Relativistic Kinetics of Phonon Gas in Superfluids

The relativistic kinetic theory of the phonon gas in superfluids is developed. The technique of the derivation of macroscopic balance equations from microscopic equations of motion for individual particles is applied to an ensemble of quasi-particles. The necessary expressions are constructed in terms of a Hamilton function of a (quasi-)particle. A phonon contribution into superfluid dynamic parameters is obtained from energy-momentum balance equations for the phonon gas together with the conservation law for superfluids as a whole. Relations between dynamic flows being in agreement with results of relativistic hydrodynamic consideration are found. Based on the kinetic approach a problem of relativistic variation of the speed of sound under phonon influence at low temperature is solved.Comment: 23 pages, Revtex fil

Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements

Urbanism in the Bronze-age Indus Civilisation (~4.6–3.9 thousand years before the present, ka) has been linked to water resources provided by large Himalayan river systems, although the largest concentrations of urban-scale Indus settlements are located far from extant Himalayan rivers. Here we analyse the sedimentary architecture, chronology and provenance of a major palaeochannel associated with many of these settlements. We show that the palaeochannel is a former course of the Sutlej River, the third largest of the present-day Himalayan rivers. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating of sand grains, we demonstrate that flow of the Sutlej in this course terminated considerably earlier than Indus occupation, with diversion to its present course complete shortly after ~8 ka. Indus urban settlements thus developed along an abandoned river valley rather than an active Himalayan river. Confinement of the Sutlej to its present incised course after ~8 ka likely reduced its propensity to re-route frequently thus enabling long-term stability for Indus settlements sited along the relict palaeochannel

Partial Deconfinement in Color Superconductivity

We analyze the fate of the unbroken SU(2) color gauge interactions for 2 light flavors color superconductivity at non zero temperature. Using a simple model we compute the deconfining/confining critical temperature and show that is smaller than the critical temperature for the onset of the superconductive state itself. The breaking of Lorentz invariance, induced already at zero temperature by the quark chemical potential, is shown to heavily affect the value of the critical temperature and all of the relevant features related to the deconfining transition. Modifying the Polyakov loop model to describe the SU(2) immersed in the diquark medium we argue that the deconfinement transition is second order. Having constructed part of the equation of state for the 2 color superconducting phase at low temperatures our results are relevant for the physics of compact objects featuring a two flavor color superconductive state.Comment: 9 pp, 4 eps-figs, version to appear in PR

Gravitational Collapse of Phantom Fluid in (2+1)-Dimensions

This investigation is devoted to the solutions of Einstein's field equations for a circularly symmetric anisotropic fluid, with kinematic self-similarity of the first kind, in $(2+1)$-dimensional spacetimes. In the case where the radial pressure vanishes, we show that there exists a solution of the equations that represents the gravitational collapse of an anisotropic fluid, and this collapse will eventually form a black hole, even when it is constituted by the phantom energy.Comment: 10 page

Neutrino Emission from Goldstone Modes in Dense Quark Matter

We calculate neutrino emissivities from the decay and scattering of Goldstone bosons in the color-flavor-locked (CFL) phase of quarks at high baryon density. Interactions in the CFL phase are described by an effective low-energy theory. For temperatures in the tens of keV range, relevant to the long-term cooling of neutron stars, the emissivities involving Goldstone bosons dominate over those involving quarks, because gaps in the CFL phase are $\sim 100$ MeV while the masses of Goldstone modes are on the order of 10 MeV. For the same reason, the specific heat of the CFL phase is also dominated by the Goldstone modes. Notwithstanding this, both the emissivity and the specific heat from the massive modes remain rather small, because of their extremely small number densities. The values of the emissivity and the specific heat imply that the timescale for the cooling of the CFL core in isolation is $\sim 10^{26}$ y, which makes the CFL phase invisible as the exterior layers of normal matter surrounding the core will continue to cool through significantly more rapid processes. If the CFL phase appears during the evolution of a proto-neutron star, neutrino interactions with Goldstone bosons are expected to be significantly more important since temperatures are high enough ($\sim 20-40$ MeV) to admit large number densities of Goldstone modes.Comment: 29 pages, no figures. slightly modified text, one new eqn. and new refs. adde

Photon and dilepton emission rates from high density quark matter

We compute the rates of real and virtual photon (dilepton) emission from dense QCD matter in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase, focusing on results at moderate densities (3-5 times the nuclear saturation density) and temperatures $T\simeq80$ MeV. We pursue two approaches to evaluate the electromagnetic (e.m.) response of the CFL ground state: (i) a direct evaluation of the photon self energy using quark particle/-hole degrees of freedom, and (ii) a Hidden Local Symmetry (HLS) framework based on generalized mesonic excitations where the $\rho$ meson is introduced as a gauge boson of a local SU(3) color-flavor group. The $\rho$ coupling to generalized two-pion states induces a finite width and allows to address the issue of vector meson dominance (VMD) in the CFL phase. We compare the calculated emissivities (dilepton rates) to those arising from standard hadronic approaches including in-medium effects. For rather large superconducting gaps (several tens of MeV at moderate densities), as suggested by both perturbative and nonperturbative estimates, the dilepton rates from CFL quark matter turn out to be very similar to those obtained in hadronic many-body calculations, especially for invariant masses above $M\simeq0.3$ GeV. A similar observation holds for (real) photon production.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figure

Assessment of an antibody-in-lymphocyte supernatant assay for the etiological diagnosis of pneumococcal pneumonia in children

New diagnostic tests for the etiology of childhood pneumonia are needed. We evaluated the antibody-in-lymphocyte supernatant (ALS) assay to detect immunoglobulin (Ig) G secretion from ex vivo peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) culture, as a potential diagnostic test for pneumococcal pneumonia. We enrolled 348 children with pneumonia admitted to Patan Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal between December 2015 and September 2016. PBMCs sampled from participants were incubated for 48 h before harvesting of cell culture supernatant (ALS). We used a fluorescence-based multiplexed immunoassay to measure the concentration of IgG in ALS against five conserved pneumococcal protein antigens. Of children with pneumonia, 68 had a confirmed etiological diagnosis: 12 children had pneumococcal pneumonia (defined as blood or pleural fluid culture-confirmed; or plasma CRP concentration ≥60 mg/l and nasopharyngeal carriage of serotype 1 pneumococci), and 56 children had non-pneumococcal pneumonia. Children with non-pneumococcal pneumonia had either a bacterial pathogen isolated from blood (six children); or C-reactive protein <60 mg/l, absence of radiographic consolidation and detection of a pathogenic virus by multiplex PCR (respiratory syncytial virus, influenza viruses, or parainfluenza viruses; 23 children). Concentrations of ALS IgG to all five pneumococcal proteins were significantly higher in children with pneumococcal pneumonia than in children with non-pneumococcal pneumonia. The concentration of IgG in ALS to the best-performing antigen discriminated between children with pneumococcal and non-pneumococcal pneumonia with a sensitivity of 1.0 (95% CI 0.73–1.0), specificity of 0.66 (95% CI 0.52–0.78) and area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUROCC) 0.85 (95% CI 0.75–0.94). Children with pneumococcal pneumonia were older than children with non-pneumococcal pneumonia (median 5.6 and 2.0 years, respectively, p < 0.001). When the analysis was limited to children ≥2 years of age, assay of IgG ALS to pneumococcal proteins was unable to discriminate between children with pneumococcal pneumonia and non-pneumococcal pneumonia (AUROCC 0.67, 95% CI 0.47–0.88). This method detected spontaneous secretion of IgG to pneumococcal protein antigens from cultured PBMCs. However, when stratified by age group, assay of IgG in ALS to pneumococcal proteins showed limited utility as a test to discriminate between pneumococcal and non-pneumococcal pneumonia in children

Magnetism in Dense Quark Matter

We review the mechanisms via which an external magnetic field can affect the ground state of cold and dense quark matter. In the absence of a magnetic field, at asymptotically high densities, cold quark matter is in the Color-Flavor-Locked (CFL) phase of color superconductivity characterized by three scales: the superconducting gap, the gluon Meissner mass, and the baryonic chemical potential. When an applied magnetic field becomes comparable with each of these scales, new phases and/or condensates may emerge. They include the magnetic CFL (MCFL) phase that becomes relevant for fields of the order of the gap scale; the paramagnetic CFL, important when the field is of the order of the Meissner mass, and a spin-one condensate associated to the magnetic moment of the Cooper pairs, significant at fields of the order of the chemical potential. We discuss the equation of state (EoS) of MCFL matter for a large range of field values and consider possible applications of the magnetic effects on dense quark matter to the astrophysics of compact stars.Comment: To appear in Lect. Notes Phys. "Strongly interacting matter in magnetic fields" (Springer), edited by D. Kharzeev, K. Landsteiner, A. Schmitt, H.-U. Ye

Phi-array: A novel method for fitness visualization and decision making in evolutionary design optimization

This article was published in the journal, Advanced Engineering Informatics [© Elsevier] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2011.07.005There is a growing interest in integrating model based evolutionary optimization in engineering design decision making for effective search of the solution space. Most applications of evolutionary optimization are concerned with the search for optimal solutions satisfying pre-defined constraints while minimizing or maximizing desired goals. A few have explored post-optimization decision making using concepts such as Pareto optimality, but mostly in multi-objective problems. Sub-optimal solutions are usually discarded and do not contribute to decision making after optimization runs. However, the discarded ‘inferior’ solutions and their fitness contain useful information about underlying sensitivities of the system and can play an important role in creative decision making. The need for understanding the underlying system behavior is more pronounced in cases where variations in the genotype space can cause non-deterministic changes in either the fitness or phenotype space and where fitness evaluations are computationally expensive. The optimized design of an artificial lighting environment of a senior living room is used as a test case to demonstrate the need for and application of fitness visualization in genotype and phenotype spaces for effective decision making. Sub-optimal solutions are retained during optimization and visualized along with the optimum solution in a fitness array visualization system called phi-array, developed as part of this research. The optimization environment is based on genetic algorithm (GA) in which a compute-intensive raytracing rendering engine, RADIANCE, is used to evaluate the fitness of prospective design solutions. Apart from describing the development of the optimization system and demonstrating the utility of phi-array in effective decision making, this article explores optimization parameters and their effectiveness for artificial lighting design problems and the nature of their rugged fitness and constraint landscapes

Reconstruction of f(T) gravity according to holographic dark energy

We develop the reconstruction of a model of $f(T)$ gravity according to the holographic dark energy. $T$ is the torsion scalar and its initial value from the Teleparallel gravity is imposed for fitting the initial value of the function $f(T)$. The result shows a polynomial function for $f(T)$, and we also observe that, when $\Omega_V\rightarrow 1$ at the future time, $\omega_V$ may cross -1 for some values of the input parameter $b$. Another interesting aspect of the obtained model is that it provides the unification of the dark matter with the dark energy.Comment: 11 pages, Accepted for publication in EPJ