arXiv subjects

Weiwei Zhu

Publications and source records attributed to Weiwei Zhu.

101 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Simultaneous Observation of Topological Edge State and Exceptional Point in an Open and Non-Hermitian System

This paper reports on the experimental observation of topologically protected edge state and exceptional point in an open and Non-Hermitian system. While the theoretical underpinning is generic to wave physics, the simulations and experiments are performed for an acoustic system whose structure has non-trivial topological properties that can be characterized by the Chern number provided that a synthetic dimension is introduced. Unidirectional reectionless propagation, a hallmark of exceptional point, is unambiguously observed in both simulations and experiments.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Zak phase and band inversion in dimerized one-dimensional locally resonant metamaterials

Zak phase, which refers to the Berry's phase picked up by a particle moving across the Brillouin zone, characterizes the topological properties of Bloch bands in one-dimensional periodic system. Here the Zak phase in dimerized one-dimensional locally resonant metamaterials is investigated. It is found that there are some singular points in the bulk band across which the Bloch states contribute π to the Zak phase, whereas while in the rest of the band the contribution is nearly zero. These singular points associated with zero reflection are caused by two different mechanisms: the dimerization-independent anti-resonating of each branch, and the dimerization-dependent destructive interference in multiple backscattering. The structure undergoes a topological transition point in the band structure where the band inverts and the Zak phase, which is determined by the numbers of singular points in the bulk band, changes following a shift in dimerization parameter. Finally, the interface state between two dimerized metamaterial structures with different topological property in the first band gap is demonstrated experimentally. The quasi-one-dimensional configuration of the system allows one to explore topology-inspired new methods and applications in the sub-wavelength scale.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Generating electromagnetic modes with fine tunable orbital angular momentum by planar topological circuits

Metamaterials made of periodic arrangements of electric permittivity and magnetic permeability and arrays of resonators can provide optic properties unexperienced in conventional materials, such as negative refractive index which can be used to achieve superlensing and cloaking. Developing new simpler structures with richer electromagnetic (EM) properties and wider working frequency bands is highly demanded for fast light-based information transfer and information processing. In the present work, we propose theoretically that a honeycomb-structured LC circuit with short-range textures in inductance can generate a topological photonic state accompanied by inversion between p- and d-orbital like EM modes carrying optic orbital angular momenta (OAM). We realize experimentally the topological photonic state in planar microstrips, a sandwich structure of bottom metallic substrate, middle dielectric film and top metallic strips with hexagonal patterns in strip width, in microwave frequency. Measuring accurately the amplitude and phase of EM fields, we demonstrate explicitly that topological interfacial EM waves launched from a linearly polarized dipole source propagate in opposite directions according to the sign of OAM, with the relative weight of p- and d-orbital like EM modes tunable precisely by sweeping the frequency in the topological band gap, which can hardly be achieved in other photonic systems and condensed-matter systems. Achieving the topological photonic state in a simple and easy fabricable structure, the present work uncovers a new direction for generating and manipulating EM modes with rich internal degrees of freedom, which can be exploited for various applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2016

The NANOGrav Nine-year Data Set: Mass and Geometric Measurements of Binary Millisecond Pulsars

We analyze 24 binary radio pulsars in the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) nine-year data set. We make fourteen significant measurements of Shapiro delay, including new detections in four pulsar-binary systems (PSRs J0613$-$0200, J2017+0603, J2302+4442, and J2317+1439), and derive estimates of the binary-component masses and orbital inclination for these MSP-binary systems. We find a wide range of binary pulsar masses, with values as low as $m_{\rm p} = 1.18^{+0.10}_{-0.09}\text{M}_{\odot}$ for PSR J1918$-$0642 and as high as $m_{\rm p} = 1.928^{+0.017}_{-0.017}\text{M}_{\odot}$ for PSR J1614$-$2230 (both 68.3\% credibility). We make an improved measurement of the Shapiro timing delay in the PSR J1918$-$0642 and J2043+1711 systems, measuring the pulsar mass in the latter system to be $m_{\rm p} = 1.41^{+0.21}_{-0.18}\text{M}_{\odot}$ (68.3\% credibility) for the first time. We measure secular variations of one or more orbital elements in many systems, and use these measurements to further constrain our estimates of the pulsar and companion masses whenever possible. In particular, we used the observed Shapiro delay and periastron advance due to relativistic gravity in the PSR J1903+0327 system to derive a pulsar mass of $m_{\rm p} = 1.65^{+0.02}_{-0.02}\text{M}_{\odot}$ (68.3\% credibility). We discuss the implications that our mass measurements have on the overall neutron-star mass distribution, and on the "mass/orbital-period" correlation due to extended mass transfer.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

The NANOGrav Nine-year Data Set: Monitoring Interstellar Scattering Delays

We report on an effort to extract and monitor interstellar scintillation parameters in regular timing observations collected for the NANOGrav pulsar timing array. Scattering delays are measured by creating dynamic spectra for each pulsar and observing epoch of wide-band observations centered near 1500 MHz and carried out at the Green Bank Telescope and the Arecibo Observatory. The ~800-MHz wide frequency bands imply dramatic changes in scintillation bandwidth across the bandpass, and a stretching routine has been included to account for this scaling. For most of the 10 pulsars for which the scaling has been measured, the bandwidths scale with frequency less steeply than expected for a Kolmogorov medium. We find estimated scattering delay values that vary with time by up to an order of magnitude. The mean measured scattering delays are similar to previously published values and slightly higher than predicted by interstellar medium models. We investigate the possibility of increasing the timing precision by mitigating timing errors introduced by the scattering delays. For most of the pulsars, the uncertainty in the time of arrival of a single timing point is much larger than the maximum variation of the scattering delay, suggesting that diffractive scintillation remains only a negligible part of their noise budget.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

The NANOGrav Nine-year Data Set: Astrometric Measurements of 37 Millisecond Pulsars

Using the nine-year radio-pulsar timing data set from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), collected at Arecibo Observatory and the Green Bank Telescope, we have measured the positions, proper motions, and parallaxes for 37 millisecond pulsars. We report twelve significant parallax measurements and distance measurements, and eighteen lower limits on distance. We compare these measurements to distances predicted by the NE2001 interstellar electron density model and find them to be in general agreement. We use measured orbital-decay rates and spin-down rates to confirm two of the parallax distances and to place distance upper limits on other sources; these distance limits agree with the parallax distances with one exception, PSR J1024-0719, which we discuss at length. Using the proper motions of the 37 NANOGrav pulsars in combination with other published measurements, we calculate the velocity dispersion of the millisecond pulsar population in Galactocentric coordinates. We find the radial, azimuthal, and perpendicular dispersions to be 46, 40, and 24 km s-1, respectively, in a model that allows for high-velocity outliers; or 81, 58, and 62 km s-1 for the full population. These velocity dispersions are far smaller than those of the canonical pulsar population, and are similar to older Galactic disk populations. This suggests that millisecond pulsar velocities are largely attributable to their being an old population rather than being artifacts of their birth and evolution as neutron star binary systems. The components of these velocity dispersions follow similar proportions to other Galactic populations, suggesting that our results are not biased by selection effects.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2015

The NANOGrav Nine-year Data Set: Limits on the Isotropic Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background

We compute upper limits on the nanohertz-frequency isotropic stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB) using the 9-year data release from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration. We set upper limits for a GWB from supermassive black hole binaries under power law, broken power law, and free spectral coefficient GW spectrum models. We place a 95\% upper limit on the strain amplitude (at a frequency of yr$^{-1}$) in the power law model of $A_{\rm gw} < 1.5\times 10^{-15}$. For a broken power law model, we place priors on the strain amplitude derived from simulations of Sesana (2013) and McWilliams et al. (2014). We find that the data favor a broken power law to a pure power law with odds ratios of 22 and 2.2 to one for the McWilliams and Sesana prior models, respectively. The McWilliams model is essentially ruled out by the data, and the Sesana model is in tension with the data under the assumption of a pure power law. Using the broken power-law analysis we construct posterior distributions on environmental factors that drive the binary to the GW-driven regime including the stellar mass density for stellar-scattering, mass accretion rate for circumbinary disk interaction, and orbital eccentricity for eccentric binaries, marking the first time that the shape of the GWB spectrum has been used to make astrophysical inferences. We then place the most stringent limits so far on the energy density of relic GWs, $Ω_\mathrm{gw}(f)\,h^2 < 4.2 \times 10^{-10}$, yielding a limit on the Hubble parameter during inflation of $H_*=1.6\times10^{-2}~m_{Pl}$, where $m_{Pl}$ is the Planck mass. Our limit on the cosmic string GWB, $Ω_\mathrm{gw}(f)\, h^2 < 2.2 \times 10^{-10}$, translates to a conservative limit of $Gμ<3.3\times 10^{-8}$ - a factor of 4 better than the joint Planck and high-$l$ CMB data from other experiments.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2010

Searching for X-ray Variability in the Glitching Anomalous X-ray Pulsar 1E 1841-045 in Kes 73

Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) are now established to exhibit significant X-ray variability and be prolific glitchers, with some glitches being accompanied by large radiative changes. An open issue is whether AXP glitches are generically accompanied by radiative changes, relevant for understanding magnetar physical properties. Here we report on an analysis of archival X-ray data from the AXP 1E~1841$-$045, obtained between 1993 and 2007. This AXP, located in the center of SNR Kes~73, has exhibited three glitches between 2002 and 2007, as determined by {\it RXTE} monitoring since 1999. We have searched for evidence of phase-averaged flux variability that could be present if glitches in AXPs are usually accompanied by radiative changes. We find no evidence for glitch-correlated flux changes from this source, arguing that such behavior is not generic to AXPs.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2009

XMM-Newton X-ray Detection of the High Magnetic Field Radio Pulsar PSR B1916+14

Using observations made with the XMM-Newton Observatory, we report the first X-ray detection of the high magnetic field radio pulsar PSR B1916+14. We show that the X-ray spectrum of the pulsar can be well fitted with an absorbed blackbody with temperature in the range of 0.08-0.23 keV, or a neutron star hydrogen atmosphere model with best-fit effective temperature of $\sim$0.10 keV, higher than expected from fast cooling models. The origin of the likely thermal emission is not well constrained by our short observation and is consistent with initial cooling or return-current heating. We found no pulsations in these data and set a 1$σ$ upper limit on the pulsed fraction in the 0.1--2 keV band of $\sim$0.7. Implications of these results for our understanding of the different observational properties of isolated neutron stars are discussed.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2009

The Long-term Radiative Evolution of Anomalous X-ray Pulsar 1E 2259+586 after its 2002 Outburst

We present an analysis of five X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM) observations of the anomalous X-ray pulsar (AXP) 1E 2259+586 taken in 2004 and 2005 during its relaxation following its 2002 outburst. We compare these data with those of five previous XMM observations taken in 2002 and 2003, and find the observed flux decay is well described by a power-law of index -0.69+/-0.03. As of mid-2005, the source may still have been brighter than preoutburst, and was certainly hotter. We find a strong correlation between hardness and flux, as seen in other AXP outbursts. We discuss the implications of these results for the magnetar model.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2004

Quark clusters in quark stars and possible astrophysical implications

A quark-cluster state, rather than the color-super-conductivity state, may appear in matter with low-temperature but high density, since the phase transition of chiral symmetry broken and that of color-confinement could not occur imultaneously. Such quark clusters might be stable in strange quark matter. Quark stars would have temperatures to be low enough to freeze by residual color interaction between the clusters, and become then solid ones.The charge numbers and the sizes of quark clusters, as well as the residual interactions in-between are investigated. The solid state properties of quark stars are constrained by observations.

astro-ph↗