Slow Dynamics in Glasses

Minimalist theories of complex systems are broadly of two kinds: mean-field and axiomatic. So far all theories of complex properties absent from simple systems and intrinsic to glasses are axiomatic. Stretched Exponential Relaxation (SER) is the prototypical complex temporal property of glasses, discovered by Kohlrausch 150 years ago, and now observed almost universally in microscopically homogeneous, complex non-equilibrium materials, including luminescent electronic (Coulomb) glasses. Critical comparison of alternative axiomatic theories with both numerical simulations and experiments strongly favors dynamical trap models over static percolative or energy landscape models. PACS: 61.20.Lc; 67.40.F

Methods for deriving and calibrating privacy-preserving heat maps from mobile sports tracking application data

AbstractUtilization of movement data from mobile sports tracking applications is affected by its inherent biases and sensitivity, which need to be understood when developing value-added services for, e.g., application users and city planners. We have developed a method for generating a privacy-preserving heat map with user diversity (ppDIV), in which the density of trajectories, as well as the diversity of users, is taken into account, thus preventing the bias effects caused by participation inequality. The method is applied to public cycling workouts and compared with privacy-preserving kernel density estimation (ppKDE) focusing only on the density of the recorded trajectories and privacy-preserving user count calculation (ppUCC), which is similar to the quadrat-count of individual application users. An awareness of privacy was introduced to all methods as a data pre-processing step following the principle of k-Anonymity. Calibration results for our heat maps using bicycle counting data gathered by the city of Helsinki are good (R2>0.7) and raise high expectations for utilizing heat maps in a city planning context. This is further supported by the diurnal distribution of the workouts indicating that, in addition to sports-oriented cyclists, many utilitarian cyclists are tracking their commutes. However, sports tracking data can only enrich official in-situ counts with its high spatio-temporal resolution and coverage, not replace them

Ordering in a frustrated pyrochlore antiferromagnet proximate to a spin liquid

We perform a general study of spin ordering on the pyrochlore lattice with a 3:1 proportionality of two spin polarizations. Equivalently, this describes valence bond solid conformations of a quantum dimer model on the diamond lattice. We determine the set of likely low temperature ordered phases, on the assumption that the ordering is weak, i.e the system is close to a ``U(1)'' quantum spin liquid in which the 3:1 proportionality is maintained but the spins are strongly fluctuating. The nature of the 9 ordered states we find is determined by a ``projective symmetry'' analysis. All the phases exhibit translational and rotational symmetry breaking, with an enlarged unit cell containing 4 to 64 primitive cells of the underlying pyrochlore. The simplest of the 9 phases is the same ``R'' state found earlier in a theoretical study of the ordering on the magnetization plateau in the $S=3/2$ materials \cdaf and \hgaf. We suggest that the spin/dimer model proposed therein undergoes a direct transition from the spin liquid to the R state, and describe a field theory for the universal properties of this critical point, at zero and non-zero temperatures

Techniques for measuring atmospheric aerosols at the High Resolution Fly's Eye experiment

We describe several techniques developed by the High Resolution Fly's Eye experiment for measuring aerosol vertical optical depth, aerosol horizontal attenuation length, and aerosol phase function. The techniques are based on measurements of side-scattered light generated by a steerable ultraviolet laser and collected by an optical detector designed to measure fluorescence light from cosmic-ray air showers. We also present a technique to cross-check the aerosol optical depth measurement using air showers observed in stereo. These methods can be used by future air fluorescence experiments.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics Journal 16 pages, 9 figure

Nonrelativistic Limit of the Scalar Chern-Simons Theory and the Aharonov-Bohm Scattering

We study the nonrelativistic limit of the quantum theory of a Chern-Simons field minimally coupled to a scalar field with quartic self-interaction. The renormalization of the relativistic model, in the Coulomb gauge, is discussed. We employ a procedure to calculate scattering amplitudes for low momenta that generates their $|p|/m$ expansion and separates the contributions coming from high and low energy intermediary states. The two body scattering amplitude is calculated up to order $p^2/m^2$. It is shown that the existence of a critical value of the self-interaction parameter for which the 2-particle scattering amplitude reduces to the Aharonov-Bohm one is a strictly nonrelativistic feature. The subdominant terms correspond to relativistic corrections to the Aharonov-Bohm scattering. A nonrelativistic reduction scheme and an effective nonrelativistic Lagrangian to account for the relativistic corrections are proposed.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, revtex, to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Structure of the Effective Potential in Nonrelativistic Chern-Simons Field Theory

We present the scalar field effective potential for nonrelativistic self-interacting scalar and fermion fields coupled to an Abelian Chern-Simons gauge field. Fermions are non-minimally coupled to the gauge field via a Pauli interaction. Gauss's law linearly relates the magnetic field to the matter field densities; hence, we also include radiative effects from the background gauge field. However, the scalar field effective potential is transparent to the presence of the background gauge field to leading order in the perturbative expansion. We compute the scalar field effective potential in two gauge families. We perform the calculation in a gauge reminiscent of the $R_\xi$-gauge in the limit $\xi\rightarrow 0$ and in the Coulomb family gauges. The scalar field effective potential is the same in both gauge-fixings and is independent of the gauge-fixing parameter in the Coulomb family gauge. The conformal symmetry is spontaneously broken except for two values of the coupling constant, one of which is the self-dual value. To leading order in the perturbative expansion, the structure of the classical potential is deeply distorted by radiative corrections and shows a stable minimum around the origin, which could be of interest when searching for vortex solutions. We regularize the theory with operator regularization and a cutoff to demonstrate that the results are independent of the regularization scheme.Comment: 24 pages, UdeM-LPN-TH-93-185, CRM-192

Effective electronic response of a system of metallic cylinders

The electronic response of a composite consisting of aligned metallic cylinders in vacuum is investigated, on the basis of photonic band structure calculations. The effective long-wavelength dielectric response function is computed, as a function of the filling fraction. A spectral representation of the effective response is considered, and the surface mode strengths and positions are analyzed. The range of validity of a Maxwell-Garnett-like approach is discussed, and the impact of our results on absorption spectra and electron energy-loss phenomena is addressed.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Instanton operators in five-dimensional gauge theories

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are creditedN.L. is supported in part by STFC grant ST/J002798/1. C.P. is a Royal Society Research Fellow.N.L. is supported in part by STFC grant ST/J002798/1. C.P. is a Royal Society Research Fellow.N.L. is supported in part by STFC grant ST/J002798/1. OPen Aceess funded by SCOAP

Easy on that trigger dad: a study of long term family photo retrieval

We examine the effects of new technologies for digital photography on people's longer term storage and access to collections of personal photos. We report an empirical study of parents' ability to retrieve photos related to salient family events from more than a year ago. Performance was relatively poor with people failing to find almost 40% of pictures. We analyze participants' organizational and access strategies to identify reasons for this poor performance. Possible reasons for retrieval failure include: storing too many pictures, rudimentary organization, use of multiple storage systems, failure to maintain collections and participants' false beliefs about their ability to access photos. We conclude by exploring the technical and theoretical implications of these findings

Dirichlet Branes on Orientifolds

We consider the classification of BPS and non-BPS D-branes in orientifold models. In particular we construct all stable BPS and non-BPS D-branes in the Gimon-Polchinski (GP) and Dabholkar-Park-Blum-Zaffaroni (DPBZ) orientifolds and determine their stability regions in moduli space as well as decay products. We find several kinds of integrally and torsion charged non-BPS D-branes. Certain of these are found to have projective representations of the orientifold $\times$ GSO group on the Chan-Paton factors. It is found that the GP orientifold is not described by equivariant orthogonal K-theory as may have been at first expected. Instead a twisted version of this K-theory is expected to be relevant.Comment: 33 pages, LaTeX, 5 figures. v2 typos corrected, references included, (4,s)-branes re-examine