Strange Cepheids and RR Lyrae

Strange modes can occur in radiative classical Cepheids and RR Lyrae models. These are vibrational modes that are trapped near the surface as a result of a 'potential barrier' caused by the sharp hydrogen partial ionization region. Typically the modal number of the strange mode falls between the 7th and 12th overtone, depending on the astrophysical parameters of the equilibrium stellar models (L, M, \Teff, X, Z). Interestingly these modes can be linearly unstable outside the usual instability strip, in which case they should be observable as new kinds of variable stars, 'strange Cepheids' or 'strange RR Lyrae' stars. The present paper reexamines the linear stability properties of the strange modes by taking into account the effects of an isothermal atmosphere, and of turbulent convection. It is found that the linear vibrational instability of the strange modes is resistant to both of these effects. Nonlinear hydrodynamic calculations indicate that the pulsation amplitude of these modes is likely to saturate at the millimagnitude level. These modes should therefore be detectable albeit not without effort.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Ap

Double-Mode Stellar Pulsations

The status of the hydrodynamical modelling of nonlinear multi-mode stellar pulsations is discussed. The hydrodynamical modelling of steady double-mode (DM) pulsations has been a long-standing quest that is finally being concluded. Recent progress has been made thanks to the introduction of turbulent convection in the numerical hydrodynamical codes which provide detailed results for individual models. An overview of the modal selection problem in the HR diagram can be obtained in the form of bifurcation diagrams with the help of simple nonresonant amplitude equations that capture the DM phenomenon.Comment: 34 pages, to appear as a chapter in Nonlinear Stellar Pulsation in the Astrophysics and Space Science Library (ASSL), Editors: M. Takeuti & D. Sasselov (prints double column with pstops '2:[email protected](22.0cm,-2cm)[email protected](22.0cm,11.0cm)' in.ps out.ps

Ultra-Low Amplitude Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud

The MACHO variables of LMC Field 77 that lie in the vicinity of the Cepheid instability strip are reexamined. Among the 144 variables that we identify as Cepheids we find 14 that have Fourier amplitudes <0.05 mag in the MACHO red band, of which 7 have an amplitude <0.006 mag : we dub the latter group of stars ultra-low amplitude (ULA) Cepheids. The variability of these objects is verified by a comparison of the MACHO red with the MACHO blue lightcurves and with those of the corresponding OGLE LMC stars. The occurrence of ULA Cepheids is in agreement with theory. We have also discovered 2 low amplitude variables whose periods are about a factor of 5--6 smaller than those of F Cepheids of equal apparent magnitude. We suggest that these objects are Cepheids undergoing pulsations in a surface mode and that they belong to a novel class of Strange Cepheids (or Surface Mode Cepheids) whose existence was predicted by Buchler et al. (1997).Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, slightly revised, to appear in ApJ Letter

Near-field imaging and frequency tuning of a high-Q photonic crystal membrane microcavity

We discuss experimental studies of the interaction between a nanoscopic object and a photonic crystal membrane resonator of quality factor Q=55000. By controlled actuation of a glass fiber tip in the near-field of a photonic crystal, we constructed a complete spatio-spectral map of the resonator mode and its coupling with the fiber-tip. On the one hand, our findings demonstrate that scanning probes can profoundly influence the optical characteristics and the near-field images of photonic devices. On the other hand, we show that the introduction of a nanoscopic object provides a low-loss method for on-command tuning of a photonic crystal resonator frequency. Our results are in a very good agreement with the predictions of a combined numerical/analytical theory.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Suppression of Classical and Quantum Radiation Pressure Noise via Electro-Optic Feedback

We present theoretical results that demonstrate a new technique to be used to improve the sensitivity of thermal noise measurements: intra-cavity intensity stabilisation. It is demonstrated that electro-optic feedback can be used to reduce intra-cavity intensity fluctuations, and the consequent radiation pressure fluctuations, by a factor of two below the quantum noise limit. We show that this is achievable in the presence of large classical intensity fluctuations on the incident laser beam. The benefits of this scheme are a consequence of the sub-Poissonian intensity statistics of the field inside a feedback loop, and the quantum non-demolition nature of radiation pressure noise as a readout system for the intra-cavity intensity fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Investigation of Lunar Surface Chemical Contamination by LEM Descent Engine and Associated Equipment

Lunar surface and atmospheric contamination study caused by LEM rocket exhaust and inorganic, organic, and microbiological contaminant

Surveying determinants of protein structure designability across different energy models and amino-acid alphabets: A consensus

A variety of analytical and computational models have been proposed to answer the question of why some protein structures are more “designable” (i.e., have more sequences folding into them) than others. One class of analytical and statistical-mechanical models has approached the designability problem from a thermodynamic viewpoint. These models highlighted specific structural features important for increased designability. Furthermore, designability was shown to be inherently related to thermodynamically relevant energetic measures of protein folding, such as the foldability F and energy gap Δ10.Δ10. However, many of these models have been done within a very narrow focus: Namely, pair–contact interactions and two-letter amino-acid alphabets. Recently, two-letter amino-acid alphabets for pair–contact models have been shown to contain designability artifacts which disappear for larger-letter amino-acid alphabets. In addition, a solvation model was demonstrated to give identical designability results to previous two-letter amino-acid alphabet pair–contact models. In light of these discordant results, this report synthesizes a broad consensus regarding the relationship between specific structural features, foldability F, energy gap Δ10,Δ10, and structure designability for different energy models (pair–contact vs solvation) across a wide range of amino-acid alphabets. We also propose a novel measure ZdkZdk which is shown to be well correlated to designability. Finally, we conclusively demonstrate that two-letter amino-acid alphabets for pair–contact models appear to be solvation models in disguise. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69591/2/JCPSA6-112-5-2533-1.pd

Universal correlation between energy gap and foldability for the random energy model and lattice proteins

The random energy model, originally used to analyze the physics of spin glasses, has been employed to explore what makes a protein a good folder versus a bad folder. In earlier work, the ratio of the folding temperature over the glass–transition temperature was related to a statistical measure of protein energy landscapes denoted as the foldability F. It was posited and subsequently established by simulation that good folders had larger foldabilities, on average, than bad folders. An alternative hypothesis, equally verified by protein folding simulations, was that it is the energy gap Δ between the native state and the next highest energy that distinguishes good folders from bad folders. This duality of measures has led to some controversy and confusion with little done to reconcile the two. In this paper, we revisit the random energy model to derive the statistical distributions of the various energy gaps and foldability. The resulting joint distribution allows us to explicitly demonstrate the positive correlation between foldability and energy gap. In addition, we compare the results of this analytical theory with a variety of lattice models. Our simulations indicate that both the individual distributions and the joint distribution of foldability and energy gap agree qualitatively well with the random energy model. It is argued that the universal distribution of and the positive correlation between foldability and energy gap, both in lattice proteins and the random energy model, is simply a stochastic consequence of the “thermodynamic hypothesis.” © 1999 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/70084/2/JCPSA6-111-14-6599-1.pd

Chiral logarithms to five loops

We investigate two specific Green functions in the framework of chiral perturbation theory. We show that, using analyticity and unitarity, their leading logarithmic singularities can be evaluated in the chiral limit to any desired order in the chiral expansion, with a modest calculational cost. The claim is illustrated with an evaluation of the leading logarithm for the scalar two-point function to five-loop order.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure