The reversibility of sea ice loss in a state-of-the-art climate model

Rapid Arctic sea ice retreat has fueled speculation about the possibility of threshold (or ‘tipping point’) behavior and irreversible loss of the sea ice cover. We test sea ice reversibility within a state-of-the-art atmosphere–ocean global climate model by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide until the Arctic Ocean becomes ice-free throughout the year and subsequently decreasing it until the initial ice cover returns. Evidence for irreversibility in the form of hysteresis outside the envelope of natural variability is explored for the loss of summer and winter ice in both hemispheres. We find no evidence of irreversibility or multiple ice-cover states over the full range of simulated sea ice conditions between the modern climate and that with an annually ice-free Arctic Ocean. Summer sea ice area recovers as hemispheric temperature cools along a trajectory that is indistinguishable from the trajectory of summer sea ice loss, while the recovery of winter ice area appears to be slowed due to the long response times of the ocean near the modern winter ice edge. The results are discussed in the context of previous studies that assess the plausibility of sea ice tipping points by other methods. The findings serve as evidence against the existence of threshold behavior in the summer or winter ice cover in either hemisphere

Lattice-induced non-adiabatic frequency shifts in optical lattice clocks

We consider the frequency shift in optical lattice clocks which arises from the coupling of the electronic motion to the atomic motion within the lattice. For the simplest of 3-D lattice geometries this coupling is shown to only affect clocks based on blue-detuned lattices. We have estimated the size of this shift for the prospective strontium lattice clock operating at the 390 nm blue-detuned magic wavelength. The resulting fractional frequency shift is found to be on the order of $10^{-18}$ and is largely overshadowed by the electric quadrupole shift. For lattice clocks based on more complex geometries or other atomic systems, this shift could potentially be a limiting factor in clock accuracy.Comment: 5 page

A review of the ONR/NAVAIR research option combustion instabilities in compact ramjets, 1983-1988

This paper consists of two parts summarizing two portions of the ONR/NAVAIR Research Option. The option began in 1983 and continued for five years, involving 11 organizations. Simultaneously, similar or related programs supported by other agencies or institutions were being carried out in several other places. Results of those programs have been briefly summarized in five papers collected in a document to be published by C.P.L.A. This paper contains two of the five papers in that document. Here we cover the subjects of approximate analyses and stability; and large-scale structures and passive control. The first is concerned chiefly with an analytical framework constructed on the basis of observations; it is intended to provide a means of correlating and interpreting data, and predicting the stability of motions in a combustion chamber. The second is a summary of recent experimental work directed to understanding the flows in dump combustors of the sort used in modern ramjet engines. Much relevant material is not included here, but may be found in the remaining papers of the document cited above. For completeness, we note briefly the substance of those reports. In their summary "Spray Combustion Processes in Ramjet Combustion Instability," Bowman (Stanford), Law (University of California, Davis) and Sirignano (University of California, Irvine) review several aspects of spray combustion relevant to combustion instabilities. The objectives of the works were: (1) to determine the effect of spray characteristics on the energy release pattern in a dump combustor and the subsequent effects on combustion instability; (2) to gain a fundamental understanding of the coupling of the spray vaporization process with an unsteady flow field; and (3) to investigate methods for controlling and enhancing spray vaporization rates in liquid-fueled ramjets. During the past five years considerable progress has been made in applying methods of computational fluid dynamics to the flow in a dump combustor including consequences of energy release due to combustion processes. Jou has summarized work done at Flow Research, Inc. and at the Naval Research Laboratory in his paper "A Summary Report on Large-Eddy Simulations of Pressure Oscillations in a Ramjet Combustor." The serious effects of combustion instabilities on the inlets of ramjet engines were discovered in the late 1970's in experimental work at the Aeropropulsion Laboratory, Wright Field, the Naval Weapons Center and the Marquardt Company. The most thorough laboratory work on the unsteady behavior of inlets has been accomplished at the McDonnell-Douglas Research Laboratory by Sajben who has reviewed the subject in his paper "The Role of Inlet in Ramjet Pressure Oscillations.

Strong Isospin Breaking in CP-even and CP-odd K -> pi pi Decays

Complete next-to-leading (chiral) order (NLO) expressions for the strong isospin-breaking (IB) contributions in K -> pi pi are used to discuss (1) for CP-even, the impact on the magnitude of the Delta I=1/2 Rule, and (2) for CP-odd, the strong IB correction, Omega_st, for the gluonic penguin contribution to epsilon'/epsilon, with particular emphasis on the strong low-energy constant (LEC) and loop contributions, numerical values for which are model-independent at NLO.Comment: 4 pages. Contribution to the proceedings of the 7th Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics (CIPANP), May 22-28 2000, Quebec City, Canada. Uses AIP 6x9 LaTeX styl

SP_Ace: a new code to derive stellar parameters and elemental abundances

Aims: We developed a new method of estimating the stellar parameters Teff, log g, [M/H], and elemental abundances. This method was implemented in a new code, SP_Ace (Stellar Parameters And Chemical abundances Estimator). This is a highly automated code suitable for analyzing the spectra of large spectroscopic surveys with low or medium spectral resolution (R=2,000-20,000). Methods: After the astrophysical calibration of the oscillator strengths of 4643 absorption lines covering the wavelength ranges 5212-6860\AA\ and 8400-8924\AA, we constructed a library that contains the equivalent widths (EW) of these lines for a grid of stellar parameters. The EWs of each line are fit by a polynomial function that describes the EW of the line as a function of the stellar parameters. The coefficients of these polynomial functions are stored in a library called the "$GCOG$ library". SP_Ace, a code written in FORTRAN95, uses the GCOG library to compute the EWs of the lines, constructs models of spectra as a function of the stellar parameters and abundances, and searches for the model that minimizes the $\chi^2$ deviation when compared to the observed spectrum. The code has been tested on synthetic and real spectra for a wide range of signal-to-noise and spectral resolutions. Results: SP_Ace derives stellar parameters such as Teff, log g, [M/H], and chemical abundances of up to ten elements for low to medium resolution spectra of FGK-type stars with precision comparable to the one usually obtained with spectra of higher resolution. Systematic errors in stellar parameters and chemical abundances are presented and identified with tests on synthetic and real spectra. Stochastic errors are automatically estimated by the code for all the parameters. A simple Web front end of SP_Ace can be found at http://dc.g-vo.org/SP_ACE, while the source code will be published soon.Comment: 36 pages, 34 figures, A&A accepte

Isospin Breaking in the Extraction of Isovector and Isoscalar Spectral Functions from e^+e^- --> hadrons

A finite energy sum rule (FESR) analysis of the isospin-breaking vector current correlator is used to determine the isospin-breaking electromagnetic (EM) decay constants of the low-lying vector mesons. These results are used to evaluate the corrections required to extract the flavor diagonal 33 and 88 resonance contributions from the full resonance EM contributions to the EM spectral function. A large (~15%) correction is found in the case of the omega contribution to the isoscalar spectral function. The implications of these results for sum rules based on the isovector-isoscalar spectral difference are considered.Comment: Presentation to the 3rd International Conference on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics, Adelaide, Mar. 13-17, 200

Fringe counter for interferometers Patent

Digital sensor for counting fringes produced by interferometers with improved sensitivity and one photomultiplier tube to eliminate alignment proble