751 research outputs found
The 2+1 Kepler Problem and Its Quantization
We study a system of two pointlike particles coupled to three dimensional
Einstein gravity. The reduced phase space can be considered as a deformed
version of the phase space of two special-relativistic point particles in the
centre of mass frame. When the system is quantized, we find some possibly
general effects of quantum gravity, such as a minimal distances and a foaminess
of the spacetime at the order of the Planck length. We also obtain a
quantization of geometry, which restricts the possible asymptotic geometries of
the universe.Comment: 59 pages, LaTeX2e, 9 eps figure
Panel Discussion - Management of Eurasian watermilfoil in the United States using native insects: State regulatory and management issues
While researchers have evaluated the potential of native
insect herbivores to manage nonindigenous aquatic plant
species such as Eurasian watermilfoil (
Myriophyllum spicatum
L.), the practical matters of regulatory compliance and implementation
have been neglected. A panel of aquatic nuisance
species program managers from three state natural
resource management agencies (Minnesota, Vermont and
Washington) discussed their regulatory and policy concerns.
In addition, one ecological consultant attempting to market
one of the native insects to manage Eurasian watermilfoil
added his perspective on the special challenges of distributing
a native biological control agent for management of Eurasian
watermilfoil
Excessive oral amphetamine use as a possible cause of renal and splanchnic arterial aneurysms: A report of two cases
AbstractIntroduction: Multiple visceral aneurysms are uncommon and usually result from connective tissue diseases, systemic arteritis, or mycotic lesions. An association between multiple visceral aneurysms and excessive oral amphetamine use has not been reported. Methods: The clinical features of 2 patients at the University of Michigan Medical Center for treatment of multiple visceral aneurysms and amphetamine use were reviewed. Results: The patients had histories of excessive oral amphetamine use that ranged from 50 mg daily for 22 years to 200 mg daily for 2 years. No evidence was seen of systemic arteritis, connective tissue disorder, or an infectious process that may have caused the aneurysms. The arteriograms documented multiple splanchnic and renal artery aneurysms that involved both the large and the small arteries. The aneurysms of 1 patient were managed conservatively, and the patient has not had any clinical sequelae of the aneurysms during 14 years of follow-up. The second patient had hematobilia from a ruptured hepatic artery aneurysm that was treated with transcatheter embolic occlusion of the bleeding vessel. The patient had no recurrent gastrointestinal problems and continued to use amphetamines until his death from a cerebrovascular accident 6 years later. Conclusion: A possible association between excessive oral amphetamine use and multiple visceral aneurysms is reported for 2 patients in whom other risk factors were absent. The potential for chronic oral amphetamine use to cause multiple visceral aneurysms is an ill-defined but not unexpected complication of this substance that is known to contribute to arterial hypertension and to produce a form of necrotizing arteritis. (J Vasc Surg 1998;28:727-31.
The GEO 600 laser system
Interferometric gravitational wave detectors require high optical power, single frequency lasers with very good beam quality and high amplitude and frequency stability as well as high long-term reliability as input light source. For GEO 600 a laser system with these properties is realized by a stable planar, longitudinally pumped 12 W Nd:YAG rod laser which is injection-locked to a monolithic 800 mW Nd:YAG non-planar ring oscillator. Frequency control signals from the mode cleaners are fed to the actuators of the non-planar ring oscillator which determines the frequency stability of the system. The system power stabilization acts on the slave laser pump diodes which have the largest influence on the output power. In order to gain more output power, a combined Nd:YAGNd:YVO4 system is scaled to more than 22 W
Generation of short-pulse VUV and XUV radiation
Starting from intense short-pulse KrF (248 nm, 25 mJ, 400 fs), ArF (193 nm, 10 mJ, sim1 ps), and Ti:sapphire (810 nm, 100 mJ, 150 fs) laser systems, schemes for the generation of fixed-frequency and tunable VUV and XUV radiation by nonlinear optical techniques are investigated. With the KrF system, a four-wave mixing process in xenon yields tunable radiation in the range of 130–200 nm with output energies of, so far, 100 mgrJ in less than 1 ps. For the XUV spectral range below 100 nm, nonperturbative high-order harmonic generation and frequency mixing processes in noble gas jets are considered. To achieve tunability, the intense fixed-frequency pump laser radiation is mixed with less intense but broadly tunable radiation from short-pulse dye lasers or optical parametric generator-amplifier systems. In this way, tunability down to wavelengths of less than 40 nm has been demonstrated
(2+1)-dimensional Einstein-Kepler problem in the centre-of-mass frame
We formulate and analyze the Hamiltonian dynamics of a pair of massive
spinless point particles in (2+1)-dimensional Einstein gravity by anchoring the
system to a conical infinity, isometric to the infinity generated by a single
massive but possibly spinning particle. The reduced phase space \Gamma_{red}
has dimension four and topology R^3 x S^1. \Gamma_{red} is analogous to the
phase space of a Newtonian two-body system in the centre-of-mass frame, and we
find on \Gamma_{red} a canonical chart that makes this analogue explicit and
reduces to the Newtonian chart in the appropriate limit. Prospects for
quantization are commented on.Comment: 38 pages, REVTeX v3.1 with amsfonts and epsf, 12 eps figures. (v2:
Presentational improvement, references added, typos corrected.
Self-organized criticality induced by quenched disorder: experiments on flux avalanches in NbH films
We present an experimental study of the influence of quenched disorder on the
distribution of flux avalanches in type-II superconductors. In the presence of
much quenched disorder, the avalanche sizes are power-law distributed and show
finite size scaling, as expected from self-organized criticality (SOC).
Furthermore, the shape of the avalanches is observed to be fractal. In the
absence of quenched disorder, a preferred size of avalanches is observed and
avalanches are smooth. These observations indicate that a certain minimum
amount of disorder is necessary for SOC behavior. We relate these findings to
the appearance or non-appearance of SOC in other experimental systems,
particularly piles of sand.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Hamiltonian structure and quantization of 2+1 dimensional gravity coupled to particles
It is shown that the reduced particle dynamics of 2+1 dimensional gravity in
the maximally slicing gauge has hamiltonian form. This is proved directly for
the two body problem and for the three body problem by using the Garnier
equations for isomonodromic transformations. For a number of particles greater
than three the existence of the hamiltonian is shown to be a consequence of a
conjecture by Polyakov which connects the auxiliary parameters of the fuchsian
differential equation which solves the SU(1,1) Riemann-Hilbert problem, to the
Liouville action of the conformal factor which describes the space-metric. We
give the exact diffeomorphism which transforms the expression of the spinning
cone geometry in the Deser, Jackiw, 't Hooft gauge to the maximally slicing
gauge. It is explicitly shown that the boundary term in the action, written in
hamiltonian form gives the hamiltonian for the reduced particle dynamics. The
quantum mechanical translation of the two particle hamiltonian gives rise to
the logarithm of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a cone whose angular deficit
is given by the total energy of the system irrespective of the masses of the
particles thus proving at the quantum level a conjecture by 't Hooft on the two
particle dynamics. The quantum mechanical Green's function for the two body
problem is given.Comment: 34 pages LaTe
Image segmentation with traveling waves in an exactly solvable recurrent neural network
We study image segmentation using spatiotemporal dynamics in a recurrent
neural network where the state of each unit is given by a complex number. We
show that this network generates sophisticated spatiotemporal dynamics that can
effectively divide an image into groups according to a scene's structural
characteristics. Using an exact solution of the recurrent network's dynamics,
we present a precise description of the mechanism underlying object
segmentation in this network, providing a clear mathematical interpretation of
how the network performs this task. We then demonstrate a simple algorithm for
object segmentation that generalizes across inputs ranging from simple
geometric objects in grayscale images to natural images. Object segmentation
across all images is accomplished with one recurrent neural network that has a
single, fixed set of weights. This demonstrates the expressive potential of
recurrent neural networks when constructed using a mathematical approach that
brings together their structure, dynamics, and computation
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