Simulations of spiral galaxies with an active potential: molecular cloud formation and gas dynamics

We describe simulations of the response of a gaseous disc to an active spiral potential. The potential is derived from an N-body calculation and leads to a multi-armed time-evolving pattern. The gas forms long spiral arms typical of grand design galaxies, although the spiral pattern is asymmetric. The primary difference from a grand-design spiral galaxy, which has a consistent 2/4-armed pattern, is that instead of passing through the spiral arms, gas generally falls into a developing potential minimum and is released only when the local minimum dissolves. In this case, the densest gas is coincident with the spiral potential, rather than offset as in the grand-design spirals. We would there fore expect no offset between the spiral shock and star formation, and no obvious co-rotation radius. Spurs which occur in grand-design spirals when large clumps are sheared off leaving the spiral arms, are rare in the active, time-evolving spiral reported here. Instead, large branches are formed from spiral arms when the underlying spiral potential is dissolving due to the N-body dynamics. We find that the molecular cloud mass spectrum for the active potential is similar to that for clouds in grand design calculations, depending primarily on the ambient pressure rather than the nature of the potential. The largest molecular clouds occur when spiral arms collide, rather than by agglomeration within a spiral arm.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Sex and the preimplantation embryo: implications of sexual dimorphism in the preimplantation period for maternal programming of embryonic development.

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Epitaxial Growth Kinetics with Interacting Coherent Islands

The Stranski-Krastanov growth kinetics of undislocated (coherent) 3-dimensional islands is studied with a self-consistent mean field rate theory that takes account of elastic interactions between the islands. The latter are presumed to facilitate the detachment of atoms from the islands with a consequent decrease in their average size. Semi-quantitative agreement with experiment is found for the time evolution of the total island density and the mean island size. When combined with scaling ideas, these results provide a natural way to understand the often-observed initial increase and subsequent decrease in the width of the coherent island size distribution.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Generic User Process Interface for Event Generators

Generic Fortran common blocks are presented for use by High Energy Physics event generators for the transfer of event configurations from parton level generators to showering and hadronization event generators.Comment: Physics at TeV Colliders II Workshop, Les Houches, France, May 2001 14 pages, 6 figure