Chris Orban

Delving Deeper into the Tumultuous Lives of Galactic Dwarfs: Modeling Star Formation Histories

The paucity of observed dwarf galaxies in the Local Group relative to the abundance of predicted dark matter halos remains one of the greatest puzzles of the ΛCDM paradigm. Solving this puzzle now requires not only matching the numbers of objects but also understanding the details of their star formation histories. We present a summary of such histories derived from the HST data using the color-magnitude diagram fitting method. To reduce observational uncertainties, we condense the data into five cumulative parameters: the fractions of stellar mass formed in the last 1, 2, 5, and 10 Gyr, and the mean stellar age. We interpret the new data with a phenomenological model based on the mass assembly histories of dark matter halos and the Schmidt law of star formation. The model correctly predicts the radial distribution of the dwarfs and the fractions of stars formed in the last 5 and 10 Gyr. However, in order to be consistent with the observations, the model requires a significant amount of recent star formation in the last 2 Gyr. Within the framework of our model, this prolonged star formation can be achieved by adding a stochastic variation in the density threshold of the star formation law. The model results are not sensitive to late gas accretion, the slope of the Schmidt law, or the details of cosmic reionization. A few discrepancies still remain: our model typically predicts too large stellar masses, only a modest population of ultrafaint dwarfs, and a small number of dwarfs with anomalously young stellar populations. Nevertheless, the observed star formation histories of Local Group dwarfs are generally consistent the expected star formation in cold dark matter halos.

Backward-propagating MeV electrons in ultra-intense laser interactions: Standing wave acceleration and coupling to the reflected laser pulse

Laser-accelerated electron beams have been created at a kHz repetition rate from the reflection of intense (∼1018 W/cm2), ∼40 fs laser pulses focused on a continuous water-jet in an experiment at the Air Force Research Laboratory. This paper investigates Particle-in-Cell simulations of the laser-target interaction to identify the physical mechanisms of electron acceleration in this experiment. We find that the standing-wave pattern created by the overlap of the incident and reflected laser is particularly important because this standing wave can “inject” electrons into the reflected laser pulse where the electrons are further accelerated. We identify two regimes of standing wave acceleration: a highly relativistic case (a0 ≥ 1), and a moderately relativistic case (a0 ∼ 0.5) which operates over a larger fraction of the laser period. In previous studies, other groups have investigated the highly relativistic case for its usefulness in launching electrons in the forward direction. We extend this by investiga...

Backward-propagating MeV electrons from 1018 W/cm2 laser interactions with water

We present an experimental study of the generation of ∼MeV electrons opposite to the direction of laser propagation following the relativistic interaction at normal incidence of a ∼3 mJ, 1018 W/cm2 short pulse laser with a flowing 30  μm diameter water column target. Faraday cup measurements record hundreds of pC charge accelerated to energies exceeding 120 keV, and energy-resolved measurements of secondary x-ray emissions reveal an x-ray spectrum peaking above 800 keV, which is significantly higher energy than previous studies with similar experimental conditions and more than five times the ∼110 keV ponderomotive energy scale for the laser. We show that the energetic x-rays generated in the experiment result from backward-going, high-energy electrons interacting with the focusing optic, and vacuum chamber walls with only a small component of x-ray emission emerging from the target itself. We also demonstrate that the high energy radiation can be suppressed through the attenuation of the nanosecond-scale...

Fast neutron production from lithium converters and laser driven protons

Experiments to generate neutrons from the 7Li(p,n)7Be reaction with 60 J, 180 fs laser pulses have been performed at the Texas Petawatt Laser Facility at the University of Texas at Austin. The protons were accelerated from the rear surface of a thin target membrane using the target-normal-sheath-acceleration mechanism. The neutrons were generated in nuclear reactions caused by the subsequent proton bombardment of a pure lithium foil of natural isotopic abundance. The neutron energy ranged up to 2.9 MeV. The total yield was estimated to be 1.6 × 107 neutrons per steradian. An extreme ultra-violet light camera, used to image the target rear surface, correlated variations in the proton yield and peak energy to target rear surface ablation. Calculations using the hydrodynamics code FLASH indicated that the ablation resulted from a laser pre-pulse of prolonged intensity. The ablation severely limited the proton acceleration and neutron yield.

Kα x-ray imaging of laser-irradiated, limited-mass zirconium foils

X-ray fluorescence measurements to determine the effect of target heating on imaging efficiency, at a photon energy of 15.7 keV corresponding to the Kα line of zirconium, have been carried out using limited-mass foils irradiated by the Texas Petawatt Laser. Zirconium foils that ranged in volume from 3000 × 3000 × 21 μm3 to 150 × 150 × 6 μm3 were irradiated with 100 J, 8 ps-long pulses and a mean intensity of 4 × 1019 W/cm2. The Kα emission was measured simultaneously using a highly ordered pyrolytic graphite crystal spectrometer and a curved quartz imaging crystal. The measured ratio of the integrated image signal to the integrated spectral signal was, within the experimental error, constant, indicating that the imaging efficiencys dependence on temperature is weak throughout the probed range. Based on our experience of target heating under similar conditions, we estimate a temperature of ∼200 eV for the smallest targets. The successful imaging of Kα emission for temperatures this high represents an impo...

Cosmological Perturbation Theory as a Tool for Estimating Box-Scale Effects in

In performing cosmological N-body simulations, it is widely appreciated that the growth of structure on the largest scales within a simulation box will be inhibited by the finite size of the simulation volume. Following ideas set forth in Seto (1999), this paper shows that standard (a.k.a. 1-loop) cosmological perturbation theory (SPT) can be used to predict, in an approximate way, the deleterious effect of the box scale on the power spectrum of density fluctuations in simulation volumes. Alternatively, this approach can be used to quickly estimate post facto the effect of the box scale on power spectrum results from existing simulations. In this way SPT can help determine whether larger box sizes or other more-sophisticated methods are needed to achieve a particular level of precision for a given application (e.g. simulations to measure the non-linear evolution of baryon acoustic oscillations). I focus on SPT in this note and show that its predictions differ only by about a factor of two or less from the measured suppression inferred from both powerlaw and

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Relativistic electron acceleration by mJ-class kHz lasers normally incident on liquid targets

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A novel approach for using programming exercises in electromagnetism coursework

-body simulations. It should be possible to improve the accuracy of these predictions through using more-sophisticated perturbation theory models. An appendix compares power spectrum measurements from the powerlaw simulations at outputs where box-scale effects are minimal to perturbation theory models and previously-published fitting functions. These power spectrum measurements are included with this paper to aid efforts to develop new perturbation theory models.