3,935 research outputs found
Upper and Lower Bounds on Gravitational Entropy
The entropy in the interior of the Universe has many contributions including
well understood ones from radiation and relic neutrinos. The gravitational
entropy is larger and more subtle. One contribution which provides our lower
bound is from supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. The
remainder is harder to pin down. We suggest an upper bound which is many orders
of magnitude below the holographic bound yet above that of the supermassive
black holes. We propose that gravitational entropy in dark matter halos is the
largest contributor to the present entropy of the universe.Comment: 10 pages LaTeX. Minor correction
Phenomenological Consequences of Singlet Neutrinos
In this paper, we study the phenomenology of right-handed neutrino
isosinglets. We consider the general situation where the neutrino masses are
not necessarily given by , where and are the Dirac and
Majorana mass terms respectively. The consequent mixing between the light and
heavy neutrinos is then not suppressed, and we treat it as an independent
parameter in the analysis. It turns out that conversion is an important
experiment in placing limits on the heavy mass scale () and the mixing.
Mixings among light neutrinos are constrained by neutrinoless double beta
decay, as well as by solar and atmospheric neutrino experiments. Detailed
one-loop calculations for lepton number violating vertices are provided.Comment: Revtex file,TRI-PP-94-1,VPI-IHEP-94-1, 23 pages, a compressed for 8
figures is appende
Logic, Probability and Action: A Situation Calculus Perspective
The unification of logic and probability is a long-standing concern in AI,
and more generally, in the philosophy of science. In essence, logic provides an
easy way to specify properties that must hold in every possible world, and
probability allows us to further quantify the weight and ratio of the worlds
that must satisfy a property. To that end, numerous developments have been
undertaken, culminating in proposals such as probabilistic relational models.
While this progress has been notable, a general-purpose first-order knowledge
representation language to reason about probabilities and dynamics, including
in continuous settings, is still to emerge. In this paper, we survey recent
results pertaining to the integration of logic, probability and actions in the
situation calculus, which is arguably one of the oldest and most well-known
formalisms. We then explore reduction theorems and programming interfaces for
the language. These results are motivated in the context of cognitive robotics
(as envisioned by Reiter and his colleagues) for the sake of concreteness.
Overall, the advantage of proving results for such a general language is that
it becomes possible to adapt them to any special-purpose fragment, including
but not limited to popular probabilistic relational models
Theory of Multidimensional Solitons
We review a number of topics germane to higher-dimensional solitons in
Bose-Einstein condensates. For dark solitons, we discuss dark band and planar
solitons; ring dark solitons and spherical shell solitons; solitary waves in
restricted geometries; vortex rings and rarefaction pulses; and multi-component
Bose-Einstein condensates. For bright solitons, we discuss instability,
stability, and metastability; bright soliton engineering, including pulsed atom
lasers; solitons in a thermal bath; soliton-soliton interactions; and bright
ring solitons and quantum vortices. A thorough reference list is included.Comment: review paper, to appear as Chapter 5a in "Emergent Nonlinear
Phenomena in Bose-Einstein Condensates: Theory and Experiment," edited by P.
G. Kevrekidis, D. J. Frantzeskakis, and R. Carretero-Gonzalez
(Springer-Verlag
Casimir Energy for a Spherical Cavity in a Dielectric: Applications to Sonoluminescence
In the final few years of his life, Julian Schwinger proposed that the
``dynamical Casimir effect'' might provide the driving force behind the
puzzling phenomenon of sonoluminescence. Motivated by that exciting suggestion,
we have computed the static Casimir energy of a spherical cavity in an
otherwise uniform material. As expected the result is divergent; yet a
plausible finite answer is extracted, in the leading uniform asymptotic
approximation. This result agrees with that found using zeta-function
regularization. Numerically, we find far too small an energy to account for the
large burst of photons seen in sonoluminescence. If the divergent result is
retained, it is of the wrong sign to drive the effect. Dispersion does not
resolve this contradiction. In the static approximation, the Fresnel drag term
is zero; on the mother hand, electrostriction could be comparable to the
Casimir term. It is argued that this adiabatic approximation to the dynamical
Casimir effect should be quite accurate.Comment: 23 pages, no figures, REVTe
Discovery of microscopic electronic inhomogeneity in the high-Tc superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x
The parent compounds of the copper oxide high-Tc superconductors are unusual
insulators. Superconductivity arises when they are properly doped away from
stoichiometry1. In Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x, superconductivity results from doping with
excess oxygen atoms, which introduce positive charge carriers (holes) into the
CuO2 planes, where superconductivity is believed to originate. The role of
these oxygen dopants is not well understood, other than the fact that they
provide charge carriers. However, it is not even clear how these charges
distribute in the CuO2 planes. Accordingly, many models of high-Tc
superconductors simply assume that the charge carriers introduced by doping
distribute uniformly, leading to an electronically homogeneous system, as in
ordinary metals. Here we report the observation of an electronic inhomogeneity
in the high-Tc superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x using scanning tunnelling
microscopy/spectroscopy. This inhomogeneity is manifested as spatial variations
in both the local density of states spectrum and the superconducting energy
gap. These variations are correlated spatially and vary on a surprisingly short
length scale of ~ 14 Angs. Analysis suggests that the inhomogeneity observed is
a consequence of proximity to a Mott insulator resulting in poor screening of
the charge potentials associated with the oxygen ions left behind in the BiO
plane after doping. Hence this experiment is a direct probe of the local nature
of the superconducting state, which is not easily accessible by macroscopic
measurements.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Study of 3-prong Hadronic Decays with Charged Kaons
Using a sample of 4.7/fb integrated luminosity accumulated with the CLEO-II
detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR), we have measured the
branching fractions of the tau lepton into and relative to and relative to . The relative branching fractions are: (5.16+-0.20+-0.50)*,
(1.52+-0.14+-0.29)*, (2.54+-0.44+-0.39)* and at 95%
C.L., respectively. Coupled with additional experimental information, we use
our results to extract information on the structure of three-prong tau decays
to charged kaons.Comment: 16 pages postscript file also available through
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN
Observation of Radiative Leptonic Decay of the Tau Lepton
Using 4.68 fb^{-1} of e^+e^- annihilation data collected with the CLEO II
detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) we have studied tau
radiative decays tau -> mu nu nu gamma and tau -> e nu nu gamma. For a 10 MeV
minimum photon energy in the tau rest frame, the branching fraction of
radiative tau decay to a muon or electron is measured to be
(3.61+-0.16+-0.35)*10^{-3} or (1.75+-0.06+-0.17)*10^{-2}, respectively. The
branching fractions are in agreement with the Standard Model theoretical
predictions.Comment: 11 pages postscript, also available through
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN
Argumentation in school science : Breaking the tradition of authoritative exposition through a pedagogy that promotes discussion and reasoning
The value of argumentation in science education has become internationally recognised and has been the subject of many research studies in recent years. Successful introduction of argumentation activities in learning contexts involves extending teaching goals beyond the understanding of facts and concepts, to include an emphasis on cognitive and metacognitive processes, epistemic criteria and reasoning. The authors focus on the difficulties inherent in shifting a tradition of teaching from one dominated by authoritative exposition to one that is more dialogic, involving small-group discussion based on tasks that stimulate argumentation. The paper builds on previous research on enhancing the quality of argument in school science, to focus on how argumentation activities have been designed, with appropriate strategies, resources and modelling, for pedagogical purposes. The paper analyses design frameworks, their contexts and lesson plans, to evaluate their potential for enhancing reasoning through foregrounding the processes of argumentation. Examples of classroom dialogue where teachers adopt the frameworks/plans are analysed to show how argumentation processes are scaffolded. The analysis shows that several layers of interpretation are needed and these layers need to be aligned for successful implementation. The analysis serves to highlight the potential and limitations of the design frameworks
A Measurement of the Decay Asymmetry Parameters in \Xi_{c}^{0}\to \X^{-}\pi^{+}
Using the CLEO II detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring we have
measured the decay asymmetry parameter in the decay . We find , using the world average value of
we obtain . The physically allowed range of a decay
asymmetry parameter is . Our result prefers a negative value:
is at the 90% CL. The central value occupies the
middle of the theoretically expected range but is not yet precise enough to
choose between models.Comment: 10 pages postscript, also available through
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN
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