1,702 research outputs found
Young star clusters in the interacting galaxies of Hickson Compact Group 90
Deep images of Hickson Compact Group 90 (HCG 90) have been obtained using the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope. We report results for star clusters observed in the interacting pair of galaxies NGC 7174 and NGC 7176. We present magnitude and colour distributions for the observed cluster population and find that the majority of objects show colours similar to intermediate/old age (>1 Gyr) globular clusters. However, a significant population of blue star clusters are also observed which may have formed from the tidal interaction currently occurring between the two galaxies. We find luminosity function turnover magnitudes of [Math Processing Error] and [Math Processing Error] for the g and z bands, respectively, implying distances of Dg = 28.8 ± 2.6 Mpc and Dz = 34.7 ± 3.1 Mpc to these galaxies, using the globular cluster luminosity function method. Lastly, we determine a total cluster population of approximately NGC ≃ 212 ± 10 over all magnitudes and a low specific frequency of SN ∼ 0.6 ± 0.1 for this pair of interacting elliptical and spiral galaxies. The small globular cluster population is likely due to tidal interactions taking place between the two galaxies which may have stripped many progenitor clusters away and formed the diffuse light observed at the core of HCG 90
Domain Bubbles of Extra Dimensions
``Dimension bubbles'' of the type previously studied by Blau and Guendelman
[S.K. Blau and E.I. Guendelman, Phys. Rev. D40, 1909 (1989)], which effectively
enclose a region of 5d spacetime and are surrounded by a region of 4d
spacetime, can arise in a 5d theory with a compact extra dimension that is
dimensionally reduced to give an effective 4d theory. These bubbles with thin
domain walls can be stabilized against total collapse in a rather natural way
by a scalar field which, as in the case with ``ordinary'' nontopological
solitons, traps light scalar particles inside the bubble.Comment: 13 pages, no figures; to appear in Phys.Rev.
Modelling the influence of RKIP on the ERK signalling pathway using the stochastic process algebra PEPA
This paper examines the influence of the Raf Kinase Inhibitor Protein (RKIP) on the Extracellular signal Regulated Kinase (ERK) signalling pathway [5] through modelling in a Markovian process algebra, PEPA [11]. Two models of the system are presented, a reagent-centric view and a pathway-centric view. The models capture functionality at the level of subpathway, rather than at a molecular level. Each model affords a different perspective of the pathway and analysis. We demonstrate the two models to be formally equivalent using the timing-aware bisimulation defined over PEPA models and discuss the biological significance
Stability and Complexity of Minimising Probabilistic Automata
We consider the state-minimisation problem for weighted and probabilistic
automata. We provide a numerically stable polynomial-time minimisation
algorithm for weighted automata, with guaranteed bounds on the numerical error
when run with floating-point arithmetic. Our algorithm can also be used for
"lossy" minimisation with bounded error. We show an application in image
compression. In the second part of the paper we study the complexity of the
minimisation problem for probabilistic automata. We prove that the problem is
NP-hard and in PSPACE, improving a recent EXPTIME-result.Comment: This is the full version of an ICALP'14 pape
Tachyon Kinks in Boundary String Field Theory
We study tachyon kinks with and without electromagnetic fields in the context
of boundary string field theory. For the case of pure tachyon only an array of
kink-antikink is obtained. In the presence of electromagnetic coupling, all
possible static codimension-one soliton solutions such as array of
kink-antikink, single topological BPS kink, bounce, half kink, as well as
nonBPS topological kink are found, and their properties including the
interpretation as branes are analyzed in detail. Spectrum of the obtained kinks
coincides with that of Dirac-Born-Infeld type effective theory.Comment: LaTex, 29 pages, 17 Figure
Evolution of Tachyon Kink with Electric Field
We investigate the decay of an inhomogeneous D1-brane wrapped on a with
an electric field. The model that we consider consists of an array of tachyon
kink and anti-kink with a constant electric flux. Beginning with an initially
static configuration, we numerically evolve the tachyon field with some
perturbations under a fixed boundary condition at diametrically opposite points
on the circle . When the electric flux is smaller than the critical value,
the tachyon kink becomes unstable; the tachyon field rolls down the potential,
and the lower dimensional D0- and -brane become thin, which
resembles the caustic formation known for this type of the system in the
literature. For the supercritical values of the electric flux, the tachyon kink
remains stable.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures, some changes, one reference added, version to
appear in JHE
Continuous and correlated nucleation during nonstandard island growth at Ag/Si(111)-7x7 heteroepitaxy
We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of submonolayer
heteroepitaxial growth of Ag on Si(111)-7x7 at temperatures from 420 K to 550 K
when Ag atoms can easily diffuse on the surface and the reconstruction 7x7
remains stable. STM measurements for coverages from 0.05 ML to 0.6 ML show that
there is an excess of smallest islands (each of them fills up just one
half-unit cell - HUC) in all stages of growth. Formation of 2D wetting layer
proceeds by continuous nucleation of the smallest islands in the proximity of
larger 2D islands (extended over several HUCs) and following coalescence with
them. Such a growth scenario is verified by kinetic Monte Carlo simulation
which uses a coarse-grained model based on a limited capacity of HUC and a
mechanism which increases nucleation probability in a neighbourhood of already
saturated HUCs (correlated nucleation). The model provides a good fit for
experimental dependences of the relative number of Ag-occupied HUCs and the
preference in occupation of faulted HUCs on temperature and amount of deposited
Ag. Parameters obtained for the hopping of Ag adatoms between HUCs agree with
those reported earlier for initial stages of growth. The model provides two new
parameters - maximum number of Ag atoms inside HUC, and on HUC boundary.Comment: LaTeX2e, BibTeX, 9 pages, 7 images, accepted to Phys. Rev.
Absence of a metallic phase in random-bond Ising models in two dimensions: applications to disordered superconductors and paired quantum Hall states
When the two-dimensional random-bond Ising model is represented as a
noninteracting fermion problem, it has the same symmetries as an ensemble of
random matrices known as class D. A nonlinear sigma model analysis of the
latter in two dimensions has previously led to the prediction of a metallic
phase, in which the fermion eigenstates at zero energy are extended. In this
paper we argue that such behavior cannot occur in the random-bond Ising model,
by showing that the Ising spin correlations in the metallic phase violate the
bound on such correlations that results from the reality of the Ising
couplings. Some types of disorder in spinless or spin-polarized p-wave
superconductors and paired fractional quantum Hall states allow a mapping onto
an Ising model with real but correlated bonds, and hence a metallic phase is
not possible there either. It is further argued that vortex disorder, which is
generic in the fractional quantum Hall applications, destroys the ordered or
weak-pairing phase, in which nonabelian statistics is obtained in the pure
case.Comment: 13 pages; largely independent of cond-mat/0007254; V. 2: as publishe
Charge and mass effects on the evaporation of higher-dimensional rotating black holes
To study the dynamics of discharge of a brane black hole in TeV gravity
scenarios, we obtain the approximate electromagnetic field due to the charged
black hole, by solving Maxwell's equations perturbatively on the brane. In
addition, arguments are given for brane metric corrections due to backreaction.
We couple brane scalar and brane fermion fields with non-zero mass and charge
to the background, and study the Hawking radiation process using well known low
energy approximations as well as a WKB approximation in the high energy limit.
We argue that contrary to common claims, the initial evaporation is not
dominated by fast Schwinger discharge.Comment: Published version. Minor typos corrected. 29 pages, 5 figure
Magnetic Field Effects on the Transport Properties of One-sided Rough Wires
We present a detailed numerical analysis of the effect of a magnetic field on
the transport properties of a `small-' one-sided surface disordered wire.
When time reversal symmetry is broken due to a magnetic field , we find a
strong increase with not only of the localization length but also of
the mean free path caused by boundary states. Despite this, the
universal relationship between and does hold. We also analyze the
conductance distribution at the metal-insulator crossover, finding a very good
agreement with Random Matrix Theory with two fluctuating channels within the
Circular Orthogonal(Unitary) Ensemble in absence(presence) of Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
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