arXiv subjects

Zhen Yuan

Publications and source records attributed to Zhen Yuan.

68 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Neutron Star Mergers as the Main Source of R-process: Natal Kicks And Inside-Out Evolution to The Rescue

Binary neutron star mergers (BNSMs) is currently the most promising source of \textsl{r}-process thanks to the detection of GW170817. The estimated occurring frequency and the amount of mass ejected per merger indicate that BNSMs by itself can account for all the \textsl{r}-process enrichment in the Galaxy. However, the decreasing trend of [Eu/Fe] vs [Fe/H] of disk stars for [Fe/H]$\gtrsim -1$ in the solar neighborhood is inconsistent with the flat trend expected from BNSMs with a standard delay time distribution (DTD) $\propto t^{-1}$. This has led to the suggestion that either additional sources or modification to the DTD of BNSMs is required to match the observations. We investigate the effects of natal kicks received during the birth of neutron star binaries on the chemical evolution of \textsl{r}-process element Eu in the Milky Way by combining the results from the galactic dynamics code \textsc{galpy} with a one-zone Galactic chemical evolution model \textsc{omega}. We show that when key inputs from simulations of the inside-out disk evolution are combined with natal kicks, BNSMs can naturally reproduce the observed decreasing trend of [Eu/Fe] with [Fe/H] in the solar neighborhood without the need for modification to the DTD or additional \textsl{r}-process sources.

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arXiv2020

The S2 Stream: the shreds of a primitive dwarf galaxy

The S2 stream is a kinematically cold stream that is plunging downwards through the Galactic disc. It may be part of a hotter and more diffuse structure called the Helmi stream. We present a multi-instrument chemical analysis of the stars in the metal-poor S2 stream using both high- and low-resolution spectroscopy, complemented with a re-analysis of the archival data to give a total sample of 62 S2 members. Our high-resolution program provides alpha-elements (C, Mg, Si, Ca and Ti), iron-peak elements (V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni), n-capture process elements (Sr, Ba) and other elements such as Li, Na, Al, and Sc for a subsample of S2 objects. We report coherent abundance patterns over a large metallicity spread (~1 dex) confirming that the S2 stream was produced by a disrupted dwarf galaxy. The combination of S2's $α$-elements displays a mildly decreasing trend with increasing metallicity which can be tentatively interpreted as a ``knee'' at [Fe/H]<-2. At the low metallicity end, the n-capture elements in S2 may be dominated by r-process production however several stars are Ba-enhanced, but unusually poor in Sr. Moreover, some of the low-[Fe/H] stars appear to be carbon-enhanced. We interpret the observed abundance patterns with the help of chemical evolution models that demonstrate the need for modest star-formation efficiency and low wind efficiency confirming that the progenitor of S2 was a primitive dwarf galaxy.

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arXiv2020

Deep Learning for Automatic Spleen Length Measurement in Sickle Cell Disease Patients

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is one of the most common genetic diseases in the world. Splenomegaly (abnormal enlargement of the spleen) is frequent among children with SCD. If left untreated, splenomegaly can be life-threatening. The current workflow to measure spleen size includes palpation, possibly followed by manual length measurement in 2D ultrasound imaging. However, this manual measurement is dependent on operator expertise and is subject to intra- and inter-observer variability. We investigate the use of deep learning to perform automatic estimation of spleen length from ultrasound images. We investigate two types of approach, one segmentation-based and one based on direct length estimation, and compare the results against measurements made by human experts. Our best model (segmentation-based) achieved a percentage length error of 7.42%, which is approaching the level of inter-observer variability (5.47%-6.34%). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to measure spleen size in a fully automated way from ultrasound images.

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arXiv2020

A Low-Mass Stellar-Debris Stream Associated with a Globular Cluster Pair in the Halo

There are expected to be physical relationships between the globular clusters (GCs) and stellar substructures in the Milky Way, not all of which have yet been found. We search for such substructures from a combined halo sample of SDSS blue horizontal-branch and SDSS+LAMOST RR Lyrae stars, cross-matched with astrometric information from $Gaia$ DR2. This is a sample of old stars which are also excellent tracers of structures, ideal for searching for ancient relics in the outer stellar halo. By applying the neural-network-based method StarGO to the full 4D dynamical space of our sample, we rediscover the Sagittarius Stream, and find the debris of the $Gaia$-Enceladus-Sausage (GES) and the Sequoia events in the outer halo, as well as their linkages with several GCs. Most importantly, we find a new, low-mass, debris stream associated with a pair of GCs (NGC 5024 and NGC 5053), which we dub LMS-1. This stream has a very polar orbit, and occupies a region between 10 to 20 kpc from the Galactic center. NGC 5024 (M53), the more-massive of the associated GC pair, is very likely the nuclear star cluster of a now-disrupted dwarf galaxy progenitor, based on the results from N-body simulations.

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arXiv2020

The R-Process Alliance: The Peculiar Chemical Abundance Pattern of RAVE J183013.5-455510

We report on the spectroscopic analysis of RAVE J183013.5-455510, an extremely metal-poor star, highly enhanced in CNO, and with discernible contributions from the rapid neutron-capture process. There is no evidence of binarity for this object. At [Fe/H]=-3.57, this is one of the lowest metallicity stars currently observed, with 18 measured abundances of neutron-capture elements. The presence of Ba, La, and Ce abundances above the Solar System r-process predictions suggest that there must have been a non-standard source of r-process elements operating at such low metallicities. One plausible explanation is that this enhancement originates from material ejected at unusually fast velocities in a neutron star merger event. We also explore the possibility that the neutron-capture elements were produced during the evolution and explosion of a rotating massive star. In addition, based on comparisons with yields from zero-metallicity faint supernova, we speculate that RAVE J1830-4555 was formed from a gas cloud pre-enriched by both progenitor types. From analysis based on Gaia DR2 measurements, we show that this star has orbital properties similar to the Galactic metal-weak thick-disk stellar population.

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arXiv2019

Dynamical Relics of the Ancient Galactic Halo

We search for dynamical substructures in the LAMOST DR3 very metal-poor (VMP) star catalog. After cross-matching with Gaia DR2, there are 3300 VMP stars with available high-quality astrometric information that have halo-like kinematics. We apply a method based on self-organizing maps to find groups clustered in the 4D space of orbital energy and angular momentum. We identify 57 dynamically tagged groups, which we label DTG-1 to DTG-57. Most of them belong to existing substructures in the nearby halo, such as the $Gaia$ Sausage or Sequoia. The stream identified by Helmi et al. is recovered, but the two disjoint portions of the substructure have distinct dynamical properties. The very retrograde substructure Rg5 found previously by Myeong et al. is also retrieved. We report 6 new DTGs with highly retrograde orbits, 2 with very prograde orbits, and 12 with polar orbits. By mapping other datasets (APOGEE halo stars, and catalogs of r-process-enhanced and CEMP stars) onto the trained neuron map, we can associate stars with detailed chemical abundances to the DTGs, and look for associations with chemically peculiar stars. The highly eccentric $Gaia$ Sausage groups contain representatives both of debris from the satellite itself (which is $α$-poor) and the Splashed Disk, sent up into eccentric halo orbits from the encounter (and is $α$-rich). The new prograde substructures also appear to be associated with the Splashed Disk. The DTGs belonging to the $Gaia$ Sausage host two relatively metal-rich $r$-II stars and six CEMP stars in different sub-classes, consistent with the idea that the $Gaia$ Sausage progenitor is a massive dwarf galaxy. Rg5 is dynamically associated with two highly $r$-process-enhanced stars with [Fe/H] $\sim -$3. This finding indicates that its progenitor might be an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy that has experienced $r$-process enrichment from neutron star mergers.

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arXiv2019

Revealing the Complicated Story of the Cetus Stream with StarGO

We use a novel cluster identification tool StarGO to explore the metal poor ([Fe/H] $<$ -1.5) outer stellar halo (d $>$ 15 kpc) of the Milky Way using data from Gaia, LAMOST and SDSS. Our method is built using an unsupervised learning algorithm, a self-organizing map, which trains a 2-D neural network to learn the topological structures of a data set from an n-D input space. Using a 4-D space of angular momentum and orbital energy, we identify three distinct groups corresponding to the Sagittarius, Orphan, and Cetus Streams. For the first time we are able to discover a northern counterpart to the Cetus stream. We test the robustness of this new detection using mock data and find that the significance is more than 5-sigma. We also find that the existing southern counterpart bifurcates into two clumps with different radial velocities. By exploiting the visualization power of StarGO, we attach MW globular clusters to the same trained neural network. The Sagittarius stream is found to have five related clusters, confirming recent literature studies, and the Cetus stream has one associated cluster, NGC 5824. This latter association has previously been postulated, but can only now be truly confirmed thanks to the high-precision Gaia proper motions and large numbers of stellar spectra from LAMOST. The large metallicity dispersion of the stream indicates that the progenitor cannot be a globular cluster. Given the mean metallicity of the stream, we propose that the stream is the result of a merger of a low-mass dwarf galaxy that hosted a large nuclear star cluster (NGC 5824).

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arXiv2019

An initial overview of the extent and structure of recent star formation within the Serpens Molecular Cloud using Gaia Data Release 2

The dense clusters within the Serpens Molecular Cloud are among the most active regions of nearby star formation. In this paper, we use Gaia DR2 parallaxes and proper motions to statistically measure 1167 kinematic members of Serpens, few of which were previously identified, to evaluate the star formation history of the complex. The optical members of Serpens are concentrated in three distinct groups located at 380 to 480 pc; the densest clusters are still highly obscured by optically-thick dust and have few optical members. The total population of young stars and protostars in Serpens is at least 2000 stars, including past surveys that were most sensitive to protostars and disks, and may be far higher. Distances to dark clouds measured from deficits in star counts are consistent with the distances to the optical star clusters. The Serpens Molecular Cloud is seen in the foreground of the Aquila Rift, dark clouds located at 600 to 700 pc, and behind patchy extinction, here called the Serpens Cirrus, located at ~250 pc. Based on the lack of a distributed population of older stars, the star formation rate throughout the Serpens Molecular Cloud increased by at least a factor of 20 within the past ~5 Myr. The optically bright stars in Serpens Northeast are visible because their natal molecular cloud has been eroded and not because they were flung outwards from a central factory of star formation. The separation between subclusters of 20 to 100 pc and the absence of an older population leads to speculation that an external forcing was needed to trigger the active star formation.

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arXiv2019

Discovery of Tidal Tails in Disrupting Open Clusters: Coma Berenices and a Neighbor Stellar Group

We report the discovery of tidal structures around the intermediate-aged ($\sim$ 700--800~Myr), nearby ($\sim85$~pc) star cluster Coma Berenices. The spatial and kinematic grouping of stars is determined with the {\it Gaia} DR2 parallax and proper motion data, by a clustering analysis tool, \textsc{StarGO}, to map 5D parameters ($X, Y, Z$, $μ_α\cosδ, μ_δ$) onto a 2D neural network. A leading and a trailing tails, each with an extension of $\sim50$~pc are revealed for the first time around this disrupting star cluster. The cluster members, totaling to $\sim115^{+5}_{-3}\,\rm {M_\odot}$, are clearly mass segregated, and exhibit a flat mass function with $α\sim 0.79\pm0.16$, in the sense of $dN/dm \propto m^{-α}$, where $N$ is the number of member stars and $m$ is stellar mass, in the mass range of $m=0.25$--$2.51~{\rm M_\odot}$. Within the tidal radius of $\sim$6.9~pc, there are 77 member candidates with an average position, i.e., as the cluster center, of R.A.= 186.8110~deg, and decl.= 25.8112~deg, and an average distance of 85.8~pc. Additional 120 member candidates reside in the tidal structures, i.e., outnumbering those in the cluster core. The expansion of escaping members lead to an anisotropy in the velocity field of the tidal tails. Our analysis also serendipitously uncovers an adjacent stellar group, part of which has been cataloged in the literature. We identify 218 member candidates, 10 times more than previously known. This star group is some 65~pc away from, and $\sim400$~Myr younger than, Coma Ber, but is already at the final stage of disruption.

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arXiv2019

SDSS-IV MaNGA: Environmental dependence of the Mgb/ -sigma_* relation for nearby galaxies

We use a sample of ~3000 galaxies from the MaNGA MPL-7 internal data release to study the alpha abundance distribution within low-redshift galaxies. We use the Lick index ratio Mgb/ as an alpha abundance indicator to study relationships between the alpha abundance distribution and galaxy properties such as effective stellar velocity dispersion within 0.3 effective radii (sigma_*), galaxy environment, and dark matter halo formation time (z_f). We find that (1) all galaxies show a tight correlation between Mgb/ and sigma_*; (2) `old' (H_beta < 3) low-sigma_* galaxies in high local density environment and inner regions within galaxy groups are enhanced in Mgb/ , while `young' (H_beta>3) galaxies and high-mass galaxies show no or less environmental dependence; (3) `old' galaxies with high-z_f show enhanced Mgb/ over low- and medium-z_f; (4) Mgb/ gradients are close to zero and show dependence on sigma_* but no obvious dependence on the environment or z_f. Our study indicates that stellar velocity dispersion or galaxy mass is the main parameter driving the Mgb/ enhancement, although environments appear to have modest effects, particularly for low- and medium-mass galaxies.

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arXiv2018

StarGO: A New Method to Identify the Galactic Origins of Halo Stars

We develop a new method StarGO (Stars' Galactic Origin) to identify the galactic origins of halo stars using their kinematics. Our method is based on self-organizing map (SOM), which is one of the most popular unsupervised learning algorithms. StarGO combines SOM with a novel adaptive group identification algorithm with essentially no free parameters. In order to evaluate our model, we build a synthetic stellar halo from mergers of nine satellites in the Milky Way. We construct the mock catalogue by extracting a heliocentric volume of 10 kpc from our simulations and assigning expected observational uncertainties corresponding to bright stars from Gaia DR2 and LAMOST DR5. We compare the results from StarGO against that from a Friends-of-Friends (FoF) based method in the space of orbital energy and angular momentum. We show that StarGO is able to systematically identify more satellites and achieve higher number fraction of identified stars for most of the satellites within the extracted volume. When applied to data from Gaia DR2, StarGO will enable us to reveal the origins of the inner stellar halo in unprecedented detail.

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arXiv2017

Determination of Dark Matter Halo Mass from Dynamics of Satellite Galaxies

We show that the mass of a dark matter halo can be inferred from the dynamical status of its satellite galaxies. Using 9 dark-matter simulations of halos like the Milky Way (MW), we find that the present-day substructures in each halo follow a characteristic distribution in the phase space of orbital binding energy and angular momentum, and that this distribution is similar from halo to halo but has an intrinsic dependence on the halo formation history. We construct this distribution directly from the simulations for a specific halo and extend the result to halos of similar formation history but different masses by scaling. The mass of an observed halo can then be estimated by maximizing the likelihood in comparing the measured kinematic parameters of its satellite galaxies with these distributions. We test the validity and accuracy of this method with mock samples taken from the simulations. Using the positions, radial velocities, and proper motions of 9 tracers and assuming observational uncertainties comparable to those of MW satellite galaxies, we find that the halo mass can be recovered to within $\sim$40%. The accuracy can be improved to within $\sim$25% if 30 tracers are used. However, the dependence of the phase-space distribution on the halo formation history sets a minimum uncertainty of $\sim$20% that cannot be reduced by using more tracers. We believe that this minimum uncertainty also applies to any mass determination for a halo when the phase space information of other kinematic tracers is used.

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arXiv2015

A Chemical Evolution Model for the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

Fornax is the brightest Milky Way (MW) dwarf spheroidal galaxy and its star formation history (SFH) has been derived from observations. We estimate the time evolution of its gas mass and net inflow and outflow rates from the SFH using a simple star formation law that relates the star formation rate to the gas mass. We present a chemical evolution model on a 2D mass grid with supernovae (SNe) as sources of metal enrichment. We find that a key parameter controlling the enrichment is the mass M_x of the gas to mix with the ejecta from each SN. The choice of M_x depends on the evolution of SN remnants and on the global gas dynamics. It differs between the two types of SNe involved and between the periods before and after Fornax became an MW satellite at time t = t_sat . Our results indicate that due to the global gas outflow at t > t_sat , part of the ejecta from each SN may directly escape from Fornax. Sample results from our model are presented and compared with data.

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arXiv2015

Estimating the evolution of gas in the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy from its star formation history: an illustrative example

We propose that detailed data on the star formation history of a dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) may be used to estimate the evolution of the total mass M_g(t) for cold gas in its star-forming disk. Using Fornax as an illustrative example, we estimate its M_g(t) and the corresponding net gas flow rate Delta F(t) assuming a global star formation rate psi(t) = lambda_*(t)[M_g(t)/M_sun]^alpha consistent with observations of nearby galaxies. We identify the onset of the transition in Delta F(t) from a net inflow to a net outflow as the time t_sat at which the Fornax halo became a Milky Way satellite and estimate the evolution of its total mass M_h(t) at t < t_sat using the median halo growth history in the LambdaCDM cosmology and its present mass within the half-light radius derived from observations. We examine three different cases of alpha = 1, 1.5, and 2, and justify the corresponding lambda_*(t) by comparing the gas mass fraction f_g(t) = M_g(t)/M_h(t) at t < t_sat with results from simulations of gas accretion by halos in a reionized universe. We find that the Fornax halo grew to M_h(t_sat) ~ 2x10^9 M_sun at t_sat ~ 5 or 8 Gyr, in broad agreement with previous studies using data on its stellar kinematics and its orbital motion. We describe qualitatively the evolution of Fornax as a satellite and discuss potential extension of our approach to other dSphs.

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