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Imara, Nia

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Imara

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Nia

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Imara, Nia
Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.5bd9e7be-f8a9-480d-9a3c-62db7cf83112

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    The Distortion of the Cosmic Microwave Background Spectrum Due to Intergalactic Dust
    (American Astronomical Society, 2016) Imara, Nia; Loeb, Abraham
    Infrared emission from intergalactic dust might compromise the ability of future experiments to detect subtle spectral distortions in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the early Universe. We provide the first estimate of foreground contamination of the CMB signal due to diffuse dust emission in the intergalactic medium. We use models of the extragalactic background light to calculate the intensity of intergalactic dust emission and find that emission by intergalactic dust at redshifts z<0.5 exceeds the sensitivity of the planned Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) to CMB spectral distortions by 1-3 orders of magnitude. We place an upper limit of 0.23% on the contribution to the far-infrared background from intergalactic dust emission.
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    Limits on Intergalactic Dust During Reionization
    (American Astronomical Society, 2016) Imara, Nia; Loeb, Abraham
    In this Letter, we constrain the dust-to-gas ratio in the intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshifts. We employ models for dust in the local Universe to contrain the dust-to-gas ratio during the epoch of reionization at redshifts z ~ 6-10. The observed level of reddening of high redshift galaxies implies that the IGM was enriched to an intergalactic dust-to-gas ratio of less than 3% of the Milky Way value by a redshift of z=10.
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    Astrophysical Russian dolls
    (Springer Nature, 2017) Loeb, Abraham; Imara, Nia
    Are there examples of "astrophysical Russian dolls," and what could we learn from their similarities? In this article, we list a few such examples, including disks, filaments, and clusters. We suggest that forging connections across disciplinary borders enhances our perception of beauty, while simultaneously leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the Universe.
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    A Possible Planet Candidate in an External Galaxy Detected Through X-Ray Transit
    (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021-10-25) Di Stefano, Rosanne; Berndtsson, Julia; Urquhart, Ryan; Soria, Roberto; Kashyap, Vinay; Carmichael, Theron; Imara, Nia
    Many lines of reasoning suggest that external galaxies should host planetary systems but detecting them by methods typically used in our own Galaxy is not possible. An alternative approach is to study the temporal behavior of X-rays emitted by bright extragalactic X-ray sources, where an orbiting planet would temporarily block the X-rays and cause a brief eclipse. We report on such a potential event in the X-ray binary M51-ULS-1 in the galaxy M51. We examined a range of explanations for the observed X-ray dip, including a variety of transiting objects and enhancements in the density of gas and dust. The latter are ruled out by the absence of changes in X-ray colors, save any with sharp density gradients that cannot be probed with our data. Instead, the data are well fit by a planet transit model in which the eclipser is most likely to be the size of Saturn. We also find that the locations of possible orbits are consistent with the survival of a planet bound to a mass-transfer binary.