Black-hole kicks from numerical-relativity surrogate models

Binary black holes radiate linear momentum in gravitational waves as they merge. Recoils imparted to the black-hole remnant can reach thousands of km/s, thus ejecting black holes from their host galaxies. We exploit recent advances in gravitational waveform modeling to quickly and reliably extract recoils imparted to generic, precessing, black hole binaries. Our procedure uses a numerical-relativity surrogate model to obtain the gravitational waveform given a set of binary parameters, then from this waveform we directly integrate the gravitational-wave linear momentum flux. This entirely bypasses the need of fitting formulae which are typically used to model black-hole recoils in astrophysical contexts. We provide a thorough exploration of the black-hole kick phenomenology in the parameter space, summarizing and extending previous numerical results on the topic. Our extraction procedure is made publicly available as a module for the Python programming language named SURRKICK. Kick evaluations take ~0.1s on a standard off-the-shelf machine, thus making our code ideal to be ported to large-scale astrophysical studies.Comment: More: https://davidegerosa.com/surrkick - Source: https://github.com/dgerosa/surrkick - pypi: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/surrkick - Published in PR

Spin and Valley dependent analysis of the two-dimensional low-density electron system in Si-MOSFETS

The 2-D electron system (2DES) in Si metal-oxide field-effect transistors (MOSFETS) consists of two distinct electron fluids interacting with each other. We calculate the total energy as a function of the density $n$, and the spin polarization $\zeta$ in the strongly-correlated low-density regime, using a classical mapping to a hypernetted-chain (CHNC) equation inclusive of bridge terms. Here the ten distribution functions, arising from spin and valley indices, are self-consistently calculated to obtain the total free energy, the chemical potential, the compressibility and the spin susceptibility. The T=0 results are compared with the 2-valley Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) data of Conti et al. (at T=0, $\zeta=0$) and found to be in excellent agreement. However, unlike in the one-valley 2DES, it is shown that {\it the unpolarized phase is always the stable phase in the 2-valley system}, right up to Wigner Crystallization at $r_s=42$. This leads to the insensitivity of $g^*$ to the spin polarization and to the density. The compressibility and the spin-susceptibility enhancement calculated from the free energy confirm the validity of a simple approach to the two-valley response based on coupled-mode formation. The three methods, QMC, CHNC, and Coupled-mode theory agree closely. Our results contain no {\it ad hoc} fit parameters. They agree with experiments and do not invoke impurity effects or metal-insulator transition phenomenology.Comment: 10 pages 4 figure

Advances in Feature Selection with Mutual Information

The selection of features that are relevant for a prediction or classification problem is an important problem in many domains involving high-dimensional data. Selecting features helps fighting the curse of dimensionality, improving the performances of prediction or classification methods, and interpreting the application. In a nonlinear context, the mutual information is widely used as relevance criterion for features and sets of features. Nevertheless, it suffers from at least three major limitations: mutual information estimators depend on smoothing parameters, there is no theoretically justified stopping criterion in the feature selection greedy procedure, and the estimation itself suffers from the curse of dimensionality. This chapter shows how to deal with these problems. The two first ones are addressed by using resampling techniques that provide a statistical basis to select the estimator parameters and to stop the search procedure. The third one is addressed by modifying the mutual information criterion into a measure of how features are complementary (and not only informative) for the problem at hand

The role of recent experience and weight on hen's agonistic behaviour during dyadic conflict resolution.

Recent victory or defeat experiences and 2-hour familiarity with the meeting place were combined with size differences in order to better understand their effects on the behaviour leading to the establishment of dyadic dominance relationships between hens not previously acquainted with each other. Three kinds of encounters were videotaped: (i) a previous winner unfamiliar with the meeting place met a previous loser familiar for 2 hours with the meeting place (n = 12 dyads); (ii) as in (i) but both were unfamiliar with the meeting place (n=12); (iii) as in (i) but the previous winner was familiar with the meeting place while the previous loser was unfamiliar (n=13). The weight asymmetry was combined with these three types of encounters by selecting hens of various weight differences: in 29 dyads the recent loser was heavier than the recent winner and in 8 dyads it was the reverse. Recent experience had a major influence upon both agonistic behaviour and dominance outcome. Hens that were familiar with the meeting site initiated attacks more frequently than their unfamiliar opponent but did not win significantly more often. Recent experience and site familiarity could be used to identify 80% of future initiators. Once the first aggressive behaviour had been initiated, it led to victory of its initiator in 92% of cases. Weight was not found to influence agonistic behaviour nor dominance outcome. However, hens with superior comb and wattles areas won significantly more initial meetings than opponents with smaller ones. In the final encounters, victory also went more frequently to the bird showing larger comb and wattles, which happened also to be the previous dominant in a majority of cases. The use of higher-order partial correlations as an ex post facto control for comb and wattles indicates that they were not influential upon agonistic behaviour nor on dominance outcome, but were simply co-selected with the selection of victorious and defeated birds in the first phase of the experiment designed to let hens acquire recent victory/defeat experience

Incorporation of H_2 in vitreous silica, qualitative and quantitative determination from Raman and infrared spectroscopy

Incorporation mechanisms of H_2 in silica glass were studied with Raman and infrared (IR) microspectroscopy. Hydrogenated samples were prepared at temperatures between 800 deg C and 955 deg C at 2 kbar total pressure. Hydrogen fugacities (f_{H_2}) were controlled using the double capsule technique with the iron-w\"ustite (IW) buffer assemblage generating f_{H_2} of 1290-1370 bars corresponding to H_2 partial pressures (P_{H_2}) of 960-975 bars. We found that silica glass hydrogenated under such conditions contains molecular hydrogen (H_2) in addition to SiH and SiOH groups. H_2 molecules dissolved in the quenched glasses introduce a band at 4136 cm^{-1} in the Raman spectra which in comparison to that of gaseous H_2 is wider and is shifted to lower frequency. IR spectra of hydrogenated samples contain a band at 4138 cm^{-1} which we assign to the stretching vibration of H_2 molecules located in non-centrosymmetric sites. The Raman and IR spectra indicate that the dissolved H_2 molecules interact with the silicate network. We suggest that the H_2 band is the envelope of at least three components due to the occupation of at least three different interstitial sites by H_2 molecules. Both, Raman and IR spectra of hydrogenated glasses contain bands at ~2255 cm^{-1} which may be due to the vibration of SiH groups

The role of hen's weight and recent experience on dyadic conflict outcome

This study simultaneously varied experiences of recent victory or defeat, 2-hour familiarity with the meeting place, and hen weight in order to understand their combined effects on the establishment of dyadic dominance relationships between hens not previously acquainted with each other. Three kinds of encounters were arranged: (i) a previous winner unfamiliar with the meeting place met a previous loser familiar with the meeting place (n =28 dyads); (ii) a previous winner met a previous loser, both unfamiliar with the meeting place (n=27); (iii) a previous winner familiar with the meeting place encountered a previous loser unfamiliar with the meeting place (n=28). The weight asymmetry was combined with these three types of encounters by selecting hens showing various weight differences, in favour of the recent loser in 54 dyads and of the recent winner in 29 dyads. Results indicate that recent victory or defeat experience significantly affected the outcome. Even an important weight asymmetry, or familiarity with the meeting place were not sufficient for a hen recently defeated to overcome an opponent that was previously victorious. A 2-hour period of familiarization with the meeting place did not provide any significant advantage over unfamiliarity. Although a significant relationship was found to exist between comb and wattles areas and the initial and final statuses, examination of partial correlations indicates that the influence was from initial status to final status, rather than from comb and wattles to final status. These results suggest that more importance should be attributed to recent social experience in comparison to intrinsic factors in determining dyadic dominance in the hen