A New Numerical Scheme for Cosmic Ray Transport

Numerical solutions of the cosmic-ray (CR) magneto-hydrodynamic equations are dogged by a powerful numerical instability, which arises from the constraint that CRs can only stream down their gradient. The standard cure is to regularize by adding artificial diffusion. Besides introducing ad-hoc smoothing, this has a significant negative impact on either computational cost or complexity and parallel scalings. We describe a new numerical algorithm for CR transport, with close parallels to two moment methods for radiative transfer under the reduced speed of light approximation. It stably and robustly handles CR streaming without any artificial diffusion. It allows for both isotropic and field-aligned CR streaming and diffusion, with arbitrary streaming and diffusion coefficients. CR transport is handled explicitly, while source terms are handled implicitly. The overall time-step scales linearly with resolution (even when computing CR diffusion), and has a perfect parallel scaling. It is given by the standard Courant condition with respect to a constant maximum velocity over the entire simulation domain. The computational cost is comparable to that of solving the ideal MHD equation. We demonstrate the accuracy and stability of this new scheme with a wide variety of tests, including anisotropic streaming and diffusion tests, CR modified shocks, CR driven blast waves, and CR transport in multi-phase media. The new algorithm opens doors to much more ambitious and hitherto intractable calculations of CR physics in galaxies and galaxy clusters. It can also be applied to other physical processes with similar mathematical structure, such as saturated, anisotropic heat conduction.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, submitted to ApJ

Star formation properties of galaxy cluster A1767

Abell 1767 is a dynamically relaxed, cD cluster of galaxies with a redshift of 0.0703. Among 250 spectroscopically confirmed member galaxies within a projected radius of 2.5r_{200}, 243 galaxies (~ 97%) are spectroscopically covered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Based on this homogeneous spectral sample, the stellar evolutionary synthesis code, STARLIGHT, is applied to investigate the stellar populations and star formation histories (SFHs) of cluster galaxies. The star formation properties of galaxies, such as mean stellar ages, metallicities, stellar masses, and star formation rates (SFRs), are presented as the functions of local galaxy density. Strong environmental effect is found in the manner that massive galaxies in the high-density core region of cluster tend to have higher metallicities, longer mean stellar ages, and lower specific star formation rates (SSFRs), and their recent star formation activities have been remarkably suppressed. In addition, the correlations of the metallicity and SSFR with stellar mass are confirmed.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted by RA

Detecting interactions between dark matter and photons at high energy e+e−e^+e^- colliders

We investigate the sensitivity to the effective operators describing interactions between dark matter particles and photons at future high energy $e^+e^-$ colliders via the \gamma+ \slashed{E} channel. Such operators could be useful to interpret the potential gamma-ray line signature observed by the Fermi-LAT. We find that these operators can be further tested at $e^+ e^-$ colliders by using either unpolarized or polarized beams. We also derive a general unitarity condition for $2 \to n$ processes and apply it to the dark matter production process $e^+e^-\to\chi\chi\gamma$.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Multicolor Photometry of the Merging Galaxy Cluster A2319: Dynamics and Star Formation Properties

Asymmetric X-ray emission and powerful cluster-scale radio halo indicate that A2319 is a merging cluster of galaxies. This paper presents our multicolor photometry for A2319 with 15 optical intermediate filters in the Beijing-Arizona-Taiwan-Connecticut (BATC) system. There are 142 galaxies with known spectroscopic redshifts within the viewing field, including 128 member galaxies (called sample I).A large velocity dispersion in the rest frame suggests a merger dynamics in A2319. The contour map of projected density and localized velocity structure confirm the so-called A2319B substructure, at ~ 10' NW to the main concentration A2319A. The spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of more than 30,000 sources are obtained in our BATC photometry down to V ~ 20 mag. With color-color diagrams and photometric redshift technique, 233 galaxies brighter than h=19.0 are newly selected as member candidates. The early-type galaxies are found to follow a tight color-magnitude correlation. Based on sample I and the enlarged sample of member galaxies (called sample II), subcluster A2319B is confirmed. A strong environmental effect on star formation histories is found in the manner that galaxies in the sparse regions have various star formation histories, while galaxies in the dense regions are found to have shorter SFR time scales, older stellar ages, and higher ISM metallicities. For the merging cluster A2319, local surface density is a better environmental indicator rather than the clustercentric distance. Compared with the well-relaxed cluster A2589, a higher fraction of star-forming galaxies is found in A2319, indicating that the galaxy-scale turbulence stimulated by the subcluster merger might have played a role in triggering the star formation activity.Comment: 27 pages, 12 figures, 4 table

Probing Light Stop Pairs at the LHC

In this work, we study the light stop pair signals at the LHC. We explore the SUSY parameter space with non-universal gaugino and third generation masses at the GUT scale. Recent LHC SUSY search results based on 35pb$^{-1}$ and 1fb$^{-1}$ of data are implemented to put the limits on stop pair events. The dark matter relic density and direct detection constraints are also taken into account. Detailed simulations on the signals and background for some benchmark points are performed, and it is found that the stop pair signals usually escape the LHC search if the present cut conditions are used. We also explore the potential and sensitivity of ILC to probe such scenarios. It is found that the ILC can detect them with an integrated luminosity of a few tens of fb$^{-1}$.Comment: 35pages, 13figure

Light stop/sbottom pair production searches in the NMSSM

In this work, we study the constraints on the scenario of light stops and sbottoms in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM), especially by a 125 GeV Higgs boson discovery and the LHC bounds on supersymmetry. The constraints from dark matter detections are also taken into account. From the parameter scan, we find that the NMSSM can well accommodate a light Higgs boson around 125 GeV and decay patterns. We would like to stress that the LHC direct supersymmetry searches with b-tagging are very powerful and can set strong bounds on many NMSSM parameter points with light stops and sbottoms. We find $\tilde {t}\to b\tilde{\chi}^+_1$ is a very promising channel for light stop detection if the mass splitting between $\tilde{\chi}^+_1$ and $\tilde{\chi}^0_1$ is very small. It is also pointed out that in order to close the parameter space of light stops and sbottoms, new search strategies for signal channels such as $p p \to {\tilde t_1} {\tilde t_1} \to t {\bar t} h h \tilde{\chi}^0_1 \tilde{\chi}^0_1$ and $p p \to {\tilde b_1} {\tilde b_1} \to t {\bar t} W^+ W^- \tilde{\chi}^0_1 \tilde{\chi}^0_1$ may be necessary.Comment: 43 pages, 18 fig