7,454 research outputs found
Determining solar abundances using helioseismology
The recent downward revision of solar photospheric abundances of Oxygen and
other heavy elements has resulted in serious discrepancies between solar models
and solar structure as determined through helioseismology. In this work we
investigate the possibility of determining the solar heavy-element abundance
without reference to spectroscopy by using helioseismic data. Using the
dimensionless sound-speed derivative in the solar convection zone, we find that
the heavy element abundance, Z, of 0.0172 +/- 0.002, which is closer to the
older, higher value of the abundances.Comment: To appear in Ap
Low abundances of heavy elements in the solar outer layers: comparisons of solar models with helioseismic inversions
Recent solar photospheric abundance analyses have led to a significant
reduction of the metal abundances compared to the previous determinations. The
solar models computed with standard opacities and diffusion processes using
these new abundances give poor agreement with helioseismic inversions for the
sound-speed profile, the surface helium abundance, and the convective zone
depth.
We attempt to obtain a good agreement between helioseismic inversions and
solar models which present the "old" mixture in the interior and new chemical
composition in the convective zone. To reach this result, we assume an
undermetallic accretion at the beginning of the main sequence.
We compute solar models with the Toulouse-Geneva Evolution Code, in which we
simulate an undermetallic accretion in the early stages of the main sequence,
in order to obtain new mixture in the outer convective zone. We compare the
sound-speed profile, the convective zone depth, and the surface helium
abundance with those deduced from helioseismology.
The model with accretion but without any mixing process inside is in better
agreement with helioseismology than the solar model with the new abundances
throughout. There is, however, a spike under the convective zone which reaches
3.4%. Furthermore, the convective zone depth and the surface helium abundance
are too low. Introducing undershooting below the convective zone allows us to
recover the good convective zone radius and the addition of rotation-induced
mixing and tachocline allows us to reconcile the surface helium abundance. But
in any case the agreement of the sound-speed profile with helioseismic
inference is worse than obtained with the old abundances.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
R-charged AdS_{5} black holes and large N unitary matrix models
Using the AdS/CFT, we establish a correspondence between the intricate
thermal phases of R-charged AdS_{5} blackholes and the R-charge sector of the
N=4 gauge theory, in the large N limit. Integrating out all fields in the gauge
theory except the thermal Polyakov line, leads to an effective unitary matrix
model. In the canonical ensemble, a logarithmic term is generated in the
non-zero charge sector of the matrix model. This term is important to discuss
various supergravity properties like i) the non-existence of thermal AdS as a
solution, ii) the existence of a point of cusp catastrophe in the phase diagram
and iii) the matching of saddle points and the critical exponents of
supergravity and those of the effective matrix model.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure
Noncommutative Quantum Hall Effect and Aharonov-Bohm Effect
We study a system of electrons moving on a noncommutative plane in the
presence of an external magnetic field which is perpendicular to this plane.
For generality we assume that the coordinates and the momenta are both
noncommutative. We make a transformation from the noncommutative coordinates to
a set of commuting coordinates and then we write the Hamiltonian for this
system. The energy spectrum and the expectation value of the current can then
be calculated and the Hall conductivity can be extracted. We use the same
method to calculate the phase shift for the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Precession
measurements could allow strong upper limits to be imposed on the
noncommutativity coordinate and momentum parameters and .Comment: 9 pages, RevTeX4, references added, small changes in the tex
'Rapid fire' spectroscopy of Kepler solar-like oscillators
The NASA Kepler mission has been continuously monitoring the same field of
the sky since the successful launch in March 2009, providing high-quality
stellar lightcurves that are excellent data for asteroseismology, far superior
to any other observations available at the present. In order to make a
meaningful analysis and interpretation of the asteroseismic data, accurate
fundamental parameters for the observed stars are needed. The currently
available parameters are quite uncertain as illustrated by e.g. Thygesen et al.
(A&A 543, A160, 2012), who found deviations as extreme as 2.0 dex in [Fe/H] and
log g, compared to catalogue values. Thus, additional follow-up observations
for these targets are needed in order to put firm limits on the parameter space
investigated by the asteroseismic modellers. Here, we propose a metod for
deriving accurate metallicities of main sequence and subgiant solar-like
oscillators from medium resolution spectra with a moderate S/N. The method
takes advantage of the additional constraints on the fundamental parameters,
available from asteroseismology and multi-color photometry. The approach
enables us to reduce the analysis overhead significantly when doing spectral
synthesis, which in turn will increases the efficiency of follow-up
observations.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. Proceedings from Asteroseismology of Stellar
Populations in the Milky Way 2013 to appear in 'Astrophysics and Space
Science Proceedings
Local Algorithms for Block Models with Side Information
There has been a recent interest in understanding the power of local
algorithms for optimization and inference problems on sparse graphs. Gamarnik
and Sudan (2014) showed that local algorithms are weaker than global algorithms
for finding large independent sets in sparse random regular graphs. Montanari
(2015) showed that local algorithms are suboptimal for finding a community with
high connectivity in the sparse Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graphs. For the
symmetric planted partition problem (also named community detection for the
block models) on sparse graphs, a simple observation is that local algorithms
cannot have non-trivial performance.
In this work we consider the effect of side information on local algorithms
for community detection under the binary symmetric stochastic block model. In
the block model with side information each of the vertices is labeled
or independently and uniformly at random; each pair of vertices is
connected independently with probability if both of them have the same
label or otherwise. The goal is to estimate the underlying vertex
labeling given 1) the graph structure and 2) side information in the form of a
vertex labeling positively correlated with the true one. Assuming that the
ratio between in and out degree is and the average degree , we characterize three different regimes under which a
local algorithm, namely, belief propagation run on the local neighborhoods,
maximizes the expected fraction of vertices labeled correctly. Thus, in
contrast to the case of symmetric block models without side information, we
show that local algorithms can achieve optimal performance for the block model
with side information.Comment: Due to the limitation "The abstract field cannot be longer than 1,920
characters", the abstract here is shorter than that in the PDF fil
How much do helioseismological inferences depend upon the assumed reference model?
We investigate systematic uncertainties in determining the profiles of the
solar sound speed, density, and adiabatic index by helioseismological
techniques. We find that rms uncertainties-averaged over the sun of ~ 0.2%-0.4%
are contributed to the sound speed profile by each of three sources: 1)the
choice of assumed reference model, 2) the width of the inversion kernel, and 3)
the measurements errors. The density profile is about an order of magnitude
less well determined by the helioseismological measurements. The profile of the
adiabatic index is determined to an accuracy of about 0.2% . We find that even
relatively crude reference models yield reasonably accurate solar parameters.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ . Related material at
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jn
Miniaturized Quadrature Hybrid Couplers based on Novel U-shaped Transmission Lines
In this paper, a miniaturized microstrip quadrature hybrid coupler (QHC) using U-shaped transmission lines (USTLs) is presented. The proposed approach replaces all arms of the conventional QHC with its equivalent USTL to achieve compactness. The proposed coupler structure is designed to operate in the 1.5 GHz (1427-1518 [MHz]) band which is one of the 5G bands of interest. At such low RF/microwave bands below 3-4 GHz, the size of the conventional coupler is considerably very large which raises a concern for the next generation networks. The pro- posed coupler is designed, simulated and fabricated using Rogers 5880 with thickness of 0.79 mm, dielectric con- stant (εr) of 2.2 and loss tangent of 0.0021. The proposed QHC size is 70% smaller in circuit area (30% relative area) than the conventional equivalent. Simulation and mea- sured results are presented and good matching between the results is observed, confirming the outstanding coupler performance properties. The proposed miniaturized QHC structure will play a vital role for next generation 4G and 5G wireless communication systems operating below 6 GHz
Helioseismic analysis of the hydrogen partition function in the solar interior
The difference in the adiabatic gradient gamma_1 between inverted solar data
and solar models is analyzed. To obtain deeper insight into the issues of
plasma physics, the so-called ``intrinsic'' difference in gamma_1 is extracted,
that is, the difference due to the change in the equation of state alone. Our
method uses reference models based on two equations of state currently used in
solar modeling, the Mihalas-Hummer-Dappen (MHD) equation of state, and the OPAL
equation of state (developed at Livermore). Solar oscillation frequencies from
the SOI/MDI instrument on board the SOHO spacecraft during its first 144 days
in operation are used. Our results confirm the existence of a subtle effect of
the excited states in hydrogen that was previously studied only theoretically
(Nayfonov & Dappen 1998). The effect stems from internal partition function of
hydrogen, as used in the MHD equation of state. Although it is a pure-hydrogen
effect, it takes place in somewhat deeper layers of the Sun, where more than
90% of hydrogen is ionized, and where the second ionization zone of helium is
located. Therefore, the effect will have to be taken into account in reliable
helioseismic determinations of the astrophysically relevant helium-abundance of
the solar convection zone.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Revised version submitted to Ap
Merlin: A Language for Provisioning Network Resources
This paper presents Merlin, a new framework for managing resources in
software-defined networks. With Merlin, administrators express high-level
policies using programs in a declarative language. The language includes
logical predicates to identify sets of packets, regular expressions to encode
forwarding paths, and arithmetic formulas to specify bandwidth constraints. The
Merlin compiler uses a combination of advanced techniques to translate these
policies into code that can be executed on network elements including a
constraint solver that allocates bandwidth using parameterizable heuristics. To
facilitate dynamic adaptation, Merlin provides mechanisms for delegating
control of sub-policies and for verifying that modifications made to
sub-policies do not violate global constraints. Experiments demonstrate the
expressiveness and scalability of Merlin on real-world topologies and
applications. Overall, Merlin simplifies network administration by providing
high-level abstractions for specifying network policies and scalable
infrastructure for enforcing them
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