1,404 research outputs found
Heat Transfer in Turbulent Rayleigh-Benard Convection below the Ultimate Regime
A Rayleigh-B\'enard cell has been designed to explore the Prandtl (Pr)
dependence of turbulent convection in the cross-over range and for
the full range of soft and hard turbulences, up to Rayleigh number . The set-up benefits from the favourable characteristics of cryogenic
helium-4 in fluid mechanics, in-situ fluid property measurements, and special
care on thermometry and calorimetric instrumentation. The cell is cylindrical
with . The effective heat transfer has been
measured with unprecedented accuracy for cryogenic turbulent convection
experiments in this range of Rayleigh numbers. Spin-off of this study include
improved fits of helium thermodynamics and viscosity properties. Three main
results were found. First the dependence exhibits a bimodality of the
flow with difference in for given and . Second, a
systematic study of the side-wall influence reveals a measurable effect on the
heat transfer. Third, the dependence is very small or null : the
absolute value of the average logarithmic slope is smaller
than 0.03 in our range of , which allows to disciminate between
contradictory experiments [Ashkenazi \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev.Lett. 83:3641
(1999)][Ahlers \textit{et al.}, Phys.Rev.Lett. 86:3320 (2001)].Comment: submitted for publication to JLTP (august 2003
Comment on "Turbulent heat transport near critical points: Non-Boussinesq effects" (cond-mat/0601398)
In a recent preprint (cond-mat/0601398), D. Funfschilling and G. Ahlers
describe a new effect, that they interpret as non-Boussinesq, in a convection
cell working with ethane, near its critical point. They argue that such an
effect could have spoiled the Chavanne {\it et al.} (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 79}
3648, 1997) results, and not the Niemela {\it et al.} (Nature, {\bf 404}, 837,
2000) ones, which would explain the differences between these two experiments.
We show that:-i)Restricting the Chavanne's data to situations as far from the
critical point than the Niemela's one, the same discrepancy remains.-ii)The
helium data of Chavanne show no indication of the effect observed by D.
Funfschilling and G. Ahlers.Comment: comment on cond-mat/060139
Plasmodium vinckei vinckei, P. v. lentum and P. yoelii yoelli : chronobiology of the asexual cycle in the blood
Weighted complex projective 2-designs from bases: optimal state determination by orthogonal measurements
We introduce the problem of constructing weighted complex projective
2-designs from the union of a family of orthonormal bases. If the weight
remains constant across elements of the same basis, then such designs can be
interpreted as generalizations of complete sets of mutually unbiased bases,
being equivalent whenever the design is composed of d+1 bases in dimension d.
We show that, for the purpose of quantum state determination, these designs
specify an optimal collection of orthogonal measurements. Using highly
nonlinear functions on abelian groups, we construct explicit examples from d+2
orthonormal bases whenever d+1 is a prime power, covering dimensions d=6, 10,
and 12, for example, where no complete sets of mutually unbiased bases have
thus far been found.Comment: 28 pages, to appear in J. Math. Phy
Low Temperature Gaseous Helium and very High Turbulence Experiments
Cryogenic gaseous helium gives access to extreme turbulent experimental conditions. The very high cooling helium flow rates available at CERN have been used to reach Reynolds numbers up to Re ~ 10**7 in a round jet experiment. First results are discussed
Continuous-variable sampling from photon-added or photon-subtracted squeezed states
We introduce a new family of quantum circuits in Continuous Variables and we
show that, relying on the widely accepted conjecture that the polynomial
hierarchy of complexity classes does not collapse, their output probability
distribution cannot be efficiently simulated by a classical computer. These
circuits are composed of input photon-subtracted (or photon-added) squeezed
states, passive linear optics evolution, and eight-port homodyne detection. We
address the proof of hardness for the exact probability distribution of these
quantum circuits by exploiting mappings onto different architectures of
sub-universal quantum computers. We obtain both a worst-case and an
average-case hardness result. Hardness of Boson Sampling with eight-port
homodyne detection is obtained as the zero squeezing limit of our model. We
conclude with a discussion on the relevance and interest of the present model
in connection to experimental applications and classical simulations.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
Detection of Neptune-size planetary candidates with CoRoT data. Comparison with the planet occurrence rate derived from Kepler
[Abridged] Context. The CoRoT space mission has been searching for transiting
planets since the end of December 2006. Aims. We aim to investigate the
capability of CoRoT to detect small-size transiting planets in short-period
orbits, and to compare the number of CoRoT planets with 2 \leq R_p \leq 4
Rearth with the occurrence rate of small-size planets provided by the
distribution of Kepler planetary candidates (Howard et al. 2012). Methods. We
performed a test that simulates transits of super-Earths and Neptunes in real
CoRoT light curves and searches for them blindly by using the LAM transit
detection pipeline. Results. The CoRoT detection rate of planets with radius
between 2 and 4 Rearth and orbital period P \leq 20 days is 59% (31%) around
stars brighter than r'=14.0 (15.5). By properly taking the CoRoT detection rate
for Neptune-size planets and the transit probability into account, we found
that according to the Kepler planet occurrence rate, CoRoT should have
discovered 12 \pm 2 Neptunes orbiting G and K dwarfs with P \leq 17 days in six
observational runs. This estimate must be compared with the validated Neptune
CoRoT-24b and five CoRoT planetary candidates in the considered range of
planetary radii. We thus found a disagreement with expectations from Kepler at
3 \sigma or 5 \sigma, assuming a blend fraction of 0% (six Neptunes) and 100%
(one Neptune) for these candidates. Conclusions. This underabundance of CoRoT
Neptunes with respect to Kepler may be due to several reasons. Regardless of
the origin of the disagreement, which needs to be investigated in more detail,
the noticeable deficiency of CoRoT Neptunes at short orbital periods seems to
indirectly support the general trend found in Kepler data, i.e. that the
frequency of small-size planets increases with increasing orbital periods and
decreasing planet radii.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in A&
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