Geographical and vertical variation of the earth's seismicity

Information concerning a total number of 13700 instrumentally recorded earthquakes is used to study the geographical and the vertical distribution of the Earth's seismicity. From these earthquakes, which form four complete samples of data (M 7.0, 1894–1992; M 6.5, 1930–1992; M 6.0, 1953–1992; M 5.5, 1966–1992), 11511 are shallow (h 60 km), 2085 are of intermediate focal depth (61 h 300 km) and 564 are deep focus earthquakes (301 h 720 km). The parameters a and b of the frequency-magnitude relationship were calculated in a grid of equally spaced points at 1° by using the data of earthquakes located inside circles centered at each point. The radius of the circles increased from 30 km with a step of 10 km until the information for the earthquakes located inside the circle fulfil three criteria which concern the size of the sample used to compute these parameters at each point of the grid. The results are given in a qualitative way (epicenter maps) as well as in a quantitative way (mean return periods).     

光子计数资料处理方法的比较

本文通过对天体测量仪器光子计数模拟资料的处理,比较了13种不同的平滑模型和两种定心算法对最终精度的影响;提出了利用频率域滤波和修正矩方法相结合的最佳处理方法;并对比较结果进行了多方面的讨论。     

Relation of Velocity Distribution and Mass for DA White Dwarfstwo

White dwarfs are the evolutionary endpoint of the low-and-medium mass stars. In the studies of white dwarfs, the mass of white dwarf is an important physical parameter. In this paper, we give an analysis about the velocity distribution of DA white dwarfs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and hope to find the relation between mass and velocity distribution of white dwarfs. We get the radial velocity and tangential velocity of every DA white dwarf according to their proper motion and spectral shift. Through analyzing the velocity distribution of DA white dwarfs, we find that the small-mass white dwarfs, which are produced from the single-star evolution channel, have a relatively large velocity dispersion.     

Merger histories in warm dark matter structure formation scenarios

Observations on galactic scales seem to be in contradiction with recent high-resolution N -body simulations. This so-called cold dark matter (CDM) crisis has been addressed in several ways, ranging from a change in fundamental physics by introducing self-interacting cold dark matter particles to a tuning of complex astrophysical processes such as global and/or local feedback. All these efforts attempt to soften density profiles and reduce the abundance of satellites in simulated galaxy haloes. In this paper, we explore a different approach that consists of filtering the dark matter power spectrum on small scales, thereby altering the formation history of low-mass objects. The physical motivation for damping these fluctuations lies in the possibility that the dark matter particles have a different nature, i.e. are warm (WDM) rather than cold. We show that this leads to some interesting new results in terms of the merger history and large-scale distribution of low-mass haloes, compared with the standard CDM scenario. However, WDM does not appear to be the ultimate solution, in the sense that it is not able to fully solve the CDM crisis, even though one of the main drawbacks, namely the abundance of satellites, can be remedied. Indeed, the cuspiness of the halo profiles still persists, at all redshifts, and for all haloes and sub-haloes that we investigated. Despite the persistence of the cuspiness problem of DM haloes, WDM seems to be still worth taking seriously, as it alleviates the problems of over-abundant sub-structures in galactic haloes and possibly the lack of angular momentum of simulated disc galaxies. WDM also lessens the need to invoke strong feedback to solve these problems, and may provide a natural explanation of the clustering properties and ages of dwarfs.     

Testing tidal-torque theory – I. Spin amplitude and direction

We evaluate the success of linear tidal-torque theory (TTT) in predicting galactic-halo spin using a cosmological N -body simulation with thousands of well-resolved haloes. The protohaloes are identified by tracing today's haloes back to the initial conditions. The TTT predictions for the protohaloes match, on average, the spin amplitudes of the virialized haloes of today, if linear growth is assumed until ∼ t ₀/3, or  55–70  per cent of the halo effective turn-around time. This makes it a useful qualitative tool for understanding certain average properties of galaxies, such as total spin and angular momentum distribution within haloes, but with a random scatter of the order of the signal itself. Non-linear changes in spin direction cause a mean error of ∼50° in the TTT prediction at t ₀, such that the linear spatial correlations of spins on scales ≥1  h ⁻¹ Mpc are significantly weakened by non-linear effects. This questions the usefulness of TTT for predicting intrinsic alignments in the context of gravitational lensing. We find that the standard approximations made in TTT, including a second-order expansion of the Zel'dovich potential and a smoothing of the tidal field, provide close-to-optimal results.     

The origin of spatial intermittency in the galaxy distribution

The dynamical equations describing the evolution of a self-gravitating fluid can be rewritten in the form of a Schrödinger equation coupled to a Poisson equation determining the gravitational potential. This approach has a number of interesting features, many of which were pointed out in a seminal paper by Widrow & Kaiser. In particular we show that this approach yields an elegant reformulation of an idea of Jones concerning the origin of lognormal intermittency in the galaxy distribution.     

Modelling the outcomes of high-velocity impacts between small solar system bodies

We present a self-consistent numerical algorithm aimed at predicting the outcomes of high-velocity impacts between asteroids (or other small bodies of the solar system), based on a set of model input parameters which can be estimated from the available experimental evidence, and including the possible gravitational reaccumulation of ejected fragments whose velocity is less than a suitably defined escape velocity. All the fragment mass distributions are modelled by truncated power laws, and a possible correlation between fragment ejection velocity and mass is taken into account in different ways, including a probabilistic one. We analyze in particular the effectiveness of the gravitational reaccumulation process in terms of different choices of the collisional parameters and the assumed relationship between fragment speed and mass. Both the transition size beyond which solid targets are likely to reaccumulate a large fraction of the fragment mass and the collision energy needed to disperse most of the fragments are sensitive functions of the assumed fragment velocity versus mass relationship. We also give some examples of how our algorithm can be applied to study the origin and collisional history of small solar system bodies, including the asteroid 951 Gaspra (recently imaged by the Galileo probe) and the asteroid families.     

Cepheid parallaxes and the Hubble constant

Revised Hipparcos parallaxes for classical Cepheids are analysed together with 10 Hubble Space Telescope ( HST )-based parallaxes. In a reddening-free V , I relation we find that the coefficient of log  P is the same within the uncertainties in our Galaxy as in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), contrary to some previous suggestions. Cepheids in the inner region of NGC 4258 with near solar metallicities confirm this result. We obtain a zero-point for the reddening-free relation and apply it to the Cepheids in galaxies used by Sandage et al. to calibrate the absolute magnitudes of Type Ia supernova (SNIa) and to derive the Hubble constant. We revise their result for H ₀ from 62 to 70 ± 5 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹. The Freedman et al. value is revised from 72 to 76 ± 8 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹. These results are insensitive to Cepheid metallicity corrections. The Cepheids in the inner region of NGC 4258 yield a modulus of 29.22 ± 0.03 (int.) compared with a maser-based modulus of 29.29 ± 0.15. Distance moduli for the LMC, uncorrected for any metallicity effects, are 18.52 ± 0.03 from a reddening-free relation in V , I ; 18.47 ± 0.03 from a period–luminosity relation at K ; 18.45 ± 0.04 from a period–luminosity–colour relation in J , K . Adopting a metallicity correction in V , I from Macri et al. leads to a true LMC modulus of 18.39 ± 0.05.     

Correlations among color,morphology, and luminosity for the luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample of the SDSS data release 5

We have investigated the correlations among color, morphology and luminosity for all LRGs, cut I LRGs, cut II LRGs, and Main galaxies that are also classified as LRGs. It is found that the morphology of LRGs is tightly correlated with luminosity. The rest-frame u-g color of cut I LRGs and cut II LRGs is nearly independent of luminosity, but the color of Main galaxies is correlated with luminosity. For cut I LRGs and Main galaxies, the early type proportion apparently changes with color: at the rest-frame u-g < 1.3 it increases strongly with increasing color, while at the rest-frame u-g > 1.3 it decreases with increasing color. We also notice that the morphology of cut II LRGs is only a weak function of color. Published in Astrofizika, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 335–345 (August 2007).     

A New Feature Vector Using Selected Line Spectra for Pulsar Signal Bispectrum Characteristic Analysis and Recognition

Average pulse profiles of pulsar signals are analyzed using the bispectrum tech-nique. The result shows that there are nonlinear phase couplings between the two frequency axes of the bispectrum charts, which indicate nonlinear factors in the generation and prop-agation of pulsar signals. Bispectra can be used as feature vectors of pulsar signals because of their being translation invariant. A one-dimension selected line spectrum algorithm for ex-tracting pulsar signal characteristic is proposed. Compared with selected bispectra, the pro-posed selected line spectra have the maximum interclass separability measurements from the point of view of the whole one-dimension feature vector. Recognition experiments on several pulsar signals received at several frequency bands are carried out. The result shows that the selected line spectrum algorithm is suitable for extracting pulsar signal characteristics and has a good classification performance.