12,624 research outputs found
Simulation of cellular irradiation with the CENBG microbeam line using GEANT4
Light-ion microbeams provide a unique opportunity to irradiate biological
samples at the cellular level and to investigate radiobiological effects at low
doses of high LET ionising radiation. Since 1998 a single-ion irradiation
facility has been developed on the focused horizontal microbeam line of the
CENBG 3.5 MV Van de Graaff accelerator. This setup delivers in air single
protons and alpha particles of a few MeV onto cultured cells, with a spatial
resolution of a few microns, allowing subcellular targeting. In this paper, we
present results from the use of the GEANT4 toolkit to simulate cellular
irradiation with the CENBG microbeam line, from the entrance to the microprobe
up to the cellular medium.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, presented at the 2003 IEEE-NSS conference,
Portland, OR, USA, October 20-24, 200
Electron localization : band-by-band decomposition, and application to oxides
Using a plane wave pseudopotential approach to density functional theory we
investigate the electron localization length in various oxides. For this
purpose, we first set up a theory of the band-by-band decomposition of this
quantity, more complex than the decomposition of the spontaneous polarization
(a related concept), because of the interband coupling. We show its
interpretation in terms of Wannier functions and clarify the effect of the
pseudopotential approximation. We treat the case of different oxides: BaO,
-PbO, BaTiO and PbTiO. We also investigate the variation of the
localization tensor during the ferroelectric phase transitions of BaTiO as
well as its relationship with the Born effective charges
Instantons and Condensate
We argue that the is similar to .Comment: 6 pages, 1 fig., 1 tab., RevTeX to be use
Instantons and Chiral Symmetry on the Lattice
I address the question of how much of QCD in the chiral limit is reproduced
by instantons. After reconstructing the instanton content of smoothed Monte
Carlo lattice configurations, I compare hadron spectroscopy on this instanton
ensemble to the spectroscopy on the original ``physical'' smoothed
configurations using a chirally optimised clover fermion action. By studying
the zero mode zone in simple instances I find that the optimised action gives a
satisfactory description of it. Through the Banks-Casher formula, instantons by
themselves are shown to break chiral symmetry but hadron correlators on the
instanton backgrounds are strongly influenced by free quark propagation. This
results in unnaturally light hadrons and a small splitting between the vector
and the pseudoscalar meson channels. Superimposing a perturbative ensemble of
zero momentum gauge field fluctuations (torons) on the instantons is found to
be enough to eliminate the free quarks and restore the physical hadron
correlators. I argue that the torons that are present only in finite volumes,
are probably needed to compensate the unnaturally large finite size effects due
to the lack of confinement in the instanton ensemble.Comment: 32 pages, LaTeX with 14 eps figure
Born Effective Charges of Barium Titanate: band by band decomposition and sensitivity to structural features
The Born effective charge tensors of Barium Titanate have been calculated for
each of its 4 phases. Large effective charges of Ti and O, also predicted by
shell model calculations and made plausible by a simplified model, reflect the
partial covalent character of the chemical bond. A band by band decomposition
confirms that orbital hybridization is not restricted to Ti and O atoms but
also involves Ba which appears more covalent than generally assumed. Our
calculations reveal a strong dependence of the effective charges on the atomic
positions contrasting with a relative insensitivity on isotropic volume
changes.Comment: 13 page
Topological Structure of the SU(3) Vacuum
We investigate the topological structure of the vacuum in SU(3) lattice gauge
theory. We use under-relaxed cooling to remove the high-frequency fluctuations
and a variety of "filters" to identify the topological charges in the resulting
smoothened field configurations. We find a densely packed vacuum with an
average instanton size, in the continuum limit, of about 0.5 fm. The density at
large sizes decreases as a large inverse power of the size. At small sizes we
see some sign of a trend towards the asymptotic perturbative behaviour. We find
that an interesting polarisation phenomenon occurs: the large topological
charges tend to have, on the average, the same sign and are over-screened by
the smaller charges which tend to have, again on the average, the opposite sign
to the larger instantons. We also calculate the topological susceptibility for
which we obtain a continuum value of about 187 MeV. We perform the calculations
for various volumes, lattice spacings and numbers of cooling sweeps, so as to
obtain some control over the associated systematic errors. The coupling range
is from beta=6.0 to beta=6.4 and the lattice volumes range from 16x16x16x48 to
32x32x32x64.Comment: LaTeX. Self-unpacking, uuencoded tar-compressed fil
Multiwavelength Observations of GX 339-4 in 1996. I. Daily Light Curves and X-ray and Gamma-Ray Spectroscopy
As part of our multiwavelength campaign of GX 339-4 observations in 1996 we
present our radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray observations made in July, when the
source was in a hard state (= soft X-ray low state). The radio observations
were made at the time when there was a possible radio jet. We show that the
radio spectrum was flat and significantly variable, and that the radio spectral
shape and amplitude at this time were not anomalous for this source. Daily
light curves from our pointed observation July 9-23 using OSSE, from BATSE, and
from the ASM on RXTE also show that there was no significant change in the X-
and gamma-ray flux or hardness during the time the possible radio jet-like
feature was seen. The higher energy portion of our pointed RXTE observation
made July 26 can be equally well fit using simple power law times exponential
(PLE) and Sunyaev-Titarchuk (ST) functions. An additional soft component is
required, as well as a broad emission feature centered on 6.4 keV. This may be
an iron line that is broadened by orbital Doppler motions and/or scattering off
a hot medium. Its equivalent width is 600 eV. Our simplistic continuum fitting
does not require an extra reflection component. Both a PLE and a ST model also
fit our OSSE spectrum on its own. Although the observations are not quite
simultaneous, combining the RXTE and CGRO spectra we find that the PLE model
easily fits the joint spectrum. However, the ST model drops off too rapidly
with increasing energies to give an acceptable joint fit.Comment: Submitted to Astrophysical Journal. 25 pages. 11 figure
On the spectral density from instantons in quenched QCD
We investigate the contribution of instantons to the eigenvalue spectrum of
the Dirac operator in quenched QCD. The instanton configurations that we use
have been derived, elsewhere, from cooled SU(3) lattice gauge fields and, for
comparison, we also analyse a random `gas' of instantons. Using a set of
simplifying approximations, we find a non-zero chiral condensate. However we
also find that the spectral density diverges for small eigenvalues, so that the
chiral condensate, at zero quark mass, diverges in quenched QCD. The degree of
divergence decreases with the instanton density, so that it is negligible for
the smallest number of cooling sweeps but becomes substantial for larger number
of cools. We show that the spectral density scales, that finite volume
corrections are small and we see evidence for the screening of topological
charges. However we also find that the spectral density and chiral condensate
vary rapidly with the number of cooling sweeps -- unlike, for example, the
topological susceptibility. Whether the problem lies with the cooling or with
the identification of the topological charges is an open question. This problem
needs to be resolved before one can determine how important is the divergence
we have found for quenched QCD.Comment: 33 pages, 16 figures (RevTex), substantial revisions; to appear in
Phys.Rev.
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