Papers for Wednesday, Jun 02 2021

We discuss how the new measurement of the $^{12}C+^{12}C$ fusion cross section carried out with the Trojan Horse Method (Tumino, A., Spitaleri, C., La Cognata, M., et al., 2018, Nature 57, 687) affects the compactness of a star, i.e. basically the binding energy of the inner mantle, at the onset of the core collapse. In particular, we find that this new cross section significantly changes the dependence of the compactness on the initial mass with respect to previous findings obtained in Chieffi & Limongi 2020 (ApJ 890, 43) by adopting the classical cross section provided by Caughlan, G.R., and Fowler, W.D. 1988 (At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 40, 283). A non monotonic but well defined behavior is confirmed also in this case and no scatter of the compactness around the main trend is found. Such an occurrence could impact the possible explodability of the stars.

We investigate the timescale with which the IR luminosity decreases after a complete and rapid quenching of star formation using observations of local and high-redshift galaxies. From SED modelling, we derive the time since quenching of a subsample of 14 galaxies from the Herschel Reference Survey suffering from ram-pressure stripping due to the environment of the Virgo cluster and of a subsample of 7 rapidly quenched COSMOS galaxies selected through a state-of-the-art statistical method already tested on the determination of galaxies' star formation history. Three out of the 7 COSMOS galaxies have an optical spectra with no emission line, confirming their quenched nature. Present physical properties of the two samples are obtained as well as the past L$_{IR}$ of these galaxies, just before their quenching, from the long-term SFH properties. This past L$_{IR}$ is shown to be consistent with the L$_{IR}$ of reference samples of normally star-forming galaxies with same $M_*$ and $z$ than each of our quenched galaxies. We put constraints on the present to past L$_{IR}$ ratio as a function of quenching time. The two samples probe different dynamical ranges in terms of quenching age with the HRS galaxies exhibiting longer timescales (0.2-3\,Gyr) compared to the COSMOS one ($<100$\,Myr). Assuming an exponential decrease of the L$_{IR}$ after quenching, the COSMOS quenched galaxies are consistent with short e-folding times less than a couple of hundreds of Myr while the properties of the HRS quenched galaxies are compatible with timescales of several hundreds of Myr. For the HRS sample, this result is consistent with ram pressure stripping due to the environment. For the COSMOS sample, different quenching processes are acting on short to intermediate timescales. Processes such as galaxy mergers, disk instabilities or environmental effects can produce such strong star formation variability.

The morphology of gas-rich disc galaxies at redshift ~1-3 is dominated by a few massive clumps. The process of formation or assembly of these clumps and their relation to molecular clouds in contemporary spiral galaxies are still unknown. Using simulations of isolated disc galaxies, we study how the structure of the interstellar medium and the stability regime of the discs change when varying the gas fraction. In all galaxies, the stellar component is the main driver of instabilities. However, the molecular gas plays a non-negligible role in the inter-clumps medium of gas-rich cases, and thus in the assembly of the massive clumps. At scales smaller than a few 100 pc, the Toomre-like disc instabilities are replaced by another regime, specially in the gas-rich galaxies. We find that galaxies at low gas fraction (10%) stand apart from discs with more gas, which all share similar properties on virtually all the aspects we explore. For gas fractions below approximately 20%, the clump-scale regime of instabilities disappears, only leaving the large-scale disc-driven regime. When translating the change of gas fraction to the cosmic evolution of galaxies, this transition marks the end of the clumpy phase of disc galaxies, and allows for the onset of spiral structures, as commonly found in the local Universe.

Context. Bulge globular clusters (BGCs) are exceptional tracers of the formation and chemodynamical evolution of this oldest Galactic component. However, until now, observational difficulties have prevented us from taking full advantage of these powerful Galactic archeological tools. Aims. CAPOS, the bulge Cluster APOgee Survey, addresses this key topic by observing a large number of BGCs, most of which have only been poorly studied previously. Even their most basic parameters, such as metallicity, [{\alpha}/Fe], and radial velocity, are generally very uncertain. We aim to obtain accurate mean values for these parameters, as well as abundances for a number of other elements, and explore multiple populations. In this first paper, we describe the CAPOS project and present initial results for seven BGCs. Methods. CAPOS uses the APOGEE-2S spectrograph observing in the H band to penetrate obscuring dust toward the bulge. For this initial paper, we use abundances derived from ASPCAP, the APOGEE pipeline. Results. We derive mean [Fe/H] values of $-$0.85$\pm$0.04 (Terzan 2), $-$1.40$\pm$0.05 (Terzan 4), $-$1.20$\pm$0.10 (HP 1), $-$1.40$\pm$0.07 (Terzan 9), $-$1.07$\pm$0.09 (Djorg 2), $-$1.06$\pm$0.06 (NGC 6540), and $-$1.11$\pm$0.04 (NGC 6642) from three to ten stars per cluster. We determine mean abundances for eleven other elements plus the mean [$\alpha$/Fe] and radial velocity. CAPOS clusters significantly increase the sample of well-studied Main Bulge globular clusters (GCs) and also extend them to lower metallicity. We reinforce the finding that Main Bulge and Main Disk GCs, formed in situ, have [Si/Fe] abundances slightly higher than their accreted counterparts at the same metallicity. We investigate multiple populations and find our clusters generally follow the light-element (anti)correlation trends of previous studies of GCs of similar metallicity. We finally explore the abundances ...

We present results from a study of fifteen red giant members of the intermediate-metallicity globular cluster (GC) FSR 1758 using high-resolution near-infrared spectra collected with the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment II survey (APOGEE-2), obtained as part of CAPOS (the bulge Cluster APOgee Survey). Since its very recent discovery as a massive GC in the bulge region, evoking the name Sequoia, this has been an intriguing object with a highly debated origin, and initially led to the suggestion of a purported progenitor dwarf galaxy of the same name. In this work, we use new spectroscopic and astrometric data to provide additional clues to the nature of FSR 1758. Our study confirms the GC nature of FSR 1758, and as such we report for the first time the existence of the characteristic N-C anti-correlation and Al-N correlation, revealing the existence of the multiple-population phenomenon, similar to that observed in virtually all GCs. Furthermore, the presence of a population with strongly enriched aluminium makes it unlikely FSR 1758 is the remnant nucleus of a dwarf galaxy, as Al-enhanced stars are uncommon in dwarf galaxies. We find that FSR 1758 is slightly more metal rich than previously reported in the literature, with a mean metallicity [Fe/H] between $-1.43$ to $-1.36$ (depending on the adopted atmospheric parameters), and with a scatter within observational error, again pointing to its GC nature. Overall, the $\alpha$-enrichment ($\gtrsim+0.3$ dex), Fe-peak (Fe, Ni), light- (C, N), and odd-Z (Al) elements follow the trend of intermediate-metallicity GCs. ... A new examination of its dynamical properties with the \texttt{GravPot16} model favors an association with the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage accretion event. Thus, paradoxically, the cluster that gave rise to the name of the Sequoia dwarf galaxy does not appear to belong to this specific merging event.

We present an improved weak-lensing (WL) study of the high$-z$ $(z=0.87)$ merging galaxy cluster ACT-CL J0102-4915 (El Gordo) based on new wide-field Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging data. The new imaging data cover the 3.5$\times$3.5 Mpc region centered on the cluster and enable us to detect WL signals beyond the virial radius, which was not possible in previous studies. We confirm the binary mass structure consisting of the northwestern (NW) and southeastern (SE) subclusters and the 2$\sigma$ dissociation between the SE mass peak and the X-ray cool core. We obtain the mass estimates of the subclusters by simultaneously fitting two Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) halos without employing mass-concentration relations. The masses are $M_{200c}^{NW} = 9.9^{+2.1}_{-2.2} \times 10^{14} M_{\sun}$ and $M_{200c}^{SE} = 6.5^{+1.9}_{-1.4} \times 10^{14} M_{\sun}$ for the NW and SE subclusters, respectively. The mass ratio is consistent with our previous WL study but significantly different from the previous strong lensing results. This discrepancy is attributed to the use of extrapolation in strong lensing studies because the SE component possesses a higher concentration. By superposing the two best-fit NFW halos, we determine the total mass of El Gordo to be $M_{200c} = 2.13^{+0.25}_{-0.23} \times 10^{15} M_{\sun}$, which is 23% lower than our previous WL result [$M_{200c} =(2.76\pm0.51) \times 10^{15} M_{\sun}$]. Our updated mass is a more direct measurement since we are not extrapolating to $R_{200c}$ as in all previous studies. The new mass is compatible with the current $\Lambda$CDM cosmology.

We develop two parallel machine-learning pipelines to estimate the contribution of cosmic strings (CSs), conveniently encoded in their tension ($G\mu$), to the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation observed by {\it Planck}. The first approach is tree-based and feeds on certain map features derived by image processing and statistical tools. The second uses convolutional neural network with the goal to explore possible non-trivial features of the CS imprints. The two pipelines are trained on {\it Planck} simulations and when applied to {\it Planck} \texttt{SMICA} map yield the $3\sigma$ upper bound of $G\mu\lesssim 8.6\times 10^{-7}$. We also train and apply the pipelines to make forecasts for futuristic CMB-S4-like surveys and conservatively find their minimum detectable tension to be $G\mu_{\rm min}\sim 1.9\times 10^{-7}$.

Inferring the climate and surface conditions of terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone is a major goal for the field of exoplanet science. This pursuit will require both statistical analyses of the population of habitable planets as well as in-depth analyses of the climates of individual planets. Given the close relationship between habitability and surface liquid water, it is important to ask whether the fraction of a planet's surface where water can be a liquid, $\chi_\text{hab}$, can be inferred from observations. We have produced a diverse bank of 1,874 3D climate models and computed the full-phase reflectance and emission spectrum for each model to investigate whether surface climate inference is feasible with high-quality direct imaging or secondary eclipse spectroscopy. These models represent the outcome of approximately 200,000 total simulated years of climate and over 50,000 CPU-hours, and the roughly-100 GB model bank and its associated spectra are being made publicly-available for community use. We find that there are correlations between spectra and $\chi_\text{hab}$ that will permit statistical approaches. However, spectral degeneracies in the climate observables produced by our model bank indicate that inference of individual climates is likely to be model-dependent, and inference will likely be impossible without exhaustive explorations of the climate parameter space. The diversity of potential climates on habitable planets therefore poses fundamental challenges to remote sensing efforts targeting exo-Earths.

We present the first Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) catalog of long-term $\gamma$-ray transient sources (1FLT). This comprises sources that were detected on monthly time intervals during the first decade of Fermi-LAT operations. The monthly time scale allows us to identify transient and variable sources that were not yet reported in other Fermi-LAT catalogs. The monthly datasets were analyzed using a wavelet-based source detection algorithm that provided the candidate new transient sources. The search was limited to the extragalactic regions of the sky to avoid the dominance of the Galactic diffuse emission at low Galactic latitudes. The transient candidates were then analyzed using the standard Fermi-LAT Maximum Likelihood analysis method. All sources detected with a statistical significance above 4$\sigma$ in at least one monthly bin were listed in the final catalog. The 1FLT catalog contains 142 transient $\gamma$-ray sources that are not included in the 4FGL-DR2 catalog. Many of these sources (102) have been confidently associated with Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN): 24 are associated with Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars; 1 with a BL Lac object; 70 with Blazars of Uncertain Type; 3 with Radio Galaxies; 1 with a Compact Steep Spectrum radio source; 1 with a Steep Spectrum Radio Quasar; 2 with AGN of other types. The remaining 40 sources have no candidate counterparts at other wavelengths. The median $\gamma$-ray spectral index of the 1FLT-AGN sources is softer than that reported in the latest Fermi-LAT AGN general catalog. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that detection of the softest $\gamma$-ray emitters is less efficient when the data are integrated over year-long intervals.

We propose a novel primordial black hole (PBH) formation mechanism based on a first-order phase transition (FOPT). If a fermion species gains a huge mass in the true vacuum, the corresponding particles get trapped in the false vacuum as they do not have sufficient energy to penetrate the bubble wall. After the FOPT, the fermions are compressed into the false vacuum remnants to form non-topological solitons called Fermi-balls, and then collapse to PBHs due to the long-range Yukawa attractive force. We derive the PBH mass and abundance, showing that for a $\mathcal{O}({\rm GeV})$ FOPT the PBHs could be $\sim10^{17}$ g and explain all of dark matter. If the FOPT happens at higher scale, PBHs are typically overproduced and extra dilution mechanism is necessary to satisfy current constraints.

The linear increase of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature with cosmological redshift, $T_{\rm CMB} = T_0(1 + z)$, is a prediction of the standard cosmological $\Lambda$CDM model. There are currently two methods to measure this dependence at redshift $z>0$, and that is equally important to estimate the CMB temperature $T_0$ at the present epoch $z=0$. The first method is based on the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect for a galaxy cluster. aThe second method is based on the analysis of the populations of atomic and molecular energy levels observed in the absorption spectra of quasars. This method allows $T_{\rm CMB}(z)$ to be measured directly. We present new estimates of $T_{\rm CMB}(z_i)$ in the redshift range $1.7\le z_i \le3.3$ based on the analysis of excitation of the CO rotational levels and C\,{\sc i} fine-structure levels in 15 absorption systems. We take into account collisional excitation of CO and C\,{\sc i} with hydrogen atoms and H$_2$ and radiative pumping of C\,{\sc i} by the interstellar ultraviolet radiation. Applying this corrections leads to a systematic decrease in the previously obtained estimates of $T_{\rm CMB}(z_i)$ (for some systems the magnitude of the effect is $\sim$10\%). Combining our measurements with the measurements of $T_{\rm CMB}(z)$ in galaxy clusters we have obtained a constraint on the parameter $\beta=+0.010\pm0.013$, which characterizes the deviation of the CMB temperature from the standard relation, $T_{\rm CMB} = T_0(1 + z)^{1-\beta}$, and an independent estimate of the CMB temperature at the present epoch, $T_0 = 2.719\pm0.009$\,K, which agrees well with the estimate from orbital measurements, $T_0 = 2.7255\pm0.0006$\,K. This independent estimate is very important because it was obtained using cosmological data, in contrast to satellite measurements, which are obtained "here" and "now".

The next generation of galaxy surveys like the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and Euclid will provide datasets orders of magnitude larger than anything available to date. Our ability to model nonlinear effects in late time matter perturbations will be a key to unlock the full potential of these datasets, and the area of initial condition reconstruction is attracting growing attention. Iterative reconstruction developed in Ref. [1] is a technique designed to reconstruct the displacement field from the observed galaxy distribution. The nonlinear displacement field and initial linear density field are highly correlated. Therefore, reconstructing the nonlinear displacement field enables us to extract the primordial cosmological information better than from the late time density field at the level of the two-point statistics. This paper will test to what extent the iterative reconstruction can recover the true displacement field and construct a perturbation theory model for the postreconstructed field. We model the iterative reconstruction process with Lagrangian perturbation theory~(LPT) up to third order for dark matter in real space and compare it with $N$-body simulations. We find that the simulated iterative reconstruction does not converge to the nonlinear displacement field, and the discrepancy mainly appears in the shift term, i.e., the term correlated directly with the linear density field. On the contrary, our 3LPT model predicts that the iterative reconstruction should converge to the nonlinear displacement field. We discuss the sources of discrepancy, including numerical noise/artifacts on small scales, and present an ad hoc phenomenological model that improves the agreement.

We compared the sizes and fluxes of a sample of protostellar disks in Orion A measured with the ALMA 0.87 mm continuum data from the VANDAM survey with the physical properties of their ambient environments on the core scale of 0.6 pc estimated with the GBT GAS NH3 and JCMT SCUPOL polarimetric data. We did not find any significant dependence of the disk radii and continuum fluxes on a single parameter on the core scale, such as the non-thermal line width, magnetic field orientation and strength, or magnitude and orientation of the velocity gradient. Among these parameters, we only found a positive correlation between the magnitude of the velocity gradient and the non-thermal line width. Thus, the observed velocity gradients are more likely related to turbulent motion but not large-scale rotation. Our results of no clear dependence of the disk radii on these parameters are more consistent with the expectation from non-ideal MHD simulations of disk formation in collapsing cores, where the disk size is self-regulated by magnetic braking and diffusion, compared to other simulations which only include turbulence and/or a magnetic field misaligned with the rotational axis. Therefore, our results could hint that the non-ideal MHD effects play a more important role in the disk formation. Nevertheless, we cannot exclude the influences on the observed disk size distribution by dynamical interaction in a stellar cluster or amounts of angular momentum on the core scale, which cannot be probed with the current data.

We present a state-of-the-art report on visualization in astrophysics. We survey representative papers from both astrophysics and visualization and provide a taxonomy of existing approaches based on data analysis tasks. The approaches are classified based on five categories: data wrangling, data exploration, feature identification, object reconstruction, as well as education and outreach. Our unique contribution is to combine the diverse viewpoints from both astronomers and visualization experts to identify challenges and opportunities for visualization in astrophysics. The main goal is to provide a reference point to bring modern data analysis and visualization techniques to the rich datasets in astrophysics.

Ongoing or upcoming surveys such as Gaia, ZTF, or LSST will observe light-curves of billons or more astronomical sources. This presents new challenges for identifying interesting and important types of variability. Collecting a sufficient number of labelled data for training is difficult, however, especially in the early stages of a new survey. Here we develop a single-band light-curve classifier based on deep neural networks, and use transfer learning to address the training data paucity problem by conveying knowledge from one dataset to another. First we train a neural network on 16 variability features extracted from the light-curves of OGLE and EROS-2 variables. We then optimize this model using a small set (e.g. 5%) of periodic variable light-curves from the ASAS dataset in order to transfer knowledge inferred from OGLE/EROS-2 to a new ASAS classifier. With this we achieve good classification results on ASAS, thereby showing that knowledge can be successfully transferred between datasets. We demonstrate similar transfer learning using Hipparcos and ASAS-SN data. We therefore find that it is not necessary to train a neural network from scratch for every new survey, but rather that transfer learning can be used even when only a small set of labelled data is available in the new survey.

We present a statistical analysis for the characteristics and spatial evolution of the interplanetary discontinuities (IDs) in the solar wind, from 0.13 to 0.9 au, by using the Parker Solar Probe measurements on Orbits 4 and 5. 3948 IDs have been collected, including 2511 rotational discontinuities (RDs) and 557 tangential discontinuities (TDs), with the remnant unidentified. The statistical results show that (1) the ID occurrence rate decreases from 200 events/day at 0.13 au to 1 events/day at 0.9 au, following a spatial scaling r-2.00, (2) the RD to TD ratio decreases quickly with the heliocentric distance, from 8 at r<0.3 au to 1 at r>0.4 au, (3) the magnetic field tends to rotate across the IDs, 45{\deg} for TDs and 30{\deg} for RDs in the pristine solar wind within 0.3 au, (4) a special subgroup of RDs exist within 0.3 au, characterized by small field rotation angles and parallel or antiparallel propagations to the background magnetic fields, (5) the TD thicknesses normalized by local ion inertial lengths (di) show no clear spatial scaling and generally range from 5 to 35 di, and the normalized RD thicknesses follow r-1.09 spatial scaling, (6) the outward (anti-sunward) propagating RDs predominate in all RDs, with the propagation speeds in the plasma rest frame proportional to r-1.03. This work could improve our understandings for the ID characteristics and evolutions and shed light on the study of the turbulent environment in the pristine solar wind.

Gamma-ray data from the Fermi-Large Area Telescope reveal an unexplained, apparently diffuse, signal from the Galactic bulge. The origin of this "Galactic Center Excess" (GCE) has been debated with proposed sources prominently including self-annihilating dark matter and a hitherto undetected population of millisecond pulsars (MSPs). We use a binary population synthesis forward model to demonstrate that an MSP population arising from the accretion induced collapse of O-Ne white dwarfs in Galactic bulge binaries can naturally explain the GCE. Synchrotron emission from MSP-launched cosmic ray electrons and positrons seems also to explain the mysterious "haze" of hard-spectrum, non-thermal microwave emission from the inner Galaxy detected in WMAP and Planck data.

Integrated-optic components are being increasingly used in astrophysics, mainly where accuracy and precision are paramount. One such emerging technology is nulling interferometry that targets high contrast and high angular resolution. Two of the most critical limitations encountered by nullers are rapid phase fluctuations in the incoming light causing instability in the interference and chromaticity of the directional couplers that prevent a deep broadband interferometric null. We explore the use of a tricoupler designed by ultrafast laser inscription that solves both issues. Simulations of a tricoupler, incorporated into a nuller, result in order of a magnitude improvement in null depth.

We describe the addition of Lyman-alpha resonant line transfer to our dust continuum radiation transfer code SKIRT, verifying our implementation with published results for spherical problems and using some self-designed three-dimensional setups. We specifically test spatial discretization through various grid types, including hierarchical octree grids and unstructured Voronoi tessellations. We then use a radiation transfer post-processing model for one of the spiral galaxies produced by the Auriga cosmological zoom simulations to investigate the effect of spatial discretization on the synthetic observations. We find that the calculated Lyman-alpha line profiles exhibit an extraordinarily strong dependence on the type and resolution of the spatial grid, rendering the results untrustworthy at best. We attribute this effect to the large gradients in the hydrogen density distribution over small distances, which remain significantly under-resolved in the input model. We therefore argue that further research is needed to determine the required spatial resolution of a hydrodynamical simulation snapshot to enable meaningful Lyman-alpha line transfer post-processing.

Surveys of the Milky Way at various wavelengths have changed our view of star formation in our Galaxy considerably in recent years. In this paper we give an overview of the GLOSTAR survey, a new survey covering large parts (145 square degrees) of the northern Galactic plane using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) in the frequency range 4-8 GHz and the Effelsberg 100-m telescope. This provides for the first time a radio survey covering all angular scales down to 1.5 arcsecond, similar to complementary near-IR and mid-IR galactic plane surveys. We outline the main goals of the survey and give a detailed description of the observations and the data reduction strategy. In our observations we covered the radio continuum in full polarization, as well as the 6.7 GHz methanol maser line, the 4.8~GHz formaldehyde line, and seven radio recombination lines. The observations were conducted in the most compact D configuration of the VLA and in the more extended B configuration. This yielded spatial resolutions of 18" and 1.5" for the two configurations, respectively. We also combined the D configuration images with the Effelsberg 100-m data to provide zero spacing information, and we jointly imaged the D- and B-configuration data for optimal sensitivity of the intermediate spatial ranges. Here we show selected results for the first part of the survey, covering the range of 28 deg <l<36 deg and |b|< 1 deg, including the full low-resolution continuum image, examples of high-resolution images of selected sources, and the first results from the spectral line data.

The 44.7 ms X-ray pulsar in the supernova remnant G12.82-0.02/HESS J1813-178 has the second highest spin-down luminosity of known pulsars in the Galaxy, with E-dot=5.6e37 erg/s. Using the Green Bank Telescope, we have detected radio pulsations from PSR J1813-1749 at 4.4-10.2 GHz. The pulse is highly scattered, with an exponential decay timescale \tau longer than that of any other pulsar at these frequencies. A point source detected at this position by Dzib et al. in several observations with the Jansky Very Large Array can be attributed to the pulsed emission. The steep dependence of \tau on observing frequency explains why all previous pulsation searches at lower frequencies failed (\tau~0.25 s at 2 GHz). The large dispersion measure, DM=1087 pc/cc, indicates a distance of either 6.2 or 12 kpc according to two widely used models of the electron density distribution in the Galaxy. These disfavor a previously suggested association with a young stellar cluster at the closer distance of 4.8 kpc. The high X-ray measured column density of ~1e23/cm^2 also supports a large distance. If at d~12 kpc, HESS J1813-178 would be one of the most luminous TeV sources in the Galaxy.

The baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) have proven to be an invaluable tool in constraining the expansion history of the Universe at late times and are characterized by the comoving sound horizon at the baryon drag epoch $r_\mathrm{s}(z_\mathrm{d})$. The latter quantity can be calculated either numerically using recombination codes or via fitting functions, such as the one by Eisenstein and Hu (EH), made via grids of parameters of the recombination history. Here we quantify the accuracy of these expressions and show that they can strongly bias the derived constraints on the cosmological parameters using BAO data. Then, using a machine learning approach, called the genetic algorithms, we proceed to derive new analytic expressions for $r_\mathrm{s}(z_\mathrm{d})$ which are accurate at the $\sim0.003\%$ level in a range of $10\sigma$ around the Planck 2018 best-fit or $\sim0.018\%$ in a much broader range, compared to $\sim 2-4\%$ for the EH expression, thus obtaining an improvement of two to three orders of magnitude. Moreover, we also provide fits that include the effects of massive neutrinos and an extension to the concordance cosmological model assuming variations of the fine structure constant. Finally, we note that our expressions can be used to ease the computational cost required to compute $r_\mathrm{s}(z_\mathrm{d})$ with a Boltzmann code when deriving cosmological constraints from current and upcoming surveys.

Atmospheric heavy elements have been observed in more than a quarter of white dwarfs (WDs) at different cooling ages, indicating ongoing accretion of asteroidal material, whilst only a few per cent of the WDs possess a dust disk, and all these WDs are accreting metals. Here, assuming that a rubble-pile asteroid is scattered inside a WD's Roche lobe by a planet, we study its tidal disruption and the long-term evolution of the resulting fragments. We find that after a few pericentric passages, the asteroid is shredded into its constituent particles, forming a flat, thin ring. On a timescale of Myr, tens of per cent of the particles are scattered onto the WD. Fragment mutual collisions are most effective for coplanar fragments, and are thus only important in $10^3-10^4$ yr before the orbital coplanarity is broken by the planet. We show that for a rubble pile asteroid with a size frequency distribution of the component particles following that of the near earth objects, it has to be roughly at least 10 km in radius such that enough fragments are generated and $\ge10\%$ of its mass is lost to mutual collisions. At relative velocities of tens of km/s, such collisions grind down the tidal fragments into smaller and smaller dust grains. The WD radiation forces may shrink those grains' orbits, forming a dust disk. Tidal disruption of a monolithic asteroid creates large km-size fragments, and only parent bodies $\ge100$ km are able to generate enough fragments for mutual collisions to be significant.

We investigate photometric variations due to stellar activity which induce systematic radial-velocity errors (so-called "jitter") for the four targets in the Hyades open cluster observed by the K2 mission (EPIC 210721261, EPIC 210923016, EPIC 247122957, and EPIC 247783757). Applying Gaussian process regressions to the K2 light curves and the near-infrared (NIR) light curves observed with the IRSF 1.4-m telescope, we derive the wavelength dependences of the photometric signals due to stellar activity. To estimate the temporal variations in the photometric variability amplitudes between the two observation periods of K2 and IRSF, separated by more than 2 years, we analyze a number of K2 targets in Hyades that have also been observed in Campaigns 4 and 13 and find a representative variation rate over 2 years of 38%pm71%. Taking this temporal variation into account, we constrain projected sizes and temperature contrast properties of the starspots in the stellar photosphere to be approximately 10% and 0.95, respectively. These starspot properties can induce relatively large differences in the variability amplitude over different observational passbands, and we find that radial-velocity jitter may be more suppressed in the NIR than previously expected. Our result supports profits of on-going exoplanet search projects that are attempting to detect or confirm young planets in open clusters via radial-velocity measurements in the NIR.

Context. Homochirality is a generic and unique property of life on Earth and is considered a universal and agnostic biosignature. Homochirality induces fractional circular polarization in the incident light that it reflects. Because this circularly polarized light can be sensed remotely, it can be one of the most compelling candidate biosignatures in life detection missions. While there are also other sources of circular polarization, these result in spectrally flat signals with lower magnitude. Additionally, circular polarization can be a valuable tool in Earth remote sensing because the circular polarization signal directly relates to vegetation physiology. Aims. While high-quality circular polarization measurements can be obtained in the laboratory and under semi-static conditions in the field, there has been a significant gap to more realistic remote sensing conditions. Methods. In this study, we present sensitive circular spectropolarimetric measurements of various landscape elements taken from a fast-moving helicopter. Results. We demonstrate that during flight, within mere seconds of measurements, we can differentiate (S/N>5) between grass fields, forests, and abiotic urban areas. Importantly, we show that with only nonzero circular polarization as a discriminant, photosynthetic organisms can even be measured in lakes. Conclusions. Circular spectropolarimetry can be a powerful technique to detect life beyond Earth, and we emphasize the potential of utilizing circular spectropolarimetry as a remote sensing tool to characterize and monitor in detail the vegetation physiology and terrain features of Earth itself.

Hierarchical analysis of the binary black hole (BBH) detections by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors has offered an increasingly clear picture of their mass, spin, and redshift distributions. Fully understanding the formation and evolution of BBH mergers will require not just the characterization of these marginal distributions, though, but the discovery of any correlations that exist between the properties of BBHs. Here, we hierarchically analyze the ensemble of BBHs discovered by the LIGO and Virgo with a model that allows for intrinsic correlations between their mass ratios $q$ and effective inspiral spins $\chi_\mathrm{eff}$. At $98.7\%$ credibility, we find that the mean of the $\chi_\mathrm{eff}$ distribution varies as a function of $q$, such that more unequal-mass BBHs exhibit systematically larger $\chi_\mathrm{eff}$. We find Bayesian odds ratio of $10.5$ in favor of a model that allows for such a correlation over one that does not. While many proposed astrophysical formation channels predict some degree correlation between spins and mass ratio, these predicted correlations typically act in an opposite sense to the trend we observationally identify in the data.

The density field reconstruction technique has been widely used for recovering the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) feature in galaxy surveys that has been degraded due to nonlinearities. In this paper, we investigate the performance of iterative reconstruction on the BAO and the broadband, focusing on the iterative implementation based on \citet{Seo:2010} and \citet{Schmittfull:2017}. We include redshift-space distortions, halo bias, and shot noise and inspect the components of the reconstructed field in Fourier space and in configuration space using both density field-based reconstruction and displacement field-based reconstruction. We find that the displacement field reconstruction becomes quickly challenging in the presence of non-negligible shot noise and therefore present surrogate methods that can be practically applied to a much more sparse field such as galaxies. For a galaxy field, implementing a debiasing step to remove the Lagrangian bias appears crucial for the displacement field reconstruction. We show that the iterative reconstruction does not substantially improve the BAO feature beyond an optimized standard reconstruction; however, we find that such aggressive optimization of the standard reconstruction with a small smoothing kernel is achieved at the cost of degradation on large scales while taking iterative steps allows us to use a small smoothing kernel `stably', i.e., without causing a substantial deviation from the linear theory model on large scales.

Cosmological $N$-body simulations show that Milky Way-sized galaxies harbor a population of unmerged dark matter subhalos. These subhalos could shine in gamma-rays and be eventually detected in gamma-ray surveys as unidentified sources. We performed a thorough selection among unidentified Fermi-LAT Objects (UFOs) to identify them as possible TeV-scale dark matter subhalo candidates. We search for very-high-energy (E $\gtrsim$ 100 GeV) gamma-ray emissions using H.E.S.S. observations towards four selected UFOs. Since no significant very-high-energy gamma-ray emission is detected in any dataset of the four observed UFOs nor in the combined UFO dataset, strong constraints are derived on the product of the velocity-weighted annihilation cross section $\langle \sigma v \rangle$ by the $J$-factor for the dark matter models. The 95% C.L. observed upper limits derived from combined H.E.S.S. observations reach $\langle \sigma v \rangle J$ values of 3.7$\times$10$^{-5}$ and 8.1$\times$10$^{-6}$ GeV$^2$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ in the $W^+W^-$ and $\tau^+\tau^-$ channels, respectively, for a 1 TeV dark matter mass. Focusing on thermal WIMPs, the H.E.S.S. constraints restrict the $J$-factors to lie in the range 6.1$\times$10$^{19}$ - 2.0$\times$10$^{21}$ GeV$^2$cm$^{-5}$, and the masses to lie between 0.2 and 6 TeV in the $W^+W^-$ channel. For the $\tau^+\tau^-$ channel, the $J$-factors lie in the range 7.0$\times$10$^{19}$ - 7.1$\times$10$^{20}$ GeV$^2$cm$^{-5}$ and the masses lie between 0.2 and 0.5 TeV. Assuming model-dependent predictions from cosmological N-body simulations on the $J$-factor distribution for Milky Way-sized galaxies, the dark matter models with masses greater than 0.3 TeV for the UFO emissions can be ruled out at high confidence level.

We assume that the strong convection during core helium flash of low mass red giant branch (RBG) stars excite waves that propagate to the envelope, and find that the energy that these waves deposit in the envelope causes envelope expansion and brightening. We base our assumption and the estimate of the wave energy on studies that explored such a process due to the vigorous core convection of massive stars just before they experience a core collapse supernova explosion. Using the stellar evolutionary code MESA we find that the wave energy causes an expansion within few years by tens to hundreds solar radii. Despite the large brightening, we expect the increase in radius and luminosity to substantially enhance mass loss rate and dust formation. The dust shifts the star to become much redder (to the infrared), and the star might actually become fainter in the visible. The overall appearance is of a faint red transient event that lasts for months to few years. We suggest that in some cases envelope expansion might lead stars that are about to leave the RGB to engulf exoplanets. The extended envelope has a smaller binding energy to a degree that allows planets of several Jupiter masses or more and brown dwarfs to survive the common envelope evolution. We suggest this scenario to account for the planet orbiting the white dwarf (WD) WD1856+534 (TIC 267574918) and for the WD - brown dwarf binary system ZTFJ003855.0+203025.5.

The long-term variations of the orbit of the Earth govern the insolation on its surface and hence its climate. The use of the astronomical signal, whose imprint has been recovered in the geological records, has revolutionized the determination of the geological time scales (e.g. Gradstein & Ogg 2020). However, the orbital variations beyond 60 Myr cannot be reliably predicted because of the chaotic dynamics of the planetary orbits in the Solar System (Laskar 1989). Taking into account this dynamical uncertainty is necessary for a complete astronomical calibration of geological records. Our work addresses this problem with a statistical analysis of 120 000 orbital solutions of the secular model of the Solar System ranging from 500 Myr to 5 Gyr. We obtain the marginal probability density functions of the fundamental secular frequencies using kernel density estimation. The uncertainty of the density estimation is also obtained here in the form of confidence intervals determined by the moving block bootstrap method. The results of the secular model are shown to be in good agreement with those of the direct integrations of a comprehensive model of the Solar System. Application of our work is illustrated on two geological data: the Newark-Hartford records and the Libsack core.

Neutron stars are known to host extremely powerful magnetic fields. Among other effects, one of the consequences of harbouring such fields is the deformation of the neutron star structure, leading, together with rotation, to the emission of continuous gravitational waves. On the one hand, the details of their internal magnetic fields are mostly unknown. Likewise, their internal structure, encoded by the equation of state, is highly uncertain. Here we present a study of axisymmetric models of isolated magnetised neutron stars, for various realistic equations of state considered viable by observations and nuclear physics constraints. We show that it is possible to find simple relations between the magnetic deformation of a neutron star, its Komar mass and its circumferential radius. Such relations are quasi-universal, meaning that they are mostly independent on the equation of state of the neutron star and only slightly dependent on the magnetic field configuration. Being formulated in terms of potentially observable quantities, as we discuss, our results could help to constrain the magnetic properties of the neutron star interior and to better assess the detectability of continuous gravitational waves by isolated neutron stars, without knowing their equation of state. Our results are derived both in general relativity and in scalar-tensor theories - one of the most promising extensions of general relativity - in this case by considering also the scalar charge. We show that even in this case general relations hold that account for deviations from general relativity, that could potentially be used to set constraints on the gravitational theory.

We report the first detection in space of the cumulene carbon chain $l$-H$_2$C$_5$. A total of eleven rotational transitions, with $J_{up}$ = 7-10 and $K_a$ = 0 and 1, were detected in TMC-1 in the 31.0-50.4 GHz range using the Yebes 40m radio telescope. We derive a column density of (1.8$\pm$0.5)$\times$10$^{10}$ cm$^{-2}$. In addition, we report observations of other cumulene carbenes detected previously in TMC-1, to compare their abundances with the newly detected cumulene carbene chain. We find that $l$-H$_2$C$_5$ is $\sim$4.0 times less abundant than the larger cumulene carbene $l$-H$_2$C$_6$, while it is $\sim$300 and $\sim$500 times less abundant than the shorter chains $l$-H$_2$C$_3$ and $l$-H$_2$C$_4$. We discuss the most likely gas-phase chemical routes to these cumulenes in TMC-1 and stress that chemical kinetics studies able to distinguish between different isomers are needed to shed light on the chemistry of C$_n$H$_2$ isomers with $n$\,$>$\,3.

Angular power spectra of temperature anisotropies and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as well as the linear matter power spectra are calculated for models with three light neutrinos with non-thermal phase-space distributions in the presence of a primordial stochastic magnetic field. The non-thermal phase-space distribution function is assumed to be the sum of a Fermi-Dirac and a gaussian distribution. It is found that the known effective description of the non-thermal model in terms of a twin thermal model with extra relativistic degrees of freedom can also be extended to models including a stochastic magnetic field. Numerical solutions are obtained for a range of magnetic field parameters.

The time-scales of the variabilities in changing look (CL) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are usually at the order of years to tens of years (some of them are even shorter than one year), which are much shorter than the viscous timescale of a standard thin accretion disk. It implies that the variabilities of CL AGNs cannot be reproduced by varying the mass accretion rate of the thin disk. In this work, we employ a magnetic accretion disk-outflow model to calculate the inflow time of the disk predominantly driven by magnetic outflows. In this model, most angular momentum of the gas in the disk is carried away by the outflows, and therefore its radial velocity can be substantially higher than that of a conventional viscous disk. Our calculations show that the inflow time of such a disk with outflows can be around several years to tens years. The calculated spectra of the disk with outflows can fit the observed spectra of a CL AGN Mrk 1018 quite well both in the low and high states. The derived inflow time of such a disk with outflows is around 5 years in the high state, while it becomes $\sim 20$ years in the low state, which is roughly consistent with the observations of the variabilities in Mrk 1018.

Mega-parsec scale radio sources in the form of halos and relics are often detected in dynamically disturbed galaxy clusters and are generally thought to be generated by merger-induced turbulence and shocks, respectively. We aim to identify the mechanisms responsible for the particle acceleration and the magnetic field amplification in diffuse radio sources of the galaxy cluster ClG 0217+70. We observed the cluster with LOFAR at 141 MHz and VLA at 1.5 GHz, and combine with VLA 1.4 GHz archival data to study the morphological, spectral properties of the sources in the cluster. We add Chandra archival data to examine the thermal and non-thermal relation of the gas in the cluster centre. Our LOFAR and VLA new data confirm the presence of a giant radio halo in the cluster centre and multiple relics in the outskirts. The radio and X-ray emission from the halo are positively correlated, implying a tight relation between the thermal and non-thermal components. The SE radio structure with a projected size of 3.5 Mpc is the most extended radio relic detected to date. The spectral index across the width of the relics steepens towards the cluster centre, suggesting the energy ageing in the post-shock regions. The shock Mach numbers for the relics derived from the spectral index map reasonably range between 2.0 and 3.2. However, the integrated spectral indices lead to increasingly high Mach numbers for the relics farther from the cluster centre. This discrepancy could be because the relation between injection and integrated spectra does not hold for distant shocks, suggesting that the cooling time for the radio-emitting electrons is shorter than the crossing time of the shocks. The variations in the surface brightness of the relics and the low Mach numbers imply that the radio-emitting electrons are re-accelerated from fossil gas that is originally energised by active galactic nucleus activities.

Ultralight bosons are possible fundamental building blocks of nature, and promising dark matter candidates. They can trigger superradiant instabilities of spinning black holes (BHs) and form long-lived "bosonic clouds" that slowly dissipate energy through the emission of gravitational waves (GWs). Previous studies constrained ultralight bosons by searching for the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) emitted by these sources in LIGO data, focusing on the most unstable dipolar and quadrupolar modes. Here we focus on scalar bosons and extend previous works by: (i) studying in detail the impact of higher modes in the SGWB; (ii) exploring the potential of future proposed ground-based GW detectors, such as the Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory, the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer, to detect this SGWB. We find that higher modes largely dominate the SGWB for bosons with masses $\gtrsim 10^{-12}$ eV, which is particularly relevant for future GW detectors. By estimating the signal-to-noise ratio of this SGWB, due to both stellar-origin BHs and from a hypothetical population of primordial BHs, we find that future ground-based GW detectors could observe or constrain bosons in the mass range $\sim [7\times 10^{-14}, 2\times 10^{-11}]$ eV and significantly improve on current and future constraints imposed by LIGO and Virgo observations.

We propose the use of the Earth as a transducer for ultralight dark-matter detection. In particular we point out a novel signal of kinetically mixed dark-photon dark matter: a monochromatic oscillating magnetic field generated at the surface of the Earth. Similar to the signal in a laboratory experiment in a shielded box (or cavity), this signal arises because the lower atmosphere is a low-conductivity air gap sandwiched between the highly conductive interior of the Earth below and ionosphere or interplanetary medium above. At low masses (frequencies) the signal in a laboratory detector is usually suppressed by the size of the detector multiplied by the dark-matter mass. Crucially, in our case the suppression is by the radius of the Earth, and not by the (much smaller) height of the atmosphere. We compute the size and global vectorial pattern of our magnetic field signal, which enables sensitive searches for this signal using unshielded magnetometers dispersed over the surface of the Earth. We summarize the results of a forthcoming companion paper, in which we will detail such a search using a publicly available dataset from the SuperMAG collaboration: we report no robust signal candidates and so place constraints in the dark-photon dark-matter mass range $2 \times 10^{-18} \text{eV} \lesssim m_{A'} \lesssim 7 \times 10^{-17} \text{eV}$ (corresponding to frequencies $6 \times 10^{-4} \text{Hz} \lesssim f \lesssim 2 \times 10^{-2} \text{Hz}$). These constraints are complementary to existing astrophysical bounds. Future searches for this signal may improve the sensitivity over a wide range of ultralight dark-matter candidates and masses.

Energy conservation is a basic physics principle, the breakdown of which often implies new physics. This paper presents a method for data-driven "new physics" discovery. Specifically, given a trajectory governed by unknown forces, our Neural New-Physics Detector (NNPhD) aims to detect new physics by decomposing the force field into conservative and non-conservative components, which are represented by a Lagrangian Neural Network (LNN) and a universal approximator network (UAN), respectively, trained to minimize the force recovery error plus a constant $\lambda$ times the magnitude of the predicted non-conservative force. We show that a phase transition occurs at $\lambda$=1, universally for arbitrary forces. We demonstrate that NNPhD successfully discovers new physics in toy numerical experiments, rediscovering friction (1493) from a damped double pendulum, Neptune from Uranus' orbit (1846) and gravitational waves (2017) from an inspiraling orbit. We also show how NNPhD coupled with an integrator outperforms previous methods for predicting the future of a damped double pendulum.

The Cohen-Kaplan-Nelson (CKN) bound formulates the condition that black hole is not produced by the low energy effective field theory dynamics. In de Sitter space it also constrains the maximal size of the matter distribution to be smaller than the cosmological horizon determined by black hole. On the other hand, the swampland distance conjecture (SDC) predicts that de Sitter space becomes unstable by the descent of the low energy degrees of freedom from UV. This results in the rapid increase in the energy inside the cosmological horizon, the distribution of which can be constrained by the CKN bound. We study the CKN bound in de Sitter space in detail and point out that when the SDC is combined, the bound on the slow-roll parameter which forbids the eternal inflation is obtained.

The detection of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) i.e. those with mass $\sim 100$-$10^5 M_\odot$, is an emerging goal of gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy with wide implications for cosmology and tests of strong-field gravity. Current PyCBC-based searches for compact binary mergers, which matched filter the detector data against a set of template waveforms, have so far detected or confirmed several GW events. However, the sensitivity of these searches to signals arising from mergers of IMBH binaries is not optimal. Here, we present a new optimised PyCBC-based search for such signals. Our search benefits from using a targeted template bank, stricter signal-noise discriminators and a lower matched-filter frequency cut-off. In particular, for a population of simulated signals with isotropically distributed spins, we improve the sensitive volume-time product over previous PyCBC-based searches, at an inverse false alarm rate of 100 years, by a factor of 1.5 to 3 depending on the total binary mass. We deploy this new search on Advanced LIGO-Virgo data from the first half of the third observing run. The search does not identify any new significant IMBH binaries but does confirm the detection of the short-duration GW signal GW190521 with a false alarm rate of 1 in 727 years.

Using relativistic mean-field models, the formation of clusterized matter, as the one expected to exist in the inner crust of neutron stars, is determined under the effect of strong magnetic fields. As already predicted from a calculation of the unstable modes resulting from density fluctuations at subsaturation densities, we confirm in the present work that for magnetic field intensities of the order of $\approx 5 \times 10^{16}$ G to $5 \times 10^{17}$ G, pasta phases may occur for densities well above the zero-field crust-core transition density. This confirms that the extension of the crust may be larger than expected. It is also verified that the equilibrium structure of the clusterized matter is very sensitive to the intensity of the magnetic fields. As a result, the decay of the magnetic field may give rise to internal stresses which may result on the yield and fracture of the inner crust lattice.

The use of computers and the role of women in radio astronomy and X-ray crystallography research at the Cavendish Laboratory between 1949 and 1975 have been investigated. We recorded examples of when computers were used, what they were used for and who used them from hundreds of papers published during these years. The use of the EDSAC, EDSAC 2 and TITAN computers was found to increase considerably over this time-scale and they were used for a diverse range of applications. The majority of references to computer operators and programmers referred to women, 57% for astronomy and 62% for crystallography, in contrast to a very small proportion, 4% and 13% respectively, of female authors of papers.

The expected event rate of lensed gravitational wave sources scales with the merger rate at redshift $z\geq 1$, where the optical depth for lensing is high. It is commonly assumed that the merger rate of the astrophysical compact objects is closely connected with the star formation rate, which peaks around redshift $z\sim 2$. However, a major source of uncertainty is the delay time between the formation and merger of compact objects. We explore the impact of delay time on the lensing event rate. We show that as the delay time increases, the peak of the merger rate of gravitational wave sources gets deferred to a lower redshift. This leads to a reduction in the event rate of the lensed events which are detectable by the gravitational wave detectors. We show that for a delay time of around $10$ Gyr or larger, the lensed event rate can be less than one per year for the design sensitivity of LIGO/Virgo. We also estimate the merger rate for lensed sub-threshold for different delay time scenarios, finding that for larger delay times the number of lensed sub-threshold events is reduced, whereas for small-delay time models they are significantly more frequent. This analysis shows for the first time that lensing is a complementary probe to explore different formation channels of binary systems by exploiting the lensing event rate from the well-detected events and sub-threshold events which are measurable using the network of gravitational wave detectors.

We establish the extended formalism for description of the static spherically symmetric relativistic non-equilibrium stellar systems in the formation of which the radiation pressure plays the key role. The main concept of this extended formalism inherits the ideas, on which the Israel-Stewart causal thermodynamics is based, but now the unit spacelike four-vector, indicated by the term director, is exploited in addition to the unit timelike medium velocity four-vector. An application of the extended formalism is considered; we analyze the profiles of the non-equilibrium pressure and temperature as the functions of guiding parameters introduced phenomenologically.

The characterization of the gravitational field of isolated objects is still an open question in quadratic theories of gravity. We study static equilibrium solutions for a self-gravitating fluid in extensions of General Relativity including terms quadratic in the Weyl tensor and in the Ricci scalar. We parametrize the external field in terms of the total mass and the strength of two Yukawa corrections associated with the quadratic terms in the action. Depending on the value of the mass-ratio of the two massive propagating degrees of freedom, these corrections are completely determined by the mass and the radius of the star. At variance with classical General Relativity, measurable definitions of the mass-energy of a star are not uniquely determined by its ADM mass, on the contrary distinct quasi-local definitions should be used to properly characterize the external field. We suggest that this apparent ambiguity can conveniently be exploited to detect deviations from standard General Relativity.

Recent advances in the high sensitivity spectroscopy have made it possible, in combination with accurate theoretical predictions, to observe for the first time very weak electric quadrupole transitions in a polar polyatomic molecule of water. Here we present accurate theoretical predictions of the complete quadrupole ro-vibrational spectrum of a non-polar molecule CO$_2$, important in atmospheric and astrophysical applications. Our predictions are validated by recent cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy measurements and are used to assign few weak features in the recent ExoMars ACS MIR spectroscopic observations of the martian atmosphere. Predicted quadrupole transitions appear in some of the mid-infrared CO$_2$ and water vapor transparency regions, making them important for detection and characterization of the minor absorbers in water- and CO$_2$-rich environments, such as present in the atmospheres of Earth, Venus and Mars.

By probing the population of binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by LIGO-Virgo, we can infer properties about the underlying black hole formation channels. A mechanism known as pair-instability (PI) supernova is expected to prevent the formation of black holes from stellar collapse with mass greater than $\sim 40-65\,M_\odot$ and less than $\sim 120\,M_\odot$. Any BBH merger detected by LIGO-Virgo with a component black hole in this gap, known as the PI mass gap, likely originated from an alternative formation channel. Here, we firmly establish GW190521 as an outlier to the stellar-mass BBH population if the PI mass gap begins at or below $65\, M_{\odot}$. In addition, for a PI lower boundary of $40-50\, M_{\odot}$, we find it unlikely that the remaining distribution of detected BBH events, excluding GW190521, is consistent with the stellar-mass population.