27,449 research outputs found
Prolongation of Friction Dominated Evolution for Superconducting Cosmic Strings
This investigation is concerned with cosmological scenarios based on particle
physics theories that give rise to superconducting cosmic strings (whose
subsequent evolution may produce stable loop configurations known as vortons).
Cases in which electromagnetic coupling of the string current is absent or
unimportant have been dealt with in previous work. The purpose of the present
work is to provide quantitative estimates for cases in which electromagnetic
interaction with the surrounding plasma significantly affects the string
dynamics. In particular it will be shown that the current can become
sufficiently strong for the initial period of friction dominated string motion
to be substantially prolonged, which would entail a reinforcement of the short
length scale end of the spectrum of the string distribution, with potentially
observable cosmological implications if the friction dominated scenario lasts
until the time of plasma recombination.Comment: 10 pages Late
Experimental study of ion heating and acceleration during magnetic reconnection
Ion heating and acceleration has been studied in the well-characterized reconnection layer of the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment [M. Yamada , Phys. Plasmas 4, 1936 (1997)]. Ion temperature in the layer rises substantially during null-helicity reconnection in which reconnecting field lines are anti-parallel. The plasma outflow is sub-Alfvenic due to a downstream back pressure. An ion energy balance calculation based on the data and including classical viscous heating indicates that ions are heated largely via nonclassical mechanisms. The T-i rise is much smaller during co-helicity reconnection in which field lines reconnect obliquely. This is consistent with a slower reconnection rate and a smaller resistivity enhancement over the Spitzer value. These observations show that nonclassical dissipation mechanisms can play an important role both in heating the ions and in facilitating the reconnection process
Hydration-induced anisotropic spin fluctuations in Na_{x}CoO_{2}\cdot1.3H_{2}O superconductor
We report ^{59}Co NMR studies in single crystals of cobalt oxide
superconductor Na_{0.42}CoO_{2}\cdot1.3H_{2}O (T_c=4.25K) and its parent
compound Na_{0.42}CoO_{2}. We find that both the magnitude and the temperature
(T) dependence of the Knight shifts are identical in the two compounds above
T_c. The spin-lattice relaxation rate (1/T_1) is also identical above T_0
\sim60 K for both compounds. Below T_0, the unhydrated sample is found to be a
non-correlated metal that well conforms to Fermi liquid theory, while spin
fluctuations develop in the superconductor. These results indicate that water
intercalation does not change the density of states but its primary role is to
bring about spin fluctuations. Our result shows that, in the hydrated
superconducting compound, the in-plane spin fluctuation around finite wave
vector is much stronger than that along the c-axis, which indicates that the
spin correlation is quasi-two-dimensional.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Equilibrium Configuration of Black Holes and the Inverse Scattering Method
The inverse scattering method is applied to the investigation of the
equilibrium configuration of black holes. A study of the boundary problem
corresponding to this configuration shows that any axially symmetric,
stationary solution of the Einstein equations with disconnected event horizon
must belong to the class of Belinskii-Zakharov solutions. Relationships between
the angular momenta and angular velocities of black holes are derived.Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages, no figure
A Puzzling Merger in A3266: the Hydrodynamic Picture from XMM-Newton
Using the mosaic of nine XMM-Newton observations, we study the hydrodynamic
state of the merging cluster of galaxies Abell 3266. The high quality of the
spectroscopic data and large field of view of XMM-Netwon allow us to determine
the thermodynamic conditions of the intracluster medium on scales of order of
50 kpc. A high quality entropy map reveals the presence of an extended region
of low entropy gas, running from the primary cluster core toward the northeast
along the nominal merger axis. The mass of the low entropy gas amounts to
approximately 2e13 solar masses, which is comparable to the baryonic mass of
the core of a rich cluster. We test the possibility that the origin of the
observed low entropy gas is either related to the disruption a preexisting
cooling core in Abell 3266 or to the stripping of gas from an infalling
subcluster companion. We find that both the radial pressure and entropy
profiles as well as the iron abundance of Abell 3266 do not resemble those in
other known cooling core clusters (Abell 478). Thus we conclude that the low
entropy region is subcluster gas in the process of being stripped off from its
dark matter halo. In this scenario the subcluster would be falling onto the
core of A3266 from the foreground. This would also help interpret the observed
high velocity dispersion of the galaxies in the cluster center, provided that
the mass of the subcluster is at most a tenth of the mass of the main cluster.Comment: 6 pages, ApJ sub
Fractal universe and quantum gravity
We propose a field theory which lives in fractal spacetime and is argued to
be Lorentz invariant, power-counting renormalizable, ultraviolet finite, and
causal. The system flows from an ultraviolet fixed point, where spacetime has
Hausdorff dimension 2, to an infrared limit coinciding with a standard
four-dimensional field theory. Classically, the fractal world where fields live
exchanges energy momentum with the bulk with integer topological dimension.
However, the total energy momentum is conserved. We consider the dynamics and
the propagator of a scalar field. Implications for quantum gravity, cosmology,
and the cosmological constant are discussed.Comment: 4 pages. v2: typos corrected; v3: discussion improved, intuitive
introduction added, matches the published versio
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