32,084 research outputs found
A Light Dilaton in Walking Gauge Theories
We analyze the existence of a dilaton in gauge theories with approximate
infrared conformal symmetry. To the extent that these theories are governed in
the infrared by an approximate fixed point (walking), the explicit breaking of
the conformal symmetry at these scales is vanishingly small. If confinement and
spontaneous chiral-symmetry breaking set in at some infrared scale, the
resultant breaking of the approximate conformal symmetry can lead to the
existence of a dilaton with mass parametrically small compared to the
confinement scale, and potentially observable at the LHC.Comment: 5 pages, references added, final version in PR
Root optimization of polynomials in the number field sieve
The general number field sieve (GNFS) is the most efficient algorithm known
for factoring large integers. It consists of several stages, the first one
being polynomial selection. The quality of the chosen polynomials in polynomial
selection can be modelled in terms of size and root properties. In this paper,
we describe some algorithms for selecting polynomials with very good root
properties.Comment: 16 pages, 18 reference
Periodicities in sunspot activity during solar cycle 23
The data of sunspot numbers, sunspot areas and solar flare index during cycle
23 are analyzed to investigate the intermediate-term periodicities. Power
spectral analysis has been performed separately for the data of the whole disk,
northern and southern hemispheres of the Sun. Several significant midrange
periodicities (175, 133, 113, 104, 84, 63 days) are detected in sunspot
activity. Most of the periodicities in sunspot numbers generally agree with
those of sunspot areas during the solar cycle 23. The study reveals that the
periodic variations in the northern and southern hemispheres of the Sun show a
kind of asymmetrical behavior. Periodicities of 175 days and 133
days are highly significant in the sunspot data of northern hemisphere showing
consistency with the findings of Lean (1990) during solar cycles 12-21. On the
other hand, southern hemisphere shows a strong periodicity of about 85 days in
terms of sunspot activity. The analysis of solar flare index data of the same
time interval does not show any significant peak. The different periodic
behavior of sunspot and flare activity can be understood in the light of
hypothesis proposed by Ballester et al. (2002), which suggests that during
cycle 23, the periodic emergence of magnetic flux partly takes place away from
developed sunspot groups and hence may not necessarily increase the magnetic
complexity of sunspot groups that leads to the generation of flares.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Time-Series Analysis of Super-Kamiokande Measurements of the Solar Neutrino Flux
The Super-Kamiokande Consortium has recently released data suitable for
time-series analysis. The binning is highly regular: the power spectrum of the
acquisition times has a huge peak (power S > 120) at the frequency (in cycles
per year) 35.98 (period 10.15 days), where power measurements are such that the
probability of obtaining a peak of strength S or more by chance at a specified
frequency is exp(-S). This inevitably leads to severe aliasing of the power
spectrum. The strongest peak in the range 0 - 100 in a power spectrum formed by
a likelihood procedure is at 26.57 (period 13.75 days) with S = 11.26. For the
range 0 - 40, the second-strongest peak is at 9.42 (period 38.82 days) with S =
7.3. Since 26.57 + 9.42 = 35.99, we conclude that the weaker peak at 9.42 is an
alias of the stronger peak at 26.57. We note that 26.57 falls in the band 26.36
- 27.66, formed from twice the range of synodic rotation frequencies of an
equatorial section of the Sun for normalized radius larger than 0.1.
Oscillations at twice the rotation frequency, attributable to "m = 2"
structures, are not uncommon in solar data. We find from the shuffle test that
the probability of obtaining a peak of S = 11.26 or more by chance in this band
is 0.1 %. This new result therefore supports at the 99.9% confidence level
previous evidence, found in Homestake and GALLEX-GNO data, for rotational
modulation of the solar neutrino flux. The frequency 25.57 points to a source
of modulation at or near the tachocline.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
Active Thrusting and Folding Along the Northern Tien Shan and Late Cenozoic Rotation of the Tarim Relative to Dzungaria and Kazakhstan
We have studied geometries and rates of late Cenozoic thrust faulting and folding along the northern piedmont of the Tien Shan mountain belt, West of Urumqi, where the M= 8.3 Manas earthquake occurred on December 23, 1906. The northern range of the Tien Shan, rising above 5000 m, overthrusts a flexural foredeep, filled with up to 11,000 m of sediment, of the Dzungarian basement. Our fieldwork reveals that the active thrust reaches the surface 30 km north of the range front, within a 200-km-long zone of Neogene-Quaternary anticlines. Fault scarps are clearest across inset terraces within narrow valleys incised through the anticlines by large rivers flowing down from the range. In all the valleys, the scarps offset vertically the highest terrace surface by the same amount (10.2±0.7 m). Inferring an early Holocene age (10±2 kyr) for this terrace, which is continuous with the largest recent fans of the piedmont, yields a rate of vertical throw of 1.0±0.3mm/yr on the main active thrust at the surface. A quantitative morphological analysis of the degradation of terrace edges that are offset by the thrust corroborates such a rate and yields a mass diffusivity of 5.5±2.5 m^2/kyr. A rather fresh surface scarp, 0.8±0.15 m high, that is unlikely to result from shallow earthquakes with 6 < M < 7 in the last 230 years, is visible at the extremities of the main fold zone. We associate this scarp with the 1906 Manas earthquake and infer that a structure comprising a deep basement ramp under the range, gently dipping flats in the foreland, and shallow ramps responsible for the formation of the active, fault propagation anticlines could have been activated by that earthquake. If so, the return period of a 1906 type event would be 850 ±380 years. The small size of the scarp for an earthquake of this magnitude suggests that a large fraction of the slip at depth (≈2/3) is taken up by incremental folding near the surface. Comparable earthquakes might activate flat detachments and ramp anticlines at a distance from the front of other rising Quaternary ranges such as the San Gabriel mountains in California or the Mont Blanc-Aar massifs in the Alps. We estimate the finite Cenozoic shortening of the folded Dzungarian sediments to be of the order of 30 km and the Cenozoic shortening rate to have been 3 ± 1.5 mm/yr. Assuming comparable shortening along the Tarim piedmont and minor additional active thrusting within the mountain belt, we infer the rate of shortening across the Tien Shan to be at least 6 ± 3 mm/yr at the longitude of Manas (≈85.5°E). A total shortening of 125±30 km is estimated from crustal thickening, assuming local Airy isostatic equilibrium. Under the same assumption, serial N-S sections imply that Cenozoic shortening across the belt increases westwards to 203±50 km at the longitude of Kashgar (≈ 76 °E), as reflected by the westward increase of the width of the belt. This strain gradient implies a clockwise rotation of Tarim relative to Dzungaria and Kazakhstan of 7±2.5° around a pole located near the eastern extremity of the Tien Shan, west of Hami (≈96°E, 43.5°N), comparable to that revealed by paleomagnetism between Tarim and Dzungaria (8.6° ± 8.7°). A 6 mm/yr rate of shortening at the longitude of Manas would imply a rate of rotation of 0.45°/m.y. and would be consistent with a shortening rate of 12 mm/yr north of Kashgar. Taking such values to be representative of Late Cenozoic rates would place the onset of reactivation of the Tien Shan by the India-Asia collision in the early to middle Miocene (16 +22/−9 m.y.), in accord with the existence of particularly thick late Neogene and Quaternary deposits. Such reactivation would thus have started much later than the collision, roughly at the time of the great mid-Miocene changes in tectonic regimes, denudation and sedimentation rates observed in southeast Asia, the Himalayas and the Bay of Bengal, and of the correlative rapid change in seawater Sr isotopic ratio (20 to 15 Ma). Like these other changes, the rise of the Tien Shan might be a distant consequence of the end of Indochina's escape
Is perpendicular magnetic anisotropy essential to all-optical ultrafast spin reversal in ferromagnets?
All-optical spin reversal presents a new opportunity for spin manipulations,
free of a magnetic field. Most of all-optical-spin-reversal ferromagnets are
found to have a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), but it has been
unknown whether PMA is necessary for the spin reversal. Here we theoretically
investigate magnetic thin films with either PMA or in-plane magnetic anisotropy
(IMA). Our results show that the spin reversal in IMA systems is possible, but
only with a longer laser pulse and within a narrow laser parameter region. The
spin reversal does not show a strong helicity dependence where the left- and
right-circularly polarized light lead to the identical results. By contrast,
the spin reversal in PMA systems is robust, provided both the spin angular
momentum and laser field are strong enough while the magnetic anisotropy itself
is not too strong. This explains why experimentally the majority of all-optical
spin-reversal samples are found to have strong PMA and why spins in Fe
nanoparticles only cant out of plane. It is the laser-induced spin-orbit torque
that plays a key role in the spin reversal. Surprisingly, the same spin-orbit
torque results in laser-induced spin rectification in spin-mixed configuration,
a prediction that can be tested experimentally. Our results clearly point out
that PMA is essential to the spin reversal, though there is an opportunity for
in-plane spin reversal.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures and one tabl
A Monte-Carlo simulation of the equilibrium beam polarization in ultra-high energy electron (positron) storage rings
With the recently emerging global interest in building a next generation of
circular electron-positron colliders to study the properties of the Higgs
boson, and other important topics in particle physics at ultra-high beam
energies, it is also important to pursue the possibility of implementing
polarized beams at this energy scale. It is therefore necessary to set up
simulation tools to evaluate the beam polarization at these ultra-high beam
energies. In this paper, a Monte-Carlo simulation of the equilibrium beam
polarization based on the Polymorphic Tracking Code(PTC) (Schmidt et al., 2002
[1]) is described. The simulations are for a model storage ring with parameters
similar to those of proposed circular colliders in this energy range, and they
are compared with the suggestion (Derbenev et al., 1978 [2]) that there are
different regimes for the spin dynamics underlying the polarization of a beam
in the presence of synchrotron radiation at ultra-high beam energies. In
particular, it has been suggested that the so-called "correlated" crossing of
spin resonances during synchrotron oscillations at current energies, evolves
into "uncorrelated" crossing of spin resonances at ultra-high energies.Comment: submitted to and accepted by Nucl. Instrum. Meth.
The upper limit of the e+e- partial width of X(3872)
The e+e- decay partial width of the recently observed state, X(3872), is
estimated using the ISR data collected at the center of mass energy 4.03 GeV in
e+e- annihilation experiment by BES at BEPC. It is found that the product of
the e+e- partial width and X(3872) --> pi+ pi- J/psi decay branching fraction
is less than 10 eV at 90 % confidence level if the J(PC) of X(3872) is 1(--).
Together with the potential models and other information, we conclude that
X(3872) is very unlikely to be a vector state.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur
Switching ferromagnetic spins by an ultrafast laser pulse: Emergence of giant optical spin-orbit torque
Faster magnetic recording technology is indispensable to massive data storage
and big data sciences. {All-optical spin switching offers a possible solution},
but at present it is limited to a handful of expensive and complex rare-earth
ferrimagnets. The spin switching in more abundant ferromagnets may
significantly expand the scope of all-optical spin switching. Here by studying
40,000 ferromagnetic spins, we show that it is the optical spin-orbit torque
that determines the course of spin switching in both ferromagnets and
ferrimagnets. Spin switching occurs only if the effective spin angular momentum
of each constituent in an alloy exceeds a critical value. Because of the strong
exchange coupling, the spin switches much faster in ferromagnets than
weakly-coupled ferrimagnets. This establishes a paradigm for all-optical spin
switching. The resultant magnetic field (65 T) is so big that it will
significantly reduce high current in spintronics, thus representing the
beginning of photospintronics.Comment: 12 page2, 6 figures. Accepted to Europhysics Letters (2016). Extended
version with the supplementary information. Contribution from Indiana State
University,Europhysics Letters (2016
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