19 research outputs found
Old and new parton distribution and fragmentation functions
A short review of problems with parton distribution functions in nucleons,
non-polarized and polarized, is given. The main part is devoted to the
transversity distribution its possible measurement and its first experimental
probe via spin asymmetry in semi-inclusive DIS. It is argued that the proton
transversity distribution could be successfully measured in future DIS
experiments with {\it longitudinally} polarized target.Comment: 9 pages, latex, czjphys2.sty, 4 eps figures. Submitted at 35-th
Rancontre de Moriond, March 2000 and at Praha-SPIN-2000, July 2000. To be
published in Czechoslovak J. Phys. (Suppl) 51 (2001
Atmospheric Heating and Wind Acceleration: Results for Cool Evolved Stars based on Proposed Processes
A chromosphere is a universal attribute of stars of spectral type later than
~F5. Evolved (K and M) giants and supergiants (including the zeta Aurigae
binaries) show extended and highly turbulent chromospheres, which develop into
slow massive winds. The associated continuous mass loss has a significant
impact on stellar evolution, and thence on the chemical evolution of galaxies.
Yet despite the fundamental importance of those winds in astrophysics, the
question of their origin(s) remains unsolved. What sources heat a chromosphere?
What is the role of the chromosphere in the formation of stellar winds? This
chapter provides a review of the observational requirements and theoretical
approaches for modeling chromospheric heating and the acceleration of winds in
single cool, evolved stars and in eclipsing binary stars, including physical
models that have recently been proposed. It describes the successes that have
been achieved so far by invoking acoustic and MHD waves to provide a physical
description of plasma heating and wind acceleration, and discusses the
challenges that still remain.Comment: 46 pages, 9 figures, 1 table; modified and unedited manuscript;
accepted version to appear in: Giants of Eclipse, eds. E. Griffin and T. Ake
(Berlin: Springer
A self-consistent determination of the temperature profile and the magnetic field geometry in winds of late-type stars
Cool giant and supergiant stars generally present low velocity winds with
high mass loss rates. Several models have been proposed to explain the
acceleration process of these winds. Although dust is known to be present in
these objects, the radiation pressure on these particles is uneffective in
reproducing the observed physical parameters of the wind. The most promising
acceleration mechanism cited in the literature is the transference of momentum
and energy from Alfven waves to the gas. Usually, these models consider the
wind to be isothermal. We present a stellar wind model in which the Alfven
waves are used as the main acceleration mechanism, and determine the
temperature profile by solving the energy equation taking into account both the
radiative losses and the wave heating. We also determine self-consistently the
magnetic field geometry as the result of the competition between the magnetic
field and the thermal pressures gradient. As main result, we show that the
magnetic geometry present a super-radial index in the region where the gas
pressure is increasing. However, this super-radial index is greater than that
observed for the solar corona.Comment: Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews. Presented at the
World Space Environment Forum 2005, Austria. 8 pages, 2 figure
A Helicity-Based Method to Infer the CME Magnetic Field Magnitude in Sun and Geospace: Generalization and Extension to Sun-Like and M-Dwarf Stars and Implications for Exoplanet Habitability
Patsourakos et al. (Astrophys. J. 817, 14, 2016) and Patsourakos and
Georgoulis (Astron. Astrophys. 595, A121, 2016) introduced a method to infer
the axial magnetic field in flux-rope coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in the
solar corona and farther away in the interplanetary medium. The method, based
on the conservation principle of magnetic helicity, uses the relative magnetic
helicity of the solar source region as input estimates, along with the radius
and length of the corresponding CME flux rope. The method was initially applied
to cylindrical force-free flux ropes, with encouraging results. We hereby
extend our framework along two distinct lines. First, we generalize our
formalism to several possible flux-rope configurations (linear and nonlinear
force-free, non-force-free, spheromak, and torus) to investigate the dependence
of the resulting CME axial magnetic field on input parameters and the employed
flux-rope configuration. Second, we generalize our framework to both Sun-like
and active M-dwarf stars hosting superflares. In a qualitative sense, we find
that Earth may not experience severe atmosphere-eroding magnetospheric
compression even for eruptive solar superflares with energies ~ 10^4 times
higher than those of the largest Geostationary Operational Environmental
Satellite (GOES) X-class flares currently observed. In addition, the two
recently discovered exoplanets with the highest Earth-similarity index, Kepler
438b and Proxima b, seem to lie in the prohibitive zone of atmospheric erosion
due to interplanetary CMEs (ICMEs), except when they possess planetary magnetic
fields that are much higher than that of Earth.Comment: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017SoPh..292...89
Experimental and Theoretical Challenges in the Search for the Quark Gluon Plasma: The STAR Collaboration's Critical Assessment of the Evidence from RHIC Collisions
We review the most important experimental results from the first three years
of nucleus-nucleus collision studies at RHIC, with emphasis on results from the
STAR experiment, and we assess their interpretation and comparison to theory.
The theory-experiment comparison suggests that central Au+Au collisions at RHIC
produce dense, rapidly thermalizing matter characterized by: (1) initial energy
densities above the critical values predicted by lattice QCD for establishment
of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP); (2) nearly ideal fluid flow, marked by
constituent interactions of very short mean free path, established most
probably at a stage preceding hadron formation; and (3) opacity to jets. Many
of the observations are consistent with models incorporating QGP formation in
the early collision stages, and have not found ready explanation in a hadronic
framework. However, the measurements themselves do not yet establish
unequivocal evidence for a transition to this new form of matter. The
theoretical treatment of the collision evolution, despite impressive successes,
invokes a suite of distinct models, degrees of freedom and assumptions of as
yet unknown quantitative consequence. We pose a set of important open
questions, and suggest additional measurements, at least some of which should
be addressed in order to establish a compelling basis to conclude definitively
that thermalized, deconfined quark-gluon matter has been produced at RHIC.Comment: 101 pages, 37 figures; revised version to Nucl. Phys.
Exclusive meson electroproduction from hydrogen at CLAS
The longitudinal and transverse components of the cross section for the reaction were measured in Hall B at Jefferson
Laboratory using the CLAS detector. The data were taken with a 4.247 GeV
electron beam and were analyzed in a range of from 0.2 to 0.6 and of
from 1.5 to 3.0 GeV. The data are compared to a Regge model based on
effective hadronic degrees of freedom and to a calculation based on Generalized
Parton Distributions. It is found that the transverse part of the cross section
is well described by the former approach while the longitudinal part can be
reproduced by the latter.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Measurement of the - and -Dependence of the Asymmetry on the Nucleon
We report results for the virtual photon asymmetry on the nucleon from
new Jefferson Lab measurements. The experiment, which used the CEBAF Large
Acceptance Spectrometer and longitudinally polarized proton (NH) and
deuteron (ND) targets, collected data with a longitudinally
polarized electron beam at energies between 1.6 GeV and 5.7 GeV. In the present
paper, we concentrate on our results for and the related ratio
in the resonance and the deep inelastic regions for our lowest
and highest beam energies, covering a range in momentum transfer from
0.05 to 5.0 GeV and in final-state invariant mass up to about 3 GeV.
Our data show detailed structure in the resonance region, which leads to a
strong --dependence of for below 2 GeV. At higher , a
smooth approach to the scaling limit, established by earlier experiments, can
be seen, but is not strictly --independent. We add
significantly to the world data set at high , up to . Our data
exceed the SU(6)-symmetric quark model expectation for both the proton and the
deuteron while being consistent with a negative -quark polarization up to
our highest . This data setshould improve next-to-leading order (NLO) pQCD
fits of the parton polarization distributions.Comment: 7 pages LaTeX, 5 figure
Large interferometer for exoplanets (LIFE). I. Improved exoplanet detection yield estimates for a large mid-infrared space-interferometer mission
Stars and planetary system