Crafting a critical technical practice

In recent years, the category of practice-based research has become an essential component of discourse around public funding and evaluation of the arts in British higher education. When included under the umbrella of public policy concerned with the creative industries", technology researchers often find themselves collaborating with artists who consider their own participation to be a form of practice-based research. We are conducting a study under the Creator Digital Economies project asking whether technologists, themselves, should be considered as engaging in practice-based research, whether this occurs in collaborative situations, or even as a component of their own personal research [1]

AUXie: Initial evaluation of a blind-accessible virtual museum tour

Remotely accessible audio-based virtual tours can offer great utility for blind or vision impaired persons, eliminating the difficulties posed by travel to unfamiliar locations, and allowing truly independent exploration. This paper draws upon sonification techniques used in previous implementations of audio-based 3D environments to develop a prototype of blind-accessible virtual tours specifically tailored to the needs of cultural sites. A navigable 3D world is presented using spatially positioned musical earcons, accompanied by synthesised speech descriptions and navigation aids. The worlds are read from X3D models enhanced with metadata to identify and describe the rooms and exhibits, thus enabling an audio modality for existing 3D worlds and simplifying the tour creation process. The prototype, named AUXie, was evaluated by 11 volunteers with total blindness to establish a proof of concept and identify the problematic aspects of the interface. The positive response obtained confirmed the validity of the approach and yielded valuable insight into how such tours can be further improved. Copyright the author(s) and CHISIG

X-ray Studies of Two Neutron Stars in 47 Tucanae: Toward Constraints on the Equation of State

We report spectral and variability analysis of two quiescent low mass X-ray binaries (X5 and X7, previously detected with the ROSAT HRI) in a Chandra ACIS-I observation of the globular cluster 47 Tuc. X5 demonstrates sharp eclipses with an 8.666+-0.01 hr period, as well as dips showing an increased N_H column. The thermal spectra of X5 and X7 are well-modeled by unmagnetized hydrogen atmospheres of hot neutron stars. No hard power law component is required. A possible edge or absorption feature is identified near 0.64 keV, perhaps an OV edge from a hot wind. Spectral fits imply that X7 is significantly more massive than the canonical 1.4 \Msun neutron star mass, with M>1.8 \Msun for a radius range of 9-14 km, while X5's spectrum is consistent with a neutron star of mass 1.4 \Msun for the same radius range. Alternatively, if much of the X-ray luminosity is due to continuing accretion onto the neutron star surface, the feature may be the 0.87 keV rest-frame absorption complex (O VIII & other metal lines) intrinsic to the neutron star atmosphere, and a mass of 1.4 \Msun for X7 may be allowed.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, accepted by Ap

Rotational States of Magnetic Molecules

We study a magnetic molecule that exhibits spin tunneling and is free to rotate about its anisotropy axis. Exact low-energy eigenstates of the molecule that are superpositions of spin and rotational states are obtained. We show that parameter $\alpha = 2(\hbar S)^2/(I\Delta)$ determines the ground state of the molecule. Here $\hbar S$ is the spin, $I$ is the moment of inertia, and $\Delta$ is the tunnel splitting. The magnetic moment of the molecule is zero at $\alpha \alpha_c$. At $\alpha \to \infty$ the spin of the molecule localizes in one of the directions along the anisotropy axis.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

SU(3) Clebsch-Gordan Coefficients for Baryon-Meson Coupling at Arbitrary N_c

We present explicit formulae for the SU(3) Clebsch-Gordan coefficients that are relevant for the couplings of large N_c baryons to mesons. In particular, we compute the Clebsch-Gordan series for the coupling of the octet (associated with mesons, and remains the correct representation at large N_c) to the large N_c analogs of the baryon octet and decuplet representations.Comment: 8 pages, no figures, ReVTe

Designing and evaluating virtual musical instruments: facilitating conversational user interaction

This paper is concerned with the design of interactive virtual musical instruments. An interaction design strategy which uses on-screen objects that respond to user actions in physically realistic ways is described. This approach allows musicians to 'play' the virtual instruments using the sound of their familiar acoustic instruments. An investigation of user experience identified three modes of interaction that characterise the musicians' approach to the virtual instruments: instrumental, ornamental and conversational. When using the virtual instruments in instrumental mode, musicians prioritise detailed control; in ornamental mode, they surrender detailed control to the software and allow it to transform their sound; in conversational mode, the musicians allow the virtual instrument to 'talk back', helping to shape the musical direction of performance much as a human playing partner might. Finding a balance between controllability and complexity emerged as a key issue in facilitating 'conversational' interaction. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Lamb Shift in Muonic Hydrogen

The Lamb shift in muonic hydrogen continues to be a subject of experimental and theoretical investigation. Here my older work on the subject is updated to provide a complementary calculation of the energies of the 2p-2s transitions in muonic hydrogen.Comment: 15 pages, no figures. 2 small misprints corrected. Published in Phys. Rev.

Noncommuting spherical coordinates

Restricting the states of a charged particle to the lowest Landau level introduces a noncommutativity between Cartesian coordinate operators. This idea is extended to the motion of a charged particle on a sphere in the presence of a magnetic monopole. Restricting the dynamics to the lowest energy level results in noncommutativity for angular variables and to a definition of a noncommuting spherical product. The values of the commutators of various angular variables are not arbitrary but are restricted by the discrete magnitude of the magnetic monopole charge. An algebra, isomorphic to angular momentum, appears. This algebra is used to define a spherical star product. Solutions are obtained for dynamics in the presence of additional angular dependent potentials.Comment: 5 pages, RevTex4 fil

Optimal full estimation of qubit mixed states

We obtain the optimal scheme for estimating unknown qubit mixed states when an arbitrary number N of identically prepared copies is available. We discuss the case of states in the whole Bloch sphere as well as the restricted situation where these states are known to lie on the equatorial plane. For the former case we obtain that the optimal measurement does not depend on the prior probability distribution provided it is isotropic. Although the equatorial-plane case does not have this property for arbitrary N, we give a prior-independent scheme which becomes optimal in the asymptotic limit of large N. We compute the maximum mean fidelity in this asymptotic regime for the two cases. We show that within the pointwise estimation approach these limits can be obtained in a rather easy and rapid way. This derivation is based on heuristic arguments that are made rigorous by using van Trees inequalities. The interrelation between the estimation of the purity and the direction of the state is also discussed. In the general case we show that they correspond to independent estimations whereas for the equatorial-plane states this is only true asymptotically.Comment: 19 pages, no figure

Cluster sum rules for three-body systems with angular-momentum dependent interactions

We derive general expressions for non-energy weighted and energy-weighted cluster sum rules for systems of three charged particles. The interferences between pairs of particles are found to play a substantial role. The energy-weighted sum rule is usually determined by the kinetic energy operator, but we demonstrate that it has similar additional contributions from the angular momentum and parity dependence of two- and three-body potentials frequently used in three-body calculations. The importance of the different contributions is illustrated with the dipole excitations in $^6$He. The results are compared with the available experimental data.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 2 table