Two-Electron Linear Intersubband Light Absorption in a Biased Quantum Well

We point out a novel manifestation of many-body correlations in the linear optical response of electrons confined in a quantum well. Namely, we demonstrate that along with conventional absorption peak at frequency close to intersubband energy, there exists an additional peak at double frequency. This new peak is solely due to electron-electron interactions, and can be understood as excitation of two electrons by a single photon. The actual peak lineshape is comprised of a sharp feature, due to excitation of pairs of intersubband plasmons, on top of a broader band due to absorption by two single-particle excitations. The two-plasmon contribution allows to infer intersubband plasmon dispersion from linear absorption experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; published versio

Late-Time Optical Afterglow Observations with LBT and MDM

Using the 2.4m MDM and 8.4m Large Binocular Telescope, we observed nine GRB afterglows to systematically probe the late time behaviors of afterglows including jet breaks, flares, and supernova bumps. In particular, the LBT observations have typical flux limits of 25-26 mag in the Sloan r' band, which allows us to extend the temporal baseline for measuring jet breaks by another decade in time scale. We detected four jet breaks (including a "textbook" jet break in GRB070125) and a fifth candidate, all of which are not detectable without deep, late time optical observations. In the other four cases, we do not detect the jet breaks either because of contamination from the host galaxy light, the presence of a supernova bump, or the intrinsic faintness of the optical afterglow. This suggests that the basic picture that GRBs are collimated is still valid and that the apparent lack of Swift jet breaks is due to poorly sampled afterglow light curves, particularly at late times. Besides the jet breaks, we also detected late time flares, which could attribute to late central engine activities, and two supernova bumps.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, 2008 NANJING GAMMA-RAY BURST CONFERENCE. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 1065, pp. 93-97 (2008), Eds. Y.F. Huang, Z.G. Dai, B. Zhan

Effect of long range forces on the interfacial profiles in thin binary polymer films

We study the effect of surface fields on the interfacial properties of a binary polymer melt confined between two parallel walls. Each wall attracts a different component of the blend by a non-retarded van der Waals potential. An interface which runs parallel to the surfaces is stabilized in the center of the film. Using extensive Monte Carlo simulations we study the interfacial properties as a function of the film thickness, the strength of the surface forces and the lateral size over which the profiles across the film are averaged. We find evidence for capillary wave broadening of the apparent interfacial profiles. However, the apparent interfacial width cannot be described quantitatively by a simple logarithmic dependence on the film thickness. The Monte Carlo simulations reveal that the surface fields give rise to an additional reduction of the intrinsic interfacial width and an increase of the effective interfacial tension upon decreasing the film thickness. These modifications of the intrinsic interfacial properties are confirmed by self-consistent field calculations. Taking account of the thickness dependence of the intrinsic interfacial properties and the capillary wave broadening, we can describe our simulation results quantitatively.Comment: to appear in J.Chem.Phy

Is GRO J1744-28 a Strange Star?

The unusal hard x-ray burster GRO J1744-28 recently discovered by the Compton Gamma-ray Observatory (GRO) can be modeled as a strange star with a dipolar magnetic field $\le 10^{11}$Gauss. When the accreted mass of the star exceeds some critical mass, its crust may break, resulting in conversion of the accreted matter into strange matter and release of energy. Subsequently, a fireball may form and expand relativistically outward. The expanding fireball may interact with the surrounding interstellar medium, causing its kinetic energy to be radiated in shock waves, producing a burst of x-ray radiation. The burst energy, duration, interval and spectrum derived from such a model are consistent with the observations of GRO J1744-28.Comment: Latex, has been published in SCIENCE, Vol. 280, 40

The equation of state for two-dimensional hard-sphere gases: Hard-sphere gases as ideal gases with multi-core boundaries

The equation of state for a two-dimensional hard-sphere gas is difficult to calculate by usual methods. In this paper we develop an approach for calculating the equation of state of hard-sphere gases, both for two- and three-dimensional cases. By regarding a hard-sphere gas as an ideal gas confined in a container with a multi-core (excluded sphere) boundary, we treat the hard-sphere interaction in an interacting gas as the boundary effect on an ideal quantum gas; this enables us to treat an interacting gas as an ideal one. We calculate the equation of state for a three-dimensional hard-sphere gas with spin $j$, and compare it with the results obtained by other methods. By this approach the equation of state for a two-dimensional hard-sphere gas can be calculated directly.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Solar modulation of cosmic ray intensity and solar flare events inferred from (14)C contents in dated tree rings

The delta 14C values in 42 rings of a white spruce grown in Mackenzie Delta was measured as a continuing effort of tracing the history of solar modulation of cosmic ray intensity. The delta 14C values in six rings were measured, in search of a 14C increase due to two large solar flares that occurred in 1942. The results are presented

Model Independent Determination of the Top Yukawa Coupling from LHC and LC

We show how a measurement of the process pp-->t tbar H + X at the LHC and a measurement of the Higgs boson branching ratios BR(H-->b bar) and BR(H-->W+W-) at a future linear electron positron collider can be combined to extract a model-independent measurement of the top quark Yukawa coupling. We find that for 120 GeV < m_H < 200 GeV a measurement precision of 15% including systematic uncertainties can be achieved for integrated luminosities of 300 fb-1 at the LHC and 500 fb-1 at the LC at a centre-of-mass energy of 350 GeV.Comment: A contribution to the LHC / LC Study Group document, 7 pages, 3 figure

Pair loading in Gamma-Ray Burst Fireball And Prompt Emission From Pair-Rich Reverse Shock

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to originate from ultra-relativistic winds/fireballs to avoid the "compactness problem". However, the most energetic photons in GRBs may still suffer from $\gamma-\gamma$ absorption leading to electron/positron pair production in the winds/fireballs. We show here that in a wide range of model parameters, the resulting pairs may dominate those electrons associated with baryons. Later on, the pairs would be carried into a reverse shock so that a shocked pair-rich fireball may produce a strong flash at lower frequencies, i.e. in the IR band, in contrast with optical/UV emission from a pair-poor fireball. The IR emission would show a 5/2 spectral index due to strong self-absorption. Rapid responses to GRB triggers in the IR band would detect such strong flashes. The future detections of many IR flashes will infer that the rarity of prompt optical/UV emissions is in fact due to dust obscuration in the star formation regions.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, ApJ accepte

On data skewness, stragglers, and MapReduce progress indicators

We tackle the problem of predicting the performance of MapReduce applications, designing accurate progress indicators that keep programmers informed on the percentage of completed computation time during the execution of a job. Through extensive experiments, we show that state-of-the-art progress indicators (including the one provided by Hadoop) can be seriously harmed by data skewness, load unbalancing, and straggling tasks. This is mainly due to their implicit assumption that the running time depends linearly on the input size. We thus design a novel profile-guided progress indicator, called NearestFit, that operates without the linear hypothesis assumption and exploits a careful combination of nearest neighbor regression and statistical curve fitting techniques. Our theoretical progress model requires fine-grained profile data, that can be very difficult to manage in practice. To overcome this issue, we resort to computing accurate approximations for some of the quantities used in our model through space- and time-efficient data streaming algorithms. We implemented NearestFit on top of Hadoop 2.6.0. An extensive empirical assessment over the Amazon EC2 platform on a variety of real-world benchmarks shows that NearestFit is practical w.r.t. space and time overheads and that its accuracy is generally very good, even in scenarios where competitors incur non-negligible errors and wide prediction fluctuations. Overall, NearestFit significantly improves the current state-of-art on progress analysis for MapReduce