Banking and sovereign risk in the euro area

We study the determinants of sovereign bond spreads in the euro area since the introduction of the euro. We show that an aggregate risk factor is a main driver of spreads. This factor also plays an important indirect role for risk spreads through its interaction with the size and structure of national banking sectors. When aggregate risk increases, countries with large banking sectors and low equity ratios in the banking sector experience greater widening in yield spreads, suggesting that financial markets perceive a larger risk that governments will have to rescue banks, increasing public debt and therefore sovereign risk. Moreover, government debt levels and forecasts of future fiscal deficits are also significant determinants of sovereign spreads. --Sovereign bond markets,banking,liquidity,EMU

Radiation from Violently Accelerated Bodies

A determination is made of the radiation emitted by a linearly uniformly accelerated uncharged dipole transmitter. It is found that, first of all, the radiation rate is given by the familiar Larmor formula, but it is augmented by an amount which becomes dominant for sufficiently high acceleration. For an accelerated dipole oscillator, the criterion is that the center of mass motion become relativistic within one oscillation period. The augmented formula and the measurements which it summarizes presuppose an expanding inertial observation frame. A static inertial reference frame will not do. Secondly, it is found that the radiation measured in the expanding inertial frame is received with 100% fidelity. There is no blueshift or redshift due to the accelerative motion of the transmitter. Finally, it is found that a pair of coherently radiating oscillators accelerating (into opposite directions) in their respective causally disjoint Rindler-coordinatized sectors produces an interference pattern in the expanding inertial frame. Like the pattern of a Young double slit interferometer, this Rindler interferometer pattern has a fringe spacing which is inversely proportional to the proper separation and the proper frequency of the accelerated sources. The interferometer, as well as the augmented Larmor formula, provide a unifying perspective. It joins adjacent Rindler-coordinatized neighborhoods into a single spacetime arena for scattering and radiation from accelerated bodies.Comment: 29 pages, 1 figure, Revte

Paired accelerated arames: The perfect interferometer with everywhere smooth wave amplitudes

Rindler's acceleration-induced partitioning of spacetime leads to a nature-given interferometer. It accomodates quantum mechanical and wave mechanical processes in spacetime which in (Euclidean) optics correspond to wave processes in a ``Mach-Zehnder'' interferometer: amplitude splitting, reflection, and interference. These processes are described in terms of amplitudes which behave smoothly across the event horizons of all four Rindler sectors. In this context there arises quite naturally a complete set of orthonormal wave packet histories, one of whose key properties is their "explosivity index". In the limit of low index values the wave packets trace out fuzzy world lines. By contrast, in the asymptotic limit of high index values, there are no world lines, not even fuzzy ones. Instead, the wave packet histories are those of entities with non-trivial internal collapse and explosion dynamics. Their details are described by the wave processes in the above-mentioned Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Each one of them is a double slit interference process. These wave processes are applied to elucidate the amplification of waves in an accelerated inhomogeneous dielectric. Also discussed are the properties and relationships among the transition amplitudes of an accelerated finite-time detector.Comment: 38 pages, RevTex, 10 figures, 4 mathematical tutorials. Html version of the figures and of related papers available at http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~gerlac

Comparative study of the growth of sputtered aluminum oxide films on organic and inorganic substrates

We present a comparative study of the growth of the technologically highly relevant gate dielectric and encapsulation material aluminum oxide in inorganic and also organic heterostructures. Atomic force microscopy studies indicate strong similarities in the surface morphology of aluminum oxide films grown on these chemically different substrates. In addition, from X-ray reflectivity measurements we extract the roughness exponent \beta of aluminum oxide growth on both substrates. By renormalising the aluminum oxide roughness by the roughness of the underlying organic film we find good agreement with \beta as obtained from the aluminum oxide on silicon oxide (\beta = 0.38 \pm 0.02), suggesting a remarkable similarity of the aluminum oxide growth on the two substrates under the conditions employed

Coulomb field of an accelerated charge: physical and mathematical aspects

The Maxwell field equations relative to a uniformly accelerated frame, and the variational principle from which they are obtained, are formulated in terms of the technique of geometrical gauge invariant potentials. They refer to the transverse magnetic (TM) and the transeverse electric (TE) modes. This gauge invariant "2+2" decomposition is used to see how the Coulomb field of a charge, static in an accelerated frame, has properties that suggest features of electromagnetism which are different from those in an inertial frame. In particular, (1) an illustrative calculation shows that the Larmor radiation reaction equals the electrostatic attraction between the accelerated charge and the charge induced on the surface whose history is the event horizon, and (2) a spectral decomposition of the Coulomb potential in the accelerated frame suggests the possibility that the distortive effects of this charge on the Rindler vacuum are akin to those of a charge on a crystal lattice.Comment: 27 pages, PlainTex. Related papers available at http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~gerlac

Danube Region data projects

The Danube Reference Data and Services Infrastructure (DRDSI) project currently provides access to more than 6,500 datasets, relevant for one or more Priority Areas of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR). These datasets can act as a solid foundation for integration of scientific knowledge into the policy making process on different levels (local, regional and international). From the perspective of macro-regional strategies, this would only be possible if data can be used across borders and domains, and put in the right context. Projects at regional, national, cross-border and macro-regional levels present a useful container to uncover stakeholders, expertise and data creation/sharing capacity for policy-making and research. This JRC technical report investigates the existing project databases and similar resources related to the EUSDR that describe such projects, as well as how this information may be presented in the DRDSI platform.JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Dat