3,327 research outputs found
Flame detector operable in presence of proton radiation
A detector of ultraviolet radiation for operation in a space vehicle which orbits through high intensity radiation areas is described. Two identical ultraviolet sensor tubes are mounted within a shield which limits to acceptable levels the amount of proton radiation reaching the sensor tubes. The shield has an opening which permits ultraviolet radiation to reach one of the sensing tubes. The shield keeps ultraviolet radiation from reaching the other sensor tube, designated the reference tube. The circuitry of the detector subtracts the output of the reference tube from the output of the sensing tube, and any portion of the output of the sensing tube which is due to proton radiation is offset by the output of the reference tube. A delay circuit in the detector prevents false alarms by keeping statistical variations in the proton radiation sensed by the two sensor tubes from developing an output signal
Detecting the Cosmic Gravitational Wave Background with the Big Bang Observer
The detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) was one of
the most important cosmological discoveries of the last century. With the
development of interferometric gravitational wave detectors, we may be in a
position to detect the gravitational equivalent of the CMB in this century. The
Cosmic Gravitational Background (CGB) is likely to be isotropic and stochastic,
making it difficult to distinguish from instrument noise. The contribution from
the CGB can be isolated by cross-correlating the signals from two or more
independent detectors. Here we extend previous studies that considered the
cross-correlation of two Michelson channels by calculating the optimal signal
to noise ratio that can be achieved by combining the full set of interferometry
variables that are available with a six link triangular interferometer. In
contrast to the two channel case, we find that the relative orientation of a
pair of coplanar detectors does not affect the signal to noise ratio. We apply
our results to the detector design described in the Big Bang Observer (BBO)
mission concept study and find that BBO could detect a background with
.Comment: 15 pages, 12 Figure
Copper cable theft: revisiting the price–theft hypothesis
Objectives: To test the commonly espoused but little examined hypothesis that fluctuations in the price of metal are associated with changes in the volume of metal theft. Specifically, we analyze the relationship between the price of copper and the number of police recorded 'live’ copper cable thefts from the British railway network (2006 to 2012)
A survey of spinning test particle orbits in Kerr spacetime
We investigate the dynamics of the Papapetrou equations in Kerr spacetime.
These equations provide a model for the motion of a relativistic spinning test
particle orbiting a rotating (Kerr) black hole. We perform a thorough parameter
space search for signs of chaotic dynamics by calculating the Lyapunov
exponents for a large variety of initial conditions. We find that the
Papapetrou equations admit many chaotic solutions, with the strongest chaos
occurring in the case of eccentric orbits with pericenters close to the limit
of stability against plunge into a maximally spinning Kerr black hole. Despite
the presence of these chaotic solutions, we show that physically realistic
solutions to the Papapetrou equations are not chaotic; in all cases, the
chaotic solutions either do not correspond to realistic astrophysical systems,
or involve a breakdown of the test-particle approximation leading to the
Papapetrou equations (or both). As a result, the gravitational radiation from
bodies spiraling into much more massive black holes (as detectable, for
example, by LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) should not exhibit
any signs of chaos.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. D. Follow-up to gr-qc/0210042. Figures are
low-resolution in order to satisfy archive size constraints; a
high-resolution version is available at http://www.michaelhartl.com/papers
Extracting galactic binary signals from the first round of Mock LISA Data Challenges
We report on the performance of an end-to-end Bayesian analysis pipeline for
detecting and characterizing galactic binary signals in simulated LISA data.
Our principal analysis tool is the Blocked-Annealed Metropolis Hasting (BAM)
algorithm, which has been optimized to search for tens of thousands of
overlapping signals across the LISA band. The BAM algorithm employs Bayesian
model selection to determine the number of resolvable sources, and provides
posterior distribution functions for all the model parameters. The BAM
algorithm performed almost flawlessly on all the Round 1 Mock LISA Data
Challenge data sets, including those with many highly overlapping sources. The
only misses were later traced to a coding error that affected high frequency
sources. In addition to the BAM algorithm we also successfully tested a Genetic
Algorithm (GA), but only on data sets with isolated signals as the GA has yet
to be optimized to handle large numbers of overlapping signals.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Proceedings of GWDAW-11 (Berlin,
Dec. '06
Gravity Waves, Chaos, and Spinning Compact Binaries
Spinning compact binaries are shown to be chaotic in the Post-Newtonian
expansion of the two body system. Chaos by definition is the extreme
sensitivity to initial conditions and a consequent inability to predict the
outcome of the evolution. As a result, the spinning pair will have
unpredictable gravitational waveforms during coalescence. This poses a
challenge to future gravity wave observatories which rely on a match between
the data and a theoretical template.Comment: Final version published in PR
A Solution to the Galactic Foreground Problem for LISA
Low frequency gravitational wave detectors, such as the Laser Interferometer
Space Antenna (LISA), will have to contend with large foregrounds produced by
millions of compact galactic binaries in our galaxy. While these galactic
signals are interesting in their own right, the unresolved component can
obscure other sources. The science yield for the LISA mission can be improved
if the brighter and more isolated foreground sources can be identified and
regressed from the data. Since the signals overlap with one another we are
faced with a ``cocktail party'' problem of picking out individual conversations
in a crowded room. Here we present and implement an end-to-end solution to the
galactic foreground problem that is able to resolve tens of thousands of
sources from across the LISA band. Our algorithm employs a variant of the
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, which we call the Blocked Annealed
Metropolis-Hastings (BAM) algorithm. Following a description of the algorithm
and its implementation, we give several examples ranging from searches for a
single source to searches for hundreds of overlapping sources. Our examples
include data sets from the first round of Mock LISA Data Challenges.Comment: 19 pages, 27 figure
Chaotic Scattering and Capture of Strings by Black Hole
We consider scattering and capture of circular cosmic strings by a
Schwarzschild black hole. Although being a priori a very simple axially
symmetric two-body problem, it shows all the features of chaotic scattering. In
particular, it contains a fractal set of unstable periodic solutions; a
so-called strange repellor. We study the different types of trajectories and
obtain the fractal dimension of the basin-boundary separating the space of
initial conditions according to the different asymptotic outcomes. We also
consider the fractal dimension as a function of energy, and discuss the
transition from order to chaos.Comment: RevTeX 3.1, 9 pages, 5 figure
Chaos in Quantum Cosmology
Much of the foundational work on quantum cosmology employs a simple
minisuperspace model describing a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe
containing a massive scalar field. We show that the classical limit of this
model exhibits deterministic chaos and explore some of the consequences for the
quantum theory. In particular, the breakdown of the WKB approximation calls
into question many of the standard results in quantum cosmology.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTex two column style. Minor revisions and
clarifications to reflect version published in Phys. Rev. Let
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