Weak boson production measured in PbPb and pp collisions by CMS

The unprecedented center-of-mass energy available at the LHC offers unique opportunities for studying the properties of the strongly-interacting QCD matter created in PbPb collisions at extreme temperatures and very low parton momentum fractions. Electroweak boson production is an important benchmark process at hadron colliders. Precise measurements of Z production in heavy-ion collisions can help to constrain nuclear PDFs as well as serve as a standard candle of the initial state in PbPb collisions at the LHC energies. The inclusive and differential measurements of the Z boson yield in the muon decay channel will be presented, establishing that no modification is observed with respect to next-to-leading order pQCD calculations, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions. The status of the Z measurement in the electron decay channel, as well as the first observation of W \rightarrow \mu {\nu} in heavy ion collisions will be given. The heavy-ion results will be presented in the context of those obtained in pp collisions with the CMS detector.Comment: Quark Matter 2011 conference proceeding

Planar laser induced fluorescence for temperature measurement of optical thermocavitation

Pulsed laser-induced cavitation, has been the subject of many studies describing bubble growth, collapse and ensuing shock waves. To a lesser extent, hydrodynamics of continuous wave (CW) cavitation or thermocavitation have also been reported. However, the temperature field around these bubbles has not been measured, partly because a sensor placed in the fluid would interfere with the bubble dynamics, but also because the short-lived bubble lifetimes (∼70–200 µs) demand high sampling rates which are costly to achieve via infrared (IR) imaging. Planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) provides a non-intrusive alternative technique to costly IR imaging to measure the temperature around laser-induced cavitation bubbles. A 440 nm laser sheet excites rhodamine-B dye to fluoresce while thermocavitation is induced by a CW 810 nm laser. Post-calibration, the fluorescence intensity captured with a high-speed Phantom Miro camera is correlated to temperature field adjacent to the bubble. Using shadowgraphy and PLIF, a significant decrease in sensible heat is observed in the nucleation site– temperature decreases after bubble collapse and the initial heated volume of liquid shrinks. Based on irradiation time and temperature, the provided optical energy is estimated to be converted up to 50% into acoustic energy based on the bubble's size, with larger bubbles converting larger percentages

Hypermultiplets and Topological Strings

The c-map relates classical hypermultiplet moduli spaces in compactifications of type II strings on a Calabi-Yau threefold to vector multiplet moduli spaces via a further compactification on a circle. We give an off-shell description of the c-map in N=2 superspace. The superspace Lagrangian for the hypermultiplets is a single function directly related to the prepotential of special geometry, and can therefore be computed using topological string theory. Similarly, a class of higher derivative terms for hypermultiplets can be computed from the higher genus topological string amplitudes. Our results provide a framework for studying quantum corrections to the hypermultiplet moduli space, as well as for understanding the black hole wave-function as a function of the hypermultiplet moduli.Comment: 21 pages, references adde

The hydrological regime of a forested tropical Andean catchment.

The hydrology of tropical mountain catchments plays a central role in ecological function, geochemical and biogeochemical cycles, erosion and sediment production, and water supply in globally important environments. There have been few studies quantifying the seasonal and annual water budgets in the montane tropics, particularly in cloud forests. We investigated the water balance and hydrologic regime of the Kosñipata catchment (basin area: 164.4 km2) over the period 2010–2011. The catchment spans over 2500 m in elevation in the eastern Peruvian Andes and is dominated by tropical montane cloud forest with some high-elevation puna grasslands. Catchment-wide rainfall was 3112 ± 414 mm yr−1, calculated by calibrating Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B43 rainfall with rainfall data from nine meteorological stations in the catchment. Cloud water input to streamflow was 316 ± 116 mm yr−1 (9.2% of total inputs), calculated from an isotopic mixing model using deuterium excess (Dxs) and δD of waters. Field streamflow was measured in 2010 by recording height and calibrating to discharge. River run-off was estimated to be 2796 ± 126 mm yr−1. Actual evapotranspiration (AET) was 688 ± 138 mm yr−1, determined using the Priestley and Taylor–Jet Propulsion Laboratory (PT-JPL) model. The overall water budget was balanced within 1.6 ± 13.7%. Relationships between monthly rainfall and river run-off follow an anticlockwise hysteresis through the year, with a persistence of high run-off after the end of the wet season. The size of the soil and shallow groundwater reservoir is most likely insufficient to explain sustained dry-season flow. Thus, the observed hysteresis in rainfall–run-off relationships is best explained by sustained groundwater flow in the dry season, which is consistent with the water isotope results that suggest persistent wet-season sources to streamflow throughout the year. These results demonstrate the importance of transient groundwater storage in stabilising the annual hydrograph in this region of the Andes

Plasmid DNA replication and topology as visualized by two-dimensional agarose gel electrophoresis

31 p.- 12 fig.During the last 20 years, two-dimensional agarose gel electrophoresis combined with other techniques such as Polymerase Chain Reaction, helicase assay and electron microscopy, helped to characterize plasmid DNA replication and topology. Here we describe some of the most important findings that were made using this method including the characterization of uni-directional replication, replication origin interference, DNA breakage at the forks, replication fork blockage, replication knotting, replication fork reversal, the interplay of supercoiling and catenation and other changes in DNA topology that take place as replication progresses.This work was sustained in part by Grants # BIO2005-02224 and BFU2008-00408/BMC to J.B.S. and BFU2007-62670 to P.H. from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.Peer reviewe

Off-shell N=2 tensor supermultiplets

A multiplet calculus is presented for an arbitrary number n of N=2 tensor supermultiplets. For rigid supersymmetry the known couplings are reproduced. In the superconformal case the target spaces parametrized by the scalar fields are cones over (3n-1)-dimensional spaces encoded in homogeneous SU(2) invariant potentials, subject to certain constraints. The coupling to conformal supergravity enables the derivation of a large class of supergravity Lagrangians with vector and tensor multiplets and hypermultiplets. Dualizing the tensor fields into scalars leads to hypermultiplets with hyperkahler or quaternion-Kahler target spaces with at least n abelian isometries. It is demonstrated how to use the calculus for the construction of Lagrangians containing higher-derivative couplings of tensor multiplets. For the application of the c-map between vector and tensor supermultiplets to Lagrangians with higher-order derivatives, an off-shell version of this map is proposed. Various other implications of the results are discussed. As an example an elegant derivation of the classification of 4-dimensional quaternion-Kahler manifolds with two commuting isometries is given.Comment: 36 page

S-duality in Twistor Space

In type IIB string compactifications on a Calabi-Yau threefold, the hypermultiplet moduli space $M_H$ must carry an isometric action of the modular group SL(2,Z), inherited from the S-duality symmetry of type IIB string theory in ten dimensions. We investigate how this modular symmetry is realized at the level of the twistor space of $M_H$, and construct a general class of SL(2,Z)-invariant quaternion-Kahler metrics with two commuting isometries, parametrized by a suitably covariant family of holomorphic transition functions. This family should include $M_H$ corrected by D3-D1-D(-1)-instantons (with fivebrane corrections ignored) and, after taking a suitable rigid limit, the Coulomb branch of five-dimensional N=2 gauge theories compactified on a torus, including monopole string instantons. These results allow us to considerably simplify the derivation of the mirror map between type IIA and IIB fields in the sector where only D1-D(-1)-instantons are retained.Comment: 29 pages, 1 figur