Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 12/04/2025

Time for the weekly Saturday morning update of papers published at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published four new papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 37 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 272.

In chronological order of publication, the four papers published this week, with their overlays, are as follows. You can click on the images of the overlays to make them larger should you wish to do so.

The first paper to report is “Searching for new physics using high precision absorption spectroscopy; continuum placement uncertainties and the fine structure constant in strong gravity” by Chung-Chi Lee (Big Questions Institute (BQI), Sydney, Australia), John K. Webb (Cambridge, UK), Darren Dougan (BQI), Vladimir A. Dzuba & Victor V. Flambaum (UNSW, Australia) and Dinko Milaković (Trieste, Italy).

This presents a discussion of the problem of continuum placement in high-resolution spectroscopy, which impacts significantly on fine structure constant measurements, and a method for mitigating its effects. The paper is in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics and was published on Tuesday 8th April 2025. The overlay is here:

You can find the officially-accepted version of the paper on arXiv here.

The second paper to announce, also published on 8th April 2025,  is “Deciphering Spatially Resolved Lyman-Alpha Profiles in Reionization Analogs: The Sunburst Arc at Cosmic Noon” by Erik Solhaug (Chicago, USA), Hsiao-Wen Chen (Chicago), Mandy C. Chen (Chicago),  Fakhri Zahedy (University of North Texas),  Max Gronke (MPA Garching, Germany),  Magdalena J. Hamel-Bravo (Swinburne, Australia), Matthew B. Bayliss (U. Cincinatti), Michael D. Gladders  (Chicago), Sebastián López (Universidad de Chile), Nicolás Tejos (Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile).

This paper, which presents a study of the Lyman-alpha emission properties of a gravitationally-lensed galaxy at redshift z=2.37, appears in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It was published

 

 

 

You can read the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.

The third paper of the week  is “On the progenitor of the type Ia supernova remnant 0509-67.5” by Noam Soker (Technion, Haifa, Israel). This one was published on Wednesday 9th April 2025 in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. The author discusses possible ideas for the origin of a supernova that exploded inside a planetary nebula.

Here is the overlay:

 

You can find the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.

Last (but certainly) not least for this week, published on April 11th 2025, we have “Are Models of Strong Gravitational Lensing by Clusters Converging or Diverging?” by Derek Perera (U. Minnesota), John H Miller Jr & Liliya L. R. Williams (U. Minnesota, USA), Jori Liesenborgs (Hasselt U., Belgium), Allison Keen (U. Minnesota), Sung Kei Li (Hong Kong University), Marceau Limousin (Aix Marseille Univ., France).  This papers study various models of a strong gravitational lensing system, the results suggesting that lens models are neither converging to nor diverging from a common solution for this system, regardless of method.

Here is the overlay:

 

 

The official published version can be found on the arXiv here.

 

That’s all the papers for this week. By way of a postscript I’ll just mention that the gremlins that have affected submissions to Crossref (which we rely on for registering the article metadata) have now been resolved and normal services have been restored.

#arXiv240910604v5 #arXiv241001849v2 #arXiv241105083v2 #arXiv250304709v2 #AstrophysicsOfGalaxies #CosmicNoon #DiamondOpenAccess #DiamondOpenAccessPublishing #fineStructureConstant #HighEnergyAstrophysicalPhenomena #HighResolutionSpectroscopy #PlanetaryNebula #reionization #SolarAndStellarAstrophysics #strongGravitationalLensing #SupernovaRemnant #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

The Open Journal of Astrophysics

The Open Journal of Astrophysics is an arXiv overlay journal providing open access to peer-reviewed research in astrophysics and cosmology.

#astronomy #cosmology #JWST #galaxies #reionization

An article published in the journal "Nature" reports the results of observations of the primordial galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1. A team of researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to examine this galaxy, estimating that it dates back to about 330 million years after the Big Bang. The surprise came from the so-called Lyman-alpha radiation because it was much stronger than expected from a galaxy of that era.

https://english.tachyonbeam.com/2025/03/27/an-intense-primordial-light-from-the-dark-ages-of-the-universe/

An intense primordial light from the dark ages of the universe

An article published in the journal 'Nature' reports the results of observations of the primordial galaxy cataloged as JADES-GS-z13-1. A team of researchers...

Witnessing the onset of #reionization through Lyman-α emission at redshift 13: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08779-5 -> NASA's Webb Sees Galaxy Mysteriously Clearing Fog of Early Universe: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-116
Witnessing the onset of reionization through Lyman-α emission at redshift 13 - Nature

Spectroscopy from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey of a galaxy at redshift 13 shows a singular, bright emission line identified as Lyman-α, suggesting the onset of reionization only 330 Myr after the Big Bang.

Nature

Weekly Update at the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 22/03/2025

It’s Satuday morning once again, and time for another update of papers published at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published two papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 29 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 264.

The papers we have published this week are connected by the theme of black holes and their role in galaxy formation, which is a very hot topic nowadays!

The first paper to report is “Hawking Radiation from non-evaporating primordial black holes cannot enable the formation of direct collapse black holes” by Jonathan Regan, Marios Kalomenopoulos and Kelly Kosmo O’Neil of the University of Nevada, USA. This paper, which is based on an undergraduate thesis, is a study of the irradiating effects of primordial black holes and a discussion of whether these might influence the subsequent formation of supermassive black holes. It is in the section marked Astrophysics of Galaxies, and was published on Tuesday  18th March.

The overlay is here:

and you can find the final accepted version on arXiv here.

The second paper, which was published on Wednesday 19th March and is also in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “First Light and Reionization Epoch Simulations (FLARES) – XV: The physical properties of super-massive black holes and their impact on galaxies in the early universe” by Stephen Wilkins & Jussi K. Kuusisto (U. Sussex, UK), Dimitrios Irodotou (Institute of Cancer Research, UK), Shihong Liao (Beijing, China) Christopher C. Lovell (Portsmouth, UK), Sonja Soininen (Insitute of Cancer Research), Sabrina C. Berger (Melbourne, Australia), Sophie L. Newman (Portsmouth, UK), William J. Roper (Sussex), Louise T. C. Seeyave (Sussex), Peter A. Thomas (Sussex) and Aswin P. Vijayan Sussex). This paper uses cosmological hydrodynamical zoom simulations to study the formation of supermassive black holes and their impact on star formation in the early Universe.

Here is the overlay, which you can click on to make larger if you wish:

 

You can read the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.

That’s all for this week. It’s been a bit frustrating for me as Managing Ediutor, because we have built up a backlog of several papers that were accepted for publication some time ago, but are still waiting for the authors to place the final version on arXiv. I hope these won’t take too long to appear, not least because I would like to clear my workflow on the Scholastica platform!

#arXiv240402815v3 #arXiv241109081v2 #AstrophysicsOfGalaxies #DiamondOpenAccess #FirstLight #FLARES #galaxyFormation #HawkingRadiation #OpenAccessPublishing #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #primordialBlackHoles #reionization #supermassiveBlackHoles

The Open Journal of Astrophysics

The Open Journal of Astrophysics is an arXiv overlay journal providing open access to peer-reviewed research in astrophysics and cosmology.

My own laptop is still with the menders but I’ve managed to borrow one until I get it back so I don’t get too far behind. Anyway, it’s Saturday morning, and once again time to post another update relating to the  Open Journal of Astrophysics.  Since the last update we have published two more papers, taking  the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 54 and the total published by OJAp up to 169.  There was one less arXiv update than usual last week, owing to the holiday on July 4th, so a couple of papers have been delayed.

The first paper of the most recent pair, published on July 3rd 2024,  is “Recovering 21cm Monopole Signals Without Smoothness” by Rugved Pund & Anže Slosar (Stony Brook, NY, USA) and Aaron Parsons (Berkeley, CA, USA) . This paper presents a new method for identifying the ‘Dark Ages’ trough contribution to the monopole of the 21cm radiation background that does not rely on the assumption that the spectrum is smooth. The paper is in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

 

 

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

The second paper, also published on 3rd July, has the title “LtU-ILI: An All-in-One Framework for Implicit Inference in Astrophysics and Cosmology”. There are fifteen authors with primary affiliations as follows: Matthew Ho (IAP, Paris, France), Deaglan J. Bartlett (IAP, Paris, France), Nicolas Chartier (Seoul National University, Korea),  Carolina Cuesta-Lazaro (Cfa, Harvard, USA),  Simon Ding (IAP, Paris, France), Axel Lapel (IAP, Paris, France), Pablo Lemos (Université de Montréal, Canada), Christopher C. Lovell (University of Portsmouth, UK),  T. Lucas Makinen (Imperial College, London, UK), Chirag Modi (Flatiron Institute, NY, USA), Viraj Pandya (Columbia University, NY, USA), Shivam Pandey (Columbia University, NY, USA), Lucia A. Perez (Flatiron Institute, NY, USA), Benjamin Wandelt (IAP, Paris, France),  and Greg L. Bryan (Sorbonne Université, Paris, France).

This paper, which is in the folder marked Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, presents a suite of software for rapid, user-friendly, and cutting-edge inference using machine learning in astrophysics and cosmology. The software can be found on Github here.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

 

 

 

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

That concludes this week’s update. No doubt I’ll have more for you next week!

https://telescoper.blog/2024/07/06/two-new-publications-at-the-open-journal-of-astrophysics-12/

#21cmRadiationBackground #arXiv231006134v5 #arXiv240205137v2 #CosmologyAndNonGalacticAstrophysics #DarkAges #ImplicitLikelihoodInference #InstrumentationAndMethodsForAstrophysics #OJAp #reionization #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

It’s a rainy Saturday morning here in Barcelona, and here’s the last update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics before I depart these shores. In fact there is only one paper to report…

In the Dark

#Cosmology #Reionization #CMB
"Reionization after JWST: a photon budget crisis?"
🔗https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07250

"Our current galaxy observations, taken at face value, imply an excess of ionizing photons and thus a process of reionization in tension with the cosmic microwave background and Lyman-α forest."

Another component of the evolution after the Big Bang that is at tension with the Big Bang.

Reionization after JWST: a photon budget crisis?

New James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations are revealing the first galaxies to be prolific producers of ionizing photons, which we argue gives rise to a tension between different probes of reionization. Over the last two decades a consensus has emerged where star-forming galaxies are able to generate enough photons to drive reionization, given reasonable values for their number densities, ionizing efficiencies $ξ_{\rm ion}$ (per unit UV luminosity), and escape fractions $f_{\rm esc}$. However, some new JWST observations infer high values of $ξ_{\rm ion}$ during reionization and an enhanced abundance of earlier ($z\gtrsim 9$) galaxies, dramatically increasing the number of ionizing photons produced at high $z$. Simultaneously, recent low-$z$ studies predict significant escape fractions for faint reionization-era galaxies. Put together, we show that the galaxies we have directly observed ($M_{\rm UV} < -15$) not only can drive reionization, but would end it too early. That is, our current galaxy observations, taken at face value, imply an excess of ionizing photons and thus a process of reionization in tension with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and Lyman-$α$ forest. Considering galaxies down to $M_{\rm UV}\approx -11$, below current observational limits, only worsens this tension. We discuss possible avenues to resolve this photon budget crisis, including systematics in either theory or observations.

arXiv.org

#astronomy #quasar #SMBH #reionization #CosmicDawn

An article published in the journal "The Astrophysical Journal Letters" reports the discovery of the most distant pair of merging quasars known. A team of researchers combined observations from the Subaru Telescope with the Gemini North Telescope to find traces of this pair of quasars that we see as they were about 900 million years after the Big Bang.

Read the details at https://english.tachyonbeam.com/2024/06/20/first-pair-of-merging-quasars-observed-at-cosmic-dawn/

First pair of merging quasars observed at Cosmic Dawn

An article published in the journal 'The Astrophysical Journal Letters' reports the discovery of the most distant pair of merging quasars known. A team of...

in the #arXiv

The First Billion Years, According to JWST

1.5 years into the JWST science mission, a snapshot of the great progress made towards understanding the initial chapters of our cosmic history.
by Angela Adamo and co-authors
https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.21054

#JWST #EarlyUniverse #Cosmology #galaxies #AGN #reionization #Universe #DarkMatter #astronomy #astrophysics #astrodon #science #STEM

The First Billion Years, According to JWST

With stunning clarity, JWST has revealed the Universe's first billion years. The scientific community is analyzing a wealth of JWST imaging and spectroscopic data from that era, and is in the process of rewriting the astronomy textbooks. Here, 1.5 years into the JWST science mission, we provide a snapshot of the great progress made towards understanding the initial chapters of our cosmic history. We highlight discoveries and breakthroughs, topics and issues that are not yet understood, and questions that will be addressed in the coming years, as JWST continues its revolutionary observations of the Early Universe. While this compendium is written by a small number of authors, invited to ISSI Bern in March 2024 as part of the 2024 ISSI Breakthrough Workshop, we acknowledge the work of a large community that is advancing our collective understanding of the evolution of the Early Universe.

arXiv.org

What sources caused the #reionization of the #universe? New results have effectively demonstrated that small #dwarfgalaxies are the likely producers of prodigious amounts of energetic radiation.

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-webb-dwarf-galaxies-reionized-universe.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter

Webb finds dwarf galaxies reionized the universe

Using the unprecedented capabilities of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of scientists has obtained the first spectroscopic observations of the faintest galaxies during the first billion years of the universe. These findings, published in the journal Nature, help answer a longstanding question for astronomers: What sources caused the reionization of the universe? These new results have effectively demonstrated that small dwarf galaxies are the likely producers of prodigious amounts of energetic radiation.

Phys.org

#JWST finds ‘smoking gun’ evidence of early galaxies transforming the #universe

https://physicsworld.com/a/jwst-finds-smoking-gun-evidence-of-early-galaxies-transforming-the-universe/

Distant #quasar sheds light on the #reionization of the #cosmos

#astronomy

JWST finds ‘smoking gun’ evidence of early galaxies transforming the universe – Physics World

Distant quasar sheds light on the reionization of the cosmos

Physics World