Astrophysics
Gravitational Wave Observations Continue to Uphold General Relativity
Analysis of 91 confident gravitational wave signals from compact binary coalescences, including data from LIGO Virgo KAGRA's O4a run, continues to validate General Relativity (GR). The study examined parameterized deviations across eight tests, finding no evidence for physics beyond GR. These result…
New Limits on Continuous Gravitational Waves from Supernova Remnants
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration performed directed searches for continuous gravitational waves from 15 supernova remnants. Utilizing five distinct analysis pipelines, the study analyzed data from the first eight months of the fourth observing run (O4). No gravitational wave signals were detected,…
New Limits on Continuous Gravitational Waves from Pulsars
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration performed narrowband searches for continuous gravitational waves (CWs) from 34 known pulsars using data from the first two parts of their fourth observing run. This search, utilizing a 5n-vector narrowband pipeline with expanded parameter space coverage to include …
Dark Matter Halo Geometry Influences Tidal Structure Morphology and Classification
Dark matter halo geometry significantly influences the morphology and classification of tidal structures, challenging traditional visual inspection methods. Projections of flattened haloes can cause shell-like structures to appear stream-like, leading to misclassifications. A clustering-based framew…
Upgraded Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope Camera Module Demonstrates Enhanced Performance for Gamma-Ray Observation
The prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) camera has undergone a significant upgrade, expanding its focal plane to 11,328 silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) pixels across 177 modules. The upgraded electronics are designed to mitigate crosstalk and noise. Performance testing of a preproduction …
Quantum Information Processing for Enhanced Gravitational Microlensing Time Delay Measurement
A novel method combining quantum-inspired algorithms and quantum information processing dramatically reduces the photon requirement for measuring gravitational microlensing time delays. This advancement enables observations previously impossible due to photon flux and signal coherence constraints. T…
Reduced Significance of CMB Anomalies with Improved Foregrounds
Improved foreground cleaning methods and minimal sky masking (1%) significantly reduce the statistical significance of two out of five commonly studied Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anomalies, specifically the low real-space correlation function and local-variance asymmetry. While other anomalie…
New CMB Analysis Confirms Low-Multipole Anomalies and Refines Cosmological Parameters
A novel analysis of WMAP and Planck CMB data, employing a template-based foreground cleaning approach, has enabled a nearly full-sky recovery of temperature anisotropy at multipoles ℓ<30. This new methodology confirms persistent anomalies such as a low quadrupole power and an overall deficit in powe…
Diamond-Loaded Polyimide Aerogel Filters for Cryogenic Astronomical Instrumentation
This paper demonstrates the utility of conductively-loaded, polyimide aerogel filters for astronomical and planetary science applications. These filters, designed for far-infrared, sub-millimeter, and microwave regimes, exhibit mechanical stability at cryogenic temperatures and perform within the re…
CLASS Measures Large-Scale CMB E-mode Polarization and Reionization Optical Depth
The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) 90 GHz data successfully measured large-scale CMB E-mode polarization with high sensitivity. The analysis addressed systematic errors and power recovery challenges through a novel pixel-space transfer matrix. This enabled an unbiased correction for …