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We report new Lyman-$\alpha$ and 21-cm constraints on freeze-in dark matter (FIDM) which injects energy into the intergalactic medium either through annihilation or decay to photon(s) or electron-positron pair. With respect to Lyman-$\alpha$ we fix the baseline ionization history using low redshift data about astrophysical reionization, whereas for 21-cm signal we adopt the baseline values of 21-cm power spectrum through a standard modeling of star formation developed so far. Using the latest numerical tools, we show that (i) for sterile neutrino FIDM, current Lyman-$\alpha$ data and future sensitivity of SKA-low (1000 hrs) on the 21-cm power spectra excludes the FIDM mass up to $1.8\times 10^{-3}$ GeV at 95$\%$ CL and $5.46\times 10^{-4}$ GeV, respectively, and (ii) for millicharged FIDM, current Lyman-$\alpha$ data only excludes the millicharge down to $10^{-8}$ within the FIDM mass range of $10^{-3}-1$ GeV at 95$\%$ CL, suggesting that the surviving parameter space of millicharged FIDM is still intact.

The statistics of Einstein radii for a sample of strong lenses can provide valuable constraints on the underlying mass distribution. The correct interpretation, however, relies critically on the modelling of the selection of the sample, which has proven to be a limiting factor. This may change thanks to upcoming uniform high-resolution imaging surveys that cover a large fraction of the sky, because they can provide complete lens samples, with well understood selection criteria. To explore how the observed distribution of Einstein radii depends on the galaxy properties, we simulated a realistic complete sample of strong lenses, predicting a number density of lenses of about 2.5 deg$^{-2}$ for a \Euclid-like setup. Such data can break the degeneracy between the stellar initial mass function (IMF) and the inner slope of the density profile of dark matter, without having to rely on additional information from stellar dynamics. We found that a survey covering only 50 deg$^2$ can already provide tight constraints: assuming that the cosmology is known, the dark matter slope is recovered with an uncertainty of $3.5\%$, while the uncertainty in the ratio between the true stellar mass and that inferred from stellar population modelling was found to be $10\%$. These findings highlight the potential of this method when applied to samples of lenses with well-understood selection functions.

The detections of Lyman-$\alpha$ ($\rm Ly\alpha$) emission in galaxies with redshifts above 5 are of utmost importance for constraining the cosmic reionization timeline, yet such detections are usually based on slit spectroscopy. Here we investigate the significant bias induced by slit placement on the estimate of $\rm Ly\alpha$ escape fraction ( $f_{\rm esc}^{\mathrm{Ly\alpha}}$), by presenting a galaxy (dubbed A2744-z6Lya) at $z=5.66$ where its deep JWST NIRSpec prism spectroscopy completely misses the strong $\rm Ly\alpha$ emission detected in the MUSE data. A2744-z6Lya exhibits a pronounced UV continuum with an extremely steep spectral slope of $\beta=-2.574_{-0.008}^{+0.008}$, and it has a stellar mass of $\mathrm{\sim10^{8.82}~M_\odot}$, a star-formation rate of $\mathrm{\sim8.35~M_\odot yr^{-1}}$ and gas-phase metallicity of $\mathrm{12+log\,(O/H)\sim7.88}$. The observed flux and rest-frame equivalent width of its Ly$\alpha$ from MUSE spectroscopy are $1.2\times \rm 10^{-16} erg~s^{-1}cm^{-2}$ and 75Å, equivalent to $f_{\rm esc}^{\mathrm{Ly\alpha}}=78\pm4 \%$. However, its Ly$\alpha$ non-detection from JWST NIRSpec gives a 5-$\sigma$ upper limit of $<13 \%$, in stark contrast to that derived from MUSE. To explore the reasons for this bias, we perform spatially resolved stellar population analysis of A2744-z6Lya using the JWST NIRCam imaging data to construct 2-dimensional maps of SFR, dust extinction and neutral hydrogen column density. We find that the absence of Ly$\alpha$ in the slit regions probably stems from both the resonance scattering effect of neutral hydrogen and dust extinction. Through analyzing an extreme case in detail, this work highlights the important caveat of inferring $f_{\rm esc}^{\mathrm{Ly\alpha}}$ from slit spectroscopy, particularly when using the JWST multiplexed NIRSpec microshutter assembly.

In recent years, scientific CMOS (sCMOS) sensors have been vigorously developed and have outperformed CCDs in several aspects: higher readout frame rate, higher radiation tolerance, and higher working temperature. For silicon image sensors, image lag will occur when the charges of an event are not fully transferred inside pixels. It can degrade the image quality for optical imaging, and deteriorate the energy resolution for X-ray spectroscopy. In this work, the image lag of a sCMOS sensor is studied. To measure the image lag under low-light illumination, we constructed a new method to extract the image lag from X-ray photons. The image lag of a customized X-ray sCMOS sensor GSENSE1516BSI is measured, and its influence on X-ray performance is evaluated. The result shows that the image lag of this sensor exists only in the immediately subsequent frame and is always less than 0.05% for different incident photon energies and under different experimental conditions. The residual charge is smaller than 0.5 e- with the highest incident photon charge around 8 ke-. Compared to the readout noise level around 3 e-, the image lag of this sensor is too small to have a significant impact on the imaging quality and the energy resolution. The image lag shows a positive correlation with the incident photon energy and a negative correlation with the temperature. However, it has no dependence on the gain setting and the integration time. These relations can be explained qualitatively by the non-ideal potential structure inside the pixels. This method can also be applied to the study of image lag for other kinds of imaging sensors.

In recent years, scientific Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (sCMOS) devices have been increasingly applied in X-ray detection, thanks to their attributes such as high frame rate, low dark current, high radiation tolerance and low readout noise. We tested the basic performance of a backside-illuminated (BSI) sCMOS sensor, which has a small pixel size of 6.5 um * 6.5 um. At a temperature of -20C, The readout noise is 1.6 e, the dark current is 0.5 e/pixel/s, and the energy resolution reaches 204.6 eV for single-pixel events. The effect of depletion depth on the sensor's performance was also examined, using three versions of the sensors with different deletion depths. We found that the sensor with a deeper depletion region can achieve a better energy resolution for events of all types of pixel splitting patterns, and has a higher efficiency in collecting photoelectrons produced by X-ray photons. We further study the effect of depletion depth on charge diffusion with a center-of-gravity (CG) model. Based on this work, a highly depleted sCMOS is recommended for applications of soft X-ray spectroscop.

The Gamma-Ray Integrated Detectors (GRID) are a space project to monitor the transient gamma-ray sky in the multi-messenger astronomy era using multiple detectors on-board CubeSats. The second GRID detector, GRID-02, was launched in 2020. The performance of the detector, including the energy response, effective area, angular response, and temperature-bias dependence, is calibrated in the laboratory and presented here. These measurements are compared with particle tracing simulations and validate the Geant4 model that will be used for generating detector responses.

Possible violations of Lorentz invariance (LIV) can produce vacuum birefringence, which results in a frequency-dependent rotation of the polarization plane of linearly polarized light from distant sources. In this paper, we try to search for a frequency-dependent change of the linear polarization angle arising from vacuum birefringence in the spectropolarimetric data of astrophysical sources. We collect five blazars with multiwavelength polarization measurements in different optical bands $(UBVRI)$. Taking into account the observed polarization angle contributions from both the intrinsic polarization angle and the rotation angle induced by LIV, and assuming that the intrinsic polarization angle is an unknown constant, we obtain new constraints on LIV by directly fitting the multiwavelength polarimetric data of the five blazars. Here we show that the birefringence parameter $\eta$ quantifying the broken degree of Lorentz invariance is limited to be in the range of $-8.91\times 10^{-7}$ < $\eta$ < $2.93\times10^{-5}$ at the $2\sigma$ confidence level, which is as good as or represents one order of magnitude improvement over the results previously obtained from ultraviolet/optical polarization observations. Much stronger limits can be obtained by future multiwavelength observations in the gamma-ray energy band.

The June 2, 2018, impact of asteroid 2018 LA over Botswana is only the second asteroid detected in space prior to impacting over land. Here, we report on the successful recovery of meteorites. Additional astrometric data refine the approach orbit and define the spin period and shape of the asteroid. Video observations of the fireball constrain the asteroid's position in its orbit and were used to triangulate the location of the fireball's main flare over the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. 23 meteorites were recovered. A consortium study of eight of these classifies Motopi Pan as a HED polymict breccia derived from howardite, cumulate and basaltic eucrite, and diogenite lithologies. Before impact, 2018 LA was a solid rock of about 156 cm diameter with high bulk density about 2.85 g/cm3, a relatively low albedo pV about 0.25, no significant opposition effect on the asteroid brightness, and an impact kinetic energy of about 0.2 kt. The orbit of 2018 LA is consistent with an origin at Vesta (or its Vestoids) and delivery into an Earth-impacting orbit via the nu_6 resonance. The impact that ejected 2018 LA in an orbit towards Earth occurred 22.8 +/- 3.8 Ma ago. Zircons record a concordant U-Pb age of 4563 +/- 11 Ma and a consistent 207Pb/206Pb age of 4563 +/- 6 Ma. A much younger Pb-Pb phosphate resetting age of 4234 +/- 41 Ma was found. From this impact chronology, we discuss what is the possible source crater of Motopi Pan and the age of Vesta's Veneneia impact basin.

The Sariçiçek howardite meteorite shower consisting of 343 documented stones occurred on 2 September 2015 in Turkey and is the first documented howardite fall. Cosmogenic isotopes show that Sariçiçek experienced a complex cosmic ray exposure history, exposed during ~12-14 Ma in a regolith near the surface of a parent asteroid, and that an ca.1 m sized meteoroid was launched by an impact 22 +/- 2 Ma ago to Earth (as did one third of all HED meteorites). SIMS dating of zircon and baddeleyite yielded 4550.4 +/- 2.5 Ma and 4553 +/- 8.8 Ma crystallization ages for the basaltic magma clasts. The apatite U-Pb age of 4525 +/- 17 Ma, K-Ar age of ~3.9 Ga, and the U,Th-He ages of 1.8 +/- 0.7 and 2.6 +/- 0.3 Ga are interpreted to represent thermal metamorphic and impact-related resetting ages, respectively. Petrographic, geochemical and O-, Cr- and Ti- isotopic studies confirm that Sariçiçek belongs to the normal clan of HED meteorites. Petrographic observations and analysis of organic material indicate a small portion of carbonaceous chondrite material in the Sariçiçek regolith and organic contamination of the meteorite after a few days on soil. Video observations of the fall show an atmospheric entry at 17.3 +/- 0.8 kms-1 from NW, fragmentations at 37, 33, 31 and 27 km altitude, and provide a pre-atmospheric orbit that is the first dynamical link between the normal HED meteorite clan and the inner Main Belt. Spectral data indicate the similarity of Sariçiçek with the Vesta asteroid family spectra, a group of asteroids stretching to delivery resonances, which includes (4) Vesta. Dynamical modeling of meteoroid delivery to Earth shows that the disruption of a ca.1 km sized Vesta family asteroid or a ~10 km sized impact crater on Vesta is required to provide sufficient meteoroids <4 m in size to account for the influx of meteorites from this HED clan.

It is generally supposed that a transition from the normal decay phase (decay slope $\sim -1$) to a steeper phase (decay slope $\sim -2$) could be suggested as a jet break. The jet opening angle $\theta_{\rm jet}$ is then calculated from the jet break time of the afterglow light curve. This allows the derivation of the collimation-corrected energy $E_{\rm jet}$ of those GRBs. We extensively searched for the GRBs with jet break features from multi-wavelength afterglow light curves, and 138 GRBs with significant breaks were collected. The jet break times of those GRBs mainly range from 1000 s to $10^6$ s, and the distribution of the collimation-corrected energy $E_{\rm jet}$ peaks at $\sim10^{50}$ erg. We also confirmed the $E_{\rm \gamma,iso}-E_{\rm p,i}$, $E_{\rm jet}-E_{\rm p,i}$ and $E_{\rm \gamma,iso}-\theta_{\rm jet}$ relations, and found $E_{\rm \gamma,iso}-T_{\rm j,z}-E_{\rm p,i}$ relation remains tight with more multi-wavelength data. This tight $E_{\rm \gamma,iso}-T_{\rm j,z}-E_{\rm p,i}$ relation is also conformed by different groups of our selected GRBs in the paper. In addition, another two new and tighter correlations among $E_{\rm jet}-T_{\rm j,z}-E_{\rm p,i}$ are well confirmed for different circumburst mediums in this paper. We suggest that those tight three-parameter correlations are more physical, and could be widely applied to constrain the cosmological parameters.

The observed time delays between photons with different circular polarizations from an astrophysical object provide a new, interesting way of testing the Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP). In this paper, we constrain the EEP by considering both Shapiro time delay and Faraday rotation effects. We continue to search for astronomical sources that are suitable for testing the EEP accuracy, and obtain 60 extragalactic radio sources with multi-wavelength polarization angles in three different radio bands (20, 8.6, and 4.8 GHz) and 29 brightest stars within our own Milky Way galaxy with multi-colour linear polarimetric data in five optical bands ($UBVRI$). We apply the Metropolis-Hastings Markov Chain to simulate the fit parameters. The final results show that the values of the parameterized post-Newtonian parameter $\gamma$ discrepancy ($\Delta \gamma_{p}$) are constrained to be in the range of $10^{-26}-10^{-23}$ for 60 radio sources and in the range of $10^{-23}-10^{-20}$ for 29 optical polarization stars. Compared to previous EEP tests that based on the single polarization measurement in the gamma-ray band, our results have profound superiority that nearly a few tens of astrophysical sources with multi-wavelength polarization observations commonly in the optical and radio bands are available. It ensures that these sources can give more significantly robust bounds on the EEP. Although the presented method is straightforward, the resulting constraints on the EEP should be taken as upper limits as other more complex astrophysical effects affecting a polarization rotation are hardly considered.

We used the newly commissioned 50 cm Binocular Network (50BiN) telescope at Qinghai Station of Purple Mountain Observatory (Chinese Academy of Sciences) to observe the old open cluster NGC 188 in V and R as part of a search for variable objects. Our time-series data span a total of 36 days. Radial velocity and proper-motion selection resulted in a sample of 532 genuine cluster members. Isochrone fitting was applied to the cleaned cluster sequence, yielding a distance modulus of (m - M)0V = 11.35 \pm 0.10 mag and a total foreground reddening of E(V - R) = 0.062 \pm 0.002 mag. Light-curve solutions were obtained for eight W Ursae Majoris eclipsing-binary systems (W UMas) and their orbital parameters were estimated. Using the latter parameters, we estimate a distance to the W UMas which is independent of the host cluster's physical properties. Based on combined fits to six of the W UMas (EP Cep, EQ Cep, ES Cep, V369 Cep, and--for the first time--V370 Cep and V782 Cep), we obtain an average distance modulus of (m - M)0V = 11.31 \pm 0.08 mag, which is comparable with that resulting from our isochrone fits. These six W UMas exhibit an obvious period-luminosity relation. We derive more accurate physical parameters for the W UMa systems and discuss their initial masses and ages. The former show that these W UMa systems have likely undergone angular-momentum evolution within a convective envelope (W-type evolution). The ages of the W UMa systems agree well with the cluster's age.

SONG is a global ground based network of 1 meter telescopes for stellar time-domain science, an international collaboration involving many countries across the world. In order to enable a favourable duty cycle, the SONG network plans to create a homogeneous distribution of 4 nodes in each of the northern and southern hemispheres. A natural possibility was building one of the northern nodes in East Asia, preferably on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. During the last decade, a great deal of effort has been invested in searching for high a quality site for ground based astronomy in China, since this has been one of the major concerns for the development of Chinese astronomy. A number of sites on the plateau have been in operation for many years, but most of them are used only for radio astronomy, as well as small optical telescopes for applied astronomy. Several potential sites for large optical instruments have been identified by the plateau site survey, but as yet none of them have been adequately quantitatively characterised. Here we present results from a detailed multi-year study of the Delingha site, which was eventually selected for the SONG-China node. We also describe the site monitoring system that will allow an isolated SONG and 50BiN node to operate safely in an automated mode.

The high-velocity features (HVFs) in optical spectra of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are examined with a large sample including very early-time spectra (e.g., t < -7 days). Multiple Gaussian fits are applied to examine the HVFs and their evolutions, using constraints on expansion velocities for the same species (i.e., SiII 5972 and SiII 6355). We find that strong HVFs tend to appear in SNe Ia with smaller decline rates (e.g., dm15(B)<1.4 mag), clarifying that the finding by Childress et al. (2014) for the Ca-HVFs in near-maximum-light spectra applies both to the Si-HVFs and Ca-HVFs in the earlier phase. The Si-HVFs seem to be more common in fast-expanding SNe Ia, which is different from the earlier result that the Ca-HVFs are associated with SNe Ia having slower SiII 6355 velocities at maximum light (i.e., Vsi). This difference can be due to that the HVFs in fast-expanding SNe Ia usually disappear more rapidly and are easily blended with the photospheric components when approaching the maximum light. Moreover, SNe Ia with both stronger HVFs at early phases and larger Vsi are found to have noticeably redder B-V colors and occur preferentially in the inner regions of their host galaxies, while those with stronger HVFs but smaller Vsi show opposite tendencies, suggesting that these two subclasses have different explosion environments and their HVFs may have different origins. We further examine the relationships between the absorption features of SiII 6355 and CaII IR lines, and find that their photospheric components are well correlated in velocity and strength but the corresponding HVFs show larger scatter. These results cannot be explained with ionization and/or thermal processes alone, and different mechanisms are required for the creation of HVF-forming region in SNe Ia.

We present a comprehensive photometric study of the pulsating, eclipsing binary OO Dra. Simultaneous B- and V-band photometry of the star was carried out on 14 nights. Revised orbital period and a new ephemeris were derived from the data. The first photometric solution of the binary system and the physical parameters of the component stars are determined. It reveals that OO Dra could be a detached system with the less-massive secondary component nearly filling in its Roche lobe. By subtracting the eclipsing light changes from the data, we obtained the intrinsic pulsating light curves of the hotter and massive primary component. Frequency analysis of the residuals light yields two confident pulsation modes in both B- and V-band data with the dominant frequency detected at 41.865 c/d. A brief discussion concerning the evolutionary status and the pulsation nature of the binary system is finally given.

We introduce a new sampling algorithm, the equi-energy sampler, for efficient statistical sampling and estimation. Complementary to the widely used temperature-domain methods, the equi-energy sampler, utilizing the temperature--energy duality, targets the energy directly. The focus on the energy function not only facilitates efficient sampling, but also provides a powerful means for statistical estimation, for example, the calculation of the density of states and microcanonical averages in statistical mechanics. The equi-energy sampler is applied to a variety of problems, including exponential regression in statistics, motif sampling in computational biology and protein folding in biophysics.