A Second Shell in the Fornax dSph Galaxy

In the search for tidal structure in Galactic satellite systems, we have conducted a photometric survey over a 10 square degree area centred on the Fornax dSph galaxy. The survey was made in two colours, and the resulting colour-magnitude data were used as a mask to select candidate Fornax RGB stars, thereby increasing the contrast of Fornax stars to background sources in the outer regions. Previously, we reported the presence of a shell (age 2 Gyr) located towards the centre of Fornax. In this contribution we reveal a second shell, significantly larger than the first, located 1.3 degrees NW from the centre of Fornax, outside the nominal tidal radius. Moreover, the distribution of Fornax RGB stars reveals two lobes extending to the spatial limit of our survey, and aligned with the minor axis and with the two shells. These results support the hypothesis of a merger between Fornax and a gas-rich companion approximately 2 Gyr ago.Comment: Four pages,accepted for the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. Contribution the annual ASA meeting, Brisbane 200

Resonant helical deformations in nonhomogeneous Kirchhoff filaments

We study the three-dimensional static configurations of nonhomogeneous Kirchhoff filaments with periodically varying Young's modulus. This type of variation may occur in long tandemly repeated sequences of DNA. We analyse the effects of the Young's modulus frequence and amplitude of oscillation in the stroboscopic maps, and in the regular (non chaotic) spatial configurations of the filaments. Our analysis shows that the tridimensional conformations of long filaments may depend critically on the Young's modulus frequence in case of resonance with other natural frequencies of the filament. As expected, far from resonance the shape of the solutions remain very close to that of the homogeneous case. In the case of biomolecules, it is well known that various other elements, besides sequence-dependent effects, combine to determine their conformation, like self-contact, salt concentration, thermal fluctuations, anisotropy and interaction with proteins. Our results show that sequence-dependent effects alone may have a significant influence on the shape of these molecules, including DNA. This could, therefore, be a possible mechanical function of the ``junk'' sequences.Comment: 18 pages (twocolumn), 5 figures Revised manuscrip

The Environmental Influence on the Evolution of Local Galaxies

The results of an Halpha photometric survey of 30 dwarf galaxies of various morphologies in the Centaurus A and Sculptor groups are presented. Of these 30, emission was detected in 13: eight are of late-type, two are early-type and three are of mixed-morphology. The typical flux detection limit of 2e-16 erg s-1 cm-2, translates into a Star Formation Rate (SFR) detection limit of 4e-6 M_sol yr-1 . In the light of these results, the morphology-density relation is reexamined: It is shown that, despite a number of unaccounted parameters, there are significant correlations between the factors determining the morphological type of a galaxy and its environment. Dwarf galaxies in high density regions have lower current SFR and lower neutral gas content than their low density counterparts, confirming earlier results from the Local Group and other denser environments. The effect of environment is also seen in the timescale formed from the ratio of blue luminosity to current SFR - dwarfs in higher density environments have larger values, indicating relatively higher past average SFR. The influence of environment extends very far and no dwarfs from our sample can be identified as 'field' objects.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, accepted in A

Instanton picture of the spin tunneling in the Lipkin model

A consistent theory of the ground state energy and its splitting due to the process of tunneling for the Lipkin model is presented. For the functional integral in terms of the spin coherent states for the partition function of the model we accurately calculate the trivial and the instanton saddle point contributions. We show that such calculation has to be perfomed very accurately taking into account the discrete nature of the functional integral. Such accurate consideration leads to finite corrections to a naive continous consideration. We present comparison with numerical calculation of the ground state energy and the tunneling splitting and with the results obtained by the quasiclassical method and get excellent agreement.Comment: REVTEX, 32 pages, 3 figure

Electron self-trapping at quantum and classical critical points

Using Feynman path integral technique estimations of the ground state energy have been found for a conduction electron interacting with order parameter fluctuations near quantum critical points. In some cases only \textit{singular} perturbation theory in the coupling constant emerges for the electron ground state energy. It is shown that an autolocalized state (quantum fluctuon) can be formed and its characteristics have been calculated depending on critical exponents for both weak and strong coupling regimes. The concept of fluctuon is considered also for the classical critical point (at finite temperatures) and the difference between quantum and classical cases has been investigated. It is shown that, whereas the quantum fluctuon energy is connected with a true boundary of the energy spectrum, for classical fluctuon it is just a saddle-point solution for the chemical potential in the exponential density of states fluctuation tail.Comment: 45 pages, 1 eps figure, elsart, submitted to Annals of Physic

Dark Energy in an Axion Model with Explicit Z(N) Symmetry Breaking

We point out that a well known axion model with an explicit Z(N) symmetry breaking term predicts both dark energy and cold dark matter. We estimate the parameters of this model which fit the observed densities of the dark components of the universe. We find that the parameters do not conflict with any observations.Comment: 5 pages, minor change

The Nature of the Density Clump in the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

We have imaged the recently discovered stellar overdensity located approximately one core radius from the center of the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy using the Magellan Clay 6.5m telescope with the Magellan Instant Camera (MagIC). Superb seeing conditions allowed us to probe the stellar populations of this overdensity and of a control field within Fornax to a limiting magnitude of R=26. The color-magnitude diagram of the overdensity field is virtually identical to that of the control field with the exception of the presence of a population arising from a very short (less than 300 Myr in duration) burst of star formation 1.4 Gyr ago. Coleman et al. have argued that this overdensity might be related to a shell structure in Fornax that was created when Fornax captured a smaller galaxy. Our results are consistent with this model, but we argue that the metallicity of this young component favors a scenario in which the gas was part of Fornax itself.Comment: 24 pages including 8 figures and 3 tables. Accepted by Astronomical Journa

Fixed points and vacuum energy of dynamically broken gauge theories

We show that if a gauge theory with dynamical symmetry breaking has non-trivial fixed points, they will correspond to extrema of the vacuum energy. This relationship provides a different method to determine fixed points.Comment: 17 pages, uuencoded latex file, 3 figures, uses epsf and epsfig. Submitted to Mod. Phys. Lett.

The Absence of Extra-Tidal Structure in the Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

The results of a wide-field survey of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy are presented. Our aims were to obtain an accurate map of the outer structure of Sculptor, and to determine the level of interaction between this system and the Galaxy. Photometry was obtained in two colours down to the magnitude limits of V=20 and I=19, covering a 3.1 times 3.1 square deg area centred on Sculptor. The resulting colour-magnitude data were used as a mask to select candidate horizontal branch and red giant branch stars for this system. Previous work has shown that the red horizontal branch (HB) stars are more concentrated than the blue HB stars. We have determined the radial distributions of these two populations and show that the overall Sculptor density profile is well described by a two component model based on a combination of these radial distributions. Additionally, spectra of the Ca ii triplet region were obtained for over 700 candidate red giant stars over the 10 square deg region using the 2dF instrument on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. These spectra were used to remove foreground Galactic stars based on radial velocity and Ca ii triplet strength. The final list of Sculptor members contained 148 stars, seven of which are located beyond the nominal tidal radius. Both the photometric and spectroscopic datasets indicate no significant extra-tidal structure. These results support at most a mild level of interaction between this system and the Galaxy, and we have measured an upper mass limit for extra-tidal material to be 2.3 +/- 0.6% of the Sculptor luminous mass. This lack of tidal interaction indicates that previous velocity dispersion measurements (and hence the amount of dark matter detected) in this system are not strongly influenced by the Galactic tidal field.Comment: 53 pages, 23 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. Some figures are reduced in size, and a full version is available at: ftp://ftp.mso.anu.edu.au/pub/coleman/sculptor.pd