20,375 research outputs found
Recording from two neurons: second order stimulus reconstruction from spike trains and population coding
We study the reconstruction of visual stimuli from spike trains, recording
simultaneously from the two H1 neurons located in the lobula plate of the fly
Chrysomya megacephala. The fly views two types of stimuli, corresponding to
rotational and translational displacements. If the reconstructed stimulus is to
be represented by a Volterra series and correlations between spikes are to be
taken into account, first order expansions are insufficient and we have to go
to second order, at least. In this case higher order correlation functions have
to be manipulated, whose size may become prohibitively large. We therefore
develop a Gaussian-like representation for fourth order correlation functions,
which works exceedingly well in the case of the fly. The reconstructions using
this Gaussian-like representation are very similar to the reconstructions using
the experimental correlation functions. The overall contribution to rotational
stimulus reconstruction of the second order kernels - measured by a chi-squared
averaged over the whole experiment - is only about 8% of the first order
contribution. Yet if we introduce an instant-dependent chi-square to measure
the contribution of second order kernels at special events, we observe an up to
100% improvement. As may be expected, for translational stimuli the
reconstructions are rather poor. The Gaussian-like representation could be a
valuable aid in population coding with large number of neurons
Dependence of Dust Obscuration on Star Formation Rates in Galaxies
Many investigations of star formation rates (SFRs) in galaxies have explored
details of dust obscuration, with a number of recent analyses suggesting that
obscuration appears to increase in systems with high rates of star formation.
To date these analyses have been primarily based on nearby (z < 0.03) or UV
selected samples. Using 1.4 GHz imaging and optical spectroscopic data from the
Phoenix Deep Survey, the SFR-dependent obscuration is explored. The use of a
radio selected sample shows that previous studies exploring SFR-dependent
obscurations have been biased against obscured galaxies. The observed relation
between obscuration and SFR is found to be unsuitable to be used as an
obscuration measure for individual galaxies. Nevertheless, it is shown to be
successful as a first order correction for large samples of galaxies where no
other measure of obscuration is available, out to intermediate redshifts (z ~
0.8).Comment: 9 pages (including 5 encapsulated postscript figures), aastex, uses
emulateapj5.sty. Accepted for publication in Ap
Neutral heavy lepton production at next high energy linear colliders
The discovery potential for detecting new heavy Majorana and Dirac neutrinos
at some recently proposed high energy colliders is discussed. These
new particles are suggested by grand unified theories and superstring-inspired
models. For these models the production of a single heavy neutrino is shown to
be more relevant than pair production when comparing cross sections and
neutrino mass ranges.
The process is calculated
including on-shell and off-shell heavy neutrino effects.
We present a detailed study of cross sections and distributions that shows a
clear separation between the signal and standard model contributions, even
after including hadronization effects.Comment: 4 pages including 15 figures, 1 table. RevTex. Accepted in Physical
Review
Spin-glass behaviour on random lattices
The ground-state phase diagram of an Ising spin-glass model on a random graph
with an arbitrary fraction of ferromagnetic interactions is analysed in the
presence of an external field. Using the replica method, and performing an
analysis of stability of the replica-symmetric solution, it is shown that
, correponding to an unbiased spin glass, is a singular point in the
phase diagram, separating a region with a spin-glass phase () from a
region with spin-glass, ferromagnetic, mixed, and paramagnetic phases
()
Temperature effect on (2+1) experimental Kardar-Parisi-Zhang growth
We report on the effect of substrate temperature (T) on both local structure
and long-wavelength fluctuations of polycrystalline CdTe thin films deposited
on Si(001). A strong T-dependent mound evolution is observed and explained in
terms of the energy barrier to inter-grain diffusion at grain boundaries, as
corroborated by Monte Carlo simulations. This leads to transitions from
uncorrelated growth to a crossover from random-to-correlated growth and
transient anomalous scaling as T increases. Due to these finite-time effects,
we were not able to determine the universality class of the system through the
critical exponents. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that this can be circumvented
by analyzing height, roughness and maximal height distributions, which allow us
to prove that CdTe grows asymptotically according to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang
(KPZ) equation in a broad range of T. More important, one finds positive
(negative) velocity excess in the growth at low (high) T, indicating that it is
possible to control the KPZ non-linearity by adjusting the temperature.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Magnetic phases evolution in the LaMn1-xFexO3+y system
We have investigated the crystal structure and magnetic properties for
polycrystalline samples of LaMn1-xFexO3+y, in the whole range x=0.0 to x=1.0,
prepared by solid state reaction in air. All samples show the ORT-2
orthorhombic structure that suppresses the Jahn-Teller distortion, thus
favoring a ferromagnetic (FM) superexchange (SE) interaction between
Mn^{3+}-O-Mn^{3+}. For x=0.0 the oxygen excess (y ~ 0.09) produces vacancies in
the La and Mn sites and generates a fraction around 18% of Mn^{4+} ions and 82%
of the usual Mn^{3+} ions, with possible double exchange interaction between
them. The Fe doping in this system is known to produce only stable Fe^{3+}
ions. We find an evolution from a fairly strong FM phase with a Curie
temperature T_{C} ~ 160 K, for x=0.0, to an antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase with
T_{N} = 790 K, for x=1.0, accompanied by clear signatures of a cluster-glass
behavior. For intermediate Fe contents a mixed-phase state occurs, with a
gradual decrease (increase) of the FM (AFM) phase, accompanied by a systematic
transition broadening for 0.2 < x < 0.7. A model based on the expected exchange
interaction among the various magnetic-ion types, accounts very well for the
saturation-magnetization dependence on Fe doping.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figure
Truncated states obtained by iteration
Quantum states of the electromagnetic field are of considerable importance,
finding potential application in various areas of physics, as diverse as solid
state physics, quantum communication and cosmology. In this paper we introduce
the concept of truncated states obtained via iterative processes (TSI) and
study its statistical features, making an analogy with dynamical systems theory
(DST). As a specific example, we have studied TSI for the doubling and the
logistic functions, which are standard functions in studying chaos. TSI for
both the doubling and logistic functions exhibit certain similar patterns when
their statistical features are compared from the point of view of DST. A
general method to engineer TSI in the running-wave domain is employed, which
includes the errors due to the nonidealities of detectors and photocounts.Comment: 10 pages, 22 figure
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