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A near-infrared spectrum of nova V1716 Scorpii (PNV J17224490-4137160), a recent bright (V_max = 7.3 mag), Fermi-LAT detected gamma-ray source, was modeled using the photoionization code CLOUDY. Abundances were estimated for He, C, N, O, Si, Al, Mg, Fe, Ne, S, Ca, and P. Notably, P (a factor of 120) and N (a factor of 248) are highly overabundant. It was necessary to assume the ejecta consist of two components (with a cylindrical geometry): a dense component from which the bulk of the H, He, and neutral O~I and N emission arises and a more diffuse component from which most of the coronal lines arise. Some of the coronal lines are found to originate from both the dense and diffuse components. The mass of the ejecta, including neutral and ionized gas, is ~ 4.19e-4 solar masses. Our analysis indicates that in the case of V1716 Sco (which has a carbon-oxygen white dwarf), a fraction of 25% white dwarf matter rather than 50% is favored for the mixing between white dwarf and the accreted envelope before the outburst. This mixing ratio is like that found for Oxygen-Neon novae where a 25% mixing fraction is also indicated. Helium hydride -- the first molecule to form after the Big Bang -- may have formed in the ejecta of V1716 Sco based on photoionization modeling. This prediction suggests that novae may be potential formation sites of this important molecular ion., Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables

We present the results of a spectroscopic analysis of extremely strong damped Lyman-{\alpha} absorbers (ESDLAs, log N(Hi)>=21.7) observed with VLT-XShooter. ESDLAs probe gas from within the star-forming disk of the associated galaxies and thus ESDLAs provide a unique opportunity to study the interstellar medium of galaxies at high-redshift. We report column densities (N), equivalent widths (w), and the kinematic spread ({\Delta} v90) of species from neutral, singly ionised, and higher ionisation species. We find that, using the dust correction prescription, the measured metallicities are consistent for singly ionised gas species such as Pii, S ii, Si ii, Mnii and Crii, and Znii in all ESDLAs within 3-sigma uncertainty. We find that the distributions of N(Ari)/N(Hi) ratio in DLAs and ESDLAs are similar. We further report that ESDLAs do not show a strong deficiency of Ari relative to other {\alpha}-capture elements as is seen in DLAs. This supports the idea that the mentioned under-abundance of Ari in DLAs is possibly caused by the presence of background UV photons that penetrate the low N(Hi) clouds to ionise Ari, but they cannot penetrate deep enough in the high N(Hi) ESDLA environment. The w(Mgii lambda2796) distribution in ESDLAs is found to be similar to that of metal-rich Ci-selected absorbers, but the velocity spread of their Mgii profile is different. For higher ionisation species (such as C iv and Si iv), {\Delta} v90 is similar in the two populations, while the {\Delta} v90 of singly ionised species is smaller for ESDLAs. This suggests that the ESDLAs sample a different Hi region of their associated galaxy compared to the general DLA population. We further study the N(Cl i) distribution in high-redshift DLA and ESDLA sightlines, as Cl i is a good tracer of H2 gas. The N(Cl i)-N(H2) correlation is followed by all the clouds (ESDLAs and otherwise) having log N(H2)<22., Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, 16 page appendix, 14 figures in appendix

We present a detailed quantitative magneto-optical imaging study of several superconductor/ferromagnet hybrid structures, including Nb deposited on top of thermomagnetically patterned NdFeB, and permalloy/niobium with erasable and tailored magnetic landscapes imprinted in the permalloy layer. The magneto-optical imaging data is complemented with and compared to scanning Hall probe microscopy measurements. Comprehensive protocols have been developed for calibrating, testing, and converting Faraday rotation data to magnetic field maps. Applied to the acquired data, they reveal the comparatively weaker magnetic response of the superconductor from the background of larger fields and field gradients generated by the magnetic layer., Comment: 21 pages, including 2 pages of supplementary material

Our understanding of physical processes in Photodissociation regions or Photon Dominated Regions (PDRs) largely depends on the ability of spectral synthesis codes to reproduce the observed infrared emission-line spectrum. In this paper, we explore the sensitivity of a single PDR model to microphysical details. Our calculations use the Cloudy spectral synthesis code, recently modified to include a wealth of PDR physical processes. We show how the chemical/thermal structure of a PDR, along with the calculated spectrum, changes when the treatment of physical processes such as grain physics and atomic/molecular rates are varied. We find a significant variation in the intensities of PDR emission lines, depending on different treatments of the grain physics. We also show how different combinations of the cosmic-ray ionization rate, inclusion of grain-atom/ion charge transfer, and the grain size distribution can lead to very similar results for the chemical structure. Additionally, our results show the utility of Cloudy for the spectral modeling of molecular environments., Comment: 36 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

(Abridged) We carried out a comprehensive far-ultraviolet (UV) survey of ^12CO and H_2 column densities along diffuse molecular Galactic sight lines in order to explore in detail the relationship between CO and H_2. We measured new CO abundances from HST spectra, new H_2 abundances from FUSE data, and new CH, CH^+, and CN abundances from the McDonald and European Southern Observatories. A plot of log N(CO) versus log N(H_2) shows that two power-law relationships are needed for a good fit of the entire sample, with a break located at log N(CO, cm^-2) = 14.1 and log N(H_2) = 20.4, corresponding to a change in production route for CO in higher-density gas. Similar logarithmic plots among all five diatomic molecules allow us to probe their relationships, revealing additional examples of dual slopes in the cases of CO versus CH (break at log N = 14.1, 13.0), CH^+ versus H_2 (13.1, 20.3), and CH^+ versus CO (13.2, 14.1). These breaks are all in excellent agreement with each other, confirming the break in the CO versus H_2 relationship, as well as the one-to-one correspondence between CH and H_2 abundances. Our new sight lines were selected according to detectable amounts of CO in their spectra and they provide information on both lower-density (< 100 cm^-3) and higher-density diffuse clouds. The CO versus H_2 correlation and its intrinsic width are shown to be empirically related to the changing total gas density among the sight lines of the sample. We employ both analytical and numerical chemical schemes in order to derive details of the molecular environments. In the low-density gas, where equilibrium-chemistry studies have failed to reproduce the abundance of CH^+, our numerical analysis shows that nonequilibrium chemistry must be employed for correctly predicting the abundances of both CH^+ and CO., Comment: 40 pages in emulateapj style, to appear in the Astrophysical Journal

Rate coefficients for rotational transitions in H_2 induced by H_2 impact are presented. Extensive quantum mechanical coupled-channel calculations based on a recently published (H_2)_2 potential energy surface were performed. The potential energy surface used here is presumed to be more reliable than surfaces used in previous work. Rotational transition cross sections with initial levels J <= 8 were computed for collision energies ranging between 0.0001 and 2.5 eV, and the corresponding rate coefficients were calculated for the temperature range 2 < T <10,000 K. In general, agreement with earlier calculations, which were limited to 100-6000 K, is good though discrepancies are found at the lowest and highest temperatures. Low-density-limit cooling functions due to para- and ortho-H_2 collisions are obtained from the collisional rate coefficients. Implications of the new results for non-thermal H_2 rotational distributions in molecular regions are also investigated.

We present a comparison between independent computer codes, modeling the physics and chemistry of interstellar photon dominated regions (PDRs). Our goal was to understand the mutual differences in the PDR codes and their effects on the physical and chemical structure of the model clouds, and to converge the output of different codes to a common solution. A number of benchmark models have been created, covering low and high gas densities and far ultraviolet intensities. The benchmark models were computed in two ways: one set assuming constant temperatures, thus testing the consistency of the chemical network and photo-processes, and a second set determining the temperature selfconsistently. We investigated the impact of PDR geometry and agreed on the comparison of results from spherical and plane-parallel PDR models. We identified a number of key processes governing the chemical network which have been treated differently in the various codes, and defined a proper common treatment. We established a comprehensive set of reference models for ongoing and future PDR model bench-marking and were able to increase the agreement in model predictions for all benchmark models significantly., Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures, see all benchmark data under: http://www.ph1.uni-koeln.de/pdr-comparison

The southwestern (SW) part of the Galactic H II region M17 contains an obscured ionization front that is most easily seen at infrared and radio wavelengths. It is nearly edge-on, thus offering an excellent opportunity to study the way in which the gas changes from fully ionized to molecular as radiation from the ionizing stars penetrates into the gas. M17 is also one of the very few H II regions for which the magnetic field strength can be measured in the photodissociation region ( PDR) that forms the interface between the ionized and molecular gas. Here we model an observed line of sight through the gas cloud, including the H+, H0 (PDR), and molecular layers, in a fully self-consistent single calculation. An interesting aspect of the M17 SW bar is that the PDR is very extended. We show that the strong magnetic field that is observed to be present inevitably leads to a very deep PDR, because the structure of the neutral and molecular gas is dominated by magnetic pressure, rather than by gas pressure, as previously had been supposed.We also show that a wide variety of observed facts can be explained if a hydrostatic geometry prevails, in which the gas pressure from an inner X-ray hot bubble and the outward momentum of the stellar radiation field compress the gas and its associated magnetic field in the PDR, as has already been shown to occur in the Orion Nebula. The magnetic field compression may also amplify the local cosmic-ray density. The pressure in the observed magnetic field balances the outward forces, suggesting that the observed geometry is a natural consequence of the formation of a star cluster within a molecular cloud., Comment: Published as 2007, ApJ,658,1119