8,324 research outputs found
Pioneer Anomaly: Evaluating Newly Recovered Data
The Pioneer 10/11 spacecraft yielded the most precise navigation in deep
space to date. However, their radio-metric tracking data received from the
distances between 20--70 astronomical units from the Sun consistently indicated
the presence of a small, anomalous, Doppler frequency drift. The drift is a
blue frequency shift that can be interpreted as a sunward acceleration of a_P =
(8.74 +/- 1.33) x 10^(-10) m/s^2 for each particular spacecraft. This signal
has become known as the Pioneer anomaly; the nature of this anomaly remains
unexplained.
New Pioneer 10 and 11 radio-metric Doppler data recently became available.
The much extended set of Pioneer Doppler data is the primary source for new
upcoming investigation of the anomaly. We also have almost entire records of
flight telemetry files received from the the Pioneers. Together with original
project documentation and newly developed software tools, this additional
information is now used to reconstruct the engineering history of both
spacecraft. To that extent, a thermal model of the Pioneer vehicles is being
developed to study possible contribution of thermal recoil force acting on the
two spacecraft. In addition, to improve the accuracy of orbital reconstruction,
we developed a new approach that uses actual flight telemetry data during
trajectory analysis of radio-metric Doppler files. The ultimate goal of these
efforts is to investigate possible contributions of the thermal recoil force to
the detected anomalous acceleration.Comment: 12 pages, 15 figures, invited talk at the "III Mexican Meeting on
Mathematical and Experimental Physics," Mexico City, Mexico, 10-14 September
200
Critical points in a relativistic bosonic gas induced by the quantum structure of spacetime
It is well known that phase transitions arise if the interaction among
particles embodies an attractive as well as a repulsive contribution. In this
work it will be shown that the breakdown of Lorentz symmetry, characterized
through a deformation in the relation dispersion, plus the bosonic statistics
predict the emergence of critical points. In other words, in some quantum
gravity models the structure of spacetime implies the emergence of critical
points even when no interaction among the particle has been considered.Comment: 5 pages, no figure
Quantum-Mechanical Detection of Non-Newtonian Gravity
In this work the possibility of detecting the presence of a Yukawa term, as
an additional contribution to the usual Newtonian gravitational potential, is
introduced. The central idea is to analyze the effects at quantum level
employing interference patterns (at this respect the present proposal resembles
the Colella, Overhauser and Werner experiment), and deduce from it the possible
effects that this Yukawa term could have. We will prove that the corresponding
interference pattern depends on the phenomenological parameters that define
this kind of terms. Afterwards, using the so called restricted path integral
formalism, the case of a particle whose position is being continuously
monitored, is analyzed, and the effects that this Yukawa potential could have
on the measurement outputs are obtained. This allows us to obtain another
scheme that could lead to the detection of these terms. This last part also
renders new theoretical predictions that could enable us to confront the
restricted path integral formalism against some future experiments.Comment: 17 pages, accepted in International Journal of Modern Physics
Entropic Barriers, Frustration and Order: Basic Ingredients in Protein Folding
We solve a model that takes into account entropic barriers, frustration, and
the organization of a protein-like molecule. For a chain of size , there is
an effective folding transition to an ordered structure. Without frustration,
this state is reached in a time that scales as , with
. This scaling is limited by the amount of frustration which
leads to the dynamical selectivity of proteins: foldable proteins are limited
to monomers; and they are stable in {\it one} range of temperatures,
independent of size and structure. These predictions explain generic properties
of {\it in vivo} proteins.Comment: 4 pages, 4 Figures appended as postscript fil
Delineation of the Native Basin in Continuum Models of Proteins
We propose two approaches for determining the native basins in off-lattice
models of proteins. The first of them is based on exploring the saddle points
on selected trajectories emerging from the native state. In the second
approach, the basin size can be determined by monitoring random distortions in
the shape of the protein around the native state. Both techniques yield the
similar results. As a byproduct, a simple method to determine the folding
temperature is obtained.Comment: REVTeX, 6 pages, 5 EPS figure
Voltage Stability Analysis of Grid-Connected Wind Farms with FACTS: Static and Dynamic Analysis
Recently, analysis of some major blackouts and failures of power system shows that voltage instability problem has been one of the main reasons of these disturbances and networks collapse. In this paper, a systematic approach to voltage stability analysis using various techniques for the IEEE 14-bus case study, is presented. Static analysis is used to analyze the voltage stability of the system under study, whilst the dynamic analysis is used to evaluate the performance of compensators. The static techniques used are Power Flow, VâP curve analysis, and QâV modal analysis. In this study, Flexible Alternating Current Transmission system (FACTS) devices- namely, Static Synchronous Compensators (STATCOMs) and Static Var Compensators (SVCs) - are used as reactive power compensators, taking into account maintaining the violated voltage magnitudes of the weak buses within the acceptable limits defined in ANSI C84.1. Simulation results validate that both the STATCOMs and the SVCs can be effectively used to enhance the static voltage stability and increasing network loadability margin. Additionally, based on the dynamic analysis results, it has been shown that STATCOMs have superior performance, in dynamic voltage stability enhancement, compared to SVCs
Electron and ion stagnation at the collision front between two laser produced plasmas
We report results from a combined optical interferometric and spectrally resolved imaging study on colliding laser produced aluminium plasmas. A Nomarski interferometer was used to probe the spatio-temporal distribution of electron densities at the collision front. Analysis of the resulting interferograms reveals the formation and evolution of a localized electron density feature with a well-defined profile reminiscent of a stagnation layer. Electron stagnation begins at a time delay of 10 ns after the peak of the plasma generating laser pulse. The peak electron density was found to exceed 10^19 cm^â3 and the layer remained well defined up to a time delay of ca 100 ns. Temporally and spectrally resolved optical imaging was also undertaken, to compare the Al^+ ion distribution with that of the 2D electron density profile. This revealed nascent stagnation of singly charged ions at a delay time of 20 ns. We attribute these results to the effects of space charge separation in the seed plasma plumes
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