310 research outputs found
A Local Hubble Bubble from SNe Ia?
We analyze the monopole in the peculiar velocities of 44 Type Ia supernovae
(SNe Ia) to test for a local void. The sample extends from 20 to 300 Mpc/h,
with distances, deduced from light-curve shapes, accurate to ~6%. Assuming
Omega_m=1 and Omega_lambda=0, the most significant deviation we find from the
Hubble law is an outwards flow of (6.6+/-2.2)% inside a sphere of radius 70
Mpc/h as would be produced by a void of ~20% underdensity surrounded by a dense
shell. This shell roughly coincides with the local Great Walls. Monte Carlo
analyses, using Gaussian errors or bootstrap resampling, show the probability
for chance occurrence of this result out of a pure Hubble flow to be ~2%. The
monopole could be contaminated by higher moments of the velocity field,
especially a quadrupole, which are not properly probed by the current limited
sky coverage. The void would be less significant if Omega_m is low and
Omega_lambda is high. It would be more significant if one outlier is removed
from the sample, or if the size of the void is constrained a-priori. This
putative void is not in significant conflict with any of the standard
cosmological scenarios. It suggests that the Hubble constant as determined
within 70 Mpc/h could be overestimated by ~6% and the local value of Omega may
be underestimated by ~20%. While the present evidence for a local void is
marginal in this data set, the analysis shows that the accumulation of SNe Ia
distances will soon provide useful constraints on elusive and important aspects
of regional cosmic dynamics.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures. Slightly revised version. To appear in ApJ, 503,
Aug. 20, 199
The pion-three-nucleon problem with two-cluster connected-kernel equations
It is found that the coupled piNNN-NNN system breaks into fragments in a
nontrivial way. Assuming the particles as distinguishable, there are indeed
four modes of fragmentation into two clusters, while in the standard three-body
problem there are three possible two-cluster partitions and conversely the
four-body problem has seven different possibilities. It is shown how to
formulate the pion-three-nucleon collision problem through the
integral-equation approach by taking into account the proper fragmentation of
the system. The final result does not depend on the assumption of separability
of the two-body t-matrices. Then, the quasiparticle method a' la
Grassberger-Sandhas is applied and effective two-cluster connected-kernel
equations are obtained. The corresponding bound-state problem is also
formulated, and the resulting homogeneous equation provides a new approach
which generalizes the commonly used techniques to describe the three-nucleon
bound-state problem, where the meson degrees of freedom are usually suppressed.Comment: 20 pages, REVTeX, with 3 COLOR figures (PostScript
Shot noise in superconducting junctions with weak link formed by Anderson impurity
A theory is developed to study shot noise in superconducting (SAS) and hybrid
(SAN) junctions with singly occupied Anderson impurity (A) as a weak link. The
zero-frequency DC component of the shot noise spectral density is calculated at
zero temperature as a function of the bias at different Coulomb repulsion
strengths U, and show a remarkable structure resulting from combination of
electron-electron interaction and Andreev reflections.Comment: 4 two column pages including 4 .eps figure
Practical approximation scheme for the pion dynamics in the three-nucleon system
We discuss a working approximation scheme to a recently developed formulation
of the coupled piNNN-NNN problem. The approximation scheme is based on the
physical assumption that, at low energies, the 2N-subsystem dynamics in the
elastic channel is conveniently described by the usual 2N-potential approach,
while the explicit pion dynamics describes small, correction-type effects.
Using the standard separable-expansion method, we obtain a dynamical equation
of the Alt-Grassberger-Sandhas (AGS) type. This is an important result, because
the computational techniques used for solving the normal AGS equation can also
be used to describe the pion dynamics in the 3N system once the matrix
dimension is increased by one component. We have also shown that this
approximation scheme treats the conventional 3N problem once the pion degrees
of freedom are projected out. Then the 3N system is described with an extended
AGS-type equation where the spin-off of the pion dynamics (beyond the 2N
potential) is taken into account in additional contributions to the driving
term. These new terms are shown to reproduce the diagrams leading to modern
3N-force models. We also recover two sets of irreducible diagrams that are
commonly neglected in 3N-force discussions, and conclude that these sets should
be further investigated, because a claimed cancellation is questionable.Comment: 18 pages, including 5 figures, RevTeX, Eps
Large Scale Power Spectrum from Peculiar Velocities Via Likelihood Analysis
The power spectrum (PS) of mass density fluctuations, independent of
`biasing', is estimated from the Mark III catalog of peculiar velocities using
Bayesian statistics. A parametric model is assumed for the PS, and the free
parameters are determined by maximizing the probability of the model given the
data. The method has been tested using detailed mock catalogs. It has been
applied to generalized CDM models with and without COBE normalization.
The robust result for all the models is a relatively high PS, with at . An
extrapolation to smaller scales using the different CDM models yields . The peak is weakly constrained to the range
. These results are consistent with a direct
computation of the PS (Kolatt & Dekel 1996). When compared to galaxy-density
surveys, the implied values for () are of order
unity to within 25%.
The parameters of the COBE-normalized, flat CDM model are confined by a 90%
likelihood contour of the sort , where
and for models with and without tensor
fluctuations respectively. For open CDM the powers are and (no tensor fluctuations). A -shape model free of COBE
normalization yields only a weak constraint: .Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in The
Astrophysical Journa
Kondo regime in triangular arrangements of quantum dots: Molecular orbitals, interference and contact effects
Transport properties of an interacting triple quantum dot system coupled to
three leads in a triangular geometry has been studied in the Kondo regime.
Applying mean-field finite-U slave boson and embedded cluster approximations to
the calculation of transport properties unveils a set of rich features
associated to the high symmetry of this system. Results using both calculation
techniques yield excellent overall agreement and provide additional insights
into the physical behavior of this interesting geometry. In the case when just
two current leads are connected to the three-dot system, interference effects
between degenerate molecular orbitals are found to strongly affect the overall
conductance. An S=1 Kondo effect is also shown to appear for the perfect
equilateral triangle symmetry. The introduction of a third current lead results
in an `amplitude leakage' phenomenon, akin to that appearing in beam splitters,
which alters the interference effects and the overall conductance through the
system.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, submitted to PR
Fluctuation of Conductance Peak Spacings in Large Semiconductor Quantum Dots
Fluctuation of Coulomb blockade peak spacings in large two-dimensional
semiconductor quantum dots are studied within a model based on the
electrostatics of several electron islands among which there are random
inductive and capacitive couplings. Each island can accommodate electrons on
quantum orbitals whose energies depend also on an external magnetic field. In
contrast with a single island quantum dot, where the spacing distribution is
close to Gaussian, here the distribution has a peak at small spacing value. The
fluctuations are mainly due to charging effects. The model can explain the
occasional occurrence of couples or even triples of closely spaced Coulomb
blockade peaks, as well as the qualitative behavior of peak positions with the
applied magnetic field.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in PR
Measuring the Nonlinear Biasing Function from a Galaxy Redshift Survey
We present a simple method for evaluating the nonlinear biasing function of
galaxies from a redshift survey. The nonlinear biasing is characterized by the
conditional mean of the galaxy density fluctuation given the underlying mass
density fluctuation, or by the associated parameters of mean biasing and
nonlinearity (following Dekel & Lahav 1999). Using the distribution of galaxies
in cosmological simulations, at smoothing of a few Mpc, we find that the mean
biasing can be recovered to a good accuracy from the cumulative distribution
functions (CDFs) of galaxies and mass, despite the biasing scatter. Then, using
a suite of simulations of different cosmological models, we demonstrate that
the matter CDF is robust compared to the difference between it and the galaxy
CDF, and can be approximated for our purpose by a cumulative log-normal
distribution of 1+\delta with a single parameter \sigma. Finally, we show how
the nonlinear biasing function can be obtained with adequate accuracy directly
from the observed galaxy CDF in redshift space. Thus, the biasing function can
be obtained from counts in cells once the rms mass fluctuation at the
appropriate scale is assumed a priori. The relative biasing function between
different galaxy types is measurable in a similar way. The main source of error
is sparse sampling, which requires that the mean galaxy separation be smaller
than the smoothing scale. Once applied to redshift surveys such as PSCz, 2dF,
SDSS, or DEEP, the biasing function can provide valuable constraints on galaxy
formation and structure evolution.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, revised version, accepted for publication in Ap
Spectral statistics near the quantum percolation threshold
The statistical properties of spectra of a three-dimensional quantum bond
percolation system is studied in the vicinity of the metal insulator
transition. In order to avoid the influence of small clusters, only regions of
the spectra in which the density of states is rather smooth are analyzed. Using
finite size scaling hypothesis, the critical quantum probability for bond
occupation is found to be while the critical exponent for the
divergence of the localization length is estimated as . This
later figure is consistent with the one found within the universality class of
the standard Anderson model.Comment: REVTeX, 4 pages, 5 figures, all uuencoded, accepted for publication
in PRB (Rapid Communication
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