arXiv subjects

Yi-Zhong Fan

Publications and source records attributed to Yi-Zhong Fan.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Quasinormal-modes of the Kerr-Newman black hole: GW150914 and fundamental physics implications

We develop an analytical ringdown waveform model, including both the fundamental and the overtone quasinormal modes, for charged black holes and show that it is precise enough to analyze current gravitational wave data. Applying this waveform model to GW150914, the charge to mass ratio of the remnant black hole ($λ_f$) has been constrained with the sole ringdown gravitational wave data for the first time and the $90\%$ upper limit is $λ_f\leq 0.38$. Correspondingly, the deviation parameter of the scalar-tensor vector gravity ($α_{\rm s}$) is limited to be $α_{\rm s}\leq 0.17$. Our approach can be directly applied to other binary black hole mergers with loud ringdown radiation.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Black Hole Gravitational Potential Enhanced Fallback Accretion onto the Nascent Lighter Compact Object: Tentative Evidence in the O3 Run Data of LIGO/Virgo

In a binary system, the gravitational potential of the primary black hole may play an important role in enhancing the fallback accretion onto the lighter compact object newly formed in the second supernova explosion. As a result, the final masses of the binary compact objects would be correlated, as suggested recently by Safarzadeh \& Wysocki. In this work, we analyze the mass distribution of four gravitational-wave events, which are characterized by both a small mass ratio and a low mass ($\leq 5M_\odot$) of the light component, and find tentative evidence for a mass correlation among the objects. To evaluate the feasibility of testing such a hypothesis with upcoming observations, we carry out simulations with a mock population and perform Bayesian hierarchical inference for the mass distribution. We find that with dozens of low mass ratio events, whether there exists correlation in the component mass distributions or not can be robustly tested and the correlation, if it exists, can be well determined.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

A GeV-TeV particle component and the barrier of cosmic-ray sea in the Central Molecular Zone

Cosmic rays are important probe of a number of fundamental physical problems such as the acceleration of high and very high energy particles in extreme astrophysical environments. The Galactic center is widely anticipated to be an important cosmic-ray source and the observations of some Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes did successfully reveal a component of TeV-PeV cosmic rays in the vicinity of the Galactic center. Here we report the identification of GeV-TeV cosmic rays in the central molecular zone with the $γ$-ray observations of the Fermi Large Area Telescope, whose spectrum and spatial gradient are consistent with that measured by the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes but the corresponding cosmic-ray energy density is substantially lower than the so-called cosmic-ray sea component, suggesting the presence of a high energy particle accelerator at the Galactic center and the existence of a barrier that can effectively suppress the penetration of the particles from the cosmic-ray sea to the central molecular zone.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Optimal gamma-ray selections for monochromatic line searches with DAMPE

The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a space high-energy cosmic-ray detector covering a wide energy band with a high energy resolution. One of the key scientific goals of DAMPE is to carry out indirect detection of dark matter by searching for high-energy gamma-ray line structure. To promote the sensitivity of gamma-ray line search with DAMPE, it is crucial to improve the acceptance and energy resolution of gamma-ray photons. In this paper, we quantitatively prove that the photon sample with the largest ratio of acceptance to energy resolution is optimal for line search. We therefore develop a line-search sample specifically optimized for the line search. Meanwhile, in order to increase the statistics, we also selected the so called BGO-only photons that convert into $e^+e^-$ pairs only in the BGO calorimeter. The standard, the line-search, and the BGO-only photon samples are then tested for line search individually and collectively. The results show that a significantly improved limit could be obtained from an appropriate combination of the date sets, and the increase is about 20\% for the highest case compared with using the standard sample only.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2021

Effect of axion-like particles on the spectrum of the extragalactic gamma-ray background

Axion-like particles (ALPs) provide a feasible explanation for the observed lower TeV opacity of the Universe. If the anomaly TeV transparency is caused by ALPs, then the fluxes of distant extragalactic sources will be enhanced at photon energies beyond TeV, resulting in an enhancement of the observed extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGB) spectrum. In this work, we have investigated the ALP modulation on the EGB spectrum at TeV energies. Our results show that in the most optimistic case, the existence of ALPs can cause the EGB spectrum to greatly deviate from the prediction of a pure extragalactic-background-light (EBL) absorption scenario. The deviation occurs at approximately $\gtrsim$1 TeV, and the current EGB measurements by Fermi-LAT cannot identify such an effect. We also find that most of the sensitive ALP parameters have been ruled out by existing constraints, leaving only a small region of unrestricted parameters that can be probed using the EGB effect investigated in this work. Observations from forthcoming very-high-energy instruments like LHAASO and CTA may be beneficial for the study of this effect.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Population properties of neutron stars in the coalescing compact binaries

We perform a hierarchical Bayesian inference to investigate the population properties of the coalescing compact binaries involving at least one neutron star (NS). With the current observation data, we can not rule out either of the Double Gaussian, Single Gaussian and Uniform NS mass distribution models, although the mass distribution of the Galactic NSs is slightly preferred by the gravitational wave (GW) observations. The mass distribution of black holes (BHs) in the neutron star-black hole (NSBH) population is found to be similar to that for the Galactic X-ray binaries. Additionally, the ratio of the merger rate densities between NSBHs and BNSs is estimated to be about 3 : 7. The spin properties of the binaries, though constrained relatively poor, play nontrivial role in reconstructing the mass distribution of NSs and BHs. We find that a perfectly aligned spin distribution can be ruled out, while a purely isotropic distribution of spin orientation is still allowed.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Mass and effective spin distributions of binary black hole events: Evidence for a population of hierarchical black hole mergers in active galactic nuclei disks

The origins of the coalescing binary black holes (BBHs) detected by the advanced LIGO/Virgo are still in debate and clues may present in the mass and effective spin ($χ_{\rm eff}$) distributions of these merger events. Here we analyze the GWTC-1 and GWTC-2.1 BBH events, and find evidence for a primary mass dependent $χ_{\rm eff}$ distribution. Below (above) the mass of $\sim 50M_\odot$, a nearly zero (relatively high) effective spin is typical. In the joint analysis of the primary mass and $χ_{\rm eff}$ distributions, we identify a sub-population of BBHs characterized by both a bump-like primary mass distribution extending to $\sim 100M_\odot$ and a relatively high $χ_{\rm eff}\sim 0.3$, consistent with the expectation for the $\geq 2$g merger events in the disks of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Our results suggest that the merger rate in AGN disks is around $1.7~{\rm Gpc}^{-3}{\rm yr}^{-1}$.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Search for gamma-ray emission from the 12 nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies with 12 years of Fermi-LAT data

Previously, we have shown in Li et al. (2018) that very weak $γ$-ray excesses ($\sim 2σ$) appear in some Milky Way dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs, including candidates) and the combination analysis of 12 nearby dSphs yields a local significance of $>4σ$. In this work, we adopt a longer data set (i.e., the 12 years of Fermi-LAT data), the latest Fermi-LAT software as well as background models to update the searches of $γ$-ray emission from these sources. Very weak $γ$-ray excesses ($>$ 2 $σ$) are found in the directions of three dSphs, including Reticulum II, Bootes II and Willman 1. In the direction of Reticulum II, the peak TS value of the excess reaches $\sim$11. However, different from the previous analysis with the 9 years of Fermi-LAT data, now the location of the gamma-ray emission is significantly away from the center of Reticulum II because of the enhancement of "offset" $γ$-rays above 10 GeV since 2017. The detected weak excess is likely due to the contamination of an astrophysical $γ$-ray source with a TS value of $\sim 22$, irrelevant to the dark matter inside Reticulum II. The possible excesses in the directions of Bootes II and Willman 1 are weaker with lower peak TS values ($\sim 7$). If interpreted as annihilation of dark matter particles into $τ^+τ^-$, the dark mass mass of $m_χ\sim 14$ GeV and $\sim 80$ GeV are found for Bootes II and Willman 1, respectively. Much more data are needed to clarify whether these two potential signals are real and then reveal their origins.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Constraints on the phase transition and nuclear symmetry parameters from PSR $\mathrm{J}0740+6620$ and multimessenger data of other neutron stars

Recently, the radius of neutron star (NS) PSR J0740+6620 was measured by Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) and an updated measurement of neutron skin thickness of ${}^{208}$Pb ($R_{\rm skin}^{208}$) was reported by the PREX-II experiment. These new measurements can help us better understand the unknown equation of state (EOS) of dense matter. In this work, we adopt a hybrid parameterization method, which incorporates the nuclear empirical parameterization and some widely used phenomenological parameterizations, to analyze the results of nuclear experiments and astrophysical observations. With the joint Bayesian analysis of GW170817, PSR J0030+0451, and PSR J0740+6620, the parameters that characterize the ultradense matter EOS are constrained. We find that the slope parameter $L$ is approximately constrained to $70_{-18}^{+21}$ MeV, which predicts $R_{\rm skin}^{208}=0.204^{+0.030}_{-0.026}\,{\rm fm}$ by using the universal relation between $R_{\rm skin}^{208}$ and $L$. The bulk properties of canonical $1.4\,M_\odot$ NS (e.g., $R_{1.4}$ and $Λ_{1.4}$) as well as the pressure ($P_{2ρ_{\rm sat}}$) at two times the nuclear saturation density are well constrained by the data; i.e., $R_{1.4}$, $Λ_{1.4}$, and $P_{2ρ_{\rm sat}}$ are approximately constrained to $12.3\pm0.7$ km, $330_{-100}^{+140}$, and $4.1_{-1.2}^{+1.5}\times10^{34}\,{\rm dyn\,cm^{-2}}$, respectively. Besides, we find that the Bayes evidences of the hybrid star and normal NS assumptions are comparable, which indicates that current observation data are compatible with quarkyonic matter existing in the core of massive star. Finally, in the case of normal NS assumption, we obtain a constraint for the maximum mass of nonrotating NS $M_{\rm TOV}=2.30^{+0.30}_{-0.18}$ $M_\odot$. All of the uncertainties reported above are for 68.3% credible levels.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2021

A kilonova from an ultra-quick merger of a neutron star binary

GRB 060505 was the first well-known nearby (at redshift 0.089) "hybrid" gamma-ray burst that has a duration longer than 2 seconds but without the association of a supernova down to very stringent limits. The prompt $γ-$ray flash lasting $\sim 4$ sec could consist of an intrinsic short burst and its tail emission, but the sizable temporal lag ($\sim 0.35$ sec) as well as the environment properties led to the widely-accepted classification of a long duration gamma-ray burst originated from the collapse of a massive star. Here for the $ first$ time we report the convincing evidence for a thermal-like optical radiation component in the spectral energy distribution of the early afterglow emission. In comparison to AT2017gfo, the thermal radiation is $\sim 2$ times brighter and the temperature is comparable at similar epochs. The optical decline is much quicker than that in X-rays, which is also at odds with the fireball afterglow model but quite natural for the presence of a blue kilonova. Our finding reveals a neutron star merger origin of the hybrid GRB 060505 and strongly supports the theoretical speculation that some binary neutron stars can merge ultra-quickly (within $\sim 1$ Myr) after their formation when the surrounding region is still highly star-forming and the metallicity remains low. Gravitational wave and electromagnetic jointed observations are expected to confirm such scenarios in the near future.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

GRB 200716C: Evidence for a Short Burst Being Lensed

A tiny fraction of observed gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) may be lensed. The time delays induced by the gravitational lensing are milliseconds to seconds if the point lenses are intermediate-mass black holes. The prompt emission of the lensed GRBs, in principle, should have repeated pulses with identical light curves and spectra but different fluxes and slightly offset positions. In this work, we search for such candidates within the GRBs detected by Fermi/GBM, Swift/BAT, and HXMT/HE and report the identification of an attractive event GRB 200716C that consists of two pulses. Both the autocorrelation analysis and the Bayesian inference of the prompt emission light curve are in favor of the gravitational lensing scenario. Moreover, the spectral properties of the two pulses are rather similar and follow the so-called Amati relation of short GRBs rather than long duration bursts. The measured flux ratios between the two pulses are nearly constant in all channels, as expected from gravitational lensing. We therefore suggest that the long duration burst GRB 200716C was a short event being lensed. The redshifted mass of the lens was estimated to be $4.25^{+2.46}_{-1.36}$ $\times$ $10^5$ $M_{\odot}$ (90$\%$ credibility). If correct, this could point towards the existence of an intermediate-mass black hole along the line of sight of GRB 200716C.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Constrains on the electric charges of the binary black holes with GWTC-1 events

Testing black hole's charged property is a fascinating topic in modified gravity and black hole astrophysics. In the first Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-1), ten binary black hole merger events have been formally reported, and these gravitational wave signals have significantly enhanced our understanding of the black hole. In this paper, we try to constrain the amount of electric charge with the parameterized post-Einsteinian framework by treating the electric charge as a small perturbation in a Bayesian way. We find that the current limits in our work are consistent with the result of Fisher information matrix method in previous works. We also develop a waveform model considering a leading order charge effect for binary black hole inspiral.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Investigating the dark matter minispikes with the gamma-ray signal from the halo of M31

Recently, the evidence for gamma-ray emission has been found in the $Fermi$-LAT observation for the outer halo of Andromeda galaxy (M31). The dark matter (DM) annihilation offers a possible explanation on the gamma-ray radiation. In this work, we focus on the dark matter annihilation within minispikes around intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with masses ranging from $100~\mathrm{M_\odot}$ to $10^6~\mathrm{M_\odot}$. When the thermal annihilation relic cross section $\left\langle σv \right\rangle = 3 \times 10^{-26}~\mathrm {cm} ^{3}\;\mathrm {s} ^{-1}$ is adopted, we conduct an investigation on the population of IMBHs in the spherical halo area of M31. We find that there could be more than 65 IMBHs with masses of $ 100~ \mathrm{M_\odot}$ surrounded by the DM minispikes as the remnants of Population III stars in the M31 spherical halo, and it is almost impossible for the existence of minspikes around IMBHs with masses above $10^4~ \mathrm{M_\odot}$ which could be formed by the collapse of primordial cold gas, for both dark matter annihilation channels $b\bar{b}$ and $τ^{+}τ^{-}$. The properties of dark matter have been further explored with the simulation of these two scenarios for IMBHs formation.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Mirror Dark Matter and Electronic Recoil Events in XENON1T

Recently, the XENON1T experiment has reported the possible detection of an excess in the electronic recoil spectrum. Such an excess may indicate the presence of new physics. In this work, we suggest that the scattering of mirror electrons with ordinary electrons through photon$-$mirror photon kinetic mixing with parameter $ε\sim 10^{-12}(n_{\rm e'}/0.2{\rm cm^{-3}})^{-1/2}({v_{\rm c}^0/5\times 10^{9}~{\rm cm~s^{-1}}})^{1/2}$ may account for the excess electronic recoil events in XENON1T, where $n_{\rm e'}$ is the density of mirror electron and $v_{\rm c}^0$ is the cutoff velocity of the mirror electron arriving at the earth. Interestingly, this parameter to interpret the excess of XENON1T electronic recoil spectrum are consistent with the constrains of Darkside50.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Search for line-like and box-shaped spectral features from nearby galaxy clusters with 11.4 years of Fermi LAT data

Sharp spectral structures in the $γ$-ray band are an important dark matter (DM) signature. Previously, a tentative line feature at $\sim 43~{\rm GeV}$ is reported in 16 nearby galaxy clusters (GCls) with 7.1 years of Fermi-LAT data, whose TS value is $\sim 16.7$. In this work, we search for line signals and box-shaped structures using the stacked data from those 16 GCls with 11.4-yr P8R3 data. There is still a hint at $\sim {42~\rm GeV}$, dominated by the radiation of Virgo and Ophiuchus clusters. Though the TS value was high up to 21.2 in October 2016, currently it has dropped to 13.1. Moreover, the TS value at $\sim {42~\rm GeV}$ decreases to 2.4 when the EDISP2 data are excluded from the analysis. Consequently, we do not find any statistically significant line-like signal and then set up the 95% confidence level upper limits on the thermally averaged cross section of DM annihilating into double photons. The same line search has been carried out for an alternative GCl sample from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey but no any evidence has been found. We also search for box-shaped features in those 16 baseline GCls. No signal is found as well and the corresponding upper limits on the annihilation cross section are given.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

A common origin of muon g-2 anomaly, Galaxy Center GeV excess and AMS-02 anti-proton excess in the NMSSM

The supersymmetric model is one of the most attractive extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. In light of the most recently reported anomaly of the muon g-2 measurement by the FermiLab E989 experiment, and the excesses of gamma rays at the Galactic center observed by Fermi-LAT space telescope, as well as the antiproton excess observed by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, we propose to account for all these anomalies or excesses in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. Considering various experimental constraints including the Higgs mass, B-physics, collider data, dark matter relic density and direct detections, we find that a $\sim 60$ GeV bino-like neutralino is able to successfully explain all these observations. Our scenario can be sensitively probed by future direct detection experiments.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Bayesian nonparametric inference of neutron star equation of state via neural network

We develop a new nonparametric method to reconstruct the Equation of State (EoS) of Neutron Star with multimessenger data. As an universal function approximator, the Feed-Forward Neural Network (FFNN) with one hidden layer and a sigmoidal activation function can approximately fit any continuous function. Thus we are able to implement the nonparametric FFNN representation of the EoSs. This new representation is validated by its capabilities of fitting the theoretical EoSs and recovering the injected parameters. Then we adopt this nonparametric method to analyze the real data, including mass-tidal deformability measurement from the Binary Neutron Star (BNS) merger Gravitational Wave (GW) event GW170817 and mass-radius measurement of PSR J0030+0451 by {\it NICER}. We take the publicly available samples to construct the likelihood and use the nested sampling to obtain the posteriors of the parameters of FFNN according to the Bayesian theorem, which in turn can be translated to the posteriors of EoS parameters. Combining all these data, for a canonical 1.4 $M_\odot$ neutron star, we get the radius $R_{1.4}=11.83^{+1.25}_{-1.08}$ km and the tidal deformability $Λ_{1.4} = 323^{+334}_{-165}$ (90\% confidence interval).Furthermore, we find that in the high density region ($\geq 3ρ_{\rm sat}$), the 90\% lower limits of the $c_{\rm s}^2/c^2$ ($c_{\rm s}$ is the sound speed and $c$ is the velocity of light in the vacuum) are above $1/3$, which means that the so-called conformal limit (i.e., $c_{\rm s}^2/c^2<1/3$) is not always valid in the neutron stars.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Tight constraints on Einstein-dilation-Gauss-Bonnet gravity from GW190412 and GW190814

Gravitational-wave (GW) data can be used to test general relativity in the highly nonlinear and strong field regime. Modified gravity theories such as Einstein-dilation-Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons can be tested with the additional GW signals detected in the first half of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO/Virgo. Specifically, we analyze gravitational-wave data of GW190412 and GW190814 to place constraints on the parameters of these two theories. Our results indicate that dynamical Chern-Simons gravity remains unconstrained. For Einstein-dilation-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, we find $\sqrt{α_{\rm EdGB}}\lesssim 0.40\,\rm km$ when considering GW190814 data, assuming it is a black hole binary. Such a constraint is improved by a factor of approximately $10$ in comparison to that set by the first Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog events.

gr-qc↗