• Discovering Ca II Absorption Lines With a Neural Network

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: Quasar absorption line analysis is critical for studying gas and dust components and their physical and chemical properties as well as the evolution and formation of galaxies in the early universe. Ca II absorbers, which are one of the dustiest absorbers and are located at lower redshifts than most other absorbers, are especially valuable when studying physical processes and conditions in recent galaxies. However, the number of known quasar Ca II absorbers is relatively low due to the difficulty of detecting them with traditional methods. In this work, we developed an accurate and quick approach to search for Ca II absorption lines using deep learning. In our deep learning model, a convolutional neural network, tuned using simulated data, is used for the classification task. The simulated training data are generated by inserting artificial Ca II absorption lines into original quasar spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) whilst an existing Ca II catalog is adopted as the test set. The resulting model achieves an accuracy of 96% on the real data in the test set. Our solution runs thousands of times faster than traditional methods, taking a fraction of a second to analyze thousands of quasars while traditional methods may take days to weeks. The trained neural network is applied to quasar spectra from SDSS's DR7 and DR12 and discovered 399 new quasar Ca II absorbers. In addition, we confirmed 409 known quasar Ca II absorbers identified previously by other research groups through traditional methods.

  • Newly discovered Ca II absorbers in the early universe: statistics, element abundances and dust

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: We report discoveries of 165 new quasar Ca II absorbers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 and 12. Our Ca II rest frame equivalent width distribution supports the weak and strong subpopulations, split at ${W}^{\lambda3934}_{0}=0.7${\AA}. Comparison of both populations' dust depletion shows clear consistency for weak absorber association with halo-type gas in the Milky Way (MW) while strong absorbers have environments consistent with halo and disc-type gas. We probed our high redshift Ca II absorbers for 2175{\AA} dust bumps, discovering 12 2175{\AA} dust absorbers (2DAs). This clearly shows that some Ca II absorbers follow the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) extinction law rather than the Small Magellanic Cloud extinction law. About 33% of our strong Ca II absorbers exhibit the 2175{\AA} dust bump while only 6% of weak Ca II absorbers show this bump. 2DA detection further supports the theory that strong Ca II absorbers are associated with disk components and are dustier than the weak population. Comparing average Ca II absorber dust depletion patterns to that of Damped Ly{\alpha} Absorbers (DLAs), Mg II absorbers, and 2DAs shows that Ca II absorbers generally have environments with more dust than DLAs and Mg II absorbers, but less dust than 2DAs. Comparing 2175{\AA} dust bump strengths from different samples and also the MW and LMC, the bump strength appears to grow stronger as the redshift decreases, indicating dust growth and the global chemical enrichment of galaxies in the universe over time.

  • The 2175 \AA~ Bump Features in FeLoBAL Quasars: One Indicator of MW-like Dust in the Nuclear Region of Quasar

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: To investigate the properties of dust in the nuclear region of quasars, we explored the extinction curves of the iron low-ionization broad absorption line (FeLoBAL) quasar SDSS J163004.29+311957.6 and its two analogues. The parameterized extinction curves indicated the Milky Way-like 2175 \AA~ bump features in underlying extinction, which are similar to those seen in the Local Group and a subset of high-redshift star-forming galaxies. Compared to the bump features in the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC), the detections in this work are much closer to those in the Milky Way (MW). These bump features, as well as those in the high- and low-ionization broad absorption line (BAL) quasars of Zhang et al., are probably the counterpart of the 2175 \AA~ bump features in the quasar environment. This type of dust grain is generally small, easily disrupted by high-energy photons and has difficulty surviving in the radiation field of the active galactic nucleus (AGN). However, due to the presence of absorption-line outflows, the 2175 \AA~ bump feature in quasars, which should be rare, is seen many times in BAL quasars. The shielding effect of outflow clouds allows the MW-like dust grains to be assembled or extends the survival period in the quasar nuclear region. The process, and physical and chemical conditions deserve further observational study and investigation.

  • ET White Paper: To Find the First Earth 2.0

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: We propose to develop a wide-field and ultra-high-precision photometric survey mission, temporarily named "Earth 2.0 (ET)". This mission is designed to measure, for the first time, the occurrence rate and the orbital distributions of Earth-sized planets. ET consists of seven 30cm telescopes, to be launched to the Earth-Sun's L2 point. Six of these are transit telescopes with a field of view of 500 square degrees. Staring in the direction that encompasses the original Kepler field for four continuous years, this monitoring will return tens of thousands of transiting planets, including the elusive Earth twins orbiting solar-type stars. The seventh telescope is a 30cm microlensing telescope that will monitor an area of 4 square degrees toward the galactic bulge. This, combined with simultaneous ground-based KMTNet observations, will measure masses for hundreds of long-period and free-floating planets. Together, the transit and the microlensing telescopes will revolutionize our understandings of terrestrial planets across a large swath of orbital distances and free space. In addition, the survey data will also facilitate studies in the fields of asteroseismology, Galactic archeology, time-domain sciences, and black holes in binaries.