The role of heavy quarks in light hadron fragmentation

We investigate the role of heavy quarks in the production of light flavored hadrons and in the determination of the corresponding non perturbative hadronization probabilities. We define a general mass variable flavor number scheme for fragmentation functions that accounts for heavy quark mass effects, and perform a global QCD analysis to an up-to-date data set including very precise Belle and BaBar results. We show that the mass dependent picture provides a much more accurate and consistent description of data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 eps figure

The Possible White Dwarf-Neutron Star Connection

The current status of the problem of whether neutron stars can form, in close binary systems, by accretion-induced collapse (AIC) of white dwarfs is examined. We find that, in principle, both initially cold C+O white dwarfs in the high-mass tail of their mass distribution in binaries and O+Ne+Mg white dwarfs can produce neutron stars. Which fractions of neutron stars in different types of binaries (or descendants from binaries) might originate from this process remains uncertain.Comment: 6 pages. To appear in "White Dwarfs", ed. J. Isern, M. Hernanz, and E. Garcia-Berro (Dordrecht: Kluwer

The Landau Distribution for Charged Particles Traversing Thin Films

The Landau distribution as well as its first and second momenta are well suited for describing the energy loss of charged particles traversing a thin layer of matter. At present, just rational approximations and asymptotic expressions for these functions were obtained. In this paper we present a direct calculation of the integral representation of these functions obtaining perturbative and nonperturvative solutions expressed in terms of fast convergent series. We also provide a simple numerical algorithm which allows to control speed and precision of the results. The testing runs have provided, in reasonable computing times, correct results up to 13-14 significant digits on the density and distribution functions and 9-10 on the first and second momenta. If necessary, this accuracy could be improved by adding more coefficients to the algorithm.Comment: 29 pages, 4 Table

Production and propagation of heavy hadrons in air-shower simulators

Very energetic charm and bottom hadrons may be produced in the upper atmosphere when a primary cosmic ray or the leading hadron in an extensive air shower collide with a nucleon. At $E\approx 10^8$ GeV their decay length becomes of the order of 10 km, implying that they tend to interact in the air instead of decaying. Since the inelasticity in these collisions is much smaller than the one in proton and pion collisions, there could be rare events where a heavy-hadron component transports a significant amount of energy deep into the atmosphere. We have developed a module for the detailed simulation of these processes and have included it in a new version of the air shower simulator AIRES. We study the frequency, the energy distribution and the depth of charm and bottom production, as well as the depth and the energy distribution of these quarks when they decay. As an illustration, we consider the production and decay of tau leptons (from $D_s$ decays) and the lepton flux at PeV energies from a 30 EeV proton primary. The proper inclusion of charm and bottom hadrons in AIRES opens the possibility to search for air-shower observables that are sensitive to heavy quark effects.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic

Coordinating heterogeneous IoT devices by means of the centralized vision of the SDN controller

The IoT (Internet of Things) has become a reality during recent years. The desire of having everything connected to the Internet results in clearly identified benefits that will impact on socio economic development. However, the exponential growth in the number of IoT devices and their heterogeneity open new challenges that must be carefully studied. Coordination among devices to adapt them to their users' context usually requires high volumes of data to be exchanged with the cloud. In order to reduce unnecessary communications and network overhead, this paper proposes a novel network architecture based on the Software-Defined Networking paradigm that allows IoT devices coordinate and adapt them within the scope of a particular context.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Type Ia supernova counts at high z: signatures of cosmological models and progenitors

Determination of the rates at which supernovae of Type Ia (SNe Ia) occur in the early Universe can give signatures of the time spent by the binary progenitor systems to reach explosion and of the geometry of the Universe. Observations made within the Supernova Cosmology Project are already providing the first numbers. Here it is shown that, for any assumed SNe Ia progenitor, SNe Ia counts up to $m_{R}\simeq 23-26$ are useful tests of the SNe Ia progenitor systems and cosmological tracers of a possible non-zero value of the cosmological constant, $\Lambda$. The SNe Ia counts at high redshifts compare differently with those at lower redshifts depending on the cosmological model. Flat $\Omega_{\Lambda}$--dominated universes would show a more significant increase of the SNe Ia counts at $z \sim 1$ than a flat, $\Omega_{M} = 1$ universe. Here we consider three sorts of universes: a flat universe with $H_{0} = 65 km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}$, $\Omega_{M} = 1.0$, $\Omega_{\Lambda} = 0.0$; an open universe with $H_{0} = 65 km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}$, $\Omega_{M} = 0.3$, $\Omega_{\Lambda} = 0.0$; and a flat, $\Lambda$--dominated universe with $H_{0} = 65 km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}$, $\Omega_{M} = 0.3$, $\Omega_{\Lambda} = 0.7$). On the other hand, the SNe Ia counts from one class of binary progenitors (double degenerate systems) should not increase steeply in the $z= 0$ to $z= 1$ range, contrary to what should be seen for other binary progenitors. A measurement of the SNe Ia counts up to $z \sim 1$ is within reach of ongoing SNe Ia searches at high redshifts.Comment: 16 pages, incl. 2 figures. To appear in ApJ (Letters