Moduli Instability in Warped Compactifications of the Type IIB Supergravity

We show that the conifold and deformed-conifold warped compactifications of the ten-dimensional type IIB supergravity, including the Klebanov-Strassler solution, are dynamically unstable in the moduli sector representing the scale of a Calabi-Yau space, although it can be practically stable for a quite long time in a region with a large warp factor. This instability is associated with complete supersymmetry breaking except for a special case and produces significant time-dependence in the structure of the four-dimensional base spacetime as well as of the internal space.Comment: 24 pages, no figure. Typos corrected, and some arguments in section 5 are adde

Magnetohydrodynamics and Plasma Cosmology

We study the linear magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations, both in the Newtonian and the general-relativistic limit, as regards a viscous magnetized fluid of finite conductivity and discuss instability criteria. In addition, we explore the excitation of cosmological perturbations in anisotropic spacetimes, in the presence of an ambient magnetic field. Acoustic, electromagnetic (e/m) and fast-magnetosonic modes, propagating normal to the magnetic field, can be excited, resulting in several implications of cosmological significance.Comment: 9 pages, RevTeX, To appear in the Proceedings of the Peyresq X Meeting, IJTP Conference Serie

Gravitational Lensing at Millimeter Wavelengths

With today's millimeter and submillimeter instruments observers use gravitational lensing mostly as a tool to boost the sensitivity when observing distant objects. This is evident through the dominance of gravitationally lensed objects among those detected in CO rotational lines at z>1. It is also evident in the use of lensing magnification by galaxy clusters in order to reach faint submm/mm continuum sources. There are, however, a few cases where millimeter lines have been directly involved in understanding lensing configurations. Future mm/submm instruments, such as the ALMA interferometer, will have both the sensitivity and the angular resolution to allow detailed observations of gravitational lenses. The almost constant sensitivity to dust emission over the redshift range z=1-10 means that the likelihood for strong lensing of dust continuum sources is much higher than for optically selected sources. A large number of new strong lenses are therefore likely to be discovered with ALMA, allowing a direct assessment of cosmological parameters through lens statistics. Combined with an angular resolution <0.1", ALMA will also be efficient for probing the gravitational potential of galaxy clusters, where we will be able to study both the sources and the lenses themselves, free of obscuration and extinction corrections, derive rotation curves for the lenses, their orientation and, thus, greatly constrain lens models.Comment: 69 pages, Review on quasar lensing. Part of a LNP Topical Volume on "Dark matter and gravitational lensing", eds. F. Courbin, D. Minniti. To be published by Springer-Verlag 2002. Paper with full resolution figures can be found at ftp://oden.oso.chalmers.se/pub/tommy/mmviews.ps.g

Computing gravitational waves from slightly nonspherical stellar collapse to black hole: Odd-parity perturbation

Nonspherical stellar collapse to a black hole is one of the most promising gravitational wave sources for gravitational wave detectors. We numerically study gravitational waves from a slightly nonspherical stellar collapse to a black hole in linearized Einstein theory. We adopt a spherically collapsing star as the zeroth-order solution and gravitational waves are computed using perturbation theory on the spherical background. In this paper we focus on the perturbation of odd-parity modes. Using the polytropic equations of state with polytropic indices $n_p=1$ and 3, we qualitatively study gravitational waves emitted during the collapse of neutron stars and supermassive stars to black holes from a marginally stable equilibrium configuration. Since the matter perturbation profiles can be chosen arbitrarily, we provide a few types for them. For $n_p=1$, the gravitational waveforms are mainly characterized by a black hole quasinormal mode ringing, irrespective of perturbation profiles given initially. However, for $n_p=3$, the waveforms depend strongly on the initial perturbation profiles. In other words, the gravitational waveforms strongly depend on the stellar configuration and, in turn, on the ad hoc choice of the functional form of the perturbation in the case of supermassive stars.Comment: 31 pages, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D, typos and minor errors correcte

Cerebral perfusion in sepsis

This article is one of ten reviews selected from the Yearbook of Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine 2010 (Springer Verlag) and co-published as a series in Critical Care. Other articles in the series can be found online at http://ccforum.com/series/yearbook. Further information about the Yearbook of Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine is available from http://www.springer.com/series/2855

Relativistic Hydrodynamic Evolutions with Black Hole Excision

We present a numerical code designed to study astrophysical phenomena involving dynamical spacetimes containing black holes in the presence of relativistic hydrodynamic matter. We present evolutions of the collapse of a fluid star from the onset of collapse to the settling of the resulting black hole to a final stationary state. In order to evolve stably after the black hole forms, we excise a region inside the hole before a singularity is encountered. This excision region is introduced after the appearance of an apparent horizon, but while a significant amount of matter remains outside the hole. We test our code by evolving accurately a vacuum Schwarzschild black hole, a relativistic Bondi accretion flow onto a black hole, Oppenheimer-Snyder dust collapse, and the collapse of nonrotating and rotating stars. These systems are tracked reliably for hundreds of M following excision, where M is the mass of the black hole. We perform these tests both in axisymmetry and in full 3+1 dimensions. We then apply our code to study the effect of the stellar spin parameter J/M^2 on the final outcome of gravitational collapse of rapidly rotating n = 1 polytropes. We find that a black hole forms only if J/M^2<1, in agreement with previous simulations. When J/M^2>1, the collapsing star forms a torus which fragments into nonaxisymmetric clumps, capable of generating appreciable ``splash'' gravitational radiation.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, submitted to PR

Theory and Applications of Non-Relativistic and Relativistic Turbulent Reconnection

Realistic astrophysical environments are turbulent due to the extremely high Reynolds numbers. Therefore, the theories of reconnection intended for describing astrophysical reconnection should not ignore the effects of turbulence on magnetic reconnection. Turbulence is known to change the nature of many physical processes dramatically and in this review we claim that magnetic reconnection is not an exception. We stress that not only astrophysical turbulence is ubiquitous, but also magnetic reconnection itself induces turbulence. Thus turbulence must be accounted for in any realistic astrophysical reconnection setup. We argue that due to the similarities of MHD turbulence in relativistic and non-relativistic cases the theory of magnetic reconnection developed for the non-relativistic case can be extended to the relativistic case and we provide numerical simulations that support this conjecture. We also provide quantitative comparisons of the theoretical predictions and results of numerical experiments, including the situations when turbulent reconnection is self-driven, i.e. the turbulence in the system is generated by the reconnection process itself. We show how turbulent reconnection entails the violation of magnetic flux freezing, the conclusion that has really far reaching consequences for many realistically turbulent astrophysical environments. In addition, we consider observational testing of turbulent reconnection as well as numerous implications of the theory. The former includes the Sun and solar wind reconnection, while the latter include the process of reconnection diffusion induced by turbulent reconnection, the acceleration of energetic particles, bursts of turbulent reconnection related to black hole sources as well as gamma ray bursts. Finally, we explain why turbulent reconnection cannot be explained by turbulent resistivity or derived through the mean field approach.Comment: 66 pages, 24 figures, a chapter of the book "Magnetic Reconnection - Concepts and Applications", editors W. Gonzalez, E. N. Parke

Deciphering the impact of uncertainty on the accuracy of large wildfire spread simulations

Predicting wildfire spread is a challenging task fraught with uncertainties. ‘Perfect’ predictions are unfeasible since uncertainties will always be present. Improving fire spread predictions is important to reduce its negative environmental impacts. Here, we propose to understand, characterize, and quantify the impact of uncertainty in the accuracy of fire spread predictions for very large wildfires. We frame this work from the perspective of the major problems commonly faced by fire model users, namely the necessity of accounting for uncertainty in input data to produce reliable and useful fire spread predictions. Uncertainty in input variables was propagated throughout the modeling framework and its impact was evaluated by estimating the spatial discrepancy between simulated and satellite-observed fire progression data, for eight very large wildfires in Portugal. Results showed that uncertainties in wind speed and direction, fuel model assignment and typology, location and timing of ignitions, had a major impact on prediction accuracy.We argue that uncertainties in these variables should be integrated in future fire spread simulation approaches, and provide the necessary data for any firemodel user to do soinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter