1,317 research outputs found
Does the United States Supreme Court Have a Constitutional Duty to Expressly Reconsider and Overrule Roe v. Wade?
Endotoxin-induced pulmonary hyporesponsiveness to inhaled nitric oxide is improved by nitric oxide synthase 2 inhibition
Wigner phase space distribution as a wave function
We demonstrate that the Wigner function of a pure quantum state is a wave
function in a specially tuned Dirac bra-ket formalism and argue that the Wigner
function is in fact a probability amplitude for the quantum particle to be at a
certain point of the classical phase space. Additionally, we establish that in
the classical limit, the Wigner function transforms into a classical
Koopman-von Neumann wave function rather than into a classical probability
distribution. Since probability amplitude need not be positive, our findings
provide an alternative outlook on the Wigner function's negativity.Comment: 6 pages and 2 figure
Exact Evolution Operator on Non-compact Group Manifolds
Free quantal motion on group manifolds is considered. The Hamiltonian is
given by the Laplace -- Beltrami operator on the group manifold, and the
purpose is to get the (Feynman's) evolution kernel. The spectral expansion,
which produced a series of the representation characters for the evolution
kernel in the compact case, does not exist for non-compact group, where the
spectrum is not bounded. In this work real analytical groups are investigated,
some of which are of interest for physics. An integral representation for the
evolution operator is obtained in terms of the Green function, i.e. the
solution to the Helmholz equation on the group manifold. The alternative series
expressions for the evolution operator are reconstructed from the same integral
representation, the spectral expansion (when exists) and the sum over classical
paths. For non-compact groups, the latter can be interpreted as the (exact)
semi-classical approximation, like in the compact case. The explicit form of
the evolution operator is obtained for a number of non-compact groups.Comment: 32 pages, 5 postscript figures, LaTe
Self-energy of a scalar charge near higher-dimensional black holes
We study the problem of self-energy of charges in higher dimensional static
spacetimes. Application of regularization methods of quantum field theory to
calculation of the classical self-energy of charges leads to model-independent
results. The correction to the self-energy of a scalar charge due to the
gravitational field of black holes of the higher dimensional
Majumdar-Papapetrou spacetime is calculated exactly. It proves to be zero in
even dimensions, but it acquires non-zero value in odd dimensional spacetimes.
The origin of the self-energy correction in odd dimensions is similar to the
origin the conformal anomalies in quantum field theory in even dimensional
spacetimes.Comment: 9 page
Non-positivity of Groenewold operators
A central feature in the Hilbert space formulation of classical mechanics is
the quantisation of classical Liouville densities, leading to what may be
termed term Groenewold operators. We investigate the spectra of the Groenewold
operators that correspond to Gaussian and to certain uniform Liouville
densities. We show that when the classical coordinate-momentum uncertainty
product falls below Heisenberg's limit, the Groenewold operators in the
Gaussian case develop negative eigenvalues and eigenvalues larger than 1.
However, in the uniform case, negative eigenvalues are shown to persist for
arbitrarily large values of the classical uncertainty product.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figures, submitted to Europhysics Letter
Impact of oceanic processes on the carbon cycle during the last termination
During the last termination (from ~18 000 years ago to ~9000 years ago), the climate significantly warmed and the ice sheets melted. Simultaneously, atmospheric CO2 increased from ~190 ppm to ~260 ppm. Although this CO2 rise plays an important role in the deglacial warming, the reasons for its evolution are difficult to explain. Only box models have been used to run transient simulations of this carbon cycle transition, but by forcing the model with data constrained scenarios of the evolution of temperature, sea level, sea ice, NADW formation, Southern Ocean vertical mixing and biological carbon pump. More complex models (including GCMs) have investigated some of these mechanisms but they have only been used to try and explain LGM versus present day steady-state climates.
In this study we use a coupled climate-carbon model of intermediate complexity to explore the role of three oceanic processes in transient simulations: the sinking of brines, stratification-dependent diffusion and iron fertilization. Carbonate compensation is accounted for in these simulations. We show that neither iron fertilization nor the sinking of brines alone can account for the evolution of CO2, and that only the combination of the sinking of brines and interactive diffusion can simultaneously simulate the increase in deep Southern Ocean δ13C. The scenario that agrees best with the data takes into account all mechanisms and favours a rapid cessation of the sinking of brines around 18 000 years ago, when the Antarctic ice sheet extent was at its maximum. In this scenario, we make the hypothesis that sea ice formation was then shifted to the open ocean where the salty water is quickly mixed with fresher water, which prevents deep sinking of salty water and therefore breaks down the deep stratification and releases carbon from the abyss. Based on this scenario, it is possible to simulate both the amplitude and timing of the long-term CO2 increase during the last termination in agreement with ice core data. The atmospheric δ13C appears to be highly sensitive to changes in the terrestrial biosphere, underlining the need to better constrain the vegetation evolution during the termination
Higher-Derivative Boson Field Theories and Constrained Second-Order Theories
As an alternative to the covariant Ostrogradski method, we show that
higher-derivative relativistic Lagrangian field theories can be reduced to
second differential-order by writing them directly as covariant two-derivative
theories involving Lagrange multipliers and new fields. Despite the intrinsic
non-covariance of the Dirac's procedure used to deal with the constraints, the
explicit Lorentz invariance is recovered at the end. We develop this new
setting on the grounds of a simple scalar model and then its applications to
generalized electrodynamics and higher-derivative gravity are worked out. For a
wide class of field theories this method is better suited than Ostrogradski's
for a generalization to 2n-derivative theoriesComment: 31 pages, Plain Te
Hard diffraction in hadron--hadron interactions and in photoproduction
Hard single diffractive processes are studied within the framework of the
triple--Pomeron approximation. Using a Pomeron structure function motivated by
Regge--theory we obtain parton distribution functions which do not obey
momentum sum rule. Based on Regge-- factorization cross sections for hard
diffraction are calculated. Furthermore, the model is applied to hard
diffractive particle production in photoproduction and in
interactions.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, 13 uuencoded figure
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