26,838 research outputs found
An unexpectedly low-redshift excess of Swift gamma-ray burst rate
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most violent explosions in the Universe and
can be used to explore the properties of high-redshift universe. It is believed
that the long GRBs are associated with the deaths of massive stars. So it is
possible to use GRBs to investigate the star formation rate (SFR). In this
paper, we use Lynden-Bell's method to study the luminosity function and
rate of \emph{Swift} long GRBs without any assumptions. We find that the
luminosity of GRBs evolves with redshift as with
. After correcting the redshift evolution through
, the luminosity function can be expressed as
for dim GRBs and for bright GRBs, with the break point
. We also find that the formation
rate of GRBs is almost constant at for the first time, which is
remarkably different from the SFR. At , the formation rate of GRB is
consistent with the SFR. Our results are dramatically different from previous
studies. Some possible reasons for this low-redshift excess are discussed. We
also test the robustness of our results with Monte Carlo simulations. The
distributions of mock data (i.e., luminosity-redshift distribution, luminosity
function, cumulative distribution and distribution) are in good
agreement with the observations. Besides, we also find that there are
remarkable difference between the mock data and the observations if long GRB
are unbiased tracers of SFR at .Comment: 33 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, accepted by ApJ
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
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
A rapid cosmic-ray increase in BC 3372-3371 from ancient buried tree rings in China
Cosmic rays interact with the Earth's atmosphere to produce C, which
can be absorbed by trees. Therefore, rapid increases of C in tree rings
can be used to probe previous cosmic-ray events. By this method, three C
rapidly increasing events have been found. Plausible causes of these events
include large solar proton events, supernovae or short gamma-ray bursts.
However, due to the lack of measurements of C by year, the occurrence
frequency of such C rapidly increasing events is poorly known. In
addition, rapid increases may be hidden in the IntCal13 data with five-year
resolution. Here we report the result of C measurements using an ancient
buried tree during the period between BC 3388 and 3358. We find a rapid
increase of about 9\textperthousand~ in the C content from BC 3372 to BC
3371. We suggest that this event could originate from a large solar proton
event.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, published in Nature Communication
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 , 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
Magnetic Coherence as a Universal Feature of Cuprate Superconductors
Recent inelastic neutron scattering (INS) experiments on
LaSrCuO have established the existence of a {\it magnetic
coherence effect}, i.e., strong frequency and momentum dependent changes of the
spin susceptibility, , in the superconducting phase. We show, using the
spin-fermion model for incommensurate antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations, that
the magnetic coherence effect establishes the ability of INS experiments to
probe the electronic spectrum of the cuprates, in that the effect arises from
the interplay of an incommensurate magnetic response, the form of the
underlying Fermi surface, and the opening of the d-wave gap in the fermionic
spectrum. In particular, we find that the magnetic coherence effect observed in
INS experiments on LaSrCuO requires that the Fermi surface be
closed around up to optimal doping. We present several predictions
for the form of the magnetic coherence effect in YBaCuO in
which an incommensurate magnetic response has been observed in the
superconducting state.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures; extended version of Phys. Rev B, R6483 (2000
Fluid and Diffusion Limits for Bike Sharing Systems
Bike sharing systems have rapidly developed around the world, and they are
served as a promising strategy to improve urban traffic congestion and to
decrease polluting gas emissions. So far performance analysis of bike sharing
systems always exists many difficulties and challenges under some more general
factors. In this paper, a more general large-scale bike sharing system is
discussed by means of heavy traffic approximation of multiclass closed queueing
networks with non-exponential factors. Based on this, the fluid scaled
equations and the diffusion scaled equations are established by means of the
numbers of bikes both at the stations and on the roads, respectively.
Furthermore, the scaling processes for the numbers of bikes both at the
stations and on the roads are proved to converge in distribution to a
semimartingale reflecting Brownian motion (SRBM) in a -dimensional box,
and also the fluid and diffusion limit theorems are obtained. Furthermore,
performance analysis of the bike sharing system is provided. Thus the results
and methodology of this paper provide new highlight in the study of more
general large-scale bike sharing systems.Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure
- …