Jens Berdermann

Ionospheric storms—A challenge for empirical forecast of the total electron content

Since the last decades, the functioning of society depends more and more on well-functioning communication and navigation systems. As the availability and reliability of most of these satellite-based systems can be severely impacted by ionospheric storms, the accurate forecast of these events becomes a required task for mitigating social and economic risks. Here we aim to make initial steps toward an empirical model for ionospheric perturbations related to space weather events that are observable in the total electron content (TEC). The perturbation TEC forecast model will be a fast and robust approach, improving TEC forecasts based on climatological models during storm conditions. The derivation of such a model is a challenging task, because although a general dependence of the storm features (enhancement or depletion of electron density) on the storm onset time, local time, season and geomagnetic latitude is well known, there is a large deviation from the mean behavior. For a better understanding of storm conditions, this paper presents analyses of ionospheric storms observed in the TEC, broken down into diverse classes of storms. It provides a detailed characterization of the typical ionospheric storm behavior over Europe from high to midlatitudes, beyond case studies. Generally, the typical clear strong TEC enhancement starting in high latitudes and propagating equatorward is found to be strongest for storms starting in the morning hours independent of the season. In midlatitudes, it is strongest during noon. In addition, a clear difference between summer and winter storms is reported. While only winter storms develop high-latitude TEC enhancements, only summer storms typically exhibit TEC depletions during the storm recovery phase. During winter storms TEC enhancements can also occur the day following the storm onset, in contrast to summer storms. Strong correlation of TEC perturbation amplitudes to the Bz component of the interplanetary magnetic field and to a proxy of the polar cap potential are shown especially for summer midlatitude TEC enhancements during storms with and onset in the morning hours (6 to 12 UT over Europe) and for winter high-latitude TEC enhancements (around 60∘N). The results indicate the potential to derive improved predictions of maximum TEC deviations during space weather events, based on solar wind measurements.

Sequential deconfinement of quark flavors in neutron stars

A scenario is suggested in which the three light quark flavors are sequentially deconfined under increasing pressure in cold asymmetric nuclear matter as found, for example, in neutron stars. The basis for this analysis is a chiral quark matter model of Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type with diquark pairing in the spin-1 single-flavor, spin-0 two-flavor, and three-flavor channels. Nucleon dissociation sets in at about the saturation density, n{sub 0}, when the down-quark Fermi sea is populated (d-quark drip line) because of the flavor asymmetry induced by {beta} equilibrium and charge neutrality. At about 3n{sub 0}, u-quarks appear and a two-flavor color superconducting (2SC) phase is formed. The s-quark Fermi sea is populated only at still higher baryon density, when the quark chemical potential is of the order of the dynamically generated strange quark mass. Two different hybrid equations of state (EOSs) are constructed using the Dirac-Brueckner Hartree-Fock (DBHF) approach and the EOS of Shen et al.[H. Shen, H. Toki, K. Oyamatsu, and K. Sumiyoshi, Nucl. Phys. A637, 435 (1998)] in the nuclear matter sector. The corresponding hybrid star sequences have maximum masses of 2.1 and 2.0 M{sub {center_dot}}, respectively. Two- and three-flavor quark-matter phases exist only in gravitationally unstable hybrid star solutionsmorexa0» in the DBHF case, whereas the Shen-based EOSs produce stable configurations with a 2SC phase component in the core of massive stars. Nucleon dissociation via d-quark drip could act as a deep crustal heating process, which apparently is required to explain superbursts and cooling of x-ray transients.«xa0less

Hybrid Neutron Stars Based on a Modified PNJL Model

We discuss a three-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type quantum field theoretical approach to the quark matter equation of state (EoS) with scalar diquark condensate, isoscalar vector mean field and Kobayashi-Maskawa-t Hooft (KMT) determinant interaction. While often the diquark and vector meson couplings are considered as free parameters, we will fix them here to their values according to the Fierz transformation of a one-gluon exchange interaction. In order to estimate the effect of a possible change in the vacuum pressure of the gluon sector at finite baryon density we exploit a recent modification of the Polyakov-loop NJL (mPNJL) model which introduces a parametric density dependence of the Polyakov-loop potential also at T=0, thus being relevant for compact star physics. We use a Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (DBHF) EoS for the hadronic matter phase and discuss results for mass-radius relationships following from a solution of the TOV equations for such a hybrid EoS in the context of observational constraints from selected objects.

Neutrino emissivity and bulk viscosity of iso‐CSL quark matter in neutron stars

We present results for neutrino emissivities and bulk viscosities of a two-flavor color superconducting quark matter phase with isotropic color-spin-locked (iso-CSL) single-flavor pairing which fulfill the constraints on quark matter derived from cooling and rotational evolution of compact stars. We compare with results for the phenomenologically successful, but yet heuristic 2SC+X phase.

Ionospheric correction using NTCM driven by GPS Klobuchar coefficients for GNSS applications

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) require mitigation of ionospheric propagation errors because the ionospheric range errors might be larger than tens of meters at the zenith direction. Taking advantage of the frequency-dispersive property of ionospheric refractivity, the ionospheric range errors can be mitigated in dual-frequency applications to a great extent by a linear combination of carrier phases or pseudoranges. However, single-frequency GNSS operations require additional ionospheric information to apply signal delay or range error corrections. To aid single-frequency operations, the global positioning system (GPS) broadcasts 8 coefficients as part of the navigation message to drive the ionospheric correction algorithm (ICA) also known as Klobuchar model. We presented here an ionospheric correction algorithm called Neustrelitz TEC model (NTCM) which can be used as complementary to the GPS ICA. Our investigation shows that the NTCM can be driven by Klobuchar model parameters to achieve a significantly better performance than obtained by the mother ICA algorithm. Our research, using post-processed reference total electron content (TEC) data from more than one solar cycle, shows that on average the RMS modeled TEC errors are up to 40% less for the proposed NTCM model compared to the Klobuchar model during high solar activity period, and about 10% less during low solar activity period. Such an approach does not require major technology changes for GPS users rather requires only introducing the NTCM approach a complement to the existing ICA algorithm while maintaining the simplicity of ionospheric range error mitigation with an improved model performance.

Single-flavor CSL phase in compact stars

We suggest a scenario where the three light quark flavors are sequentially deconfined under increasing pressure in cold asymmetric nuclear matter as, e.g., in neutron stars. The basis for our analysis is a chiral quark matter model of Nambu–Jona‐Lasinio (NJL) type with diquark pairing in the spin‐1 single flavor (CSL), spin‐0 two flavor (2SC) and three flavor (CFL) channels. We find that nucleon dissociation sets in at about the saturation density, n0, when the down‐quark Fermi sea is populated (d‐quark dripline) due to the flavor asymmetry induced by β‐equilibrium and charge neutrality. At about 3n0 u‐quarks appear and a two‐flavor color superconducting (2SC) phase is formed. The s‐quark Fermi sea is populated only at still higher baryon density, when the quark chemical potential is of the order of the dynamically generated strange quark mass. We construct two different hybrid equations of state (EoS) using the Dirac‐Brueckner Hartree‐Fock (DBHF) approach and the EoS by Shen et al. in the nuclear matter ...

Neutrino emissivities and bulk viscosity in neutral two-flavor quark matter

We study thermodynamic and transport properties for the isotropic color-spin-locking (iso-CSL) nphase of two-flavor superconducting quark matter under compact star constraints within a NJL-type nchiral quark model. Chiral symmetry breaking and the phase transition to superconducting quark nmatter leads to a density dependent change of quark masses, chemical potentials and diquark gap. nA self-consistent treatment of these physical quantities influences on the microscopic calculations nof transport properties. We present results for the iso-CSL direct URCA emissivities and bulk nviscosities, which fulfill the constraints on quark matter derived from cooling and rotational evolution nof compact stars. We compare our results with the phenomenologically successful, but yet heuristic n2SC+X phase. We show that the microscopically founded iso-CSL phase can replace the purely nphenomenological 2SC+X phase in modern simulations of the cooling evolution for compact stars nwith color superconducting quark matter interior.

Scintillation of GNSS signals at equatorial latitudes

A particular threat to global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) are small scale ionospheric disturbances. These can lead to fluctuations of the received satellite signal, so called signal scintillations. Strong scintillations can lead to a loss of lock between satellite and receiver. All GNSS signals are affected by this phenomenon. The influence of the short scale disturbances on the different GNSS signals is expected to be different for each signal, since the signals are transmitted by different carrier frequencies and are constructed in different ways.