Discovering the New Standard Model: Fundamental Symmetries and Neutrinos

This White Paper describes recent progress and future opportunities in the area of fundamental symmetries and neutrinos.Comment: Report of the Fundamental Symmetries and Neutrinos Workshop, August 10-11, 2012, Chicago, I

Galaxy alignments: An overview

The alignments between galaxies, their underlying matter structures, and the cosmic web constitute vital ingredients for a comprehensive understanding of gravity, the nature of matter, and structure formation in the Universe. We provide an overview on the state of the art in the study of these alignment processes and their observational signatures, aimed at a non-specialist audience. The development of the field over the past one hundred years is briefly reviewed. We also discuss the impact of galaxy alignments on measurements of weak gravitational lensing, and discuss avenues for making theoretical and observational progress over the coming decade.Comment: 43 pages excl. references, 16 figures; minor changes to match version published in Space Science Reviews; part of a topical volume on galaxy alignments, with companion papers at arXiv:1504.05546 and arXiv:1504.0546

Analysing Mutual Exclusion using Process Algebra with Signals

In contrast to common belief, the Calculus of Communicating Systems (CCS) and similar process algebras lack the expressive power to accurately capture mutual exclusion protocols without enriching the language with fairness assumptions. Adding a fairness assumption to implement a mutual exclusion protocol seems counter-intuitive. We employ a signalling operator, which can be combined with CCS, or other process calculi, and show that this minimal extension is expressive enough to model mutual exclusion: we confirm the correctness of Peterson's mutual exclusion algorithm for two processes, as well as Lamport's bakery algorithm, under reasonable assumptions on the underlying memory model. The correctness of Peterson's algorithm for more than two processes requires stronger, less realistic assumptions on the underlying memory model.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2017, arXiv:1709.0004

Galaxy alignments: Observations and impact on cosmology

Galaxy shapes are not randomly oriented, rather they are statistically aligned in a way that can depend on formation environment, history and galaxy type. Studying the alignment of galaxies can therefore deliver important information about the physics of galaxy formation and evolution as well as the growth of structure in the Universe. In this review paper we summarise key measurements of galaxy alignments, divided by galaxy type, scale and environment. We also cover the statistics and formalism necessary to understand the observations in the literature. With the emergence of weak gravitational lensing as a precision probe of cosmology, galaxy alignments have taken on an added importance because they can mimic cosmic shear, the effect of gravitational lensing by large-scale structure on observed galaxy shapes. This makes galaxy alignments, commonly referred to as intrinsic alignments, an important systematic effect in weak lensing studies. We quantify the impact of intrinsic alignments on cosmic shear surveys and finish by reviewing practical mitigation techniques which attempt to remove contamination by intrinsic alignments.Comment: 52 pages excl. references, 16 figures; minor changes to match version published in Space Science Reviews; part of a topical volume on galaxy alignments, with companion papers arXiv:1504.05456 and arXiv:1504.0554