Clumpy Ultracompact HII Regions I: Fully Supersonic Wind-blown Models

We propose that a significant fraction of the ultracompact HII regions found in massive star-forming clouds are the result of the interaction of the wind and ionizing radiation from a young massive star with the clumpy molecular cloud gas in its neighbourhood. Distributed mass loading in the flow allows the compact nebulae to be long-lived. In this paper, we discuss a particularly simple case, in which the flow in the HII region is everywhere supersonic. The line profiles predicted for this model are highly characteristic, for the case of uniform mass loading. We discuss briefly other observational diagnostics of these models.Comment: To appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 5 pages LaTeX (uses mn.sty and epsf.sty macros) + 4 PS figures. Also available via http://axp2.ast.man.ac.uk:8000/Preprints.htm

Does Inflation Provide Natural Initial Conditions for the Universe?

If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to arise through randomly-chosen initial conditions. To resolve this puzzle, we examine the notion of a natural state for the universe, and argue that it is a nearly-empty spacetime. If empty space has a small vacuum energy, however, inflation can begin spontaneously in this background. This scenario explains why a universe like ours is likely to have begun via a period of inflation, and also provides an origin for the cosmological arrow of time.Comment: Submitted to Gravity Research Foundation Essay Competition; based on hep-th/041027

Poincare Recurrences and Topological Diversity

Finite entropy thermal systems undergo Poincare recurrences. In the context of field theory, this implies that at finite temperature, timelike two-point functions will be quasi-periodic. In this note we attempt to reproduce this behavior using the AdS/CFT correspondence by studying the correlator of a massive scalar field in the bulk. We evaluate the correlator by summing over all the SL(2,Z) images of the BTZ spacetime. We show that all the terms in this sum receive large corrections after at certain critical time, and that the result, even if convergent, is not quasi-periodic. We present several arguments indicating that the periodicity will be very difficult to recover without an exact re-summation, and discuss several toy models which illustrate this. Finally, we consider the consequences for the information paradox.Comment: 18 + 8 pages, 5 figures. v2: reference adde

ACTIVATION AND CONTRIBUTION OF TRUNK AND LEG MUSCULATURE TO FORCE PRODUCTION DURING ON-WATER SPRINT KAYAK PERFORMANCE

Velocity production during sprint kayaking has been shown to be dependent on the magnitude of forces produced during the stroke cycle. However, while the importance of the upper body in force production has been promoted by previous research, the importance of the trunk and lower body are yet to be established. Eight international level paddlers completed 5 on-water sprint trials during which paddle force and trunk and leg muscle activations were recorded. Significant correlations (

Kepler and the Kuiper Belt

The proposed field-of-view of the Kepler mission is at an ecliptic latitude of ~55 degrees, where the surface density of scattered Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) is a few percent that in the ecliptic plane. The rate of occultations of Kepler target stars by scattered KBOs with radii r>10km is ~10^-6 to 10^-4 per star per year, where the uncertainty reflects the current ignorance of the thickness of the scattered KBO disk and the faint-end slope of their magnitude distribution. These occultation events will last only ~0.1% of the planned t_exp=15 minute integration time, and thus will appear as single data points that deviate by tiny amounts. However, given the target photometric accuracy of Kepler, these deviations will nevertheless be highly significant, with typical signal-to-noise ratios of ~10. I estimate that 1-20 of the 10^5 main-sequence stars in Kepler's field-of-view will exhibit detectable occultations during its four-year mission. For unresolved events, the signal-to-noise of individual occultations scales as t_exp^{-1/2}, and the minimum detectable radius could be decreased by an order of magnitude to ~1 km by searching the individual 3-second readouts for occultations. I propose a number of methods by which occultation events may be differentiated from systematic effects. Kepler should measure or significantly constrain the frequency of highly-inclined, ~10 km-sized KBOs.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. No changes. Accepted to ApJ, to appear in the August 1, 2004 issue (v610

Black Holes Surrounded by Uniformly Rotating Rings

Highly accurate numerical solutions to the problem of Black Holes surrounded by uniformly rotating rings in axially symmetric, stationary spacetimes are presented. The numerical methods developed to handle the problem are discussed in some detail. Related Newtonian problems are described and numerical results provided, which show that configurations can reach an inner mass-shedding limit as the mass of the central object increases. Exemplary results for the full relativistic problem for rings of constant density are given and the deformation of the event horizon due to the presence of the ring is demonstrated. Finally, we provide an example of a system for which the angular momentum of the central Black Hole divided by the square of its mass exceeds one.Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures, revtex, v4: minor changes, Eq. (17) corrected, corresponds to version in PR

Tachyons in de Sitter space and analytical continuation from dS/CFT to AdS/CFT

We discuss analytic continuation from d-dimensional Lorentzian de Sitter (dS$_d$) to d-dimensional Lorentzian anti-de Sitter (AdS$_{d}$) spacetime. We show that AdS$_{d}$, with opposite signature of the metric, can be obtained as analytic continuation of a portion of dS$_d$. This implies that the dynamics of (positive square-mass) scalar particles in AdS$_{d}$ can be obtained from the dynamics of tachyons in dS$_d$. We discuss this correspondence both at the level of the solution of the field equations and of the Green functions. The AdS/CFT duality is obtained as analytic continuation of the dS/CFT duality.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure, JHEP styl

Spectral correlations : understanding oscillatory contributions

We give a different derivation of a relation obtained using a supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model by Andreev and Altshuler [Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 902 (1995)], which connects smooth and oscillatory components of spectral correlation functions. We show that their result is not specific to the random matrix theory. Also, we show that despite an apparent contradiction, the results obtained using their formula are consistent with earlier perspectives on random matrix models