Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory beam tube component and module leak testing

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a joint project of the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology funded by the National Science Foundation. The project is designed to detect gravitational waves from astrophysical sources such as supernova and black holes. The LIGO project constructed observatories at two sites in the U.S. Each site includes two beam tubes (each 4 km long) joined to form an "L" shape. The beam tube is a 1.25 m diam 304 L stainless steel, ultrahigh vacuum tube that will operate at 1×10^–9 Torr or better. The beam tube was manufactured using a custom spiral weld tube mill from material processed to reduce the outgassing rate in order to minimize pumping costs. The integrity of the beam tube was assured by helium mass spectrometer leak testing each component of the beam tube system prior to installation. Each 2 km long, isolatable beam tube module was then leak tested after completion

Teaching students to teach patients: A theory-guided approach

Nurses in every setting provide patient teaching on a routine basis, often several times a day. Patient teaching skills are essential competencies to be developed during pre-licensure nursing education. While students learn what to teach for specific conditions, they often lack competence in how to teach in ways that individualize and optimize patient learning. The ultimate goal of patient teaching is to arm patients with the knowledge and skills, and the desire and confidence in their ability to reach their targeted health outcomes. We describe the creation of a theoretical framework to guide development of patient teaching skills. The framework, rooted in the contemporary health care values of patient-centered care, is a synthesis of four evidence-based approaches to patient teaching: patient engagement, motivational interviewing, adult learning theory, and teach-back method. Specific patient teaching skills, derived from each of the approaches, are applied within the context of discharge teaching, an important nursing practice linked to patient outcomes. This exemplar emphasizes the use of critical teaching process skills and targeted informational content. An online student learning module based on the theoretical framework and combined with simulation experiences provides the nurse educator with one strategy for use with nursing students. The theoretical framework has applicability for skill development during pre-licensure education and skill refinement for nurses in clinical practice

Higher twists in polarized DIS and the size of the constituent quark

The spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry implies the presence of a short-distance scale in the QCD vacuum, which phenomenologically may be associated with the "size" of the constituent quark, rho ~ 0.3 fm. We discuss the role of this scale in the matrix elements of the twist-4 and 3 quark-gluon operators determining the leading power (1/Q^2-) corrections to the moments of the nucleon spin structure functions. We argue that the flavor-nonsinglet twist-4 matrix element, f_2^{u - d}, has a sizable negative value of the order rho^{-2}, due to the presence of sea quarks with virtualities ~ rho^{-2} in the proton wave function. The twist-3 matrix element, d_2, is not related to the scale rho^{-2}. Our arguments support the results of previous calculations of the matrix elements in the instanton vacuum model. We show that this qualitative picture is in agreement with the phenomenological higher-twist correction extracted from an NLO QCD fit to the world data on g_1^p and g_1^n, which include recent data from the Jefferson Lab Hall A and COMPASS experiments. We comment on the implications of the short-distance scale rho for quark-hadron duality and the x-dependence of higher-twist contributions.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Classical limit of master equation for harmonic oscillator coupled to oscillator bath with separable initial conditions

The equation for the Wigner function describing the reduced dynamics of a single harmonic oscillator, coupled to an oscillator bath, was obtained by Karrlein and Grabert [Phys. Rev. E, vol. 55, 153 (1997)]. It was shown that for some special correlated initial conditions the equation reduces, in the classical limit, to the corresponding classical Fokker-Planck equation obtained by Adelman [J. Chem Phys., vol. 64, 124 (1976)]. However for separable initial conditions the Adelman equations were not recovered. We resolve this problem by showing that, for separable initial conditions, the classical Langevin equation obtained from the oscillator bath model is somewhat different from the one considered by Adelman. We obtain the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation and show that it exactly matches the classical limit of the equation for the Wigner function obtained from the master equation for separable initial conditions. We also discuss why the special correlated initial conditions correspond to Adelman's solution.Comment: 12 page

Interaction of plane gravitational waves with a Fabry-Perot cavity in the local Lorentz frame

We analyze the interaction of plane '+'-polarized gravitational waves with a Fabry-Perot cavity in the local Lorentz frame of the cavity input mirror outside of the range of long-wave approximation with the force of radiation pressure taken into account. The obtained detector response signal is represented as a sum of two parts: (i) the phase shift due to displacement of the movable mirror under the influence of gravitational wave and the force of light pressure, and (ii) the phase shift due to direct interaction of gravitational wave with light wave inside the cavity. We obtain formula for the movable mirror law of motion paying close attention to the phenomena of optical rigidity, radiative friction and direct coupling of gravitational wave to light wave. Some issues concerning the detection of high-frequency gravitational waves and the role of optical rigidity in it are discussed. We also examine in detail special cases of optical resonance and small detuning from it and compare our results with the known ones.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures; corrected references [7,8,34], added 2 new references (currently [35,36]), added comments on (i) relativistic corrections, (ii) detector angular pattern, (iii) quantized electromagnetic field, increased font in figure

Location- and observation time-dependent quantum-tunneling

We investigate quantum tunneling in a translation invariant chain of particles. The particles interact harmonically with their nearest neighbors, except for one bond, which is anharmonic. It is described by a symmetric double well potential. In the first step, we show how the anharmonic coordinate can be separated from the normal modes. This yields a Lagrangian which has been used to study quantum dissipation. Elimination of the normal modes leads to a nonlocal action of Caldeira-Leggett type. If the anharmonic bond defect is in the bulk, one arrives at Ohmic damping, i.e. there is a transition of a delocalized bond state to a localized one if the elastic constant exceeds a critical value $C_{crit}$. The latter depends on the masses of the bond defect. Superohmic damping occurs if the bond defect is in the site $M$ at a finite distance from one of the chain ends. If the observation time $T$ is smaller than a characteristic time $\tau_M \sim M$, depending on the location M of the defect, the behavior is similar to the bulk situation. However, for $T \gg \tau_M$ tunneling is never suppressed.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Modeling quasar accretion disc temperature profiles

Microlensing observations indicate that quasar accretion discs have half-light radii larger than expected from standard theoretical predictions based on quasar fluxes or black hole masses. Blackburne and colleagues have also found a very weak wavelength dependence of these half-light radii. We consider disc temperature profile models that might match these observations. Nixon and colleagues have suggested that misaligned accretion discs around spinning black holes will be disrupted at radii small enough for the Lense-Thirring torque to overcome the disc's viscous torque. Gas in precessing annuli torn off a disc will spread radially and intersect with the remaining disc, heating the disc at potentially large radii. However, if the intersection occurs at an angle of more than a degree or so, highly supersonic collisions will shock-heat the gas to a Compton temperature of T~10^7 K, and the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of discs with such shock-heated regions are poor fits to observations of quasar SEDs. Torn discs where heating occurs in intermittent weak shocks that occur whenever the intersection angle reaches a tenth of a degree pose less of a conflict with observations, but do not have significantly larger half-light radii than standard discs. We also study two phenomenological disc temperature profile models. We find that discs with a temperature spike at relatively large radii and lowered temperatures at radii inside the spike yield improved and acceptable fits to microlensing sizes in most cases. Such temperature profiles could in principle occur in sub-Keplerian discs partially supported by magnetic pressure. However, such discs overpredict the fluxes from quasars studied with microlensing except in the limit of negligible continuum emission from radii inside the temperature spike.Comment: Submitted to MNRAS. Comments welcome. 20 pages, 5 figure

Coherent control of population transfer between communicating defects

Population transfer between two identical, communicating defects in a one-dimensional tight-binding lattice can be systematically controlled by external time-periodic forcing. Employing a force with slowly changing amplitude, the time it takes to transfer a particle from one defect to the other can be altered over several orders of magnitude. An analytical expression is derived which shows how the forcing effectively changes the energy splitting between the defect states, and numerical model calculations illustrate the possibility of coherent control of the transfer.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Transverse nucleon structure and diagnostics of hard parton-parton processes at LHC

We propose a new method to determine at what transverse momenta particle production in high-energy pp collisions is governed by hard parton-parton processes. Using information on the transverse spatial distribution of partons obtained from hard exclusive processes in ep/gamma p scattering, we evaluate the impact parameter distribution of pp collisions with a hard parton-parton process as a function of p_T of the produced parton (jet). We find that the average pp impact parameters in such events depend very weakly on p_T in the range 2 < p_T < few 100 GeV, while they are much smaller than those in minimum-bias inelastic collisions. The impact parameters in turn govern the observable transverse multiplicity in such events (in the direction perpendicular to the trigger particle or jet). Measuring the transverse multiplicity as a function of p_T thus provides an effective tool for determining the minimum p_T for which a given trigger particle originates from a hard parton-parton process. Additional tests of the proposed geometric correlations are possible by measuring the dependence on the trigger rapidity. Various strategies for implementing this method are outlined.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Initial design and evaluation of automatic restructurable flight control system concepts

Results of efforts to develop automatic control design procedures for restructurable aircraft control systems is presented. The restructurable aircraft control problem involves designing a fault tolerance control system which can accommodate a wide variety of unanticipated aircraft failure. Under NASA sponsorship, many of the technologies which make such a system possible were developed and tested. Future work will focus on developing a methodology for integrating these technologies and demonstration of a complete system