L'époque de la réionisation, qui s'étend pendant le premier milliard d'années de l'Univers, correspond à la période où les premières étoiles et galaxies apparaissent. Dans ce contexte, l'enjeu majeur de cette thèse est d'étudier la formation de ces premières structures et leur rétroaction radiative sur leur environnement. Pour cela, j'utilise différentes méthodes de simulations numériques permettant de modéliser le transfert radiatif dans les galaxies, dans un cadre cosmologique.En particulier, les plus petites galaxies seraient celles qui apportent la majorité des photons nécessaires à ioniser l'Univers. J'explore cette hypothèse dans une première partie à l'aide de simulations radio-hydrodynamiques avec le code RAMSES-RT, ciblant trois petites galaxies avec une très haute résolution spatiale et temporelle. Je me suis d'abord intéressé aux mécanismes régulant la production et le transfert de photons ionisants dans les galaxies, et j'ai montré que les explosions de supernovae en sont un facteur essentiel. Ensuite, j'ai exploré les propriétés observables dérivées à partir de ces simulations.Dans un second temps, j'ai développé une extension au code Monte Carlo de transfert radiatif MCLya prenant en compte la polarisation du rayonnement et l'émission diffuse dans une simulation. J'ai utilisé ce code pour post-traiter une simulation d'un blob Lyman-alpha, une source étendue d'émission Lyman-alpha, et étudier ses propriétés de polarisation à l'aide de pseudo-observations. Contrairement à ce qui était proposé précédemment, j'ai pu montrer que la polarisation n'était pas un indicateur aussi utile qu'espéré pour tracer l'origine des photons Lyman-alpha / The Epoch of Reionisation, which spans during the first billion year of te Universe, corresponds to the period during which the first stars and galaxy form. In this context, the main topic of this thesis is to study the formation of those early structures and their radiative feedback to their environment. For this purpose, I use various numerical simulations tools designed to model the radiative transfer in galaxies in a cosmological framework.More specifically, I look at very small galaxies, which are believed to contribute the bulk of the photons required to reionise the Universe. I explore this idea using radiative hydrodynamics simulations performed with RAMSES-RT, focusing on three small galaxies with a very high spatial and temporal resolution. I first detail the mechanism that regulate te production and escape of ionising photons in galaxies, and I show that supernovae explosions are a crucial element for this regulation. I then started to investigate the observable properties of those galaxies.In a second part of my thesis, I developped an extension to the Monte Carlo radiative transfer code MCLya to take light polarisation into account and to model the diffuse emission. I applied this code to post-process the simulation of a Lyman-alpha blob (an extended Lyman-alpha source), and to study its polarisation properties with mock observations. Contrary to what was suggested before, I showed that polarisation is not a strong tracer of the origin of Lyman-alpha photons

Mes travaux de recherche portent sur l'étude du rayonnement (surtouts rayons X durs) provenant des trous noirs accrétant (dans les noyaux actifs de galaxies et les binaires X). L'objectif est d'en extraire des informations sur les conditions physique régnant dans l'environnement immédiat de ces objets. Les principales question auxquelles je tente de répondre sont les suivantes: Quelle est la structure et la géométrie de la matière accrétée au voisinage du trou noir ? Comment celle -ci évolue-t-elle avec le taux d'accrétion de masse ? Quel est la relation entre les processus d'accrétion et la formation de jets souvent observés dans ces systèmes ? Mon approche est fondée sur une comparaison précise entre les observations et les prédictions des divers modèles. Je présente les efforts poursuivis depuis près de dix ans afin de développer des outils de simulation numérique pour modéliser le transfert de rayonnement dans les plasma chauds des sources compactes X. Je montre comment ces outils ont été utilisés pour modéliser le continuum haute énergie et la variabilité des trous noirs accrétants et pour contraindre la structure du flot d'accrétion. Je présente également des résultats reposant sur l'analyse et l'interprétation d'observations menées avec des télescopes spatiaux tels que XMM-Newton et INTEGRAL ainsi que sur des d'observations simultanées à plusieurs longueurs d'ondes allant de la radio aux rayons X durs.

The current paradigm in planet formation theory is developed around a hierarquical growth of solid bodies, from interstellar dust grains to rocky planetary cores. A particularly difficult phase in the process is the growth from meter-size boulders to planetary embryos of the size of our Moon or Mars. Objects of this size are expected to drift extremely rapid in a protoplanetary disk, so that they would generally fall into the central star well before larger bodies can form. In this thesis, we used numerical simulations to find a physical mechanism that may retain solids in some parts of protoplanetary disks long enough to allow for the formation of planetary embryos. We found that such accumulation can happen at the borders of so-called dead zones. These dead zones would be regions where the coupling to the ambient magnetic field is weaker and the turbulence is less strong, or maybe even absent in some cases. We show by hydrodynamical simulations that material accumulating between the turbulent active and dead regions would be trapped into vortices to effectively form planetary embryos of Moon to Mars mass. We also show that in disks that already formed a giant planet, solid matter accumulates on the edges of the gap the planet carves, as well as at the stable Lagrangian points. The concentration is strong enough for the solids to clump together and form smaller, rocky planets like Earth. Outside our solar system, some gas giant planets have been detected in the habitable zone of their stars. Their wakes may harbour rocky, Earth-size worlds.

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology / Department of Mathematics

Nuclear reactor design requires the calculation of integral core parameters and power and radiation profiles. These physical parameters are obtained by the solution of the linear neutron transport equation over the geometry of the reactor. In order to represent the fine structure of the nuclear core a very small geometrical mesh size should be used, but the computational capacity available these days is still not enough to solve these transport problems in the time range (hours-days) that would make the method useful as a design tool. This problem is traditionally solved by the solution of simple, smaller problems in specific parts of the core and then use a procedure known as homogenization to create average material properties and solve the full problem with a wider mesh size. The iterative multi-level solution procedure is inspired in this multi-stage approach, solving the problem at fuel-pin (cell) level, fuel assembly and nodal levels. The nested geometrical structure of the finite element representation of a reactor can be used to create a set of restriction/prolongation operators to connect the solution in the different levels. The procedure is to iterate between the levels, solving for the error in the coarse level using as source the restricted residual of the solution in the finer level. This way, the complete problem is only solved in the coarsest level and in the other levels only a pair of restriction/interpolation operations and a relaxation is required. In this work, a multigrid solver is developed for the in-moment equation of the spherical harmonics, finite element formulation of the second order transport equation. This solver is implemented as a subroutine in the code EVENT. Numerical tests are provided as a standalone diffusion solver and as part of a block Jacobi transport solver.

The presented work deals with two distinct problems in the field of Mathematical Physics. The first part is dedicated to an 'almost' solution of Villani's conjecture, a known conjecture related to a Statistical Mechanics model invented by Kac in 1956, giving a rigorous explanation of some simple cases of the Boltzmann equation. In 2003 Villani conjectured that the time it will take the system of particles in Kac's model to equilibrate is proportional to the number of particles in the system. Our main result in this part is a proof, up to an epsilon, of that conjecture, showing that for all practical purposes we can consider it to be true. The second part of the presentation is based on a joint work with Prof. Michael Loss and is dedicated to a newly developed trace inequality for the fractional Laplacian, connecting between the fractional Laplacian of a function and its restriction to intersection of hyperplanes. The newly found inequality is sharp and the functions that attain equality in it are completely classified.

Large spectroscopic surveys are trailblazing endeavours in the study of stellar archaeology and near eld cosmology. Access to homogeneous databases of thousands of stellar spectra allow for a detailed and statistically satisfying look into the chemical abundance distribution of our Galaxy and its surrounding satellites, ultimately working towards a better understanding of galactic chemical evolution. This thesis presents the work of three new studies at the current frontier of stellar archaeology. Through the rst look at carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars using H-band spectra, six new CEMP stars and another seven likely candidates were found within the APOGEE database following Data Release 12. These stars have chemical compositions typical of metal-poor halo stars, however the alpha-abundances of two stars indicate possible origins in an accreted dwarf galaxy. A lack of heavy element spectral lines impedes further sub-classi cation of these CEMP stars, however, based on radial velocity scatter, we predict most are not CEMP-s stars which are typically found in binary systems. This preliminary investigation warrants optical observations to con rm the stellar parameters and low metallicities of these stars, to determine the heavy-element abundance ratios and improve the precision in the derived abundances, and to examine their CEMP sub-classi cations. Additionally, the rst results for the spectroscopic follow up to the Pristine survey are presented. Using a sample of 149 stars, a success rate of 70% for finding stars with [Fe/H]<-2.5 and 22% for finding stars with [Fe/H]<-3.0 is reported, significantly higher than other surveys that typically report success rates of 3-4% for recovering stars with [Fe/H]<-3.0. Finally, the new spectral analysis tool StarNet is introduced. A deep neural network architecture is used to examine both synthetic stellar spectra and SDSS-III APOGEE spectral data and can produce the stellar parameters of temperature, gravity, and metallicity with similar or better precision as the APOGEE pipeline values when trained directly with the APOGEE spectra. StarNet is capable of being trained on synthetic data as well, and is able to reproduce the stellar parameters for both synthetic and APOGEE spectra, including low signal-to-noise spectra, with similar precision to training on the APOGEE spectra itself. The residuals between StarNet predictions and APOGEE DR13 parameters are similar to or better than the di erences between the APOGEE DR13 results and optical high resolution spectral analyses for a subset of benchmark stars. While developed using the APOGEE spectral database (real spectra and corresponding ASSET synthetic data with similar normalization functions), StarNet should be applicable to other large spectroscopic surveys like Pristine. / Graduate

Cosmological N-body simulations indicate that the dark matter haloes of galaxies should be generally triaxial. Yet, the presence of a baryonic disc is believed to modify the shape of the haloes. The goal of this thesis is to study how bar formation is affected by halo triaxiality and how, in turn, the presence of the bar influences the shape of the halo. We performed a series of collisionless and hydrodynamical numerical simulations, using elliptical discs as initial conditions. Triaxial halos tend to become more spherical and we show that part of the circularisation of the halo is due to disc growth, but part must be attributed to the formation of a bar. We find that the presence of gas in the disc is a more efficient factor than halo triaxiality in inhibiting the formation of a strong bar. / As simulações cosmológicas de N-corpos indicam que os halos de matéria escura das galáxias devem ser em geral triaxiais. Contudo, acredita-se que a presença de um disco bariônico seja capaz de alterar a forma do halo. O objetivo desta tese é o de estudar como a formação de barras é afetada pela triaxialidade do halo e como, por sua vez, a presença da barra influencia a forma do halo. Nós realizamos uma série de simulações numéricas acolisionais e hidrodinâmicas, utilizando discos elípticos como condições iniciais. Os halos triaxiais tendem a se tornar mais esféricos e nós mostramos que parte da circularização do halo é devida ao crescimento do disco, mas parte precisa ser atribuída à formação da barra. Notamos que a presença de gás no disco é um fator mais eficiente do que a triaxialidade do halo em inibir a formação de uma barra forte.

The presented study gives a comprehensive overview of the theory and the evidence for a systematically varying stellar initial mass function (IMF). Then we focus on the impact of this paradigm change, that is, from the universal invariant IMF to a variable IMF, on galaxy chemical evolution (GCE) studies. For this aim, we developed the first GCE code, GalIMF, that is able to incorporate the empirically calibrated environment-dependent IMF variation theory, the integrated galactic initial mass function (IGIMF) theory. In this theory, the galaxy-wide IMF is calculated by summing all the IMFs in all embedded star clusters which formed throughout the galaxy in 10 Myr time epochs. The GalIMF code recalculates the galaxy-wide IMF at each time step because the integrated galaxy- wide IMF depends on the galactic star formation rate and metallicity. The resulting galaxy-wide IMF and metal abundance evolve with time. Using this code, we examine the chemical evolution of early-type galaxies (ETGs) from dwarf to the most massive. We find that the introduction of the non-canonical IMF affects the best estimation of the galaxy properties such as their mass, star formation history, and star formation efficiency. Moreover, we are able to provide an independent estimation on the stellar formation timescale of galaxies, the...

Gammastrahlenblitze (Gamma-Ray Bursts, GRBs) gehören zu den energiereichsten transienten Ereignissen im Universum und werden als mögliche Quellen von ultra-hochenergetischen kosmischen Strahlen (Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays, UHECRs) gehandelt. Eine eindeutige Bestätigung durch UHECR-Messungen ist jedoch schwierig, da die Richtungsinformation der kosmischen Strahlen während ihrer Ausbreitung aufgrund von Ablenkung durch Magnetfelder teilweise verloren geht. In dieser Dissertation folgen wir einem alternativen multi-messenger Ansatz in welchem die Anwesenheit von kosmischen Strahlen in einem astrophysikalischen Objekt durch Neutrino- oder Photon-Signaturen angezeigt wird. Hierfür simulieren wir GRBs im Internal-Schock-Szenario, welches verschiedene Emissionszonen entlang des astrophysikalischen Jets erfasst, und berechnen nukleare Wechselwirkungen mit modernsten numerischen Codes. In diesem Rahmen diskutieren wir unter welchen Voraussetzungen die Quellklasse von GRBs UHECR-Daten beschreiben kann ohne Neutrinolimits. Letzere begründen sich im Mangel an gemessenen hoch-energetischen (High-Energy, HE) Neutrinos, die mit bekannten GRBs assoziert werden konnten. Die Neutrinolimits können alternativ in Objekten niedriger Leuchtkraft eingehalten werden, die typischerweise eine niedrige Neutrinoproduktionseffizienz haben. Wir präsentieren leptonische Strahlungsmodellierungen für die Unterklasse von GRBs niedriger Leuchktraft mit einem Fokus auf sehr hoch-energetischer (Very-High-Energy, VHE) Emission welche von aktuellen/zukünfitgen Instrumenten beobachtet werden könnte und bestimmen wir die maximalen Energien verschiedener Atomkerne. Die Präsenz von Hadronen kann alternativ durch Signaturen in verschiedenen Wellenlängen des Photonspektrums angezeigt werden. Wir erforschen diesen Ansatz in lepto-hadronischen Modellen für GRBs mit hoher Leuchtkraft, wobei wir kritisch diskutieren, welche Bedingungen erfüllt sein müssen damit typische GRB-Spektren reproduziert werden können. / Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are among the most energetic transients in the Universe and candidate sources of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs). A clear confirmation from UHECR measurements is however challenging, as the directional information of cosmic rays is partially lost due to deflection by (inter-)galactic magnetic fields. In this dissertation we follow an alternative multi-messenger approach, in which the presence of UHECRs in an astrophysical object is indicated by neutrino or photon signatures produced in nuclear interactions. For this, we simulate GRBs in the multi-zone internal shock model, which accounts for different emission zones along the astrophysical jet and calculate nuclear interactions with state-of-the-art numerical codes. In this framework we discuss under which conditions the population of GRBs can still account for UHECR measurements while obeying current neutrino limits that stem from the lack of detected High-Energy (HE) neutrinos which could be associated with known GRBs. These neutrino limits may alternatively be met in low-luminosity objects, which typically have low neutrino production efficiency. We present leptonic radiation models of the sub-class of low-luminosity GRBs, with a focus on Very-High-Energy (VHE) emission potentially observable by current/future instruments. Connecting to UHECRs, we determine maximal energies of different cosmic-ray nuclei. The presence of nuclei may also be indicated by multi-wavelength signatures in the photon spectrum. We explore this approach in lepto-hadronic models of high-luminosity bursts, where we also critically review the conditions necessary to reproduce typical GRB spectra within our model.