Measurement potential of laser speckle velocimetry

Laser speckle velocimetry, the measurement of fluid velocity by measuring the translation of speckle pattern or individual particles that are moving with the fluid, is described. The measurement is accomplished by illuminating the fluid with consecutive pulses of Laser Light and recording the images of the particles or the speckles on a double exposed photographic plate. The plate contains flow information throughout the image plane so that a single double exposure may provide data at hundreds or thousands of points in the illuminated region of the fluid. Conventional interrogation of the specklegram involves illuminating the plate to form Young's fringes, whose spacing is inversely proportional to the speckle separation. Subsequently the fringes are digitized and analyzed in a computer to determine their frequency and orientation, yielding the velocity magnitude and orientation. The Young's fringe technique is equivalent to performing a 2-D spatial correlation of the double exposed specklegram intensity pattern, and this observation suggests that correlation should be considered as an alternative processing method. The principle of the correlation technique is examined

Scalar potentials, propagators and global symmetries in AdS/CFT

We study the transition of a scalar field in a fixed $AdS_{d+1}$ background between an extremum and a minimum of a potential. We first prove that two conditions must be met for the solution to exist. First, the potential involved cannot be generic, i.e. a fine-tuning of their parameters is mandatory. Second, at least in some region its second derivative must have a negative upper limit which depends only on the dimensionality $d$. We then calculate the boundary propagator for small momenta in two different ways: first in a WKB approximation, and second with the usual matching method, generalizing the known calculation to arbitrary order. Finally, we study a system with spontaneously broken non-Abelian global symmetry, and show in the holographic language why the Goldstone modes appear.Comment: 26 pages - Invited contribution for the Central European Journal of Physics, topical issue devoted to "Cosmology and Particle Physics beyond Standard Models". Some parts overlap with 1304.3051v1, which has been replaced by the published versio

On the matching method and the Goldstone theorem in holography

We study the transition of a scalar field in a fixed $AdS_{d+1}$ background between an extremum and a minimum of a potential. We compute analytically the solution to the perturbation equation for the vev deformation case by generalizing the usual matching method to higher orders and find the propagator of the boundary theory operator defined through the AdS-CFT correspondence. We show that, contrary to what happens at the leading order of the matching method, the next-to-leading order presents a simple pole at $q^2=0$ in accordance with the Goldstone theorem applied to a spontaneously broken dilatation invariance.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, published versio

Constraining cosmology and ionization history with combined 21 cm power spectrum and global signal measurements

Improvements in current instruments and the advent of next-generation instruments will soon push observational 21 cm cosmology into a new era, with high significance measurements of both the power spectrum and the mean ("global") signal of the 21 cm brightness temperature. In this paper we use the recently commenced Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array as a worked example to provide forecasts on astrophysical and cosmological parameter constraints. In doing so we improve upon previous forecasts in a number of ways. First, we provide updated forecasts using the latest best-fit cosmological parameters from the Planck satellite, exploring the impact of different Planck datasets on 21 cm experiments. We also show that despite the exquisite constraints that other probes have placed on cosmological parameters, the remaining uncertainties are still large enough to have a non-negligible impact on upcoming 21 cm data analyses. While this complicates high-precision constraints on reionization models, it provides an avenue for 21 cm reionization measurements to constrain cosmology. We additionally forecast HERA's ability to measure the ionization history using a combination of power spectrum measurements and semi-analytic simulations. Finally, we consider ways in which 21 cm global signal and power spectrum measurements can be combined, and propose a method by which power spectrum results can be used to train a compact parameterization of the global signal. This parameterization reduces the number of parameters needed to describe the global signal, increasing the likelihood of a high significance measurement.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures. Revised to match accepted MNRAS version: expanded discussion of covariances between astrophysics and cosmology in Section 2.2, including two new figures; short discussion relating to KL modes added to Section 4; final results unchange