1,282 research outputs found
New Measurements of the Particle Size Distribution of Apollo 11 Lunar Soil 10084
We have initiated a major new program to determine the grain size distribution of nearly all lunar soils collected in the Apollo program. Following the return of Apollo soil and core samples, a number of investigators including our own group performed grain size distribution studies and published the results [1-11]. Nearly all of these studies were done by sieving the samples, usually with a working fluid such as Freon(TradeMark) or water. We have measured the particle size distribution of lunar soil 10084,2005 in water, using a Microtrac(TradeMark) laser diffraction instrument. Details of our own sieving technique and protocol (also used in [11]). are given in [4]. While sieving usually produces accurate and reproducible results, it has disadvantages. It is very labor intensive and requires hours to days to perform properly. Even using automated sieve shaking devices, four or five days may be needed to sieve each sample, although multiple sieve stacks increases productivity. Second, sieving is subject to loss of grains through handling and weighing operations, and these losses are concentrated in the finest grain sizes. Loss from handling becomes a more acute problem when smaller amounts of material are used. While we were able to quantitatively sieve into 6 or 8 size fractions using starting soil masses as low as 50mg, attrition and handling problems limit the practicality of sieving smaller amounts. Third, sieving below 10 or 20microns is not practical because of the problems of grain loss, and smaller grains sticking to coarser grains. Sieving is completely impractical below about 5- 10microns. Consequently, sieving gives no information on the size distribution below approx.10 microns which includes the important submicrometer and nanoparticle size ranges. Finally, sieving creates a limited number of size bins and may therefore miss fine structure of the distribution which would be revealed by other methods that produce many smaller size bins
Modeling Life as Cognitive Info-Computation
This article presents a naturalist approach to cognition understood as a
network of info-computational, autopoietic processes in living systems. It
provides a conceptual framework for the unified view of cognition as evolved
from the simplest to the most complex organisms, based on new empirical and
theoretical results. It addresses three fundamental questions: what cognition
is, how cognition works and what cognition does at different levels of
complexity of living organisms. By explicating the info-computational character
of cognition, its evolution, agent-dependency and generative mechanisms we can
better understand its life-sustaining and life-propagating role. The
info-computational approach contributes to rethinking cognition as a process of
natural computation in living beings that can be applied for cognitive
computation in artificial systems.Comment: Manuscript submitted to Computability in Europe CiE 201
SL(2,C) Chern-Simons theory and the asymptotic behavior of the colored Jones polynomial
We clarify and refine the relation between the asymptotic behavior of the
colored Jones polynomial and Chern-Simons gauge theory with complex gauge group
SL(2,C). The precise comparison requires a careful understanding of some
delicate issues, such as normalization of the colored Jones polynomial and the
choice of polarization in Chern-Simons theory. Addressing these issues allows
us to go beyond the volume conjecture and to verify some predictions for the
behavior of the subleading terms in the asymptotic expansion of the colored
Jones polynomial.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure
Nuclear Medium Effects in the Relativistic Treatment of Quasifree Electron Scattering
Non-relativistic reduction of the S-matrix for the quasifree electron
scattering process is studied in order to
understand the source of differences between non-relativistic and relativistic
models. We perform an effective Pauli reduction on the relativistic expression
for the S-matrix in the one-photon exchange approximation. The reduction is
applied to the nucleon current only; the electrons are treated fully
relativistically. An expansion of the amplitude results in a power series in
the nuclear potentials. The series is found to converge rapidly only if the
nuclear potentials are included in the nuclear current operator. The results
can be cast in a form which reproduces the non-relativistic amplitudes in the
limit that the potentials are removed from the nuclear current operator. Large
differences can be found between calculations which do and do not include the
nuclear potentials in the different orders of the nuclear current operator. In
the high missing momentum region we find that the non-relativistic calculations
with potentials included in the nuclear current up to second order give results
which are close to those of the fully relativistic calculation. This behavior
is an indication of the importance of the medium modifications of the nuclear
currents in this model, which are naturally built into the relativistic
treatment of the reaction.Comment: Latex, 26 pages including 5 uuencoded postscript figures. accepted
for publication in Phys. Rev. C
Magnetic field-dependent interplay between incoherent and Fermi liquid transport mechanisms in low-dimensional tau phase organic conductors
We present an electrical transport study of the 2-dimensional (2D) organic
conductor tau-(P-(S,S)-DMEDT-TTF)_2(AuBr)_2(AuBr_2)_y (y = 0.75) at low
temperatures and high magnetic fields. The inter-plane resistivity rho_zz
increases with decreasing temperature, with the exception of a slight anomaly
at 12 K. Under a magnetic field B, both rho_zz and the in-plane resistivity
plane rho_xx show a pronounced negative and hysteretic magnetoresistance with
Shubnikov de Haas (SdH)oscillations being observed in some (high
quality)samples above 15 T. Contrary to the predicted single, star-shaped,
closed orbit Fermi surface from band structure calculations (with an expected
approximate area of 12.5% of A_FBZ), two fundamental frequencies F_l and F_h
are detected in the SdH signal. These orbits correspond to 2.4% and 6.8% of the
area of the first Brillouin zone(A_FBZ), with effective masses F_l = 4.0 +/-
0.5 and F_h = 7.3 +/- 0.1. The angular dependence, in tilted magnetic fields of
F_l and F_h, reveals the 2D character of the FS and Angular dependent
magnetoresistance (AMRO) further suggests a FS which is strictly 2-D where the
inter-plane hopping t_c is virtually absent or incoherent. The Hall constant
R_xy is field independent, and the Hall mobility increases by a factor of 3
under moderate magnetic fields. Our observations suggest a unique physical
situation where a stable 2D Fermi liquid state in the molecular layers are
incoherently coupled along the least conducting direction. The magnetic field
not only reduces the inelastic scattering between the 2D metallic layers, but
it also reveals the incoherent nature of interplane transport in the AMRO
spectrum. The apparent ferromagnetism of the hysteretic magnetoresistance
remains an unsolved problem.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figure
Superconducting fluctuations and the Nernst effect: A diagrammatic approach
We calculate the contribution of superconducting fluctuations above the
critical temperature to the transverse thermoelectric response
, the quantity central to the analysis of the Nernst effect. The
calculation is carried out within the microscopic picture of BCS, and to linear
order in magnetic field. We find that as , the dominant contribution
to arises from the Aslamazov-Larkin diagrams, and is equal to the
result previously obtained from a stochastic time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau
equation [Ussishkin, Sondhi, and Huse, arXiv:cond-mat/0204484]. We present an
argument which establishes this correspondence for the heat current. Other
microscopic contributions, which generalize the Maki-Thompson and density of
states terms for the conductivity, are less divergent as .Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Multi-level Dynamical Systems: Connecting the Ruelle Response Theory and the Mori-Zwanzig Approach
In this paper we consider the problem of deriving approximate autonomous
dynamics for a number of variables of a dynamical system, which are weakly
coupled to the remaining variables. In a previous paper we have used the Ruelle
response theory on such a weakly coupled system to construct a surrogate
dynamics, such that the expectation value of any observable agrees, up to
second order in the coupling strength, to its expectation evaluated on the full
dynamics. We show here that such surrogate dynamics agree up to second order to
an expansion of the Mori-Zwanzig projected dynamics. This implies that the
parametrizations of unresolved processes suited for prediction and for the
representation of long term statistical properties are closely related, if one
takes into account, in addition to the widely adopted stochastic forcing, the
often neglected memory effects.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur
Superconductivity in the two dimensional Hubbard Model.
Quasiparticle bands of the two-dimensional Hubbard model are calculated using
the Roth two-pole approximation to the one particle Green's function. Excellent
agreement is obtained with recent Monte Carlo calculations, including an
anomalous volume of the Fermi surface near half-filling, which can possibly be
explained in terms of a breakdown of Fermi liquid theory. The calculated bands
are very flat around the (pi,0) points of the Brillouin zone in agreement with
photoemission measurements of cuprate superconductors. With doping there is a
shift in spectral weight from the upper band to the lower band. The Roth method
is extended to deal with superconductivity within a four-pole approximation
allowing electron-hole mixing. It is shown that triplet p-wave pairing never
occurs. Singlet d_{x^2-y^2}-wave pairing is strongly favoured and optimal
doping occurs when the van Hove singularity, corresponding to the flat band
part, lies at the Fermi level. Nearest neighbour antiferromagnetic correlations
play an important role in flattening the bands near the Fermi level and in
favouring superconductivity. However the mechanism for superconductivity is a
local one, in contrast to spin fluctuation exchange models. For reasonable
values of the hopping parameter the transition temperature T_c is in the range
10-100K. The optimum doping delta_c lies between 0.14 and 0.25, depending on
the ratio U/t. The gap equation has a BCS-like form and (2*Delta_{max})/(kT_c)
~ 4.Comment: REVTeX, 35 pages, including 19 PostScript figures numbered 1a to 11.
Uses epsf.sty (included). Everything in uuencoded gz-compressed .tar file,
(self-unpacking, see header). Submitted to Phys. Rev. B (24-2-95
Magnetic field generation from non-equilibrium phase transitions
We study the generation of magnetic fields during the stage of particle
production resulting from spinodal instabilities during phase transitions out
of equilibrium. The main premise is that long-wavelength instabilities that
drive the phase transition lead to strong non-equilibrium charge and current
fluctuations which generate electromagnetic fields. We present a formulation
based on the non-equilibrium Schwinger-Dyson equations that leads to an exact
expression for the spectrum of electromagnetic fields valid for general
theories and cosmological backgrounds and whose main ingredient is the
transverse photon polarization out of equilibrium. This formulation includes
the dissipative effects of the conductivity in the medium. As a prelude to
cosmology we study magnetogenesis in Minkowski space-time in a theory of N
charged scalar fields to lowest order in the gauge coupling and to leading
order in the large N within two scenarios of cosmological relevance. The
long-wavelength power spectrum for electric and magnetic fields at the end of
the phase transition is obtained explicitly.
It follows that equipartition between electric and magnetic fields does not
hold out of equilibrium. In the case of a transition from a high temperature
phase, the conductivity of the medium severely hinders the generation of
magnetic fields, however the magnetic fields generated are correlated on scales
of the order of the domain size, which is much larger than the magnetic
diffusion length. Implications of the results to cosmological phase transitions
driven by spinodal unstabilities are discussed.Comment: Preprint no. LPTHE 02-55, 30 pages, latex, 2 eps figures. Added one
reference. To appear in Phys. Rev.
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