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Yan-Ke Tang

Publications and source records attributed to Yan-Ke Tang.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Magnetar-powered long gamma-ray bursts and connection to superluminous supernovae and fast radio bursts

Based on X-ray afterglow observations from the Swift satellite, we construct a sample of 169 long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) exhibiting the canonical magnetar plateau signature, i.e., a plateau followed by a $t^{-2}$ decay. We derive the plateau luminosity $L_0$ and break time $t_b$ for each burst by performing Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) fits to the light curves, and estimate pseudo-redshifts for bursts lacking known redshifts via the Amati relation. The fundamental magnetar parameters are subsequently inferred: the surface polar magnetic field strength $B_p \in [0.39,\ 23.08] \times 10^{15}$G and the initial spin period $P_0 \in [0.95,\ 13.79]$ms. Statistical analysis shows that both the known-redshift subsample and the full sample follow the Dainotti correlation between $L_0$ and $t_b$ with a slope close to $-1$, supporting a constant energy injection rate during the plateau phase. Furthermore, we identify a significant correlation between $B_p$ and $P_0$: $B_p \propto P_0^{0.83 \pm 0.09}$ for the full sample and $B_p \propto P_0^{0.80 \pm 0.16}$ for the known-redshift subsample, with both slopes consistent within uncertainties. Compared to magnetars powering superluminous supernovae (SLSNe), GRB magnetars possess systematically stronger magnetic fields (by approximately one order of magnitude), suggesting fundamental differences in their progenitor systems or collapse conditions; while their magnetic field strengths show no significant difference from those powering fast radio bursts (FRBs), suggesting a possible common evolutionary pathway. This study provides a physics-motivated, model-consistent sample of magnetar-candidate GRBs, offering a robust foundation for statistical investigations within the magnetar central engine model and placing new observational constraints on the birth properties of these extreme compact objects.

astro-ph.HE

Photometric and Spectroscopic Studies of Four Low Mass-ratio Contact Binaries with Period Longer than 0.7 days

Photometric and spectroscopic studies of four long-period low mass-ratio contact binaries, V0508 And, V0844 Aur, V0699 Cep, and NSVS 6259046, are performed. V0508 And, V0844 Aur, and V0699 Cep are found to be A-type low-mass-ratio medium-contact binaries, while NSVS 6259046 is found to be an A-type deep-contact binary. O - C analysis indicates no long-term variation in V0844 Aur. However, the orbital periods of the other three targets are increasing. We conclude that V0844 Aur, V0699 Cep and NSVS 6259046 are magnetically active, as evidenced by the presence and variable nature of the O'Connell effect in these systems. By analyzing the LAMOST spectroscopic data, we find out that NSVS 6259046 and V0508 And exhibit no chromospheric activity on the dates the LAMOST spectra were taken, while the low signal-to-noise ratio in LAMOST data for V0844 Aur prevents us from obtaining reliable results. We discover that V0699 Cep is an early-type contact binary with chromospheric activity. Their initial masses and ages are calculated. All four systems are determined to be currently stable. We collect 217 contact binaries with both spectroscopic and photometric observations, and compare the differences between short-period and long-period systems in terms of mass-luminosity relation and mass-radius relation, using 0.7 days as the period boundary.

astro-ph.SR

Constraining the circumburst medium of gamma-ray bursts with X-ray afterglows

Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are considered to be originated from core collapse of massive stars. It is believed that the afterglow property is determined by the density of the material in the surrounding interstellar medium. Therefore, the circumburst density can be used to distinguish between an interstellar wind $n(R) \propto R^{\rm -k}$, and a constant density medium (ISM), $n(R) = const$. Previous studies with different afterglow samples, show that the circumburst medium of GRBs is neither simply supported by an interstellar wind, nor completely favored by an ISM. In this work, our new sample is consisted of 39 GRBs with smoothly onset bump-like features in early X-ray afterglows, in which 20 GRBs have the redshift measurements. By using a smooth broken power law function to fit the bumps of X-ray light curves, we derive the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) as the feature width ($ω$), as well as the rise and decay time scales of the bumps ($T_{\rm r}$ and $T_{\rm d}$). The correlations between the timescales of X-ray bumps are similar to those found previously in the optical afterglows. Based on the fireball forward shock (FS) model of the thin shell case, we obtain the distribution of the electron spectral index $p$, and further constrain the medium density distribution index $k$. The new inferred $k$ is found to be concentrated at 1.0, with a range from 0.2 to 1.8. This finding is consistent with previous studies. The conclusion of our detailed investigation for X-ray afterglows suggests that the ambient medium of the selected GRBs is not homogeneous, i.e., neither ISM nor the typical interstellar wind.

astro-ph.HE

Stellar populations of galaxies in the LAMOST spectral survey

We firstly derive the stellar population properties: age and metallicity for $\sim$ 43,000 low redshift galaxies in the seventh data release (DR7) of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) survey, which have no spectroscopic observations in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey(SDSS). We employ a fitting procedure based on the small-scale features of galaxy spectra so as to avoid possible biases from the uncertain flux calibration of the LAMOST spectroscopy. We show that our algorithm can successfully recover the average age and metallicity of the stellar populations of galaxies down to signal-to-noise$\geq$5 through testing on both mock galaxies and real galaxies comprising LAMOST and their SDSS counterparts. We provide a catalogue of the age and metallicity for $\sim$ 43,000 LAMOST galaxies online. As a demonstration of the scientific application of this catalogue, we present the Holmberg effect on both age and metallicity of a sample of galaxies in galaxy pairs.

astro-ph.GA

Study on Outliers in the Big Stellar Spectral Dataset of the Fifth Data Release (DR5) of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST)

To study the quality of stellar spectra of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) and the correctness of the corresponding stellar parameters derived by the LASP (LAMOST Stellar Parameter Pipeline), the outlier analysis method is applied to the archived AFGK stars in the fifth data release (DR5) of LAMOST. The outlier factor is defined in order to sort more than 3 million stellar spectra selected from the DR5 Stellar Parameter catalog. We propose an improved Local Outlier Factor (LOF) method based on Principal Component Analysis and Monte Carlo to enable the computation of the LOF rankings for randomly picked sub-samples that are computed in parallel by multiple computers, and finally to obtain the outlier ranking of each spectrum in the entire dataset. Totally 3,627 most outlier ranked spectra, around one-thousandth of all spectra, are selected and clustered into 10 groups, and the parameter density distribution of them conforms to the parameter distribution of LAMOST DR5, which suggests that in the whole parameter space the probability of bad spectra is uniformly distributed. By cross-matching the 3,627 spectra with APOGEE, we obtain 122 common ones. The published parameters calculated from LASP agree with APOGEE for the 122 spectra although there are bad pixels or bad flux calibrations in them. On the other hand, some outlier spectra show strong nebular contamination warning the corresponding parameters should be carefully used. A catalog and a spectral atlas of all the 3,627 outliers can be found at the link http://paperdata.china-vo.org/LY_paper/dr5Outlier/dr5Outlier_resource.zip.

astro-ph.SR

Direct reconstruction of dynamical dark energy from observational Hubble parameter data

Reconstructing the evolution history of the dark energy equation of state parameter $w(z)$ directly from observational data is highly valuable in cosmology, since it contains substantial clues in understanding the nature of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Many works have focused on reconstructing $w(z)$ using Type Ia supernova data, however, only a few studies pay attention to Hubble parameter data. In the present work, we explore the merit of Hubble parameter data and make an attempt to reconstruct $w(z)$ from them through the principle component analysis approach. We find that current Hubble parameter data perform well in reconstructing $w(z)$; though, when compared to supernova data, the data are scant and their quality is worse. Both $Λ$CDM and evolving $w(z)$ models can be constrained within $10\%$ at redshifts $z \lesssim 1.5$ and even $5\%$ at redshifts 0.1 $\lesssim$ z $\lesssim$ 1 by using simulated $H(z)$ data of observational quality.

astro-ph.CO

Modeling $ε$ Eridani and asteroseismic tests of element diffusion

Taking into account the helium and metal diffusion, we explore the possible evolutionary status and perform seismic analysis of MOST target: the star $ε$ Eridani. We adopt the different input parameters to construct the models by fitting the available observational constraints: e.g., $T_{eff}$, $L$, $R$, $[Fe/H]$. From computation, we obtain the average large spacings of $ε$ Eridani about $194\pm 1 μ$Hz. The age of the diffused models has been found to be about 1 Gyr, which is younger than one determined previously by models without diffusion. We found that the effect of pure helium diffusion on the internal structure of the young low-mass star is slight, but the metal diffusion influence is obvious. The metal diffusion leads the models to have much higher temperature in the radiation interior, correspondingly the higher sound speed in the interior of the model, thereby the larger frequency and spacings.

astro-ph