40,390 research outputs found
Volitional control of anticipatory ocular smooth pursuit after viewing, but not pursuing, a moving target: evidence for a re-afferent velocity store
Although human subjects cannot normally initiate smooth eye movements in the absence of a moving target, previous experiments have established that such movements can be evoked if the subject is required to pursue a regularly repeated, transient target motion stimulus. We sought to determine whether active pursuit was necessary to evoke such an anticipatory response or whether it could be induced after merely viewing the target motion. Subjects were presented with a succession of ramp target motion stimuli of identical velocity and alternating direction in the horizontal axis. In initial experiments, the target was exposed for only 120 ms as it passed through centre, with a constant interval between presentations. Ramp velocity was varied from +/- 9 to 45 degrees/s in one set of trials; the interval between ramp presentations was varied from 640 to 1920 ms in another. Subjects were instructed either to pursue the moving target from the first presentation or to hold fixation on another, stationary target during the first one, two or three presentations of the moving display. Without fixation, the first smooth movement was initiated with a mean latency of 95 ms after target onset, but with repeated presentations anticipatory smooth movements started to build up before target onset. In contrast, when the subjects fixated the stationary target for three presentations of the moving target, the first movement they made was already anticipatory and had a peak velocity that was significantly greater than that of the first response without prior fixation. The conditions of experiment 1 were repeated in experiment 3 with a longer duration of target exposure (480 ms), to allow higher eye velocities to build up. Again, after three prior fixations, the anticipatory velocity measured at 100 ms after target onset (when visual feedback would be expected to start) was not significantly different to that evoked after the subjects had made three active pursuit responses to the same target motion, reaching a mean of 20 degrees/s for a 50 degrees/s target movement. In a further experiment, we determined whether subjects could use stored information from prior active pursuit to generate anticipatory pursuit in darkness if there was a high expectancy that the target would reappear with identical velocity. Subjects made one predictive response immediately after target disappearance, but very little response thereafter until the time at which they expected the target to reappear, when they were again able to re-vitalize the anticipatory response before target appearance. The findings of these experiments provide evidence that information related to target velocity can be stored and used to generate future anticipatory responses even in the absence of eye movement. This suggests that information for storage is probably derived from a common pre-motor drive signal that is inhibited during fixation, rather than an efference copy of eye movement itself. Furthermore, a high level of expectancy of target appearance can facilitate the release of this stored information in darkness
Soft-gluon effects in WW production at hadron colliders
We consider QCD radiative corrections to WW pair production in hadron
collisions. We perform a calculation that consistently combines next-to-leading
order predictions with soft-gluon resummation valid at small transverse momenta
ptWW of the WW pair. We present results for the ptWW distribution at the LHC up
to (almost) next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, and study the effect
of resummation on the charged-lepton distributions. Soft-gluon effects are
typically mild, but they can be strongly enhanced when hard cuts are applied.
The relevant distributions are generally well described by the MC@NLO event
generator.Comment: 15 pages, 12 postscript figures. Error corrected in NLO plot for WW
transverse-mass distribution. Results unchange
Post-Impact Thermal Evolution of Porous Planetesimals
Impacts between planetesimals have largely been ruled out as a heat source in
the early Solar System, by calculations that show them to be an inefficient
heat source and unlikely to cause global heating. However, the long-term,
localized thermal effects of impacts on planetesimals have never been fully
quantified. Here, we simulate a range of impact scenarios between planetesimals
to determine the post-impact thermal histories of the parent bodies, and hence
the importance of impact heating in the thermal evolution of planetesimals. We
find on a local scale that heating material to petrologic type 6 is achievable
for a range of impact velocities and initial porosities, and impact melting is
possible in porous material at a velocity of > 4 km/s. Burial of heated
impactor material beneath the impact crater is common, insulating that material
and allowing the parent body to retain the heat for extended periods (~
millions of years). Cooling rates at 773 K are typically 1 - 1000 K/Ma,
matching a wide range of measurements of metallographic cooling rates from
chondritic materials. While the heating presented here is localized to the
impact site, multiple impacts over the lifetime of a parent body are likely to
have occurred. Moreover, as most meteorite samples are on the centimeter to
meter scale, the localized effects of impact heating cannot be ignored.Comment: 38 pages, 9 figures, Revised for Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta
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QCD Factorization for Semi-Inclusive Deep-Inelastic Scattering at Low Transverse Momentum
We demonstrate a factorization formula for semi-inclusive deep-inelastic
scattering with hadrons in the current fragmentation region detected at low
transverse momentum. To facilitate the factorization, we introduce the
transverse-momentum dependent parton distributions and fragmentation functions
with gauge links slightly off the light-cone, and with soft-gluon radiations
subtracted. We verify the factorization to one-loop order in perturbative
quantum chromodynamics and argue that it is valid to all orders in perturbation
theory.Comment: 28 pages, figures include
Charmonia in moving frames
Lattice simulation of charmonium resonances with non-zero momentum provides
additional information on the two-meson scattering matrices. However, the
reduced rotational symmetry in a moving frame renders a number of states with
different in the same lattice irreducible representation. The
identification of for these states is particularly important, since
quarkonium spectra contain a number of states with different in a
relatively narrow energy region. Preliminary results concerning
spin-identification are presented in relation to our study of charmonium
resonances in flight on the Nf=2+1 CLS ensembles.Comment: 6 pages, presented at the 35th International Symposium on Lattice
Field Theory, 18-24 June 2017, Granada, Spai
Parametrized post-Newtonian virial theorem
Using the parametrized post-Newtonian equations of hydrodynamics, we derive
the tensor form of the parametrized post-Newtonian virial theorem.Comment: 10 pages, submitted to CQ
Hard-scattering factorization with heavy quarks: A general treatment
A detailed proof of hard scattering factorization is given with the inclusion
of heavy quark masses. Although the proof is explicitly given for
deep-inelastic scattering, the methods apply more generally The
power-suppressed corrections to the factorization formula are uniformly
suppressed by a power of \Lambda/Q, independently of the size of heavy quark
masses, M, relative to Q.Comment: 52 pages. Version as published plus correction of misprint in Eq.
(45
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