Information Flow in an R and D Laboratory

Statistical analysis of hypotheses concerning roles of technological gatekeeper and primary groups in flow of information in small research and development laborator

The Dynamics of Stellar Coronae Harboring Hot-jupiters II. A Space Weather Event on A Hot-jupiter

We carry out a numerical simulation depicting the effects of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) event on a close-in giant planet in an extrasolar system. We drive the CME in a similar manner as in simulations of space weather events on Earth. The simulation includes the planetary orbital motion, which leads to the forming of a comet-like planetary magnetotail which is oriented almost perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the CME. The combination of this feature and the fact that the CME does not expand much by the time it reaches the planet leads to a unique CME-magnetosphere interaction, where the CME itself is highly affected by the presence of the planetary magnetosphere. We find that the planet is well-shielded from CME penetration, even for a relatively weak internal magnetic field. The planetary angular momentum loss associated with such an event is negligible compared to the total planetary angular momentum. We also find that the energy which is deposited in the magnetosphere is much higher than in the case of the Earth, and our simulation suggests there is a large-scale change in the orientation of the magnetosphere-ionosphere current system during the CME event.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, accepted to Ap

An Update on the 0Z Project

We give an update on our 0Z Survey to find more extremely metal poor (EMP) stars with [Fe/H] < -3 dex through mining the database of the Hamburg/ESO Survey. We present the most extreme such stars we have found from ~1550 moderate resolution follow up spectra. One of these, HE1424-0241, has highly anomalous abundance ratios not seen in any previously known halo giant, with very deficient Si, moderately deficient Ca and Ti, highly enhanced Mn and Co, and low C, all with respect to Fe. We suggest a SNII where the nucleosynthetic yield for explosive alpha-burning nuclei was very low compared to that for the hydrostatic alpha-burning element Mg, which is normal in this star relative to Fe. A second, less extreme, outlier star with high [Sc/Fe] has also been found. We examine the extremely metal-poor tail of the HES metallicity distribution function (MDF). We suggest on the basis of comparison of our high resolution detailed abundance analyses with [Fe/H](HES) for stars in our sample that the MDF inferred from follow up spectra of the HES sample of candidate EMP stars is heavily contaminated for [Fe/H](HES) < -3 dex; many of the supposed EMP stars below that metallicity are of substantially higher Fe-metallicity, including most of the very C-rich stars, or are spurious objects.Comment: to appear in conference proceedings "First Stars III", ed. B. O'Shea, A. Heger & T.Abel, 4 pages, 2 figure

Lower Bounds in the Preprocessing and Query Phases of Routing Algorithms

In the last decade, there has been a substantial amount of research in finding routing algorithms designed specifically to run on real-world graphs. In 2010, Abraham et al. showed upper bounds on the query time in terms of a graph's highway dimension and diameter for the current fastest routing algorithms, including contraction hierarchies, transit node routing, and hub labeling. In this paper, we show corresponding lower bounds for the same three algorithms. We also show how to improve a result by Milosavljevic which lower bounds the number of shortcuts added in the preprocessing stage for contraction hierarchies. We relax the assumption of an optimal contraction order (which is NP-hard to compute), allowing the result to be applicable to real-world instances. Finally, we give a proof that optimal preprocessing for hub labeling is NP-hard. Hardness of optimal preprocessing is known for most routing algorithms, and was suspected to be true for hub labeling

Femtosecond transparency in the extreme ultraviolet

Electromagnetically induced transparency-like behavior in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) is studied theoretically, including the effect of intense 800 nm laser dressing of He 2s2p (1Po) and 2p^2 (1Se) autoionizing states. We present an ab initio solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation (TDSE) in an LS-coupling configuration interaction basis set. The method enables a rigorous treatment of optical field ionization of these coupled autoionizing states into the N = 2 continuum in addition to N = 1. Our calculated transient absorption spectra show encouraging agreement with experiment.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

The Interaction of Venus-like, M-dwarf Planets with the Stellar Wind of Their Host Star

We study the interaction between the atmospheres of Venus-like, non-magnetized exoplanets orbiting an M-dwarf star, and the stellar wind using a multi-species Magnetohydrodynaic (MHD) model. We focus our investigation on the effect of enhanced stellar wind and enhanced EUV flux as the planetary distance from the star decreases. Our simulations reveal different topologies of the planetary space environment for sub- and super-Alfvenic stellar wind conditions, which could lead to dynamic energy deposition in to the atmosphere during the transition along the planetary orbit. We find that the stellar wind penetration for non-magnetized planets is very deep, up to a few hundreds of kilometers. We estimate a lower limit for the atmospheric mass-loss rate and find that it is insignificant over the lifetime of the planet. However, we predict that when accounting for atmospheric ion acceleration, a significant amount of the planetary atmosphere could be eroded over the course of a billion years.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, accepted to Ap

The Coronal Structure of AB Doradus

We perform a numerical simulation of the corona of the young, rapidly rotating K0 dwarf AB Doradus using a global MHD model. The model is driven by a surface map of the radial magnetic field constructed using Zeeman-Doppler Imaging. We find that the global structure of the stellar corona is dominated by strong azimuthal tangling of the magnetic field due to the rapid rotation. The MHD solution enables us to calculate realistic Alfv\'en surfaces and we can therefore estimate the stellar mass loss rate and angular momentum loss rate without making undue theoretical simplifications. We consider three cases, parametrized by the base density of the corona, that span the range of possible solutions for the system. We find that overall, the mass and angular-momentum loss rates are higher than in the solar case; the mass loss rates are 10 to 500 times higher, and the angular momentum loss rate can be up to $3\times{10}^4$ higher than present day solar values. Our simulations show that this model can be use to constrain the wide parameter space of stellar systems. It also shows that an MHD approach can provide more information about the physical system over the commonly used potential field extrapolation.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

Effects of Preference for Attachment to Low-degree Nodes on the Degree Distributions of a Growing Directed Network and a Simple Food-Web Model

We study the growth of a directed network, in which the growth is constrained by the cost of adding links to the existing nodes. We propose a new preferential-attachment scheme, in which a new node attaches to an existing node i with probability proportional to 1/k_i, where k_i is the number of outgoing links at i. We calculate the degree distribution for the outgoing links in the asymptotic regime (t->infinity), both analytically and by Monte Carlo simulations. The distribution decays like k c^k/Gamma(k) for large k, where c is a constant. We investigate the effect of this preferential-attachment scheme, by comparing the results to an equivalent growth model with a degree-independent probability of attachment, which gives an exponential outdegree distribution. Also, we relate this mechanism to simple food-web models by implementing it in the cascade model. We show that the low-degree preferential-attachment mechanism breaks the symmetry between in- and outdegree distributions in the cascade model. It also causes a faster decay in the tails of the outdegree distributions for both our network growth model and the cascade model.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. A new figure added. Minor modifications made in the tex

Model Independent Extraction of ∣Vbc∣|V_{\rm bc}| Without Heavy Quark Symmetry

A new method to extract $|V_{\rm bc}|$ is proposed based on a sum--rule for semileptonic decays of the $B$ meson. The method relies on much weaker assumptions than previous approaches which are based on heavy--quark symmetry. This sum--rule only relies on the assumption that the virtual $c \overline{c}$ pair content of the $B$ meson can be neglected. The extraction of the CKM matrix element also requires that the sum--rule saturates in the kinematically accessible region.Comment: 10 pages revtex3 manuscript. No figures, U. of MD PP #94--086. With our apologies, some innocuous errors corrected and some references added that had been brought to our attentio