An MHD Model For Magnetar Giant Flares

Giant flares on soft gamma-ray repeaters that are thought to take place on magnetars release enormous energy in a short time interval. Their power can be explained by catastrophic instabilities occurring in the magnetic field configuration and the subsequent magnetic reconnection. By analogy with the coronal mass ejection (CME) events on the Sun, we develop a theoretical model via an analytic approach for magnetar giant flares. In this model, the rotation and/or displacement of the crust causes the field to twist and deform, leading to flux rope formation in the magnetosphere and energy accumulation in the related configuration. When the energy and helicity stored in the configuration reach a threshold, the system loses its equilibrium, the flux rope is ejected outward in a catastrophic way, and magnetic reconnection helps the catastrophe develop to a plausible eruption. By taking SGR 1806 - 20 as an example, we calculate the free magnetic energy released in such an eruptive process and find that it is more than $10^{47}$ ergs, which is enough to power a giant flare. The released free magnetic energy is converted into radiative energy, kinetic energy and gravitational energy of the flux rope. We calculated the light curves of the eruptive processes for the giant flares of SGR 1806 - 20, SGR 0526-66 and SGR 1900+14, and compared them with the observational data. The calculated light curves are in good agreement with the observed light curves of giant flares.Comment: Accepted to Ap

Resonant Tunneling through double-bended Graphene Nanoribbons

We investigate theoretically resonant tunneling through double-bended graphene nanoribbon structures, i.e., armchair-edged graphene nanoribbons (AGNRs) in between two semi-infinite zigzag graphene nanoribbon (ZGNR) leads. Our numerical results demonstrate that the resonant tunneling can be tuned dramatically by the Fermi energy and the length and/or widths of the AGNR for both the metallic and semiconductor-like AGNRs. The structure can also be use to control the valley polarization of the tunneling currents and could be useful for potential application in valleytronics devices.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

A numerical analysis of transient planetary waves and the vertical structure in a meso-strato-troposphere model, part 1.4A

The structure of unstable planetary waves is computed by a quasi-geostrophic model extending from the surface up to 80 km by means of eigenvalue-eigenfunction techniques in spherical coordinates. Three kinds of unstable modes of distinct phase speeds and vertical structures are identified in the winter climate state: (1) the deep Green mode with its maximum amplitude in the stratosphere; (2) the deep Charney mode with its maximum amplitude in the troposphere: and (3) the shallow Charney mode which is largely confined to the troposphere. Both the Green mode and the deep Charney mode are characterized by very slow phase speeds. They are mainly supported by upward wave energy fluxes, but the local baroclinic energy conversion within the stratosphere also contributes in supporting these deep modes. The mesosphere and the troposphere are dynamically independent in the summer season decoupled by the deep stratospheric easterly. The summer mesosphere supports the easterly unstable waves 1-4. Waves 3 and 4 are identified with the observed mesospheric 2-day wave and 1.7-day wave, respectively

A novel multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on space partitioning

To design an e ective multi-objective optimization evolutionary algorithms (MOEA), we need to address the following issues: 1) the sensitivity to the shape of true Pareto front (PF) on decomposition-based MOEAs; 2) the loss of diversity due to paying so much attention to the convergence on domination-based MOEAs; 3) the curse of dimensionality for many-objective optimization problems on grid-based MOEAs. This paper proposes an MOEA based on space partitioning (MOEA-SP) to address the above issues. In MOEA-SP, subspaces, partitioned by a k-dimensional tree (kd-tree), are sorted according to a bi-indicator criterion de ned in this paper. Subspace-oriented and Max-Min selection methods are introduced to increase selection pressure and maintain diversity, respectively. Experimental studies show that MOEA-SP outperforms several compared algorithms on a set of benchmarks

Polarization and Variations of BL Lacertae Objects

BL Lacertae objects are an extreme subclass of AGNs showing rapid and large-amplitude variability, high and variable polarization, and core-dominated radio emissions. If a strong beaming effect is the cause of the extreme observation properties, one would expect that these properties would be correlated with each other. Based on the relativistic beaming model, relationships between the polarization and the magnitude variation in brightness, as well as the core- dominance parameter are derived and used statistically to compare with the observational data of a BL Lacertae object sample. The statistical results are consistent with these correlations, which suggests that the polarization, the variation, and the core-dominance parameter are possible indications of the beaming effect.Comment: 6 pages, two figures, one table, some revisions. PASJ, 53 (2001