4 GHz radio power of only $\sim10^{20}\,\mathrm{W\,Hz^{-1}}$ with the VLBA observation, which is consistent with local AGNs but lower than the current PS samples. One of the two blobs has a steep radio spectrum $α=-0.62\pm0.08$ ($S_ν\proptoν^{+α}$), while the other one has an inverted spectrum $α=0.32\pm0.10$. The VLBA 1.5 GHz luminosity ratio of the two blobs is 3.23 and both blobs show lateral-flowing structures where the hotspots reside at the edge of each radio lobe. This can be explained as jet interactions with dense circumnuclear medium. We estimate the black hole mass of NGC 4293 through the fundamental plane of black hole activity, which constrains the black hole mass to be $\lesssim10^6 M_\odot$. It supports that the object is a low-mass AGN and a potential candidate for accreting and ejecting IMBHs.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Global CD/EoR Signal Detection with a Dense Digital Beamforming Array and Beyond

The global neutral hydrogen 21 cm signal extracted from the all-sky averaged radio spectra is one of the signatures of the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization (CD/EoR). The frequency-dependency of antenna beam patterns coupled with the strong foreground emission could introduce artificial spectral structures and cause false detection. A digital beamforming array could be potentially employed to form achromatic station beam patterns to overcome this problem. In this work, we discuss the method of forming achromatic beam patterns with a dense regular beamforming array to detect the global CD/EoR signal, covering topics including the array configuration, antenna weight optimization, and error estimation. We also show that based on the equivalence between a beamforming array and an interferometer, most antennas in the array can be removed by canceling redundant baselines. We present an example array design, optimize the antenna weights, and show the final array configuration by canceling redundant baselines. The performance of the example array is evaluated based on a simulation, which provides a positive indication towards the feasibility of detecting the CD/EoR signal using a dense digital beamforming array.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

Impact of the turnover in the high-z galaxy luminosity function on the 21-cm signal during Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization

The shape of the faint-end of the high-z galaxy luminosity function (LF) informs early star formation and reionization physics during the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization. Until recently, based on the strong gravitational lensing cluster deep surveys, the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) has found a potential turnover in the ultraviolet (UV) LF at z$\sim$6. In this paper, we analyze the contribution of extremely faint galaxies with the magnitude larger than the turnover magnitude in LF to cosmic reionization. We apply the measurement from HFF to our suppressed star formation efficiency model, including three free parameters: halo mass threshold $M_t$, curvature parameter $β$ and a UV conversion factor $l_{\rm UV}$. According to our fit of 68\% confidence level, the high-redshift star formation in haloes smaller than $ M_t=1.82^{+2.86}_{-1.08}\times10^{10} \rm M_{\odot}$ is found to be dampened. The turnover magnitude $\rm \gtrsim -13.99-2.45$, correspondingly the halo mass $\lesssim(4.57+20.03)\times10^{9} \rm M_{\odot}$. We find that the absorption trough in the global 21-cm signal is sensitive to our SFE model parameters. Together with ($β$, $l_{\rm UV}$) = ($2.17^{+2.42}_{-1.72}$, $9.33^{+0.43}_{-0.42} \rm ~erg~yr ~s^{-1}M_{\odot}^{-1})$, the trough locates at $\sim$ $134^{+10}_{-17}$ $\rm MHz$ with an amplitude of $\sim$ $-237^{-6}_{+7}$ $\rm mK$, compared to (106\rm MHz, -212\rm mK) in the absence of turnover. Besides, we find that the star formation of faint galaxies has also an impact on the 21-cm power spectra. The best fitting peak power decreases by $\sim4\%$ and shifts towards smaller scales from $0.88 h \rm Mpc^{-1}$ to $0.91 h \rm Mpc^{-1}$. According to our calculation, such impact is distinguishable with the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

DomiKnowS: A Library for Integration of Symbolic Domain Knowledge in Deep Learning

We demonstrate a library for the integration of domain knowledge in deep learning architectures. Using this library, the structure of the data is expressed symbolically via graph declarations and the logical constraints over outputs or latent variables can be seamlessly added to the deep models. The domain knowledge can be defined explicitly, which improves the models' explainability in addition to the performance and generalizability in the low-data regime. Several approaches for such an integration of symbolic and sub-symbolic models have been introduced; however, there is no library to facilitate the programming for such an integration in a generic way while various underlying algorithms can be used. Our library aims to simplify programming for such an integration in both training and inference phases while separating the knowledge representation from learning algorithms. We showcase various NLP benchmark tasks and beyond. The framework is publicly available at Github(https://github.com/HLR/DomiKnowS).

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Possible observational evidence that cosmic filaments spin

Most cosmological structures in the universe spin. Although structures in the universe form on a wide variety of scales from small dwarf galaxies to large super clusters, the generation of angular momentum across these scales is poorly understood. We have investigated the possibility that filaments of galaxies - cylindrical tendrils of matter hundreds of millions of light-years across, are themselves spinning. By stacking thousands of filaments together and examining the velocity of galaxies perpendicular to the filament's axis (via their red and blue shift), we have found that these objects too display motion consistent with rotation making them the largest objects known to have angular momentum. The strength of the rotation signal is directly dependent on the viewing angle and the dynamical state of the filament. Just as it is easiest to measure rotation in a spinning disk galaxy viewed edge on, so too is filament rotation clearly detected under similar geometric alignment. Furthermore, the mass of the haloes that sit at either end of the filaments also increases the spin speed. The more massive the haloes, the more rotation is detected. These results signify that angular momentum can be generated on unprecedented scales.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

External Calibrator in Global Signal Experiment for Detection of the Epoch of Reionization

We present a conceptual design study of external calibrators in the 21 cm experiment towards detecting the globally averaged radiation of the epoch of reionization (EoR). Employment of external calibrator instead of internal calibrator commonly used in current EoR experiments allows to remove instrumental effects such as beam pattern, receiver gain and instability of the system if the conventional three-position switch measurements are implemented in a short time interval. Furthermore, in the new design the antenna system is placed in an underground anechoic chamber with an open/closing ceiling to maximally reduce the environmental effect such as RFI and ground radiation/reflection. It appears that three of the four external calibrators proposed in this paper, including two indoor artificial transmitters and one outdoor celestial radiation (the Galactic polarization), fail to meet our purpose. Diurnal motion of the Galactic diffuse emission turns to be the most possible source as an external calibrator, for which we have discussed the observational strategy and the algorithm of extracting the EoR signal.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2021

Towards Navigation by Reasoning over Spatial Configurations

We deal with the navigation problem where the agent follows natural language instructions while observing the environment. Focusing on language understanding, we show the importance of spatial semantics in grounding navigation instructions into visual perceptions. We propose a neural agent that uses the elements of spatial configurations and investigate their influence on the navigation agent's reasoning ability. Moreover, we model the sequential execution order and align visual objects with spatial configurations in the instruction. Our neural agent improves strong baselines on the seen environments and shows competitive performance on the unseen environments. Additionally, the experimental results demonstrate that explicit modeling of spatial semantic elements in the instructions can improve the grounding and spatial reasoning of the model.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2021

The lopsided distribution of satellites of isolated central galaxies

Satellites are not randomly distributed around their central galaxies but show polar and planar structures. In this paper, we investigate the axis-asymmetry or lopsidedness of satellite galaxy distributions around isolated galaxies in a hydrodynamic cosmological simulation. We find a statistically significant lopsided signal by studying the angular distribution of the satellite galaxies' projected positions around isolated central galaxies in a two-dimensional plane. The signal is dependent on galaxy mass, color and large-scale environment. Satellites that inhabit low-mass blue hosts, or located further from the hosts show the most lopsided signal. Galaxy systems with massive neighbors exhibit stronger lopsidedness. This satellite axis-asymmetry signal also decreases as the universe evolves. Our findings are in agreement with recent observational results, and they provide a useful perspective for studying galaxy evolution, especially on the satellite accretion, internal evolution and interaction with the cosmic large-scale structure.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

Pre-selection of the Candidate Fields for Deep Imaging of the Epoch of Reionization with SKA1-Low

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the first low-frequency instrument with the capability to directly image the structures of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Indeed, deep imaging of the EoR over 5 targeted fields of 20 square degrees each has been selected as the highest priority science objective for SKA1. Aiming at preparing for this highly challenging observation, we perform an extensive pre-selection of the `quietest' and `cleanest' candidate fields in the southern sky to be suited for deep imaging of the EoR using existing catalogs and observations over a broad frequency range. The candidate fields should meet a number of strict criteria to avoid contaminations from foreground structures and sources. The candidate fields should also exhibit both the lowest average surface brightness and smallest variance to ensure uniformity and high quality deep imaging over the fields. Our selection eventually yields a sample of 7 `ideal' fields of 20 square degrees in the southern sky that could be targeted for deep imaging of the EoR. Finally, these selected fields are convolved with the synthesized beam of SKA1-low stations to ensure that the effect of sidelobes from the far field bright sources is also weak.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2020

The alignment of satellite systems with cosmic filaments in the SDSS DR12

Galaxies, as well as their satellites, are known to form within the cosmic web: the large, multi-scale distribution of matter in the universe. It is known that the surrounding large scale structure (LSS) can impact and influence the formation of galaxies, e.g. the spin and shape of haloes or galaxies are correlated with the LSS and the correlation depends on halo mass or galaxy morphology. In this work, we use group and filament catalogues constructed from the SDSS DR12 to investigate the correlation between satellite systems and the large scale filaments they are located in. We find that the distribution of satellites is significantly correlated with filaments, namely the major axis of the satellite systems are preferentially aligned with the spine of the closest filament. Stronger alignment signals are found for the cases where the system away from the filament spine, while systems close to the filament spine show significantly weaker alignment. Our results suggest that satellites are accreted along filaments, which agrees with previous works. The case of which away from the filament spine may help us to understand how the filament forms as well as the peculiar satellite distribution in the Local Universe.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

A robust determination of halo environment in the cosmic field

A number of methods for studying the large-scale cosmic matter distribution exist in the literature. One particularly common method employed to define the cosmic web is to examine the density, velocity or potential field. Such methods are advantageous since a Hessian matrix can be constructed whose eigenvectors (and eigenvalues) indicate the principal directions (and strength) of local collapse or expansion. Technically this is achieved by diagonalizing the Hessian matrix using a fixed finite grid. The resultant large-scale structure quantification is thus inherently limited by the grid's finite resolution. Here, we overcome the obstacle of finite grid resolution by introducing a new method to determine halo environment using an adaptive interpolation which is more robust to resolution than the typical "Nearest Grid Point" (NGP) method. Essentially instead of computing and diagonalizing the Hessian matrix once for the entire grid, we suggest doing so once for each halo or galaxy in question. We examine how the eigenvalues and eigenvector direction's computed using our algorithm and the NGP method converge for different grid resolutions, finding that our new method is convergent faster. Namely changes of resolution have a much smaller effect than in the NGP method. We therefore suggest this method for future use by the community.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Cross-Modality Relevance for Reasoning on Language and Vision

This work deals with the challenge of learning and reasoning over language and vision data for the related downstream tasks such as visual question answering (VQA) and natural language for visual reasoning (NLVR). We design a novel cross-modality relevance module that is used in an end-to-end framework to learn the relevance representation between components of various input modalities under the supervision of a target task, which is more generalizable to unobserved data compared to merely reshaping the original representation space. In addition to modeling the relevance between the textual entities and visual entities, we model the higher-order relevance between entity relations in the text and object relations in the image. Our proposed approach shows competitive performance on two different language and vision tasks using public benchmarks and improves the state-of-the-art published results. The learned alignments of input spaces and their relevance representations by NLVR task boost the training efficiency of VQA task.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2019

Hour-scale persistent negative anomaly of atmospheric electrostatic field near the epicenter before earthquake

Although earthquake prediction is a big challenge in the world, some simple observational tools can capture many physical signals and demonstrate that an earthquake (EQ) may be forthcoming in short period. Many researchers have studied the significant variation of atmospheric electrostatic field related to the forthcoming earthquake. However, until now, there is not a compelling physical mechanism which can explain why atmospheric electrostatic abnormal signal could appear just before an earthquake. Here we present a precursor signal and propose a brief physical interpretation. Under fair air conditions, if the near-surface atmospheric electrostatic field Ez (oriented down when it is positive) presents a very stable negative anomaly (from -100 V/m to -5000 V/m), it will forebode that an earthquake (seismicity from 3-8) would take place in the next several to tens of hours within a distance less than 100 km. We name this prediction technique as "DC Ez Determination"(DED). In addition, the mechanism of such abnormal quasi-static electric field before a forthcoming earthquake has been proposed here: (1) Radon gas releases from the rock clefts near the epicenter during seismogenic process. (2) α particles are produced due to the radioactive decay of Radon gas in the air. (3) α particle ionizing radiation creates more positive particles in the air, which is much more effective than that β and γ particles produced during Radon radioactive decay. (4) The new positive particles change formal positive atmospheric electric field (Ez) into stably negative near the earth-surface. (5) The closer the instrument is to the epicenter, the more likely it is to observe the negative Ez signal related to the earthquake. It is recommended to establish an instrument network to capture the reliable precursor and make some warnings before the earthquake disaster.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2019

The Origin of Lopsided Satellite Galaxy Distribution in Galaxy Pairs

It is well known that satellite galaxies are not isotropically distributed among their host galaxies as suggested by most interpretations of the $Λ$CDM model. One type of anisotropy recently detected in the SDSS (and seen when examining the distribution of satellites in the Local Group and in the Centaurus group) is a tendency to be so-called "lopsided". Namely, in pairs of galaxies (like Andromeda and the Milky Way) the satellites are more likely to inhabit the region in between the pair, rather than on opposing sides. Although recent studies found a similar set up when comparing pairs of galaxies in $Λ$CDM simulations indicating that such a set up is not inconsistent with $Λ$CDM, the origin has yet to be explained. Here we examine the origin of such lopsided setups by first identifying such distributions in pairs of galaxies in numerical cosmological simulations, and then tracking back the orbital trajectories of satellites (which at $z=0$ display the effect). We report two main results: first, the lopsided distribution was stronger in the past and weakens towards $z=0$. Second, the weakening of the signal is due to the interaction of satellite galaxies with the pair. Finally, we show that the $z=0$ signal is driven primarily by satellites that are on first approach, who have yet to experience a "flyby". This suggests that the signal seen in the observations is also dominated by dynamically young accretion events.

astro-ph.GA↗