Related papers: A new way of detecting intergalactic baryons
Nonlinear radio waves modulate the plasma, scatter on the modulations, and develop an intermittent power spectrum -- perhaps. Rudiments of theory, numerical simulations, and qualitative modeling of nonlinear scattering are presented.…
Third generation ground-based interferometers as well as the planned space-based interferometer LISA are expected to detect a plethora of gravitational wave signals from coalescing binaries at cosmological distance. The emitted…
The frequency-dependent time delays in fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to constrain the photon mass, if the FRB redshifts are known, but the similarity between the frequency dependences of dispersion due to plasma effects and a photon…
Conventional techniques that measure rapid time variations are inefficient or inadequate to discover and observe rapidly pulsating astronomical sources. It is therefore conceivable that there exist some classes of objects pulsating with…
Modern radio interferometers sensitive to low frequencies will make use of wide-band detectors. For such wide bandwidths, dispersive atmospheric effects introduce variations in the fringe delay which change through the band of the…
The properties of low-frequency convective fluctuations and transport are investigated for the boundary region of magnetized plasmas. We employ a two-dimensional fluid model for the evolution of the global plasma quantities in a geometry…
Mapping the expansion of the universe gives clues to the underlying physics causing the recently discovered acceleration of the expansion, and enables discrimination among cosmological models. We examine the utility of measuring the rate of…
The number of identified Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) is increasing rapidly with current and future facilities. Strongly lensed FRBs are expected to be found as well, which can provide precise time delays and thus have rich applications in…
In separate series of observations of the Crab pulsar, pulse broadening due to scattering was measured at 111 MHz, and variations of dispersion due to pulse delay were measured at higher radio frequencies. In a remarkable event lasting 200…
This paper sets out to measure the timescale of quasar variability with a view to new understanding of the size of accretion discs in active galactic nuclei. Previous attempts to measure such timescales have been based on sparsely sampled…
The recently discovered fast radio bursts (FRBs), presumably of extra-galactic origin, have the potential to become a powerful probe of the intergalactic medium (IGM). We point out a few such potential applications. We provide expressions…
Most of the baryons in the low-redshift universe reside in a warm/hot component which is difficult to detect with standard absorption/emission line techniques. We propose to use quasar refractive scintillation as an useful, complementary…
The connection between the time-dependent physical spectrum of light and the phase space overlap of Wigner functions is investigated for optical pulses. Time and frequency properties of optical pulses with chirp are analyzed using the phase…
Observations over the last two decades have shown that a significant fraction of all flat-spectrum, extragalactic radio sources exhibit flux density variations on timescales of a day or less at frequencies of several GHz. It has been…
Background radiation fields pervade the Universe, and above a certain energy any $\gamma$-ray flux emitted by an extragalactic source should be attenuated due to $e^+e^-$ pair production. The opacity could be alleviated if photons…
Gravitational microlensing has become a mature technique for discovering small gravitational lenses in the Universe which are otherwise beyond our detection limits. Similarly, plasma microlensing can help us explore cosmic plasma lenses.…
Over 80% of the cosmic baryon density is likely to be distributed in the diffuse, $\gtrsim10^{4}$ K circum- and inter-galactic medium (CGM and IGM respectively). We demonstrate that the dispersion measures (DMs) of samples of localized Fast…
The measurements of the linear polarisation of visible light from quasars give strong evidence for large-scale coherent orientations of their polarisation vectors in some regions of the sky. We show that these observations can be explained…
Experimental observations indicate that gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and high-energy neutrino bursts may travel at different speeds with a typical delay measured at the order of hours or days. We discuss two potential interpretations for the GRB…
The discovery of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) at cosmological distances has opened a powerful window on otherwise unseen matter in the Universe. In the 2020s, observations of $>10^{4}$ FRBs will assess the baryon contents and physical…