The Rat and the Ship's Captain: A Dialogue-poem (muḥāwara) from the Gulf, with some comments on the social and literary-historical background of the genre

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Digital second-order phase-locked loop

A digital second-order phase-locked loop is disclosed in which a counter driven by a stable clock pulse source is used to generate a reference waveform of the same frequency as an incoming waveform, and to sample the incoming waveform at zero-crossover points. The samples are converted to digital form and accumulated over M cycles, reversing the sign of every second sample. After every M cycles, the accumulated value of samples is hard limited to a value SGN = + or - 1 and multiplied by a value delta sub 1 equal to a number of n sub 1 of fractions of a cycle. An error signal is used to advance or retard the counter according to the sign of the sum by an amount equal to the sum

White holes and eternal black holes

We investigate isolated white holes surrounded by vacuum, which correspond to the time reversal of eternal black holes that do not evaporate. We show that isolated white holes produce quasi- thermal Hawking radiation. The time reversal of this radiation, incident on a black hole precursor, constitutes a special preparation that will cause the black hole to become eternal.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, revtex; revised version to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit

The Role of Primordial Kicks on Black Hole Merger Rates

Primordial stars are likely to be very massive \geq30\Msun, form in isolation, and will likely leave black holes as remnants in the centers of their host dark matter halos in the mass range 10^{6}-10^{10}\Ms. Such early black holes, at redshifts z\gtsim10, could be the seed black holes for the many supermassive black holes found in galaxies in the local universe. If they exist, their mergers with nearby supermassive black holes may be a prime signal for long wavelength gravitational wave detectors. We simulate formation of black holes in the center of high redshift dark matter halos and explore implications of initial natal kick velocities conjectured by some formation models. The central concentration of early black holes in present day galaxies is reduced if they are born even with moderate kicks of tens of km/s. The modest kicks allow the black holes to leave their parent halo, which consequently leads to dynamical friction being less effective on the lower mass black holes as compared to those still embedded in their parent halos. Therefore, merger rates may be reduced by more than an order of magnitude. Using analytical and illustrative cosmological N--body simulations we quantify the role of natal kicks of black holes formed from massive metal free stars on their merger rates with supermassive black holes in present day galaxies. Our results also apply to black holes ejected by the gravitational slingshot mechanism.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Optimizing the Density of Holes of EWT Solar Cells Taking Into Consideration Mechanical Aspects

EWT solar cells start from drilled wafers with approximately 100 holes/cm2. These holes act as stress concentrators leading to a reduction in the mechanical strength of this type of wafers. The viability of cells with higher density of holes has been studied. To this end, sets of wafers with different density of holes have been characterized. The ring on ring test has been employed and FE models have been developed to simulate the test. The statistical evaluation permits to draw conclusions about the reduction of the strength depending on the density of holes. Moreover, the stress concentration around the holes has been studied by means of the FE method employing the sub-modeling technique. The maximum principal stress of EWT wafers with twice the density of holes of commercial ones is almost the same. However, the mutual interaction between the stress concentration effects around neighboring holes is only observed for wafers with a density of 200 holes/cm