Sunspot group tilt angle measurements from historical observations

Sunspot positions from various historical sets of solar drawings are analysed with respect to the tilt angles of bipolar sunspot groups. Data by Scheiner, Hevelius, Staudacher, Zucconi, Schwabe, and Spoerer deliver a series of average tilt angles spanning a period of 270 years, additional to previously found values for 20th-century data obtained by other authors. We find that the average tilt angles before the Maunder minimum were not significantly different from the modern values. However, the average tilt angles of a period 50 years after the Maunder minimum, namely for cycles 0 and 1, were much lower and near zero. The normal tilt angles before the Maunder minimum suggest that it was not abnormally low tilt angles which drove the solar cycle into a grand minimum.Comment: accepted by Advances in Space Researc

Sunspot areas and tilt angles for solar cycles 7-10

Extending the knowledge about the properties of solar cycles into the past is essential for understanding the solar dynamo. This paper aims at estimating areas of sunspots observed by Schwabe in 1825-1867 and at calculating the tilt angles of sunspot groups. The sunspot sizes in Schwabe's drawings are not to scale and need to be converted into physical sunspot areas. We employed a statistical approach assuming that the area distribution of sunspots was the same in the 19th century as it was in the 20th century. Umbral areas for about 130,000 sunspots observed by Schwabe were obtained, as well as the tilt angles of sunspot groups assuming them to be bipolar. There is, of course, no polarity information in the observations. The annually averaged sunspot areas correlate reasonably with sunspot number. We derived an average tilt angle by attempting to exclude unipolar groups with a minimum separation of the two alleged polarities and an outlier rejection method which follows the evolution of each group and detects the moment it turns unipolar at its decay. As a result, the tilt angles, although displaying considerable scatter, place the leading polarity on average 5.85+-0.25 closer to the equator, in good agreement with tilt angles obtained from 20th-century data sets. Sources of uncertainties in the tilt angle determination are discussed and need to be addressed whenever different data sets are combined. The sunspot area and tilt angle data are provided online.Comment: accepted for publication in Astron. & Astrophy

Soliton spiraling in optically-induced rotating Bessel lattices

We address soliton spiraling in optical lattices induced by multiple coherent Bessel beams and show that the dynamical nature of such lattices make them able to drag different soliton structures, setting them into rotation. The rotation rate can be controlled by varying the topological charges of lattice-inducing Bessel beams.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Optics Letter

Width of Sunspot Generating Zone and Reconstruction of Butterfly Diagram

Based on the extended Greenwich-NOAA/USAF catalogue of sunspot groups it is demonstrated that the parameters describing the latitudinal width of the sunspot generating zone (SGZ) are closely related to the current level of solar activity, and the growth of the activity leads to the expansion of SGZ. The ratio of the sunspot number to the width of SGZ shows saturation at a certain level of the sunspot number, and above this level the increase of the activity takes place mostly due to the expansion of SGZ. It is shown that the mean latitudes of sunspots can be reconstructed from the amplitudes of solar activity. Using the obtained relations and the group sunspot numbers by Hoyt and Schatten (1998), the latitude distribution of sunspot groups ("the Maunder butterfly diagram") for the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries is reconstructed and compared with historical sunspot observations.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures; accepted by Solar Physics; the final publication will be available at www.springerlink.co

Space-charge mechanism of aging in ferroelectrics: an exactly solvable two-dimensional model

A mechanism of point defect migration triggered by local depolarization fields is shown to explain some still inexplicable features of aging in acceptor doped ferroelectrics. A drift-diffusion model of the coupled charged defect transport and electrostatic field relaxation within a two-dimensional domain configuration is treated numerically and analytically. Numerical results are given for the emerging internal bias field of about 1 kV/mm which levels off at dopant concentrations well below 1 mol%; the fact, long ago known experimentally but still not explained. For higher defect concentrations a closed solution of the model equations in the drift approximation as well as an explicit formula for the internal bias field is derived revealing the plausible time, temperature and concentration dependencies of aging. The results are compared to those due to the mechanism of orientational reordering of defect dipoles.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. accepted to Physical Review

Magnetic shear-driven instability and turbulent mixing in magnetized protostellar disks

Observations of protostellar disks indicate the presence of the magnetic field of thermal (or superthermal) strength. In such a strong magnetic field, many MHD instabilities responsible for turbulent transport of the angular momentum are suppressed. We consider the shear-driven instability that can occur in protostellar disks even if the field is superthermal. This instability is caused by the combined influence of shear and compressibility in a magnetized gas and can be an efficient mechanism to generate turbulence in disks. The typical growth time is of the order of several rotation periods.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, A&A to appea

Phase Fluctuations in Bose-Einstein Condensates

We demonstrate the existence of phase fluctuations in elongated Bose-Einstein Condensates (BECs) and study the dependence of those fluctuations on the system parameters. A strong dependence on temperature, atom number, and trapping geometry is observed. Phase fluctuations directly affect the coherence properties of BECs. In particular, we observe instances where the phase coherence length is significantly smaller than the condensate size. Our method of detecting phase fluctuations is based on their transformation into density modulations after ballistic expansion. An analytic theory describing this transformation is developed.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Doppler images and the underlying dynamo. The case of AF Leporis

The (Zeeman-)Doppler imaging studies of solar-type stars very often reveal large high-latitude spots. This also includes F stars that possess relatively shallow convection zones, indicating that the dynamo operating in these stars differs from the solar dynamo. We aim to determine whether mean-field dynamo models of late-F type dwarf stars can reproduce the surface features recovered in Doppler maps. In particular, we wish to test whether the models can reproduce the high-latitude spots observed on some F dwarfs. The photometric inversions and the surface temperature maps of AF Lep were obtained using the Occamian-approach inversion technique. Low signal-to-noise spectroscopic data were improved by applying the least-squares deconvolution method. The locations of strong magnetic flux in the stellar tachocline as well as the surface fields obtained from mean-field dynamo solutions were compared with the observed surface temperature maps. The photometric record of AF Lep reveals both long- and short-term variability. However, the current data set is too short for cycle-length estimates. From the photometry, we have determined the rotation period of the star to be 0.9660+-0.0023 days. The surface temperature maps show a dominant, but evolving, high-latitude (around +65 degrees) spot. Detailed study of the photometry reveals that sometimes the spot coverage varies only marginally over a long time, and at other times it varies rapidly. Of a suite of dynamo models, the model with a radiative interior rotating as fast as the convection zone at the equator delivered the highest compatibility with the obtained Doppler images.Comment: accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Atomic micromotion and geometric forces in a triaxial magnetic trap

Non-adiabatic motion of Bose-Einstein condensates of rubidium atoms arising from the dynamical nature of a time-orbiting-potential (TOP) trap was observed experimentally. The orbital micromotion of the condensate in velocity space at the frequency of the rotating bias field of the TOP was detected by a time-of-flight method. A dependence of the equilibrium position of the atoms on the sense of rotation of the bias field was observed. We have compared our experimental findings with numerical simulations. The nonadiabatic following of the atomic spin in the trap rotating magnetic field produces geometric forces acting on the trapped atoms.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Rhodium catalyzed hydrogenation reactions in aqueous micellar systems as green solvents

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The hydrogenation of itaconic acid and dimethyl itaconate is transferred from methanol to aqueous micellar solutions of several surfactants, e.g., SDS and Triton X-100, in order to facilitate the recovery of the catalyst. The reaction rate and selectivity strongly depends on the chosen surfactant and in some cases also on the surfactant concentration. In the best case the selectivity is the same as in methanol but the reaction rate is still lower because of a lower hydrogen solubility in water. Repetitive semi-batch experiments are chosen to demonstrate that high turn-over-numbers (>1000) can be reached in aqueous micellar solutions. No notable catalyst deactivation is observed in these experiments. The performance of micellar reaction systems is controlled by the partition coefficient of the substrates between the micelles and the continuous aqueous phase which can be predicted using the Conductor-like Screening Model for Real Solvents (COSMO-RS).DFG, EXC 314, Unifying Concepts in Catalysi