High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)

Abstract: Understanding dark matter is one of the most urgent questions in modern physics. A very interesting candidate is primordial black holes (PBHs; Carr2016). For the mass ranges of $< 10^{-16} M_{\odot}$ and $> 100 M_{\odot}$, PBHs have been ruled out. However, they are still poorly constrained in the mass ranges of $10^{-16} - 100 M_{\odot}$ (Belotsky et al. 2019). Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond flashes of radio light of unknown origin mostly from outside the Milky Way. Due to their short timescales, gravitationally lensed FRBs, which are yet to be detected, have been proposed as a useful probe for constraining the presence of PBHs in the mass window of $< 100M_{\odot}$ (Mu\~noz et al. 2016). Up to now, the most successful project in finding FRBs has been CHIME. Due to its large field of view (FoV), CHIME is detecting at least 600 FRBs since 2018. However, none of them is confirmed to be gravitationally lensed (Leung et al. 2022). Taiwan plans to build a new telescope, BURSTT dedicated to detecting FRBs. Its survey area will be 25 times greater than CHIME. BURSTT can localize all of these FRBs through very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI). We estimate the probability to find gravitationally lensed FRBs, based on the scaled redshift distribution from the latest CHIME catalog and the lensing probability function from Mu\~noz et al. (2016). BURSTT-2048 can detect ~ 24 lensed FRBs out of ~ 1,700 FRBs per annum. With BURSTT's ability to detect nanosecond FRBs, we can constrain PBHs to form a part of dark matter down to $10^{-4}M_{\odot}$.

Abstract: The question of what ingredients characterize the quasi-steady state of fast neutrino-flavor conversion (FFC) is one of the long-standing riddles in neutrino oscillation. Addressing this issue is necessary for accurate modeling of neutrino transport in core-collapse supernova and binary neutron star merger. Recent numerical simulations of FFC have shown, however, that the quasi-steady state is sensitively dependent on boundary conditions in space, and the physical reason for the dependence is not clear at present. In this study, we provide a physical interpretation of this issue based on arguments with stability and conservation laws. The stability can be determined by the disappearance of ELN(electron neutrino-lepton number)-XLN(heavy-leptonic one) angular crossings, and we also highlight two conserved quantities characterizing the quasi-steady state of FFC: (1) lepton number conservation along each neutrino trajectory and (2) conservation law associated with angular moments, depending on boundary conditions, for each flavor of neutrinos. We demonstrate that neutrino distributions in quasi-steady states can be determined in an analytic way regardless of boundary conditions, which are in good agreement with numerical simulations. This study represents a major step forward a unified picture determining asymptotic states of FFCs.

Abstract: A well-known paradigm about the origin of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) is that these high-energy particles are accelerated in the process of diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) at collisionless shocks (at least up to the so-called "knee"energy of $10^{15}$ eV). Knowing the details of injection of electrons, protons and heavier nuclei into the DSA, their initial and the resulting spectrum, is extremely important in many "practical" applications of the CR astrophysics, e.g. in modelling of the gamma or synchrotron radio emission of astrophysical sources. In this contribution I we will give an overview of the DSA theory and the results of observations and kinetic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations that support the basic theoretical concepts. PIC simulations of quasi-parallel collisionless shocks show that thermal and supra-thermal proton distribution functions at the shock can be represented by a single quasi-thermal distribution - the $\kappa$-distribution that is commonly observed in out-of-equilibrium space plasmas. Farther downstream, index $\kappa$ increases and the low-energy spectrum tends to Maxwell distribution. On the other hand, higher-energy particles continue through the acceleration process and the non-thermal particle spectrum takes a characteristic power-law form predicted by the linear DSA theory. In the end, I will show what modification of the spectra is expected in the non-linear DSA, when CR back-reaction to the shock is taken into account.

Abstract: We show that a typical X-ray outburst light curve of Aql X-1 can be reproduced by accretion onto the neutron star in the frame of the disc instability model without invoking partial accretion or propeller effect. The knee and the subsequent sharp decay in the X-ray light curve can be generated naturally by taking into account the weak dependence of the disc aspect ratio, $h/r$, on the disc mass-flow rate, $\dot{M}_\mathrm{in}$, in the X-ray irradiation flux calculation. This $\dot{M}_\mathrm{in}$ dependence of $h/r$ only slightly modifies the irradiation temperature profile along the hot disc in comparison to that obtained with constant $h/r$. Nevertheless, this small difference has a significant cumulative effect on the hot disc radius leading to a much faster decrease in the size of the hot disc, and thereby to a sharper decay in the X-ray outburst light curve. The same model also produces the long-term evolution of the source consistently with its observed outburst recurrence times and typical light curves of Aql X-1. Our results imply that the source accretes matter from the disc in the quiescent state as well. We also estimate that the dipole moment of the source $\mu \lesssim 2 \times 10^{26}$ G cm$^3$.