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Abstract: In the past decade, the observations of diffuse radio synchrotron emission toward galaxy clusters revealed cosmic-ray (CR) electrons and magnetic fields on megaparsec scales. However, their origin remains poorly understood to date, and several models have been discussed in the literature. CR protons are also expected to accumulate during the formation of clusters and probably contribute to the production of these high-energy electrons. In order to understand the physics of CRs in clusters, combining of observations at various wavelengths is particularly relevant. The exploitation of such data requires using a self-consistent approach including both the thermal and the nonthermal components, so that it is capable of predicting observables associated with the multiwavelength probes at play, in particular in the radio, millimeter, X-ray, and γ-ray bands. We develop and describe such a self-consistent modeling framework, called MINOT (modeling the intracluster medium (non-)thermal content and observable prediction tools) and make this tool available to the community. MINOT models the intracluster diffuse components of a cluster (thermal and nonthermal) as spherically symmetric. It therefore focuses on CRs associated with radio halos. The spectral properties of the cluster CRs are also modeled using various possible approaches. All the thermodynamic properties of a cluster can be computed self-consistently, and the particle physics interactions at play are processed using a framework based on the Naima software. The multiwavelength observables (spectra, profiles, flux, and images) are computed based on the relevant physical process, according to the cluster location (sky and redshift), and based on the sampling defined by the user. With a standard personal computer, the computing time for most cases is far shorter than one second and it can reach about one second for the most complex models. This makes MINOT suitable for instance for Monte Carlo analyses. We describe the implementation of MINOT and how to use it. We also discuss the different assumptions and approximations that are involved and provide various examples regarding the production of output products at different wavelengths. As an illustration, we model the clusters Abell 1795, Abell 2142, and Abell 2255 and compare the MINOT predictions to literature data. While MINOT was originally build to simulate and model data in the γ-ray band, it can be used to model the cluster thermal and nonthermal physical processes for a wide variety of datasets in the radio, millimeter, X-ray, and γ-ray bands, as well as the neutrino emission.
Keywords: galaxy clusters, intracluster medium, cosmic rays, radiation mechanisms, numerical methods
Published in RUNG: 27.01.2023; Views: 990; Downloads: 0
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Abstract: In these proceedings we summarize the current status of the study of the sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to detect diffuse gamma-ray emission from the Perseus galaxy cluster. Gamma-ray emission is expected in galaxy clusters both from interactions of cosmic rays (CR) with the intra-cluster medium, or as a product of annihilation or decay of dark matter (DM) particles in case they are weakly interactive massive particles (WIMPs). The observation of Perseus constitutes one of the Key Science Projects to be carried out by the CTA Consortium. In this contribution, we focus on the DM-induced component of the flux. OurDMmodelling includes the substructures we expect in the main halo which will boost the annihilation signal significantly. We adopt an ON/OFF observation strategy and simulate the expected gamma-ray signals. Finally we compute the expected CTA sensitivity using a likelihood maximization analysis including the most recent CTA instrument response functions. In absence of signal, we show that CTA will allow us to provide stringent and competitive constraints on TeV DM, especially for the case of DM decay.
Keywords: dark matter, gamma-ray astronomy, galaxy clusters, cosmic rays and astroparticles
Published in RUNG: 27.01.2023; Views: 1105; Downloads: 15
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Abstract: We analyze 11 years of Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT) data corresponding to the sky regions of seven dwarf irregular (dIrr) galaxies. DIrrs are dark matter (DM)-dominated systems, proposed as interesting targets for the indirect search of DM with gamma rays. The galaxies represent interesting cases with a strong disagreement between the density profiles (core versus cusp) inferred from observations and numerical simulations. In this work, we addressed the problem by considering two different DM profiles, based on both the fit to the rotation curve (in this case, a Burkert cored profile) and results from N-body cosmological simulations (i.e., Navarro-Frenk-White cuspy profile). We also include halo substructure in our analysis, which is expected to boost the DM signal by a factor of 10 in halos such as those of dIrrs. For each DM model and dIrr, we create a spatial template of the expected DM-induced gamma-ray signal to be used in the analysis of Fermi-LAT data. No significant emission is detected from any of the targets in our sample. Thus, we compute upper limits on the DM annihilation cross section versus mass parameter space. Among the seven dIrrs, we find IC10 and NGC6822 to yield the most stringent individual constraints, independently of the adopted DM profile. We also produce combined DM limits for all objects in the sample, which turn out to be dominated by IC10 for all DM models and annihilation channels, i.e., b¯b, τ+τ−, and W+W−. The strongest constraints are obtained for b¯b and are at the level of <σv>∼7×10−26 cm3 s−1 at mχ ∼ 6 GeV. Though these limits are a factor of ∼3 higher than the thermal relic cross section at low weakly interacting massive particles masses, they are independent from and complementary to those obtained by means of other targets.
Keywords: Dark matter, gamma-ray astronomy, galaxies, astronomical masses and mass distributions
Published in RUNG: 26.01.2023; Views: 1047; Downloads: 0
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Abstract: Providing reliable observations of aerosol particles' absorption properties at spatial and temporal resolutions suited to climate models is of utter importance to better understand the effects that atmospheric particles have on climate. Nowadays, one of the instruments most widely used in international monitoring networks for in situ surface measurements of light absorption properties of atmospheric aerosol particles is the multi-wavelength dual-spot Aethalometer, AE33. The AE33 derives the absorption coefficients of aerosol particles at seven different wavelengths from the measurements of the optical attenuation of light through a filter where particles are continuously collected. An accurate determination of the absorption coefficients from the AE33 instrument relies on the quantification of the non-linear processes related to the sample collection on the filter. The multiple-scattering correction factor (C), which depends on the filter tape used and on the optical properties of the collected particles, is the parameter with both the greatest uncertainty and the greatest impact on the absorption coefficients derived from the AE33 measurements. Here we present an in-depth analysis of the AE33 multiple-scattering correction factor C and its wavelength dependence for two different and widely used filter tapes, namely the old, and most referenced, TFE-coated glass, or M8020, filter tape and the currently, and most widely used, M8060 filter tape. For performing this analysis, we compared the attenuation measurements from AE33 with the absorption coefficients measured with different filter-based techniques. On-line co-located multi-angle absorption photometer (MAAP) measurements and off-line PP_UniMI polar photometer measurements were employed as reference absorption measurements for this work. To this aim, we used data from three different measurement stations located in the north-east of Spain, namely an urban background station (Barcelona, BCN), a regional background station (Montseny, MSY) and a mountaintop station (Montsec d'Ares, MSA). The median C values (at 637 nm) measured at the three stations ranged between 2.29 (at BCN and MSY, lowest 5th percentile of 1.97 and highest 95th percentile of 2.68) and 2.51 (at MSA, lowest 5th percentile of 2.06 and highest 95th percentile of 3.06). The analysis of the cross-sensitivity to scattering, for the two filter tapes considered here, revealed a large increase in the C factor when the single-scattering albedo (SSA) of the collected particles was above a given threshold, up to a 3-fold increase above the average C values. The SSA threshold appeared to be site dependent and ranged between 0.90 to 0.95 for the stations considered in the study. The results of the cross-sensitivity to scattering displayed a fitted constant multiple-scattering parameter, Cf, of 2.21 and 1.96, and a cross-sensitivity factor, ms, of 1.8 % and 3.4 % for the MSY and MSA stations, respectively, for the TFE-coated glass filter tape. For the M8060 filter tape, Cf values of 2.50, 1.96 and 1.82 and ms values of 1.6 %, 3.0 % and 4.9 % for the BCN, MSY and MSA stations, respectively, were obtained. SSA variations also influenced the spectral dependence of C, which showed an increase with wavelength when SSA was above the site-dependent threshold. Below the SSA threshold, no statistically significant dependence of C on the wavelength was observed. For the measurement stations considered here, the wavelength dependence of C was to some extent driven by the presence of dust particles during Saharan dust outbreaks that had the potential to increase the SSA above the average values. At the mountaintop station, an omission of the wavelength dependence of the C factor led to an underestimation of the absorption Ångström exponent (AAE) by up to 12 %. Differences in the absorption coefficient determined from AE33 measurements at BCN, MSY and MSA of around 35 %–40 % can be expected when using the site-dependent experimentally obtained C value instead of the nominal C value. Due to the fundamental role that the SSA of the particles collected on the filter tape has in the multiple-scattering parameter C, we present a methodology that allows the recognition of the conditions upon which the use of a constant and wavelength-independent C is feasible.
Keywords: black carbon, aerosol absorption, filter photometer, artifact
Published in RUNG: 01.10.2021; Views: 1987; Downloads: 0
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Keywords: thermoelectric properties, nanostructured porous silicon
Published in RUNG: 01.12.2017; Views: 3206; Downloads: 0
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