1,182 research outputs found
The Kaon B-parameter in Mixed Action Chiral Perturbation Theory
We calculate the kaon B-parameter, B_K, in chiral perturbation theory for a
partially quenched, mixed action theory with Ginsparg-Wilson valence quarks and
staggered sea quarks. We find that the resulting expression is similar to that
in the continuum, and in fact has only two additional unknown parameters. At
one-loop order, taste-symmetry violations in the staggered sea sector only
contribute to flavor-disconnected diagrams by generating an O(a^2) shift to the
masses of taste-singlet sea-sea mesons. Lattice discretization errors also give
rise to an analytic term which shifts the tree-level value of B_K by an amount
of O(a^2). This term, however, is not strictly due to taste-breaking, and is
therefore also present in the expression for B_K for pure G-W lattice fermions.
We also present a numerical study of the mixed B_K expression in order to
demonstrate that both discretization errors and finite volume effects are small
and under control on the MILC improved staggered lattices.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures; Expanded spurion discussion, other discussions
clarified, version to appear in PR
Paramagnetic metalloporphyrins as potential contrast agents in NMR imaging
AbstractSeveral water-soluble paramagnetic metalloporphyrins were found to increase significantly the relaxation rate (1/T1) of water. Such compounds are known to be selectively retained by tumors in animals, and consequently we identify them as potential contrast agents for tumors in NMR imaging
Loss of buoyancy control in the copepod Calanus finmarchicus
A mechanism is demonstrated that could explain large-scale aggregations of lipid-rich copepods in the surface waters of marine environments. Laboratory experiments establish that changes in salinity and temperature induce lipid-mediated buoyancy instability that entrains copepods in surface waters. Reduced hydrostatic pressure associated with forced ascent of copepods at fjordic sills, shelf breaks and seamounts would also reduce the density of the lipid reserves, forcing copepods and particularly those in diapause to the surface. We propose that salinity, temperature and hydrodynamics of the physical environment, in conjunction with the biophysical properties of lipids, explain periodic high abundances of lipid-rich copepods in surface waters
Coulomb-hole summations and energies for GW calculations with limited number of empty orbitals: a modified static remainder approach
Ab initio GW calculations are a standard method for computing the
spectroscopic properties of many materials. The most computationally expensive
part in conventional implementations of the method is the generation and
summation over the large number of empty orbitals required to converge the
electron self energy. We propose a scheme to reduce the summation over empty
states by the use of a modified static-remainder approximation, which is simple
to implement and yields accurate self energies for both bulk and molecular
systems requiring a small fraction of the typical number of empty orbitals
Surface and lightning sources of nitrogen oxides over the United States: Magnitudes, chemical evolution, and outflow
We use observations from two aircraft during the ICARTT campaign over the eastern United States and North Atlantic during summer 2004, interpreted with a global 3-D model of tropospheric chemistry (GEOS-Chem) to test current understanding of regional sources, chemical evolution, and export of NOx. The boundary layer NOx data provide top-down verification of a 50% decrease in power plant and industry NOx emissions over the eastern United States between 1999 and 2004. Observed NOx concentrations at 8–12 km altitude were 0.55 ± 0.36 ppbv, much larger than in previous U.S. aircraft campaigns (ELCHEM, SUCCESS, SONEX) though consistent with data from the NOXAR program aboard commercial aircraft. We show that regional lightning is the dominant source of this upper tropospheric NOx and increases upper tropospheric ozone by 10 ppbv. Simulating ICARTT upper tropospheric NOx observations with GEOS-Chem requires a factor of 4 increase in modeled NOx yield per flash (to 500 mol/ flash). Observed OH concentrations were a factor of 2 lower than can be explained from current photochemical models, for reasons that are unclear. A NOy-CO correlation analysis of the fraction f of North American NOx emissions vented to the free troposphere as NOy (sum of NOx and its oxidation products) shows observed f = 16 ± 10% and modeled f = 14 ± 9%, consistent with previous studies. Export to the lower free troposphere is mostly HNO3 but at higher altitudes is mostly PAN. The model successfully simulates NOy export efficiency and speciation, supporting previous model estimates of a large U.S. anthropogenic contribution to global tropospheric ozone through PAN export
Sensitivity to grid resolution in the ability of a chemical transport model to simulate observed oxidant chemistry under high-isoprene conditions
Formation of ozone and organic aerosol in continental atmospheres depends on whether isoprene emitted by vegetation is oxidized by the high-NOx pathway (where peroxy radicals react with NO) or by low-NOx pathways (where peroxy radicals react by alternate channels, mostly with HO2). We used mixed layer observations from the SEAC4RS aircraft campaign over the Southeast US to test the ability of the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model at different grid resolutions (0.25° × 0.3125°, 2° × 2.5°, 4° × 5°) to simulate this chemistry under high-isoprene, variable-NOx conditions. Observations of isoprene and NOx over the Southeast US show a negative correlation, reflecting the spatial segregation of emissions; this negative correlation is captured in the model at 0.25° × 0.3125° resolution but not at coarser resolutions. As a result, less isoprene oxidation takes place by the high-NOx pathway in the model at 0.25° × 0.3125° resolution (54 %) than at coarser resolution (59 %). The cumulative probability distribution functions (CDFs) of NOx, isoprene, and ozone concentrations show little difference across model resolutions and good agreement with observations, while formaldehyde is overestimated at coarse resolution because excessive isoprene oxidation takes place by the high-NOx pathway with high formaldehyde yield. The good agreement of simulated and observed concentration variances implies that smaller-scale non-linearities (urban and power plant plumes) are not important on the regional scale. Correlations of simulated vs. observed concentrations do not improve with grid resolution because finer modes of variability are intrinsically more difficult to capture. Higher model resolution leads to decreased conversion of NOx to organic nitrates and increased conversion to nitric acid, with total reactive nitrogen oxides (NOy) changing little across model resolutions. Model concentrations in the lower free troposphere are also insensitive to grid resolution. The overall low sensitivity of modeled concentrations to grid resolution implies that coarse resolution is adequate when modeling continental boundary layer chemistry for global applications
Generalized messengers of supersymmetry breaking and the sparticle mass spectrum
We investigate the sparticle spectrum in models of gauge-mediated
supersymmetry breaking. In these models, supersymmetry is spontaneously broken
at an energy scale only a few orders of magnitude above the electroweak scale.
The breakdown of supersymmetry is communicated to the standard model particles
and their superpartners by "messenger" fields through their ordinary gauge
interactions. We study the effects of a messenger sector in which the
supersymmetry-violating F-term contributions to messenger scalar masses are
comparable to the supersymmetry-preserving ones. We also argue that it is not
particularly natural to restrict attention to models in which the messenger
fields lie in complete SU(5) GUT multiplets, and we identify a much larger
class of viable models. Remarkably, however, we find that the superpartner mass
parameters in these models are still subject to many significant contraints.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, uses epsf.sty, 4 figures. Assumptions clarified,
numerical bounds tweaked, typos correcte
Infrared alignment of SUSY flavor structures
The various experimental bounds on flavor-changing interactions severely
restrict the low-energy flavor structures of soft supersymmetry breaking
parameters. In this work, we show that with a particular assumption of Yukawa
couplings, the fermion mass and sfermion soft mass matrices are simultaneously
diagonalized by common mixing matrices and we then obtain an alignment solution
for the flavor problems. The required condition is generated by renormalization
group evolutions and achieved at low-energy scale independently of high-energy
structures of couplings. In this case, the diagonal entries of the soft scalar
mass matrices are determined by gaugino and Higgs soft masses. We also discuss
possible realizations of this scenario and the characteristic sparticle
spectrum in the models.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
Why do models overestimate surface ozone in the Southeast United States
Ozone pollution in the Southeast US involves complex chemistry driven by emissions of anthropogenic nitrogen oxide radicals (NOx ≡ NO + NO2) and biogenic isoprene. Model estimates of surface ozone concentrations tend to be biased high in the region and this is of concern for designing effective emission control strategies to meet air quality standards. We use detailed chemical observations from the SEAC4RS aircraft campaign in August and September 2013, interpreted with the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model at 0.25° × 0.3125° horizontal resolution, to better understand the factors controlling surface ozone in the Southeast US. We find that the National Emission Inventory (NEI) for NOx from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is too high. This finding is based on SEAC4RS observations of NOx and its oxidation products, surface network observations of nitrate wet deposition fluxes, and OMI satellite observations of tropospheric NO2 columns. Our results indicate that NEI NOx emissions from mobile and industrial sources must be reduced by 30–60 %, dependent on the assumption of the contribution by soil NOx emissions. Upper-tropospheric NO2 from lightning makes a large contribution to satellite observations of tropospheric NO2 that must be accounted for when using these data to estimate surface NOx emissions. We find that only half of isoprene oxidation proceeds by the high-NOx pathway to produce ozone; this fraction is only moderately sensitive to changes in NOx emissions because isoprene and NOx emissions are spatially segregated. GEOS-Chem with reduced NOx emissions provides an unbiased simulation of ozone observations from the aircraft and reproduces the observed ozone production efficiency in the boundary layer as derived from a regression of ozone and NOx oxidation products. However, the model is still biased high by 6 ± 14 ppb relative to observed surface ozone in the Southeast US. Ozonesondes launched during midday hours show a 7 ppb ozone decrease from 1.5 km to the surface that GEOS-Chem does not capture. This bias may reflect a combination of excessive vertical mixing and net ozone production in the model boundary layer
Anomaly Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking in Four Dimensions, Naturally
We present a simple four-dimensional model in which anomaly mediated
supersymmetry breaking naturally dominates. The central ingredient is that the
hidden sector is near a strongly-coupled infrared fixed-point for several
decades of energy below the Planck scale. Strong renormalization effects then
sequester the hidden sector from the visible sector. Supersymmetry is broken
dynamically and requires no small input parameters. The model provides a
natural and economical explanation of the hierarchy between the
supersymmetry-breaking scale and the Planck scale, while allowing anomaly
mediation to address the phenomenological challenges posed by weak scale
supersymmetry. In particular, flavor-changing neutral currents are naturally
near their experimental limits.Comment: 14 pages, Late
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