3,500 research outputs found
A Superfield for Every Dash-Chromotopology
The recent classification scheme of so-called adinkraic off-shell
supermultiplets of N-extended worldline supersymmetry without central charges
finds a combinatorial explosion. Completing our earlier efforts, we now
complete the constructive proof that all of these trillions or more of
supermultiplets have a superfield representation. While different as
superfields and supermultiplets, these are still super-differentially related
to a much more modest number of minimal supermultiplets, which we construct
herein.Comment: 13 pages, integrated illustration
Energy-dependent quenching adjusts the excitation diffusion length to regulate photosynthetic light harvesting
An important determinant of crop yields is the regulation of photosystem II
(PSII) light harvesting by energy-dependent quenching (qE). However, the
molecular details of excitation quenching have not been quantitatively
connected to the PSII yield, which only emerges on the 100 nm scale of the
grana membrane and determines flux to downstream metabolism. Here, we
incorporate excitation dissipation by qE into a pigment-scale model of
excitation transfer and trapping for a 200 nm x 200 nm patch of the grana
membrane. We demonstrate that single molecule measurements of qE are consistent
with a weak-quenching regime. Consequently, excitation transport can be
rigorously coarse-grained to a 2D random walk with an excitation diffusion
length determined by the extent of quenching. A diffusion-corrected lake model
substantially improves the PSII yield determined from variable chlorophyll
fluorescence measurements and offers an improved model of PSII for
photosynthetic metabolism.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, 3 supplementary figure
Aberration of the Cosmic Microwave Background
The motion of the solar system barycenter with respect to the cosmic
microwave background (CMB) induces a very large apparent dipole component into
the CMB brightness map at the 3 mK level. In this Letter we discuss another
kinematic effect of our motion through the CMB: the small shift in apparent
angular positions due to the aberration of light. The aberration angles are
only of order beta ~0.001, but this leads to a potentially measurable
compression (expansion) of the spatial scale in the hemisphere toward (away
from) our motion through the CMB. In turn, this will shift the peaks in the
acoustic power spectrum of the CMB by a factor of order 1 +/- beta. For current
CMB missions, and even those in the foreseeable future, this effect is small,
but should be taken into account. In principle, if the acoustic peak locations
were not limited by sampling noise (i.e., the cosmic variance), this effect
could be used to determine the cosmic contribution to the dipole term.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, comments welcome. Submitted to ApJ Letter
Theory Challenges of the Accelerating Universe
The accelerating expansion of the universe presents an exciting, fundamental
challenge to the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. I highlight
some of the outstanding challenges in both developing theoretical models and
interpreting without bias the observational results from precision cosmology
experiments in the next decade that will return data to help reveal the nature
of the new physics. Examples given focus on distinguishing a new component of
energy from a new law of gravity, and the effect of early dark energy on baryon
acoustic oscillations.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures; minor changes to match J. Phys. A versio
Effective Symmetries of the Minimal Supermultiplet of N = 8 Extended Worldline Supersymmetry
A minimal representation of the N = 8 extended worldline supersymmetry, known
as the `ultra-multiplet', is closely related to a family of supermultiplets
with the same, E(8) chromotopology. We catalogue their effective symmetries and
find a Spin(4) x Z(2) subgroup common to them all, which explains the
particular basis used in the original construction. We specify a constrained
superfield representation of the supermultiplets in the ultra-multiplet family,
and show that such a superfield representation in fact exists for all adinkraic
supermultiplets. We also exhibit the correspondences between these
supermultiplets, their Adinkras and the E(8) root lattice bases. Finally, we
construct quadratic Lagrangians that provide the standard kinetic terms and
afford a mixing of an even number of such supermultiplets controlled by a
coupling to an external 2-form of fluxes.Comment: 13 Figure
Mechanistic Regimes of Vibronic Transport in a Heterodimer and the Design Principle of Incoherent Vibronic Transport in Phycobiliproteins
Following the observation of coherent oscillations in non-linear spectra of
photosynthetic pigment protein complexes, particularly phycobilliprotein such
as PC645, coherent vibronic transport has been suggested as a design principle
for novel light harvesting materials operating at room temperature. Vibronic
transport between energetically remote pigments is coherent when the presence
of a resonant vibration supports transient delocalization between the pair of
electronic excited states. Here, we establish the mechanism of vibronic
transport for a model heterodimer across a wide range of molecular parameter
values. The resulting mechanistic map demonstrates that the molecular
parameters of phycobiliproteins in fact support incoherent vibronic transport.
This result points to an important design principle: incoherent vibronic
transport is more efficient than a coherent mechanism when energetic disorder
exceeds the coupling between the donor and vibrationally excited acceptor
states. Finally, our results suggest that the role of coherent vibronic
transport in pigment protein complexes should be reevaluated
Early Dark Energy Cosmologies
We propose a novel parameterization of the dark energy density. It is
particularly well suited to describe a non-negligible contribution of dark
energy at early times and contains only three parameters, which are all
physically meaningful: the fractional dark energy density today, the equation
of state today and the fractional dark energy density at early times. As we
parameterize Omega_d(a) directly instead of the equation of state, we can give
analytic expressions for the Hubble parameter, the conformal horizon today and
at last scattering, the sound horizon at last scattering, the acoustic scale as
well as the luminosity distance. For an equation of state today w_0 < -1, our
model crosses the cosmological constant boundary. We perform numerical studies
to constrain the parameters of our model by using Cosmic Microwave Background,
Large Scale Structure and Supernovae Ia data. At 95% confidence, we find that
the fractional dark energy density at early times Omega_early < 0.06. This
bound tightens considerably to Omega_early < 0.04 when the latest Boomerang
data is included. We find that both the gold sample of Riess et. al. and the
SNLS data by Astier et. al. when combined with CMB and LSS data mildly prefer
w_0 < -1, but are well compatible with a cosmological constant.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; references added, matches published versio
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