The aurora as a source of planetary-scale waves in the middle atmosphere

Photographs of global-scale auroral forms taken by scanning radiometers onboard U.S. Air Force weather satellites in 1972 show that auroral bands exhibit well-organized wave motion with typical zonal wave number of 5 or so. The scale size of these waves is in agreement with that of well-organized neutral wind fields measured by the 1967-50B satellite in the 150- to 220-km region during the geomagnetic storm of May 27, 1967. The horizontal scale size revealed by these observations is in agreement with that of high-altitude traveling ionospheric disturbances. It is conjectured that the geomagnetic storm is a source of planetary and synoptic scale neutral atmospheric waves in the middle atmosphere. The possible existence of a source of waves of the proper scale size to trigger instabilities in middle atmospheric circulation systems may be significant in the study of lower atmospheric response to geomagnetic activity

Eddy intrustion of hot plasma into the polar cap and formation of polar-cap arcs

Under the simple postulate that multiple large scale detachable magnetospheric convection eddies can exist in the vicinity of the convection reversal boundary and in the polar cap, by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability or otherwise, it is shown that a number of seemingly disconnected plasma and electric field observations in the polar cap can be organized into a theory of magnetosheath and plasmasheet plasma intrusion into the polar cap. Current theory of inverted V structures then predicts existence of similar, but weaker, structures at the eddy convection reversal boundaries in the polar cap. A possible consequence is that the polar cap auroras are natural offshoots from discrete oval arcs and evidently are formed by similar processes. The two arc systems can occassionally produce an optical image in the form of the theta aurora

Effective models of two-flavor QCD: from small towards large mqm_q

We study effective models of chiral fields and Polyakov loop expected to describe the dynamics responsible for the phase structure of two-flavor QCD. We consider chiral sector described either using linear sigma model or Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model and study how these models, on the mean-field level when coupled with the Polyakov loop, behave as a function of increasing bare quark (or pion) mass. We find qualitatively similar behaviors for the cases of linear sigma model and Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model and, relating to existing lattice data, show that one cannot conclusively decide which or the two approximate symmetries drives the phase transitions near the physical point

Kinetic response of ionospheric ions to onset of auroral electric fields

Examination of the exact analytic solution of a kinetic model of collisional interaction of ionospheric fions with atmospheric neutrals in the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook approximation, shows that the onset of intense auroral electric fields in the topside ionosphere can produce the following kinetic effects: (1) heat the bulk ionospheric ions to approximately 2 eV, thus driving them up to higher altitudes where they can be subjected to collisionless plasma processes; (2) produce a nonMaxwellian superthermal tail in the distribution function; and (3) cause the ion distribution function to be anisotropic with respect to the magnetic field with the perpendicular average thermal energy exceeding the parallel thermal energy

Effects of turbulence on a kinetic auroral arc model

A plasma kinetic model of an inverted-V auroral arc structure which includes the effects of electrostatic turbulence is proposed. In the absence of turbulence, a parallel potential drop is supported by magnetic mirror forces and charge quasi neutrality, with energetic auroral ions penetrating to low altitudes; relative to the electrons, the ions' pitch angle distribution is skewed toward smaller pitch angles. The electrons energized by the potential drop form a current which excites electrostatic turbulence. In equilibrium the plasma is marginally stable. The conventional anomalous resistivity contribution to the potential drop is very small. Anomalous resistivity processes are far too dissipative to be powered by auroral particles. It is concluded that under certain circumstances equilibrium may be impossible and relaxation oscillations set in

Auroral magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling: A brief topical review

Auroral arcs result from the acceleration and precipitation of magnetospheric plasma in narrow regions characterized by strong electric fields both perpendicular and parallel to the earth's magnetic field. The various mechanisms that were proposed for the origin of such strong electric fields are often complementary Such mechanisms include: (1) electrostatic double layers; (2) double reverse shock; (3) anomalous resistivity; (4) magnetic mirroring of hot plasma; and (5) mapping of the magnetospheric-convection electric field through an auroral discontinuity

Processing of insect retrotransposons by self-cleaving ribozymes

We show that several classes of insect non-LTR retrotransposons harbor self-cleaving ribozymes of the HDV family at their 5′ termini. In Drosophila the R2 ribozymes exhibit highly differential in vivo expression and robust in vitro activity, modulated by an upstream sequence originating from the insertion site. Our data suggest a role for self-cleaving ribozymes in co-transcriptional processing of retrotransposons with implications for downstream events, including translation and retrotransposition

Two-dimensional quasineutral description of particles and fields above discrete auroral arcs

Stationary hot and cool particle distributions in the auroral magnetosphere are modelled using adiabatic assumptions of particle motion in the presence of broad-scale electrostatic potential structure. The study has identified geometrical restrictions on the type of broadscale potential structure which can be supported by a multispecies plasma having specified sources and energies. Without energization of cool thermal ionospheric electrons, a substantial parallel potential drop cannot be supported down to altitudes of 2000 km or less. Observed upward-directed field-aligned currents must be closed by return currents along field lines which support little net potential drop. In such regions the plasma density appears significantly enhanced. Model details agree well with recent broad-scale implications of satellite observations

On computations of the integrated space shuttle flowfield using overset grids

Numerical simulations using the thin-layer Navier-Stokes equations and chimera (overset) grid approach were carried out for flows around the integrated space shuttle vehicle over a range of Mach numbers. Body-conforming grids were used for all the component grids. Testcases include a three-component overset grid - the external tank (ET), the solid rocket booster (SRB) and the orbiter (ORB), and a five-component overset grid - the ET, SRB, ORB, forward and aft attach hardware, configurations. The results were compared with the wind tunnel and flight data. In addition, a Poisson solution procedure (a special case of the vorticity-velocity formulation) using primitive variables was developed to solve three-dimensional, irrotational, inviscid flows for single as well as overset grids. The solutions were validated by comparisons with other analytical or numerical solution, and/or experimental results for various geometries. The Poisson solution was also used as an initial guess for the thin-layer Navier-Stokes solution procedure to improve the efficiency of the numerical flow simulations. It was found that this approach resulted in roughly a 30 percent CPU time savings as compared with the procedure solving the thin-layer Navier-Stokes equations from a uniform free stream flowfield

Taking a Razor to Dark Matter Parameter Space at the LHC

Dark matter (DM) has been searched for at colliders in a largely model independent fashion by looking for an excess number of events involving a single jet, or photon, and missing energy. We investigate the possibility of looking for excesses in more inclusive jet channels. Events with multiple jets contain more information and thus more handles to increase the signal to background ratio. In particular, we adapt the recent CMS "razor" analysis from a search for supersymmetry to a search for DM. We consider simplified models where DM is a Dirac fermion that couples to the quarks of the Standard Model (SM) through exchange of vector or axial-vector mediators or to gluons through scalar exchange. We consider both light and heavy (leading to effective contact interactions) mediators. Since the razor analysis requires multiple jets in the final state, the data set is complementary to that used for the monojet search and thus the bounds can be combined.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures; v2 published version; v3 removes duplication of manuscript in pd