The role of nonthermal electrons in the optical continuum of stellar flares

We explore the possibility that the continuum emission in stellar flares is powered by nonthermal electrons accelerated during the flares. We compute the continuum spectra from an atmospheric model for a dMe star, AD Leo, at its quiescent state, when considering the nonthermal excitation and ionisation effects by precipitating electron beams. The results show that if the electron beam has an energy flux large enough, the U band brightening and, in particular, the U-B colour are roughly comparable with observed values for a typical large flare. Moreover, for electron beams with a moderate energy flux, a decrease of the emission at the Paschen continuum appears. This can explain at least partly the continuum dimming observed in some stellar flares. Adopting an atmospheric model for the flaring state can further raise the continuum flux but it yields a spectral colour incomparable with observations. This implies that the nonthermal effects may play the chief role in powering the continuum emission in some stellar flares.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX (psfigs.sty), to appear in MNRA

What kinds of coordinate can keep the Hawking temperature invariant for the static spherically symmetric black hole?

By studying the Hawking radiation of the most general static spherically symmetric black hole arising from scalar and Dirac particles tunnelling, we find the Hawking temperature is invariant in the general coordinate representation (\ref{arbitrary1}), which satisfies two conditions: a) its radial coordinate transformation is regular at the event horizon; and b) there is a time-like Killing vector.Comment: 10 page

Hot Spots on the Fermi Surface of Bi2212: Stripes versus Superstructure

In a recent paper Saini et al. have reported evidence for a pseudogap around (pi,0) at room temperature in the optimally doped superconductor Bi2212. This result is in contradiction with previous ARPES measurements. Furthermore they observed at certain points on the Fermi surface hot spots of high spectral intensity which they relate to the existence of stripes in the CuO planes. They also claim to have identified a new electronic band along Gamma-M1 whose one dimensional character provides further evidence for stripes. We demonstrate in this Comment that all the measured features can be simply understood by correctly considering the superstructure (umklapp) and shadow bands which occur in Bi2212.Comment: 1 page, revtex, 1 encapsulated postscript figure (color

Bipartite graph partitioning and data clustering

Many data types arising from data mining applications can be modeled as bipartite graphs, examples include terms and documents in a text corpus, customers and purchasing items in market basket analysis and reviewers and movies in a movie recommender system. In this paper, we propose a new data clustering method based on partitioning the underlying bipartite graph. The partition is constructed by minimizing a normalized sum of edge weights between unmatched pairs of vertices of the bipartite graph. We show that an approximate solution to the minimization problem can be obtained by computing a partial singular value decomposition (SVD) of the associated edge weight matrix of the bipartite graph. We point out the connection of our clustering algorithm to correspondence analysis used in multivariate analysis. We also briefly discuss the issue of assigning data objects to multiple clusters. In the experimental results, we apply our clustering algorithm to the problem of document clustering to illustrate its effectiveness and efficiency.Comment: Proceedings of ACM CIKM 2001, the Tenth International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, 200

Evolution of the Fermi surface with carrier concentration in Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta}

We show, by use of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, that underdoped Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta} appears to have a large Fermi surface centered at (\pi,\pi), even for samples with a T_c as low as 15 K. No clear evidence of a Fermi surface pocket around (\pi/2,\pi/2) has been found. These conclusions are based on a determination of the minimum gap locus in the pseudogap regime T_c < T < T^*, which is found to coincide with the locus of gapless excitations in momentum space (Fermi surface) determined above T^*. These results suggest that the pseudogap is more likely of precursor pairing rather than magnetic origin.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, 4 postscript color figure

Cusp-scaling behavior in fractal dimension of chaotic scattering

A topological bifurcation in chaotic scattering is characterized by a sudden change in the topology of the infinite set of unstable periodic orbits embedded in the underlying chaotic invariant set. We uncover a scaling law for the fractal dimension of the chaotic set for such a bifurcation. Our analysis and numerical computations in both two- and three-degrees-of-freedom systems suggest a striking feature associated with these subtle bifurcations: the dimension typically exhibits a sharp, cusplike local minimum at the bifurcation.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Revte

H-Alpha and Hard X-Ray Observations of a Two-Ribbon Flare Associated with a Filament Eruption

We perform a multi-wavelength study of a two-ribbon flare on 2002 September 29 and its associated filament eruption, observed simultaneously in the H-alpha line by a ground-based imaging spectrograph and in hard X-rays by RHESSI. The flare ribbons contain several H-alpha bright kernels that show different evolutional behaviors. In particular, we find two kernels that may be the footpoints of a loop. A single hard X-ray source appears to cover these two kernels and to move across the magnetic neutral line. We explain this as a result of the merging of two footpoint sources that show gradually asymmetric emission owing to an asymmetric magnetic topology of the newly reconnected loops. In one of the H-alpha kernels, we detect a continuum enhancement at the visible wavelength. By checking its spatial and temporal relationship with the hard X-ray emission, we ascribe it as being caused by electron beam precipitation. In addition, we derive the line-of-sight velocity of the filament plasma based on the Doppler shift of the filament-caused absorption in the H-alpha blue wing. The filament shows rapid acceleration during the impulsive phase. These observational features are in principal consistent with the general scenario of the canonical two-ribbon flare model.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap