From kinetic theory to dissipative fluid dynamics

We present the results of deriving the Israel-Stewart equations of relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics from kinetic theory via Grad's 14-moment expansion. Working consistently to second order in the Knudsen number, these equations contain several new terms which are absent in previous treatments.Comment: 7 pages, proceedings of the Erice School on Nuclear Physics "Heavy Ion collisions from the Coulomb Barrier up to the Quark Gluon Plasma", Erice, Sicily, Sep. 16 - 24, 200

Kinetics of the long-range spherical model

The kinetic spherical model with long-range interactions is studied after a quench to $T < T_c$ or to $T = T_c$. For the two-time response and correlation functions of the order-parameter as well as for composite fields such as the energy density, the ageing exponents and the corresponding scaling functions are derived. The results are compared to the predictions which follow from local scale-invariance.Comment: added "fluctuation-dissipation ratios"; fixed typo

The association between water kilomasers and compact radio sources in the starburst galaxy NGC2146

We report the detection of 22 GHz water vapor emission toward the starburst galaxy NGC2146, made using the Effelsberg 100-m telescope. Interferometric observations with the Very Large Array (VLA) show that a part of the emission originates from two prominent sites of star formation that are associated with compact radio continuum sources, likely ultra-compact HII regions. It is concluded that the emission arises from the most luminous and distant water `kilomasers' detected so far. Our data increase the number of water maser detections in northern galaxies (Dec > -30 deg) with 100 micron IRAS point source fluxes > 50 Jy to 18%.Comment: 4 pages including 3 figures, accepted for publication in A&A Lette

The Boundary Conformal Field Theories of the 2D Ising critical points

We present a new method to identify the Boundary Conformal Field Theories (BCFTs) describing the critical points of the Ising model on the strip. It consists in measuring the low-lying excitation energies spectra of its quantum spin chain for different boundary conditions and then to compare them with those of the different boundary conformal field theories of the $(A_2,A_3)$ minimal model.Comment: 7 pages, no figures. Talk given at the XXth International Conference on Integrable Systems and Quantum Symmetries (ISQS-20). Prague, June 201

[CI], [CII] and CO emission lines as a probe for alpha variations at low and high redshifts

The offsets between the radial velocities of the rotational transitions of carbon monoxide and the fine structure transitions of neutral and singly ionized carbon are used to test the hypothetical variation of the fine structure constant, alpha. From the analysis of the [CI] and [CII] fine structure lines and low J rotational lines of 12CO and 13CO, emitted by the dark cloud L1599B in the Milky Way disk, we find no evidence for fractional changes in alpha at the level of |$\Delta \alpha/\alpha$| < 3*10^-7. For the neighbour galaxy M33 a stringent limit on Delta alpha/alpha is set from observations of three HII zones in [CII] and CO emission lines: |$\Delta \alpha/\alpha$| < 4*10^-7. Five systems over the redshift interval z = 5.7-6.4, showing CO J=6-5, J=7-6 and [CII] emission, yield a limit on |$\Delta \alpha/\alpha$| < 1.3*10^-5. Thus, a combination of the [CI], [CII], and CO emission lines turns out to be a powerful tool for probing the stability of the fundamental physical constants over a wide range of redshifts not accessible to optical spectral measurements.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA

DGSAT: Dwarf Galaxy Survey with Amateur Telescopes II. A catalogue of isolated nearby edge-on disk galaxies and the discovery of new low surface brightness systems

The connection between the bulge mass or bulge luminosity in disk galaxies and the number, spatial and phase space distribution of associated dwarf galaxies is a discriminator between cosmological simulations related to galaxy formation in cold dark matter and generalized gravity models. Here, a nearby sample of isolated Milky Way class edge-on galaxies is introduced, to facilitate observational campaigns to detect the associated families of dwarf galaxies at low surface brightness. Three galaxy pairs with at least one of the targets being edge-on are also introduced. About 60% of the catalogued isolated galaxies contain bulges of different size, while the remaining objects appear to be bulge-less. Deep images of NGC 3669 (small bulge, with NGC 3625 at the edge of the image) and NGC 7814 (prominent bulge), obtained with a 0.4-m aperture, are also presented, resulting in the discovery of two new dwarf galaxy candidates, NGC3669-DGSAT-3 and NGC7814-DGSAT-7. Eleven additional low surface brightness galaxies are identified, previously notified with low quality measurement flags in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Integrated magnitudes, surface brightnesses, effective radii, Sersic indices, axis ratios, and projected distances to their putative major hosts are displayed. At least one of the galaxies, NGC3625-DGSAT-4, belongs with a surface brightness of approximately 26 mag per arcsec^2 and effective radius >1.5 kpc to the class of ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs). NGC3669-DGSAT-3, the galaxy with lowest surface brightness in our sample, may also be an UDG.Comment: 12 pages including 6 figures, 4 tables, a brief appendix, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A). Paper slightly modified after A&A language editing, updating very few references and correcting a small typo at the start of the Appendi

Observations of extragalactic masers in bright IRAS sources

We report the first results of an ongoing survey at 22 GHz with the 100-m Effelsberg telescope to search for water maser emission in bright IRAS sources. We have detected water vapor emission in IC 342. The maser, associated with a star forming region ~10-15 arcsec west of the nucleus, consists of a single 0.5 km/s wide feature and reaches an isotropic luminosity of 0.01 L(sun) (D = 1.8 Mpc). Our detection raises the detection rate among northern galaxies with IRAS point source fluxes S(100micron) > 50 Jy to 16%.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Proceeding of the conference "SRT: the impact of large antennas on Radio Astronomy and Space Science", Cagliari, Italy, 7-10 Nov. 2001, Eds. Porceddu et al. Needs srt_style.st

Non-equilibrium relaxation and critical aging for driven Ising lattice gases

We employ Monte Carlo simulations to study the non-equilibrium relaxation of driven Ising lattice gases in two dimensions. Whereas the temporal scaling of the density auto-correlation function in the non-equilibrium steady state does not allow a precise measurement of the critical exponents, these can be accurately determined from the aging scaling of the two-time auto-correlations and the order parameter evolution following a quench to the critical point. We obtain excellent agreement with renormalization group predictions based on the standard Langevin representation of driven Ising lattice gases.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures included; to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2012