20,197 research outputs found
Quark masses in QCD: a progress report
Recent progress on QCD sum rule determinations of the light and heavy quark
masses is reported. In the light quark sector a major breakthrough has been
made recently in connection with the historical systematic uncertainties due to
a lack of experimental information on the pseudoscalar resonance spectral
functions. It is now possible to suppress this contribution to the 1% level by
using suitable integration kernels in Finite Energy QCD sum rules. This allows
to determine the up-, down-, and strange-quark masses with an unprecedented
precision of some 8-10%. Further reduction of this uncertainty will be possible
with improved accuracy in the strong coupling, now the main source of error. In
the heavy quark sector, the availability of experimental data in the vector
channel, and the use of suitable multipurpose integration kernels allows to
increase the accuracy of the charm- and bottom-quarks masses to the 1% level.Comment: Invited review paper to be published in Modern Physics Letters
Extensive near-infrared (H-band) photometry in Coma
We present extensive and accurate photometry in the near-infrared H band of a
complete sample of objects in an area of about 400 arcmin2 toward the Coma
cluster of galaxies. The sample, including about 300 objects, is complete down
to H~17 mag, the exact value depending on the type of magnitude (isophotal,
aperture, Kron) and the particular region studied. This is six magnitudes below
the characteristic magnitude of galaxies, well into the dwarfs' regime at the
distance of the Coma cluster. For each object (star or galaxy) we provide
aperture magnitudes computed within five different apertures, the magnitude
within the 22 mag arcsec2 isophote, the Kron magnitude and radius, magnitude
errors, as well as the coordinates, the isophotal area, and a stellarity index.
Photometric errors are 0.2 mag at the completness limit. This sample is meant
to be the zero-redshift reference for evolutionary studies of galaxies.Comment: A&AS in press, paper, with high resolution images & tables are
available at http://oacosf.na.astro.it/~andreon/listapub.htm
Gas expulsion in highly substructured embedded star clusters
We investigate the response of initially substructured, young, embedded star
clusters to instantaneous gas expulsion of their natal gas. We introduce
primordial substructure to the stars and the gas by simplistically modelling
the star formation process so as to obtain a variety of substructure
distributed within our modelled star forming regions. We show that, by
measuring the virial ratio of the stars alone (disregarding the gas
completely), we can estimate how much mass a star cluster will retain after gas
expulsion to within 10% accuracy, no matter how complex the background
structure of the gas is, and we present a simple analytical recipe describing
this behaviour. We show that the evolution of the star cluster while still
embedded in the natal gas, and the behavior of the gas before being expelled,
are crucial processes that affect the timescale on which the cluster can evolve
into a virialized spherical system. Embedded star clusters that have high
levels of substructure are subvirial for longer times, enabling them to survive
gas expulsion better than a virialized and spherical system. By using a more
realistic treatment for the background gas than our previous studies, we find
it very difficult to destroy the young clusters with instantaneous gas
expulsion. We conclude that gas removal may not be the main culprit for the
dissolution of young star clusters.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA
- …