Von Bezold assimilation effect reverses in stereoscopic conditions

Lightness contrast and lightness assimilation are opposite phenomena: in contrast, grey targets appear darker when bordering bright surfaces (inducers) rather than dark ones; in assimilation, the opposite occurs. The question is: which visual process favours the occurrence of one phenomenon over the other? Researchers provided three answers to this question. The first asserts that both phenomena are caused by peripheral processes; the second attributes their occurrence to central processes; and the third claims that contrast involves central processes, whilst assimilation involves peripheral ones. To test these hypotheses, an experiment on an IT system equipped with goggles for stereo vision was run. Observers were asked to evaluate the lightness of a grey target, and two variables were systematically manipulated: (i) the apparent distance of the inducers; and (ii) brightness of the inducers. The retinal stimulation was kept constant throughout, so that the peripheral processes remained the same. The results show that the lightness of the target depends on both variables. As the retinal stimulation was kept constant, we conclude that central mechanisms are involved in both lightness contrast and lightness assimilation

Entanglement entropy of black holes

The entanglement entropy is a fundamental quantity which characterizes the correlations between sub-systems in a larger quantum-mechanical system. For two sub-systems separated by a surface the entanglement entropy is proportional to the area of the surface and depends on the UV cutoff which regulates the short-distance correlations. The geometrical nature of the entanglement entropy calculation is particularly intriguing when applied to black holes when the entangling surface is the black hole horizon. I review a variety of aspects of this calculation: the useful mathematical tools such as the geometry of spaces with conical singularities and the heat kernel method, the UV divergences in the entropy and their renormalization, the logarithmic terms in the entanglement entropy in 4 and 6 dimensions and their relation to the conformal anomalies. The focus in the review is on the systematic use of the conical singularity method. The relations to other known approaches such as 't Hooft's brick wall model and the Euclidean path integral in the optical metric are discussed in detail. The puzzling behavior of the entanglement entropy due to fields which non-minimally couple to gravity is emphasized. The holographic description of the entanglement entropy of the black hole horizon is illustrated on the two- and four-dimensional examples. Finally, I examine the possibility to interpret the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy entirely as the entanglement entropy.Comment: 89 pages; an invited review to be published in Living Reviews in Relativit

Static and dynamic ionization levels of transition metal-doped zinc chalcogenides

Transition metal (TM) impurities in semiconductors have a considerable effect on the electronic properties and on the lattice vibrations. The unfilled d shell permits the impurity atoms to exist in a variety of charge states. In this work, the static donor and acceptor ionization energies of ZnX:M, with X = S, Se, Te and M:Sc, Ti, V, Fe, Co, Ni are obtained from first principles total energy calculations and compared with experimental results in the literature where they exist. From these results, many of the TM-doped zinc chalogenides have an amphoteric behavior. To analyze the rule of the deep gap levels in both the radiative and non-radiative processes, the dynamic ionization energies are obtained as a function of the inward and outward M–X displacements. In many cases, the changes in the mass and the force constants resulting from the substitution of an impurity center for a lattice atom are small. When the charge or the environment of the impurity changes, the electron population tend to remain compensated. As consequence, the changes in the lattice vibrational modes are small

Design, construction and operation of the ProtoDUNE-SP Liquid Argon TPC

The ProtoDUNE-SP detector is a single-phase liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) that was constructed and operated in the CERN North Area at the end of the H4 beamline. This detector is a prototype for the first far detector module of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), which will be constructed at the Sandford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota, U.S.A. The ProtoDUNE-SP detector incorporates full-size components as designed for DUNE and has an active volume of 7 × 6 × 7.2 m3. The H4 beam delivers incident particles with well-measured momenta and high-purity particle identification. ProtoDUNE-SP's successful operation between 2018 and 2020 demonstrates the effectiveness of the single-phase far detector design. This paper describes the design, construction, assembly and operation of the detector components

Low exposure long-baseline neutrino oscillation sensitivity of the DUNE experiment

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will produce world-leading neutrino oscillation measurements over the lifetime of the experiment. In this work, we explore DUNE's sensitivity to observe charge-parity violation (CPV) in the neutrino sector, and to resolve the mass ordering, for exposures of up to 100 kiloton-megawatt-years (kt-MW-yr). The analysis includes detailed uncertainties on the flux prediction, the neutrino interaction model, and detector effects. We demonstrate that DUNE will be able to unambiguously resolve the neutrino mass ordering at a 3σ (5σ) level, with a 66 (100) kt-MW-yr far detector exposure, and has the ability to make strong statements at significantly shorter exposures depending on the true value of other oscillation parameters. We also show that DUNE has the potential to make a robust measurement of CPV at a 3σ level with a 100 kt-MW-yr exposure for the maximally CP-violating values \delta_{\rm CP}} = \pm\pi/2. Additionally, the dependence of DUNE's sensitivity on the exposure taken in neutrino-enhanced and antineutrino-enhanced running is discussed. An equal fraction of exposure taken in each beam mode is found to be close to optimal when considered over the entire space of interest

Critical thermodynamics of two-dimensional N-vector cubic model in the five-loop approximation

The critical behavior of the two-dimensional N-vector cubic model is studied within the field-theoretical renormalization-group (RG) approach. The beta functions and critical exponents are calculated in the five-loop approximation, RG series obtained are resummed using Pade-Borel-Leroy and conformal mapping techniques. It is found that for N = 2 the continuous line of fixed points is well reproduced by the resummed RG series and an account for the five-loop terms makes the lines of zeros of both 0 functions closer to each other. For N >= 3 the five-loop contributions are shown to shift the cubic fixed point, given by the four-loop approximation, towards the Ising fixed point. This confirms the idea that the existence of the cubic fixed point in two dimensions under N > 2 is an artifact of the perturbative analysis. In the case N = 0 the results obtained are compatible with the conclusion that the impure critical behavior is controlled by the Ising fixed point