The impact of celestial pole offset modelling on VLBI UT1 Intensive results

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Intensive sessions are scheduled to provide operational Universal Time (UT1) determinations with low latency. UT1 estimates obtained from these observations heavily depend on the model of the celestial pole motion used during data processing. However, even the most accurate precession-nutation model, IAU 2000/2006, is not accurate enough to realize the full potential of VLBI observations. To achieve the highest possible accuracy in UT1 estimates, a celestial pole offset (CPO), which is the difference between the actual and modelled precession-nutation angles, should be applied. Three CPO models are currently available for users. In this paper, these models have been tested and the differences between UT1 estimates obtained with those models are investigated. It has been shown that neglecting CPO modelling during VLBI UT1 Intensive processing causes systematic errors in UT1 series of up to 20 microarcseconds. It has been also found that using different CPO models causes the differences in UT1 estimates reaching 10 microarcseconds. Obtained results are applicable to the satellite data processing as well.Comment: 8 pp., accepted for publication in Journal of Geodes

Flow fluctuations and long-range correlations: elliptic flow and beyond

These proceedings consist of a brief overview of the current understanding of collective behavior in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. In particular, recent progress in understanding the implications of event-by-event fluctuations have solved important puzzles in existing data -- the "ridge" and "shoulder" phenomena of long-range two-particle correlations -- and have created an exciting opportunity to tightly constrain theoretical models with many new observables.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings for the 22nd International Conference On Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2011), Annecy, France, May 23 - 28, 2011; includes Fig. 2 which was omitted from journal submission for lack of spac

Employing combination procedures to short-time EOP prediction

A well known problem with Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) prediction is that a prediction strategy proved to be the best for some testing time span and prediction length may not remain the same for other time intervals. In this paper, we consider possible strategies to combine EOP predictions computed using different analysis techniques to obtain a final prediction with the best accuracy corresponding to the smallest prediction error of input predictions. It was found that this approach is most efficient for ultra-short-term EOP forecast.Comment: 7 pages, presented at the IERS Workshop on EOP Combination and Prediction, Warsaw, Poland, 19-21 Oct 200

VISHNU hybrid model for viscous QCD matter at RHIC and LHC energies

In this proceeding, we briefly describe the viscous hydrodynamics + hadron cascade hybrid model VISHNU for relativistic heavy ion collisions and report the current status on extracting the QGP viscosity from elliptic flow data.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, the proceedings of 7th International Workshop on Critical Point and Onset of Deconfinement, Wuhan, China, Nov. 7-11, 201

Transport properties of the quark-gluon plasma from lattice QCD

I review the progress made in extracting transport properties of the quark-gluon plasma from lattice QCD simulations. The information on shear and bulk viscosity, the "low-energy constants" of hydrodynamics, is encoded in the retarded correlators of Tmunu, the energy-momentum tensor. Euclidean correlators, computable on the lattice, are related to the retarded correlators by an integral transform. The most promising strategy to extract shear and bulk viscosity is to study the shear and sound channel correlators where the hydrodynamic modes dominate. I present preliminary results from a comprehensive study of the gluonic plasma between 0.95Tc and 4.0Tc.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, plenary talk at the Quark Matter 2009 conference, Knoxville, T

Anisotropic flow of charged particles at sNN=2.76\mathbf{\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76} TeV measured with the ALICE detector

Measurements of anisotropic flow in heavy-ion collisions provide evidence for the creation of strongly interacting matter which appears to behave as an almost ideal fluid. Anisotropic flow signals the presence of multiple interactions and is very sensitive to the initial spatial anisotropy of the overlap region in non-central heavy-ion collisions. In this article we report measurements of elliptic $v_2$, triangular $v_3$, quadrangular $v_4$ and pentagonal $v_5$ flow. These measurements have been performed with 2- and multi-particle correlation techniques.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Quark Matter 2011 proceeding

Parallelization of Kinetic Theory Simulations

Numerical studies of shock waves in large scale systems via kinetic simulations with millions of particles are too computationally demanding to be processed in serial. In this work we focus on optimizing the parallel performance of a kinetic Monte Carlo code for astrophysical simulations such as core-collapse supernovae. Our goal is to attain a flexible program that scales well with the architecture of modern supercomputers. This approach requires a hybrid model of programming that combines a message passing interface (MPI) with a multithreading model (OpenMP) in C++. We report on our approach to implement the hybrid design into the kinetic code and show first results which demonstrate a significant gain in performance when many processors are applied.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, conference proceeding

On the Temperature Dependence of the Shear Viscosity and Holography

We examine the structure of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio eta/s in holographic theories of gravity coupled to a scalar field, in the presence of higher derivative corrections. Thanks to a non-trivial scalar field profile, eta/s in this setup generically runs as a function of temperature. In particular, its temperature behavior is dictated by the shape of the scalar potential and of the scalar couplings to the higher derivative terms. We consider a number of dilatonic setups, but focus mostly on phenomenological models that are QCD-like. We determine the geometric conditions needed to identify local and global minima for eta/s as a function of temperature, which translate to restrictions on the signs and ranges of the higher derivative couplings. Finally, such restrictions lead to an holographic argument for the existence of a global minimum for eta/s in these models, at or above the deconfinement transition.Comment: references adde