6,435 research outputs found
Suppression of maximal linear gluon polarization in angular asymmetries
We perform a phenomenological analysis of the azimuthal
asymmetry in virtual photon plus jet production induced by the linear
polarization of gluons in unpolarized collisions. Although the linearly
polarized gluon distribution becomes maximal at small , TMD evolutionleads
to a Sudakov suppression of the asymmetry with increasing invariant mass of the
-jet pair. Employing a small- model input distribution, the
asymmetry is found to be strongly suppressed under TMD evolution, but still
remains sufficiently large to be measurable in the typical kinematical region
accessible at RHIC or LHC at moderate photon virtuality, whereas it is expected
to be negligible in -jet pair production at LHC. We point out the optimal
kinematics for RHIC and LHC studies, in order to expedite the first
experimental studies of the linearly polarized gluon distribution through this
process. We further argue that this is a particularly clean process to test the
-resummation formalism in the small- regime.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
Gravity Waves as a Probe of Hubble Expansion Rate During An Electroweak Scale Phase Transition
Just as big bang nucleosynthesis allows us to probe the expansion rate when
the temperature of the universe was around 1 MeV, the measurement of gravity
waves from electroweak scale first order phase transitions may allow us to
probe the expansion rate when the temperature of the universe was at the
electroweak scale. We compute the simple transformation rule for the gravity
wave spectrum under the scaling transformation of the Hubble expansion rate. We
then apply this directly to the scenario of quintessence kination domination
and show how gravity wave spectra would shift relative to LISA and BBO
projected sensitivities.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figures
Planets in Spin-Orbit Misalignment and the Search for Stellar Companions
The discovery of giant planets orbiting close to their host stars was one of
the most unexpected results of early exoplanetary science. Astronomers have
since found that a significant fraction of these 'Hot Jupiters' move on orbits
substantially misaligned with the rotation axis of their host star. We recently
reported the measurement of the spin-orbit misalignment for WASP-79b by using
data from the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope. Contemporary models of
planetary formation produce planets on nearly coplanar orbits with respect to
their host star's equator. We discuss the mechanisms which could drive planets
into spin-orbit misalignment. The most commonly proposed being the Kozai
mechanism, which requires the presence of a distant, massive companion to the
star-planet system. We therefore describe a volume-limited direct-imaging
survey of Hot Jupiter systems with measured spin-orbit angles, to search for
the presence of stellar companions and test the Kozai hypothesis.Comment: Accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed proceedings of the 13th
annual Australian Space Science Conferenc
The effect of allophonic variability on L2 contrast perception: Evidence from perception of English vowels
Current frameworks of L2 phonetic acquisition remain largely underspecified with respect to the role of L1 allophonic variability in acquisition. Examining the role of L1 allophonic variability, the current study compared the perceptual discrimination of English /i-I/ and /E-æ/ by L1 Korean and L1 Mandarin speakers. Korean and Mandarin vowel inventories differ in that Mandarin employs significantly greater allophonic variation of the mid-region /E/ vowel. Results demonstrated worse perceptual accuracy by L1 Mandarin speakers for the /E-æ/ contrast than L1 Korean speakers. These results suggest that both L1 phonemic inventories and allophonic variation play a role in L2 phonetic acquisition
Quantifying the Roles of Visual, Linguistic, and Visual-Linguistic Complexity in Verb Acquisition
Children typically learn the meanings of nouns earlier than the meanings of
verbs. However, it is unclear whether this asymmetry is a result of complexity
in the visual structure of categories in the world to which language refers,
the structure of language itself, or the interplay between the two sources of
information. We quantitatively test these three hypotheses regarding early verb
learning by employing visual and linguistic representations of words sourced
from large-scale pre-trained artificial neural networks. Examining the
structure of both visual and linguistic embedding spaces, we find, first, that
the representation of verbs is generally more variable and less discriminable
within domain than the representation of nouns. Second, we find that if only
one learning instance per category is available, visual and linguistic
representations are less well aligned in the verb system than in the noun
system. However, in parallel with the course of human language development, if
multiple learning instances per category are available, visual and linguistic
representations become almost as well aligned in the verb system as in the noun
system. Third, we compare the relative contributions of factors that may
predict learning difficulty for individual words. A regression analysis reveals
that visual variability is the strongest factor that internally drives verb
learning, followed by visual-linguistic alignment and linguistic variability.
Based on these results, we conclude that verb acquisition is influenced by all
three sources of complexity, but that the variability of visual structure poses
the most significant challenge for verb learning
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