9,946 research outputs found
Lepton asymmetry and primordial nucleosynthesis in the era of precision cosmology
We calculate and display the primordial light-element abundances as a
function of a neutrino degeneracy parameter \xi common to all flavors. It is
the only unknown parameter characterizing the thermal medium at the primordial
nucleosynthesis epoch. The observed primordial helium abundance Y_p is the most
sensitive cosmic ``leptometer.'' Adopting the conservative Y_p error analysis
of Olive and Skillman implies -0.04 \alt \xi \alt 0.07 whereas the errors
stated by Izotov and Thuan imply \xi=0.0245+-0.0092 (1 sigma). Improved
determinations of the baryon abundance have no significant impact on this
situation. A determination of Y_p that reliably distinguishes between a
vanishing or nonvanishing \xi is a crucial test of the cosmological standard
assumption that sphaleron effects equilibrate the cosmic lepton and baryon
asymmetries.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; minor changes, references added, replaced to
match the published version in PRD (Brief Reports
Megasonic Enhanced Electrodeposition
A novel way of filling high aspect ratio vertical interconnection (microvias)
with an aspect ratio of >2:1 is presented. High frequency acoustic streaming at
megasonic frequencies enables the decrease of the Nernst-diffusion layer down
to the sub-micron range, allowing thereby conformal electrodeposition in deep
grooves. Higher throughput and better control over the deposition properties
are possible for the manufacturing of interconnections and metal-based MEMS.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association
(http://irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/16838
Self-induced decoherence in dense neutrino gases
Dense neutrino gases exhibit collective oscillations where "self-maintained
coherence" is a characteristic feature, i.e., neutrinos of different energies
oscillate with the same frequency. In a non-isotropic gas, however, the flux
term of the neutrino-neutrino interaction has the opposite effect of causing
kinematical decoherence of neutrinos propagating in different directions, an
effect that is at the origin of the "multi-angle behavior" of neutrinos
streaming off a supernova core. We cast the equations of motion in a form where
the role of the flux term is manifest. We study in detail the symmetric case of
equal neutrino and antineutrino densities where the evolution consists of
collective pair conversions ("bipolar oscillations"). A gas of this sort is
unstable in that an infinitesimal anisotropy is enough to trigger a run-away
towards flavor equipartition. The "self-maintained coherence" of a perfectly
isotropic gas gives way to "self-induced decoherence."Comment: Revtex, 16 pages, 12 figure
Reverse engineering of CAD models via clustering and approximate implicitization
In applications like computer aided design, geometric models are often
represented numerically as polynomial splines or NURBS, even when they
originate from primitive geometry. For purposes such as redesign and
isogeometric analysis, it is of interest to extract information about the
underlying geometry through reverse engineering. In this work we develop a
novel method to determine these primitive shapes by combining clustering
analysis with approximate implicitization. The proposed method is automatic and
can recover algebraic hypersurfaces of any degree in any dimension. In exact
arithmetic, the algorithm returns exact results. All the required parameters,
such as the implicit degree of the patches and the number of clusters of the
model, are inferred using numerical approaches in order to obtain an algorithm
that requires as little manual input as possible. The effectiveness, efficiency
and robustness of the method are shown both in a theoretical analysis and in
numerical examples implemented in Python
Room temperature dynamic correlation between methylammonium molecules in lead-iodine based perovskites: An ab-initio molecular dynamics perspective
The high efficiency of lead organo-metal-halide perovskite solar cells has
raised many questions about the role of the methylammonium (MA) molecules in
the Pb-I framework. Experiments indicate that the MA molecules are able to
'freely' spin around at room temperature even though they carry an intrinsic
dipole moment. We have performed large supercell (2592 atoms) finite
temperature ab-initio molecular dynamics calculations to study the correlation
between the molecules in the framework. An underlying long range
anti-ferroelectric ordering of the molecular dipoles is observed. The dynamical
correlation between neighboring molecules shows a maximum around room
temperature in the mid-temperature phase. In this phase, the rotations are slow
enough to (partially) couple to neighbors via the Pb-I cage. This results in a
collective motion of neighboring molecules in which the cage acts as the
mediator. At lower and higher temperatures the motions are less correlated
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