7,766 research outputs found
Waveless Approximation Theories of Gravity
The analysis of a general multibody physical system governed by Einstein's
equations in quite difficult, even if numerical methods (on a computer) are
used. Some of the difficulties -- many coupled degrees of freedom, dynamic
instability -- are associated with the presence of gravitational waves. We have
developed a number of ``waveless approximation theories'' (WAT) which repress
the gravitational radiation and thereby simplify the analysis. The matter,
according to these theories, evolves dynamically. The gravitational field,
however, is determined at each time step by a set of elliptic equations with
matter sources. There is reason to believe that for many physical systems, the
WAT-generated system evolution is a very accurate approximation to that
generated by the full Einstein theory
The Effect of the LISA Response Function on Observations of Monochromatic Sources
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is expected to provide the
largest observational sample of binary systems of faint sub-solar mass compact
objects, in particular white-dwarfs, whose radiation is monochromatic over most
of the LISA observational window. Current astrophysical estimates suggest that
the instrument will be able to resolve about 10000 such systems, with a large
fraction of them at frequencies above 3 mHz, where the wavelength of
gravitational waves becomes comparable to or shorter than the LISA arm-length.
This affects the structure of the so-called LISA transfer function which cannot
be treated as constant in this frequency range: it introduces characteristic
phase and amplitude modulations that depend on the source location in the sky
and the emission frequency. Here we investigate the effect of the LISA transfer
function on detection and parameter estimation for monochromatic sources. For
signal detection we show that filters constructed by approximating the transfer
function as a constant (long wavelength approximation) introduce a negligible
loss of signal-to-noise ratio -- the fitting factor always exceeds 0.97 -- for
f below 10mHz, therefore in a frequency range where one would actually expect
the approximation to fail. For parameter estimation, we conclude that in the
range 3mHz to 30mHz the errors associated with parameter measurements differ
from about 5% up to a factor of 10 (depending on the actual source parameters
and emission frequency) with respect to those computed using the long
wavelength approximation.Comment: replacement version with typos correcte
Tidal coupling of a Schwarzschild black hole and circularly orbiting moon
We describe the possibility of using LISA's gravitational-wave observations
to study, with high precision, the response of a massive central body to the
tidal gravitational pull of an orbiting, compact, small-mass object. Motivated
by this application, we use first-order perturbation theory to study tidal
coupling for an idealized case: a massive Schwarzschild black hole, tidally
perturbed by a much less massive moon in a distant, circular orbit. We
investigate the details of how the tidal deformation of the hole gives rise to
an induced quadrupole moment in the hole's external gravitational field at
large radii. In the limit that the moon is static, we find, in Schwarzschild
coordinates and Regge-Wheeler gauge, the surprising result that there is no
induced quadrupole moment. We show that this conclusion is gauge dependent and
that the static, induced quadrupole moment for a black hole is inherently
ambiguous. For the orbiting moon and the central Schwarzschild hole, we find
(in agreement with a recent result of Poisson) a time-varying induced
quadrupole moment that is proportional to the time derivative of the moon's
tidal field. As a partial analog of a result derived long ago by Hartle for a
spinning hole and a stationary distant companion, we show that the orbiting
moon's tidal field induces a tidal bulge on the hole's horizon, and that the
rate of change of the horizon shape leads the perturbing tidal field at the
horizon by a small angle.Comment: 14 pages, 0 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Nonlinear dynamics, rectification, and phase locking for particles on symmetrical two-dimensional periodic substrates with dc and circular ac drives
We investigate the dynamical motion of particles on a two-dimensional
symmetric periodic substrate in the presence of both a dc drive along a
symmetry direction of the periodic substrate and an additional circular ac
drive. For large enough ac drives, the particle orbit encircles one or more
potential maxima of the periodic substrate. In this case, when an additional
increasing dc drive is applied in the longitudinal direction, the longitudinal
velocity increases in a series of discrete steps that are integer multiples of
the lattice constant of the substrate times the frequency. Fractional steps can
also occur. These integer and fractional steps correspond to distinct stable
dynamical orbits. A number of these phases also show a rectification in the
positive or negative transverse direction where a non-zero transverse velocity
occurs in the absence of a dc transverse drive. We map out the phase diagrams
of the regions of rectification as a function of ac amplitude, and find a
series of tongues. Most of the features, including the steps in the
longitudinal velocity and the transverse rectification, can be captured with a
simple toy model and by arguments from nonlinear maps. We have also
investigated the effects of thermal disorder and incommensuration on the
rectification phenomena, and find that for increasing disorder, the
rectification regions are gradually smeared and the longitudinal velocity steps
are no longer flat but show a linearly increasing velocity.Comment: 14 pages, 17 postscript figure
Incident HIV during pregnancy and early postpartum period: a population-based cohort study in a rural area in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
BACKGROUND: The evidence on the effect of pregnancy on acquiring HIV is conflicting, with studies reporting both higher and lower HIV acquisition risk during pregnancy when prolonged antiretroviral therapy was accessible. The aim of this study was to assess the pregnancy effect on HIV acquisition where antiretroviral therapy was widely available in a high HIV prevalence setting. METHODS: This is a retrospective cohort study nested within a population-based surveillance to determine HIV incidence in HIV-uninfected women from 15 to 49Â years from 2010 through 2015 in rural KwaZulu-Natal. HIV incidence per 100 person-years according to pregnancy status (not pregnant, pregnant, to eight weeks postpartum) were measured in 5260 HIV-uninfected women. Hazard ratios (HR) were estimated by Cox proportional hazards regression with pregnancy included as a time varying variable. RESULTS: Overall, pregnancy HIV incidence was 4.5 per 100 person-years (95% CI 3.4-5.8), higher than non-pregnancy (4.0; 95% CI 3.7-4.3) and postpartum incidences (4.2 per 100 person-years; 95% CI 2.3-7.6). However, adjusting for age, and demographic factors, pregnant women had a lower risk of acquiring HIV (HR 0.4; 95% CI 0.2-0.9, PÂ =Â 0.032) than non-pregnant women; there were no differences between postpartum and non-pregnant women (HR 1.2; 95% CI 0.4-3.2; PÂ =Â 0.744). In models adjusting for the interaction of age and gravidity, pregnant women under 25Â years with two or more pregnancies had a 2.3 times greater risk of acquiring HIV than their older counterparts (95% CI 1.3-4.3; PÂ =Â 0.008). CONCLUSIONS: Pregnancy had a protective effect on HIV acquisition. Elevated HIV incidence in younger women appeared to be driven by those with higher gravidity. The sexual and biological factors in younger women should be explored further in order to design appropriate HIV prevention interventions
Evaluating adversarial attacks against multiple fact verification systems
© 2019 Association for Computational Linguistics Automated fact verification has been progressing owing to advancements in modeling and availability of large datasets. Due to the nature of the task, it is critical to understand the vulnerabilities of these systems against adversarial instances designed to make them predict incorrectly. We introduce two novel scoring metrics, attack potency and system resilience which take into account the correctness of the adversarial instances, an aspect often ignored in adversarial evaluations. We consider six fact verification systems from the recent Fact Extraction and VERification (FEVER) challenge: the four best-scoring ones and two baselines. We evaluate adversarial instances generated by a recently proposed state-of-the-art method, a paraphrasing method, and rule-based attacks devised for fact verification. We find that our rule-based attacks have higher potency, and that while the rankings among the top systems changed, they exhibited higher resilience than the baselines
Absorption Effects due to Spin in the Worldline Approach to Black Hole Dynamics
We generalize the effective point particle approach to black hole dynamics to
include spin. In this approach dissipative effects are captured by degrees of
freedom localized on the wordline. The absorptive properties of the black hole
are determined by correlation functions which can be matched with the graviton
absorption cross section in the long wavelength approximation. For rotating
black holes, superradiance is responsible for the leading contribution. The
effective theory is then used to predict the power loss due to spin in the
dynamics of non-relativistic binary systems. An enhancement of three powers of
the relative velocity is found with respect to the non-rotating case. Then we
generalize the results to other type of constituents in the binary system, such
as rotating neutron stars. Finally we compute the power loss absorbed by a test
spinning black hole in a given spacetime background.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures. v2 Typos and misprints fixe
Model-independent test of gravity with a network of ground-based gravitational-wave detectors
The observation of gravitational waves with a global network of
interferometric detectors such as advanced LIGO, advanced Virgo, and KAGRA will
make it possible to probe into the nature of space-time structure. Besides
Einstein's general theory of relativity, there are several theories of
gravitation that passed experimental tests so far. The gravitational-wave
observation provides a new experimental test of alternative theories of gravity
because a gravitational wave may have at most six independent modes of
polarization, of which properties and number of modes are dependent on theories
of gravity. This paper proposes a method to reconstruct the independent modes
of polarization in time-series data of an advanced detector network. Since the
method does not rely on any specific model, it gives model-independent test of
alternative theories of gravity
Mitochondrial Dna Replacement Versus Nuclear Dna Persistence
In this paper we consider two populations whose generations are not
overlapping and whose size is large. The number of males and females in both
populations is constant. Any generation is replaced by a new one and any
individual has two parents for what concerns nuclear DNA and a single one (the
mother) for what concerns mtDNA. Moreover, at any generation some individuals
migrate from the first population to the second.
In a finite random time , the mtDNA of the second population is completely
replaced by the mtDNA of the first. In the same time, the nuclear DNA is not
completely replaced and a fraction of the ancient nuclear DNA persists. We
compute both and . Since this study shows that complete replacement of
mtDNA in a population is compatible with the persistence of a large fraction of
nuclear DNA, it may have some relevance for the Out of Africa/Multiregional
debate in Paleoanthropology
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