Atomic force microscopy senses tip–sample interactions through a compliant cantilever. Contact deflection, oscillation amplitude, phase or resonance frequency can be converted into a feedback signal. Chemical bonding and short-range repulsion, van der Waals forces, electrostatic forces and, where relevant, magnetic or capillary interactions produce contrast. Apparent height at a fixed force or frequency setpoint can therefore contain interaction contrast as well as geometry. Lateral resolution depends on the effective tip apex and interaction range; finite tip radius broadens features. Vertical sensitivity also depends on thermal and detector noise, cantilever calibration, vibration, drift and feedback bandwidth. Strongly localized short-range forces favor atomic resolution, whereas extended interactions average over more of the tip and surface.
For small oscillations about equilibrium separation , write and linearize . The constant force is absorbed into the equilibrium displacement. The cantilever equation becomes
Consequently the small-amplitude AFM frequency shift is
The linear expression is the small-force-gradient approximation, , in addition to the small-oscillation assumption. For an attractive force , and the resonance softens. A finite oscillation amplitude samples a weighted range of forces rather than only the gradient at one separation, and destroys local stability in this simple static model.
Figure 1.
AFM frequency shift: exact local linearized oscillator and the weak-gradient approximation
. Details.
In a scanning electron microscope, a focused electron beam scans the surface and a detector records an emitted signal at each beam position. Low-energy secondary electrons escape from near the surface; changes in local slope, edges and detector-facing geometry give strong secondary-electron topographic contrast. Backscattered electrons result from elastic deflection of primary electrons and generally have a larger yield for higher atomic number. Their backscattered-electron atomic-number contrast therefore helps separate compositional regions. Detector geometry, crystal orientation and topography can also affect this signal, so brightness is not a unique elemental identification.
An environmental scanning electron microscope admits gas around the specimen while pressure-limiting apertures and differential pumping preserve the electron-optical column's vacuum. Electron collisions ionize the gas. Positive ions can neutralize negative charging of a poorly conducting specimen, enabling observation without a conductive coating. A gaseous secondary electron detector uses gas amplification to collect secondary-electron signals under these conditions. Gas pressure, path length and scattering must be controlled because they also affect the probe and background.[ref]
Finally, acquire an energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy spectrum at each pixel to add elemental specificity. The beam creates inner-shell vacancies, and characteristic X-rays emitted as they fill identify chemical elements. Selecting fitted characteristic-line intensities yields elemental maps that can be compared with the electron image. Peak overlap, detector response, absorption and the X-ray-generating interaction volume limit identification, quantification and spatial resolution. This gives chemical-element contrast; resolving different bonds or oxidation states generally needs more detailed spectral information than one broad elemental map.
Use the projected baseline along the source offset, , and . The first bandwidth null occurs at . A worst-case gives . That is a zero of the response, not a good usable bandwidth. A quantitative maximum needs an allowed attenuation.
For example, requiring a response of at least gives at . Hence
for that worst projection. A strictly east-west offset in a sides-aligned square instead samples at most , giving a first null and a ten-percent-loss bandwidth. The original two-antenna geometry supplies an additional projection; these examples use its maximum magnitude. Thus a bandwidth of order is a reasonable conservative estimate with a stated small-loss criterion, rather than a unique geometry-free limit.
Figure 1.
Array baselines and bandwidth decorrelation away from the tracking center
. Original array geometry and rectangular-band sinc calculations for a ten-arcminute offset. The marked ten-percent-loss bandwidth is an illustrative response criterion; the first null is not a usable-bandwidth recommendation. Details.
To use a much wider total band, channelize the signals before correlation or before irreversible frequency averaging. Correlate sufficiently narrow channels, track the reference delay and phase at each frequency, and combine frequency-aware visibilities or images. This preserves sensitivity while avoiding field-dependent averaging losses in radio interferometry. Merely adding a phase correction after a broad channel has decorrelated cannot recover the lost signal; nor can one tracking delay cancel every sky direction simultaneously.[ref]
The wavelength corresponds to about , in the low-frequency decrement part of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. Hot cluster electrons inverse-Compton scatter CMB photons. In the Rayleigh-Jeans limit,
The signal probes integrated electron pressure. Short baselines give sensitivity to extended arcminute-scale cluster structure, while the primary field covers the cluster and surrounding sky. The array's several-arcminute resolution suits many such structures; it is not equally well matched to every cluster size.
Simultaneous cross-correlations reject uncorrelated receiver noise and provide spatial information; compact radio sources can be constrained with the relatively longer baselines and separated from extended structure. Broad frequency coverage helps sensitivity provided channel smearing is controlled. Correlated atmospheric emission, calibration error, primordial CMB fluctuations and radio-source contamination remain relevant. The lack of zero and very short spacings also means that total integrated cluster flux requires a model or complementary data. An interferometer is therefore useful for the spatially resolved decrement, rather than automatically measuring every cluster's full pressure integral.
Thermal bremsstrahlung arises from electron acceleration in ion Coulomb fields. For a thermal plasma its optically thin spectral emissivity has the dependence
The exponential high-energy slope helps constrain temperature in X-ray spectra, with composition, absorption and other emission components included. At radio frequencies with , the thin spectrum is much flatter and does not alone determine a unique temperature; the Gaunt factor supplies a weak frequency dependence.
For an approximately isothermal layer, radiative transfer gives . Radio free-free opacity scales approximately as , where the hydrogen-plasma emission measure is . A resolved optically thick brightness temperature approaches ; an unresolved filling factor lowers the observed value. The turnover between thin and thick regimes helps constrain emission measure.
An angular extent and distance give a physical size, and an assumed geometry supplies a line-of-sight depth. Combining that depth with emission measure estimates an rms density, . Clumping, filling factor, composition and unknown depth preserve a density-depth degeneracy of free-free radiation. These measurements constrain different combinations of temperature, density and size rather than independently fixing all three without assumptions.
The wavelength is . Thirty dishes give interferometric baselines. The longest projected baseline sets the finest angular scale, while the individual dish beam sets the instantaneous field of view. At the maximum separation,
A aperture instead has primary-beam width of order , about arcseconds; the Airy first-null convention gives about arcseconds. Illumination taper changes the precise beam definition. The array therefore resolves many synthesized beams within one pointing, but it does not image an arbitrarily wide field at that resolution.
The shortest useful baseline determines missing large-scale structure. A common estimate is . If dishes can be packed with usable center separations near , this is of order arcseconds. A more extended layout has a smaller recoverable scale. The site diameter does not specify or the actual Fourier coverage, and low-elevation shadowing can remove short spacings. Mosaicking expands sky coverage but does not supply all zero-spacing information; suitable total-power or compact-array data help recover extended emission. Earth rotation and reconfiguration improve sampled baseline coverage, sidelobes and image reconstruction, with a tradeoff between resolution and surface-brightness sensitivity.
For dish aperture efficiency , . The system-equivalent flux density of one dish is
For independent receivers, natural weighting, correlator efficiency and equally sensitive polarization products contributing to intensity, the unresolved-source thermal rms is
Here is usable bandwidth and integration time. A numerical sensitivity is therefore conditional on these unspecified observing choices. For an illustrative bandwidth, one hour, two polarizations and , it is about , or at . Resolved-source brightness sensitivity also depends on beam area and missing flux. The sensitivity expression assumes naturally weighted data and the stated polarization convention.[ref]
Earth rotation changes geometric delay. At a baseline , can be of order , here , and a raw fringe-rate bound is
The actual rate depends on geometry and source direction. Correlator delay tracking and fringe stopping compensate the chosen phase center rather than averaging rapidly rotating uncorrected fringes away. Off-center directions retain residual delays and rates.
Finite bandwidth causes chromatic phase averaging and radial bandwidth smearing. A direction offset has residual delay of order ; a channel should satisfy for small decorrelation. Across a field of order radians on the longest baseline, the one-cycle frequency scale is about , so substantially narrower channels are required for accurate wide-field imaging. Similarly, time averaging should keep ; the associated one-cycle scale is about seconds in this example. Frequency-resolved visibilities and shorter dumps control these field-dependent averaging losses in radio interferometry; they are averaging losses, not ordinary glass-lens chromatic focusing.
Figure 1.
Millimeter-array baseline tradeoff: angular resolution and the loss of large-scale structure
. Details.
At , atmospheric water vapor produces absorption, thermal emission and path-length fluctuations. A high dry site reduces these effects, while phase fluctuations can still destroy coherence on long baselines. A one-radian phase corresponds to path fluctuation , motivating frequent phase calibration or atmospheric path monitoring. Surface errors must also be small relative to the wavelength: the Ruze efficiency factor is . Pointing errors matter relative to a primary beam only tens of arcseconds wide.
Important systematic errors include antenna gains and bandpasses, delay and baseline-coordinate errors, polarization leakage, pointing, atmospheric opacity, correlator response and flux-scale calibration. Nearby compact calibrators, bandpass standards, appropriate total-power information and repeated configurations address different parts of this problem. High nominal collecting area and longest-baseline resolution alone do not determine image dynamic range or reliable extended-source flux.
The thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect is inverse-Compton scattering of cosmic microwave background photons by hot electrons in the intracluster medium. Electron thermal energy shifts photons toward higher frequencies, changing the spectrum relative to neighboring sky. In the nonrelativistic, small-optical-depth limit its amplitude is controlled by the Compton parameter
It measures line-of-sight electron pressure. At low frequencies the apparent Rayleigh-Jeans temperature changes by . The thermal spectral distortion crosses through zero near for the usual CMB temperature and then becomes an increment; relativistic corrections matter for hot gas. Multi-frequency measurements distinguish this spectrum from dust, radio sources and an ordinary CMB temperature fluctuation.
The surface-brightness contrast has no ordinary dimming for the same cluster pressure integral: the incident CMB temperature and the observation's frequency redshift scale together. Angular extent and integrated flux still depend on distance. This makes the effect useful for selecting distant clusters and mapping their thermal pressure. The solid-angle integral scales with total thermal energy divided by angular-diameter distance squared, providing a mass proxy when its gas-physics calibration is specified.[ref]
X-ray surface brightness depends roughly on , whereas depends on . Combining X-ray spectra, brightness and resolved SZ data constrains density and line-of-sight depth. With a justified geometry, comparison to angular size gives a distance estimate; clumping and elongation can bias it. Cluster abundances and their redshift evolution test cosmological structure growth after selection and mass calibration are modeled.
The kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect additionally probes bulk line-of-sight motion, with leading in a stated velocity-sign convention. Its approximately blackbody temperature spectrum differs from the thermal distortion. These are complementary measurements of thermal pressure and gas motion, requiring foreground and instrumental control.
thermal bremsstrahlung is continuum radiation from electrons accelerated in ion electric fields. For Maxwellian electrons,
At high frequency the exponential cutoff constrains ; X-ray fitting must also model foreground absorption, line emission, detector response and possible multitemperature or nonthermal components. At radio frequencies, , an optically thin free-free spectrum is almost flat, with the weak frequency dependence set mainly by the Gaunt factor.
For pure ionized hydrogen, radio free-free opacity gives
The turnover constrains emission measure; a resolved, optically thick source has brightness temperature approaching . An unresolved source has an unknown beam filling factor, so its observed brightness need not equal its electron temperature. Angular size and an independent distance give a geometric depth ; a uniform model then yields . Clumping instead measures a density-squared average, not the mean density.[ref]
A free-free spectrum alone does not uniquely determine density and size. The density-depth degeneracy of free-free radiation is explicit: for a resolved uniform column, , leaves both emissivity-integrated brightness and optical depth unchanged at fixed temperature. With independent SZ information and known , the electron column is ; then
These equalities require consistent composition and geometry, and uniform density and temperature. Relating to angular extent can give distance; asphericity and the gas clumping factor are important limitations of this combined cluster method.
Delay-compensated geometry. Choose an east-west baseline vector and let the upward unit vector be . A ray direction at zenith angle in their plane has . Its signed geometric path difference is . Removing the phase-centre delay leaves the residual path
With the receiver ordering chosen to give positive phase for this path, a complex correlator measures
The reverse ordering complex-conjugates the expression without changing its information. A single real multiplier supplies its cosine component; the stated exponential represents an in-phase/quadrature correlator. Equal cable lengths to the central correlator remove a fixed instrumental difference but do not remove the changing geometric delay. Pointing the antennas and electronically compensating the path are separate operations.
Figure 1.
Original east-west interferometer geometry and normalized visibility of a centred one-dimensional uniform source
. Details.
Resolved uniform source. Contributions from mutually incoherent sky elements add as brightness-weighted complex visibilities. Put over and zero elsewhere, and define . Integrating gives
Therefore
The zero-argument value is defined by continuity as one. Normalization by isolates the visibility shape from total flux. The first null occurs when the source spans one fringe period, . A negative real visibility beyond a null is a phase reversal, not negative surface brightness.
Path-compensation precision. A finite observing band sets a coherence envelope. For a rectangular band of width , an uncorrected residual delay multiplies the correlation by
Coarse delay steps must leave if decorrelation is to be small. Thus a coarse path-step scale must be well below the coherence length , with the precise bound determined by the tolerated amplitude loss and maximum quantization residual. A digital fine-delay or phase-rotation system can separately correct the central-frequency phase.
If there is no such carrier-phase correction, the steps must also be a small fraction of to avoid large untracked phase jumps or time-averaging loss. For a step rounded to the nearest setting, and the maximum carrier-phase error is . Bandwidth controls coarse group-delay decorrelation; wavelength controls the precision of untracked carrier phase. No numerical delay step can be inferred from the central frequency alone without a bandwidth, loss tolerance and compensation architecture. Earth rotation additionally sets how rapidly the delay setting must be updated.
Largest sampled angular scale. For a near-zenith view take the shortest projected baseline as . At , . The inverse shortest spatial frequency gives
This is an order-of-magnitude largest fringe scale. A convention defining maximum recoverable source size as would instead give about arcminutes; source profile, weighting and projected baseline coverage determine the operational value. The antenna diameter and primary beam can further restrict the usable field but were explicitly neglected in the source's initial idealization. Ten antennas supply pairwise baselines; their number improves sampling and sensitivity, not the inverse-shortest-baseline scale by a factor of ten. The longest baseline is not supplied, so the finest synthesized resolution is not numerically fixed.
A suitable observing programme. A compact centimetre-wave array is well suited to CMB temperature anisotropy on degree to sub-degree scales sampled by its baselines, and, with sufficiently long baselines and suitable foreground control, thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich structure in galaxy clusters. At the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich signal is a decrement relative to the CMB. The compact baselines retain sensitivity to extended brightness features; the spatial frequencies measured by each baseline have a direct statistical interpretation in CMB analysis.
Compared with lower radio frequencies, synchrotron foregrounds are generally reduced, while thermal dust rises toward higher frequencies; observing near this centimetre-wave atmospheric window is therefore useful, although foregrounds are not absent. Correlation and phase switching reject mean uncorrelated receiver offsets and some instrumental drifts. Receiver thermal noise still contributes variance, and atmosphere, ground pickup or cross-talk can be correlated and require control. Additional long baselines can identify compact radio-source contaminants for subtraction, but the question does not specify enough array geometry to guarantee that capability. There is no zero baseline in ordinary pairwise cross-correlation, so the array does not directly measure the sky monopole or arbitrary larger-scale smooth emission.
Choose the baseline vector from the first antenna to the second. Apart from a sign convention for receiver delay, the geometric delay is , and the phase difference is . For equal received source powers , adding the voltages and averaging over many wave periods gives
Uncorrelated receiver noise adds a mean level but not the source's coherent cross term. For an east-west baseline and one choice of hour-angle sign, . Earth rotation therefore sweeps the phase; locally the fringe frequency is . Tracking the antenna pointing keeps the source in the primary beam. Electronic fringe stopping is a separate operation: it can remove this phase evolution, making a source at the phase centre constant in the corrected complex visibility. The oscillating power above is the geometrical fringe before that correction.
Figure 1.
Projected interferometer baseline, geometric delay and illustrative fringes before electronic fringe stopping
. Details.
For a small angular displacement along the projected baseline, . One full fringe therefore spans . Here . This is the angular period of the measured Fourier component and the characteristic resolution scale when such long baselines are synthesized; precise beam width and image ambiguity also depend on baseline coverage and weighting. A single pair by itself does not give an unambiguous complete image.
Writing , the expansion immediately gives the Rayleigh-Jeans law,
The factor two counts the two independent modes of polarization of waves. A small brightness-temperature perturbation thus has in this limit.
Hot intracluster electrons inverse-Compton scatter the microwave-background photons. The scattering optical depth is and the characteristic thermal fractional energy transfer is of order . The integrated distortion is therefore controlled by
Scattering conserves photon number while shifting photons toward higher frequencies, giving a low-frequency decrement and a high-frequency increment. Thus the printed estimate correctly gives a negative change of order . Its numerical coefficient, however, is not the standard Rayleigh-Jeans coefficient. For nonrelativistic electrons and small , the Kompaneets equation gives . At small , , so and
Equivalently the thermodynamic-temperature spectral factor is . The original PDF really prints the estimate with , not ; both numerical conventions are retained below. Relativistic corrections at the supplied are small compared with this factor-of-two difference.[ref]
The uniform cube has a constant line-of-sight depth . Using the supplied cross-section rather than replacing it with a more precise value gives
Adopt , explicitly an external measured constant, not a temperature supplied in the question. The values , and set the physical units. Hence the printed relation gives ; the standard Rayleigh-Jeans result gives . Keeping the answer as , or twice that, avoids needing a numerical background temperature.[ref]
The face is a square, so its solid angle is , not the area of a circular six-arcminute aperture. At ,
Thus using the printed estimate, or using the standard factor two. The sign denotes missing brightness relative to the surrounding microwave background. At this frequency ; the exact nonrelativistic spectral intensity differs from the strict Rayleigh-Jeans approximation by about one percent. This precision does not affect the estimates.
For the array noise, the system temperature sets the receiver noise scale; let be the effective area of each dish, and let describe correlation losses. No efficiencies or polarization of waves count are supplied, so first take and a single independent polarization of waves. An unpolarized point source produces antenna temperature , and the system-equivalent flux density is . The interferometric radiometer equation gives one baseline an rms flux error . There are cross-correlation baselines; averaging their independent thermal noise for a point source gives
The ideal single-dish effective area is , giving and
Combining two independent parallel-hand polarization of waves measurements gives . Nonunit efficiencies increase these estimates by . Here signal equal to noise means a weak-source signal-to-noise ratio of one after integration; it does not mean equating the source to the entire unaveraged receiver-noise power.[ref]
At the band centre, . Taking a representative maximum projected baseline of gives arcminutes. A corner-to-corner baseline of would give about arcminutes before projection and weighting. The exact antenna locations and source declination are not supplied, so neither a unique synthesized beam shape nor an exact FWHM is determined. The individual-dish primary-beam scale, roughly arcminutes, is the field of view, not the synthesized resolution.
To extract the cluster signal, retain frequency-resolved complex visibilities and fit an extended SZ template together with contaminating compact sources. For the ideal uniform square centred at the phase centre and with a nearly constant primary beam across it, the Fourier transform is
This is why the integrated decrement must not be treated as a point-source flux on every baseline. The first axial visibility null occurs at . Short baselines carry most of the large-scale decrement; the longest baselines are useful for separating unresolved positive radio sources. natural visibility weighting or a suitable taper gives a clearer extended-source image than emphasizing the longest baselines, while a visibility-domain matched filter uses all samples with weights proportional to template amplitude divided by noise variance. Its amplitude estimate is for a real template amplitude. A joint fit propagates radio-source uncertainty instead of subtracting exact, noise-free source models.
Figure 2.
Normalized visibilities of the six-arcminute square cluster and their suppression on long baselines
. Details.
Earth-rotation and multifrequency synthesis improve Fourier coverage, but each channel must use its own baseline in wavelengths, primary beam and SZ spectrum. Use the longer baselines and spectra to identify variable point sources, flag bad data, and test the decrement with time, antenna and frequency splits. Primary-beam and absolute-flux calibration must be included. Large-scale microwave-background fluctuations and residual ground or atmospheric signals can remain even below the thermal-noise estimate. The narrow low-frequency band alone gives limited separation of SZ and primary microwave-background temperature structure. There is no zero-spacing interferometric datum: integrated flux is model dependent unless sufficiently short baselines or additional total-power information are available. Exact cluster detection significance cannot be obtained from the point-source noise alone without the actual projected baseline distribution and weighting.
An electron accelerated in an ion's Coulomb field emits bremsstrahlung. Both electron states are unbound, giving free-free radiation rather than a discrete bound-state line. Averaging over a Maxwellian electron distribution gives an optically thin spectral emissivity with dependence
Here depends on the emissivity convention, and the Gaunt factor supplies the quantum correction. No numerical emissivity normalization is needed for these diagnostics. For a mixture, sum over ion species. The bolometric emissivity is proportional to with a frequency-averaged Gaunt factor. Thermal electron speeds control the spectrum while the encounter rate supplies its density-squared dependence.
temperature can be measured from the high-energy exponential cutoff at photon energy of order , provided the spectrum spans that turnover and foreground absorption and nonthermal contamination are modelled. At radio frequencies , the exponential is nearly one, so the optically thin continuum is a poor thermometer by slope alone. Kirchhoff's law, , and the Rayleigh-Jeans law give for an isothermal thermal plasma. The transfer solution is
in the radio limit. A resolved optically thick region therefore measures its electron temperature through brightness temperature, if it fills the beam. The turnover between thick and thin emission constrains the line-of-sight emission measure for a hydrogen-dominated fully ionized plasma. In the thin regime , rather than . The slowly varying Gaunt factor gives a nearly flat optically thin radio flux-density spectrum, in contrast to the thick limit at fixed projected area.[ref]
To obtain density, one also needs geometry. An angular extent and independent distance give a transverse size; an assumed shape provides a depth or volume. For approximately uniform emitting gas with astrophysical volume filling factor , , so . Alternatively a measured column emission measure and assumed path length give an rms density. Clumping raises the mean squared density relative to the square of the mean: the inferred value is not automatically the mean gas density. Free-free brightness alone does not uniquely determine temperature, density and physical size. Resolved imaging, a distance, optical-depth information or an independent column-density diagnostic is needed to remove those degeneracies. Cluster SZ data are complementary because their leading signal depends on , whereas free-free emission depends on density squared. Metal lines, unresolved temperature structure, foreground absorption, synchrotron emission and background subtraction must be controlled before attributing the continuum to a single thermal component.
In a CCD, absorbed optical photons create photoelectrons collected in electrostatic wells beneath gate electrodes. During readout, clock voltages move the charge packets row by row into a serial register; serial clocks move them one pixel at a time to an output node. The node converts charge to a voltage, approximately , which is amplified and digitized. pixel addresses are recovered from the row and serial-clock sequence. Resetting and sampling the output between packets establishes the baseline. Efficient transfer preserves charge; trapping or incomplete transfer produces loss and trailing. This is CCD clocked charge transfer, not independent wiring of an amplifier to every imaging pixel.[ref]
dark current is thermally generated charge accumulated even without illumination. If its mean rate is electrons per pixel per second, a single exposure adds mean and Poisson variance . Cooling the detector and using low-defect material suppresses this generation. A dark calibration removes the reproducible mean pattern, but cannot remove the dark electrons' random shot noise in the science exposure. read noise comes from measuring the output packet and resetting the sense node, amplifiers and electronics; write its rms as electrons per read. correlated double sampling reduces reset and correlated offsets by subtracting the baseline measurement from the signal measurement. Low-noise electronics and an appropriate slower readout reduce the remaining contribution. The CCD noise budget for separate exposures combined over total time contains independent dark and read contributions , not . Long exposures reduce repeated read noise, but saturation, cosmic rays and tracking requirements constrain the exposure length. On-chip binning can reduce read-noise penalties for a fixed binned area at the cost of angular sampling.
For the source and sky calculation, define the count conversion factor and the source flux per pixel . The ideal source and background electron counts are and . These assume unit throughput and quantum efficiency, approximately constant quantities across the band and a well-determined mean sky level from many background pixels. Source and sky photons have independent Poisson fluctuations, so the variance after subtracting that mean sky is . Subtracting a background removes its mean, not its photon noise. Therefore
Thus the required expression follows directly from adding photon-count variances. Finite sky-estimation noise, dark current and read noise would add further variance. A nonunit common efficiency replaces by the effective collecting area; a nonflat spectrum requires the corresponding frequency integral. For example, estimating the sky from one equally exposed background pixel would add an extra , whereas a large sky region makes that extra term small.
With and the supplied photon frequency, the sky flux per pixel is . Multiplying arcsecond-squared pixel area by brightness per arcsecond squared already gives a flux: no additional steradian conversion belongs in this product. Rearranging gives
Using yields
Table 1.
Ideal per-pixel source and sky rates and exposure divided by squared signal-to-noise ratio
.
Source rate per pixel Sky rate per pixel
The first case is mainly source-shot-noise limited, while the last is strongly sky limited. At high source brightness ; at low source brightness it approaches . Reducing source flux by ten can therefore require nearly a hundred times the exposure once sky noise dominates. These are per-pixel values for the ideal model, not guaranteed integration times including calibration, cosmic rays or read noise.
Increasing the diameter increases both source and sky photon rates as for fixed angular pixels. In this ideal limit the required exposure decreases as , whereas the stated telescope cost increases as : collecting area grows only as cost to the power . A larger ground telescope does not remove atmospheric photons or recover arbitrary wavefront information lost in a long seeing-limited exposure. Space observations avoid atmospheric airglow, weather and atmospheric turbulence, and offer stable high-resolution imaging and access to very faint structure. They still have zodiacal light, instrumental backgrounds and their own calibration limits. adaptive optics can provide excellent ground-based resolution in suitable fields, but its guide-star, wavelength and field-dependent limitations do not remove the need for space-based continuum imaging. The need is for complementary low-background, stable and high-resolution measurements; the cost exponent alone is not a proof that every imaging programme is cheaper in space.
For X rays, one fully absorbed photon produces many electron-hole pairs in silicon, rather than one optical photoelectron count. At moderate surface brightness, the probability of two photons landing in the same event island during one CCD frame is small. The charge packet or sum over neighbouring split-event pixels then supplies a pulse height for each photon, while its pixel position supplies the image coordinate. Calibrating pulse height against energy produces an event list from which a spectrum can be accumulated for any spatial region. photon pile-up at larger occupancies merges photon energies and corrupts both spectra and event grades, so fast enough frames and event-pattern screening are essential.[ref]
A measured silicon pair-creation energy gives electrons for a photon. Let be the Fano factor of pair production, the number of independently read pixels in the event sum, and the rms read noise per pixel. Then
The Fano-limited X-ray CCD energy resolution using the representative silicon value gives an ideal Fano-limited at , or resolving power . Finite read noise, charge loss and event summing broaden this; an order-of-magnitude practical estimate is a few tenths of a keV, but the particular detector's value is not determined by the given optical-pixel parameters. These and values are external detector properties, not supplied question data. Treating every pair as independent Poisson production instead would give rms, or FWHM; stating which width is meant avoids conflating those estimates. Radiation-induced charge-transfer inefficiency requires additional gain and spectral-response calibration.[ref]
A relativistic quantum field describes both creation and annihilation of excitations; a one-particle wavefunction alone is insufficient when interactions can change particle number. For a free complex scalar field, one conventional mode expansion of a free field is
The apparently negative-frequency term creates a positive-energy antiparticle; it is not a physical particle of unbounded negative energy. The normal-ordered Hamiltonian and conserved global phase charge have the forms
Particles and antiparticles have equal mass and opposite additive internal charges. Including both frequency sectors is also essential to the local field commutator: the positive- and negative-frequency terms combine so that spacelike-separated scalar observables commute, respecting microcausality.
A Dirac field similarly contains particle annihilation operators multiplying spinors and antiparticle creation operators multiplying spinors. Its canonical anticommutation relations implement Fermi-Dirac statistics, whereas scalar modes use commutators and Bose-Einstein statistics. These assignments are tied to the Spin-statistics theorem under the usual relativistic locality and positivity assumptions. Conserved charge constrains particle creation and annihilation, but particle and antiparticle numbers need not be separately conserved in an interacting theory.
An antiparticle need not be a distinct species. A neutral real scalar field is self-conjugate; the photon is also its own antiparticle. A Majorana fermion obeys a self-conjugacy condition and cannot carry an unbroken additive charge that distinguishes it from its antiparticle. Electric neutrality alone does not force self-conjugacy when other conserved quantum numbers distinguish the states.
Use metric signature and transverse-traceless gauge, . To resolve the source's origin ambiguity, put the detector centre at and the source centre at , so the gravitational wave travels in the positive direction. Reversing that direction replaces by . Work in the weak-field approximation, with , , and detector size . The radiation reaction is neglected, so the rod maintains the prescribed steady motion.
At the retarded source time , take the source positions as . The arbitrary constant specifies the initial source phase. The second mass moment tensor obeys
The quadrupole formula projects away the transverse trace, which is already constant here. Differentiating twice therefore gives
All time and longitudinal metric perturbation components vanish in transverse-traceless gauge. The gravitational-wave frequency is in angular units; is each source mass, not their sum, and the detector mass does not enter the strain. The plane wave approximation holds the amplitude fixed at ; retaining spherical spreading replaces its denominator by near the axis. The retarded quadrupole formula and the distinction between source and wave frequency are derived in [ref].
There are two first-order effects: an intrinsic temperature change from adiabatic compression, and the gravitational redshift of the emerging photons. Evaluate the excess Newtonian gravitational potential at the boundary of the spherical fluctuation, with the exterior reference potential subtracted:
In the weak-field approximation, gravitational time dilation gives . A local emitter's successive wave crests therefore arrive farther apart at a reference observer outside the potential well. Their frequency changes by . Since a redshifted black-body radiation spectrum has its temperature scaled by the same factor as its frequency, the gravitational contribution is
For the intrinsic effect, compare the local scale factor with the unperturbed value at the reference epoch. An equilibrium photon gas has energy density and pressure . For adiabatic compression, the first law of thermodynamics applied to a comoving volume gives
Thus is constant along this adiabatic process, and the initial intrinsic contribution is . The smaller local expansion associated with the fluctuation leaves its radiation hotter; this is the compression or local expansion-history contribution, distinct from the clock-rate effect on the escaping radiation.
Multiplying the two first-order factors, and cancelling the common subsequent background redshift, gives
For the overdense region produced by adiabatic compression, , so the final term is positive. It competes with the negative gravitational redshift term. Their sum is the intrinsic-plus-endpoint part of the Sachs-Wolfe combination; computing a full observed Cosmic microwave background anisotropy can also require Doppler CMB anisotropy and the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect.[ref]
The inverse of the metric tensor block is
The normal covector has squared norm . Therefore
More explicitly, the induced metric tensor is ; at zero its sole zero direction is . The coefficients are independent of , so is a Killing vector field. On ,
Hence is both tangent and normal to this null hypersurface, proving it is a Killing horizon. The definition of surface gravity is on the Killing horizon, or equivalently . Since vanishes there while ,
Thus this is a degenerate Killing horizon, and is an affine parameter on each of its null geodesics.
For a concrete horizon frequency comparison, fix the same angular position for a narrow high-frequency light beam and two freely falling radial observers. Work in geometric optics, with the beam's affinely transported wavevector tangent to the Killing horizon, . Here is constant because . Choose the observers as translates of one timelike geodesic by the isometry generated by , crossing at and . Give them the same positive Killing energy per unit rest mass, . At their crossings their normalized four-velocities have
which satisfy . They can be realized by local geodesics with precisely these initial data. The measured angular frequency is
To connect this measurement to surface gravity, if with constant , affine transport of would give . For observers related by the same Killing vector field translation, agrees at the crossings, giving . Here there is no accumulated redshift along the Killing horizon for these equally prepared observers. Arbitrary observers with different four-velocities can still measure different frequencies through their different Killing energies.
Use a plane wave with phase , and take , . The positive-frequency branch of the given hydrostatic dispersion relation is . The wavevector is . Differentiating with respect to its components gives the group velocity, which carries the wave packet and its energy:
The normal phase velocity, which follows a crest in its normal direction, is
Consequently,
Thus the group velocity lies along the constant-phase lines , perpendicular to the phase velocity. For , crests move upward and rightward, whereas energy moves downward and rightward. Choosing gives upward and rightward energy propagation and downward and rightward normal phase propagation. Conjugate or oppositely directed components supply the other outgoing directions from a localized source.
Figure 1.
Internal-wave crests, normal phase propagation, and perpendicular energy propagation for positive horizontal and vertical wavenumbers
. Details.
The speeds are
The hydrostatic limit is . In that limit energy propagates almost horizontally, with and , while normal phase propagation is almost vertical and has speed approximately . The horizontal speed at which a crest intersects a fixed height is ; this is not the horizontal component of the normal phase velocity vector. For example, , vertical wavelength and horizontal wavelength give and .
These are local speeds in a uniform medium, without a background current. The non-rotating approximation requires , while the hydrostatic approximation requires . At lower frequencies, rotation changes the dispersion relation to that of inertia-gravity waves.
For a zonal background , its relative vorticity is . The meridional absolute vorticity gradient is therefore
At ,
A localized jet stream of velocity scale and width has
For -- this is about -- times the planetary contribution, so wind curvature cannot generally be neglected. The coefficient in this scaling depends on the chosen jet profile and width convention.
Linearizing the vorticity equation now gives the Rossby-wave equation for a sheared zonal current
For a qualitative estimate at the jet core, freeze the local coefficients. At a smooth maximum , so : the restoring absolute vorticity gradient is stronger. The local Rossby-wave dispersion relation in a zonal jet gives, for the same local and zonal wavenumber with ,
so
The envelope in the diagram would advance eastward faster, while individual phase contours would advance more slowly eastward, become stationary if , or move westward if . The separation between envelope and phase speeds increases. On a plot with time downward, compare horizontal displacement at fixed time: the envelope moves farther right, while a given phase moves less far right, or left after reversal. If the frequency changes sign for a fixed signed , conjugate the mode to restore the convention ; the physical propagation is unchanged.
This conclusion concerns the concave-down jet core. On a flank with the correction has the opposite sign; the value at the edge of the Hadley cell alone does not specify the curvature everywhere. Indeed the angular-momentum-conserving profile in 1(a) is a rising inner branch, not a complete smooth jet maximum. A global sheared-current normal mode requires its meridional structure and boundary conditions; the local calculation is the qualitative estimate requested.
Let and . The long-wavelength electron branch has . The convergent power series
turns the degenerate-plasma dielectric response into
Substitute . The coefficient of is , so the degenerate-plasma Langmuir dispersion is
The Langmuir wave therefore has a finite frequency at zero wavenumber, with the first dispersive correction set by the Fermi velocity. Indeed the occupied Fermi sphere has , so the coefficient agrees with the high-phase velocity velocity moment expansion.
Screening-length convention. The source defines , so its long-wavelength condition is equivalent to . We retain that definition when expressing answers in its symbols. The actual electron Thomas-Fermi screening length obtained from the static response is instead
For a concrete comparison, at , the static dielectric function is ; using the printed length as the physical Thomas-Fermi screening length would give . Calling the printed length the Debye length thus differs from the physical degenerate-electron screening convention by a factor of three. It does not affect the boxed dimensional dispersion relation.
For the positive-frequency branch write , , and . The degenerate-plasma dielectric response is equivalent to
At large , a logarithmic divergence is needed to balance the right-hand side; hence . Keeping the constant as well as the large term gives
More precisely the relative correction is . The additive constant in the exponent fixes the leading prefactor and should not be discarded.
The negative-frequency branch follows from the even real dielectric function outside the occupied interval. Thus
Using the physical Thomas-Fermi screening length instead gives . This is degenerate-plasma zero-point sound: the phase velocity lies exponentially close to, but strictly beyond, the edge of the Fermi sphere for every finite in this approximation. The limit is a property of the supplied classical-trajectory kinetic theory; applying it at microscopic wavelengths would require checking quantum recoil, which that equation omits.
The two real branches start at , have zero initial slope, and approach the lines from outside the populated parallel-velocity region. The original plot solves the degenerate-plasma dielectric response numerically; the shaded wedge shows where particles with resonant parallel velocities exist.
Figure 1.
Degenerate electron-plasma branches remain outside the resonant-velocity wedge
. The frequency is scaled by the electron plasma frequency and the wavenumber by . The dashed curves show the leading long-wavelength approximation. At large wavenumber the exact branches are exponentially close to ; their visual overlap with those edges does not mean that a finite- root is inside the shaded region. Ion response, collisions and quantum recoil are omitted. Details.
The distinction from a nondegenerate gas with a Maxwellian Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution is its tail. A Maxwellian has resonant particles at every finite phase velocity. Its long-wavelength Langmuir waves have exponentially weak Landau damping, but at shorter wavelengths that damping becomes strong. The ideal degenerate cutoff instead permits this undamped branch to persist continuously into degenerate-plasma zero-point sound. The coefficient in c is also different from the classical thermal dispersive coefficient.
A natural additional branch is a degenerate ion-acoustic wave. For singly charged ions with equal electron and ion number densities, degenerate electron pressure supplies a restoring force while ion mass supplies inertia. The electron equation of state has , suggesting, at long wavelengths,
Both species are degenerate here, so . The hierarchy explains the damping: there are no resonant ions, but there are resonant electrons inside their parallel marginal distribution. That electron marginal distribution has a small nonzero slope at , even though the full three-dimensional occupation is constant inside the Fermi sphere. One therefore expects weak electron Landau damping, of relative order , rather than exact absence of damping. Ion degeneracy pressure adds a relatively small correction to . This reasoning concerns an electrostatic ion-acoustic wave; transverse or magnetized branches require additional field dynamics or a background magnetic field.