61,239 research outputs found
Long Gamma-Ray Transients from Collapsars
In the collapsar model for common gamma-ray bursts, the formation of a
centrifugally supported disk occurs during the first 10 seconds following
the collapse of the iron core in a massive star. This only occurs in a small
fraction of massive stellar deaths, however, and requires unusual conditions. A
much more frequent occurrence could be the death of a star that makes a black
hole and a weak or absent outgoing shock, but in a progenitor that only has
enough angular momentum in its outermost layers to make a disk. We consider
several cases where this is likely to occur - blue supergiants with low mass
loss rates, tidally-interacting binaries involving either helium stars or giant
stars, and the collapse to a black hole of very massive pair-instability
supernovae. These events have in common the accretion of a solar mass or so of
material through a disk over a period much longer than the duration of a common
gamma-ray burst. A broad range of powers is possible, to
erg s, and this brightness could be enhanced by beaming. Such
events were probably more frequent in the early universe where mass loss rates
were lower. Indeed this could be one of the most common forms of gamma-ray
transients in the universe and could be used to study first generation stars.
Several events could be active in the sky at any one time. A recent example of
this sort of event may have been the SWIFT transient Sw-1644+57.Comment: submitted to Astrophysical Journa
Flexoelectric effect in finite samples
Static flexoelectric effect in a finite sample of a solid is addressed in
terms of phenomenological theory for the case of a thin plate subjected to
bending. It has been shown that despite an explicit asymmetry inherent to the
bulk constitutive electromechanical equations which take into account the
flexoelectric coupling, the electromechanical response for a finite sample is
"symmetric". "Symmetric" means that if a sensor and an actuator are made of a
flexoelectric element, performance of such devices can be characterized by the
same effective piezoelectric coefficient. This behavior is consistent with the
thermodynamic arguments offered earlier, being in conflict with the current
point of view on the matter in literature. This result was obtained using
standard mechanical boundary conditions valid for the case where the
polarization vanishes at the surface. It was shown that, for the case where
there is the polarization is nonzero at the surface, the aforementioned
symmetry of electromechanical response may be violated if standard mechanical
boundary conditions are used, leading to a conflict with the thermodynamic
arguments. It was argued that this conflict may be resolved when using modified
mechanical boundary conditions. It was also shown that the contribution of
surface piezoelectricity to the flexoelectric response of a finite sample is
expected to be comparable to that of the static bulk contribution (including
the material with high values of the dielectric constant) and to scale as the
bulk value of the dielectric constant (similar to the bulk contribution). This
finding implies that if the experimentally measured flexoelectric coefficient
scales as the dielectric constant of the material, this does not imply that the
measured flexoelectric response is controlled by the static bulk contribution
to the flexoelectric effect
A major crustal feature in the southeastern United States inferred from the MAGSAT equivalent source anomaly field
The MAGSAT equivalent-source anomaly field evaluated at 325 km altitude depicts a prominent anomaly centered over southeast Georgia, which is adjacent to the high-amplitude positive Kentucky anomaly. To overcome the satellite resolution constraint in studying this anomaly, conventional geophysical data were included in analysis: Bouguer gravity, seismic reflection and refraction, aeromagnetic, and in-situ stress-strain measurements. This integrated geophysical approach, infers more specifically the nature and extent of the crustal and/or lithospheric source of the Georgia MAGSAT anomaly. Physical properties and tectonic evolution of the area are all important in the interpretation
The effects of forcing and dissipation on phase transitions in thin granular layers
Recent experimental and computational studies of vibrated thin layers of
identical spheres have shown transitions to ordered phases similar to those
seen in equilibrium systems. Motivated by these results, we carry out
simulations of hard inelastic spheres forced by homogenous white noise. We find
a transition to an ordered state of the same symmetry as that seen in the
experiments, but the clear phase separation observed in the vibrated system is
absent. Simulations of purely elastic spheres also show no evidence for phase
separation. We show that the energy injection in the vibrated system is
dramatically different in the different phases, and suggest that this creates
an effective surface tension not present in the equilibrium or randomly forced
systems. We do find, however, that inelasticity suppresses the onset of the
ordered phase with random forcing, as is observed in the vibrating system, and
that the amount of the suppression is proportional to the degree of
inelasticity. The suppression depends on the details of the energy injection
mechanism, but is completely eliminated when inelastic collisions are replaced
by uniform system-wide energy dissipation.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
A simple test for hidden variables in spin-1 system
We resolve an old problem about the existence of hidden parameters in a
three-dimensional quantum system by constructing an appropriate Bell's type
inequality. This reveals a nonclassical nature of most spin- states. We
shortly discuss some physical implications and an underlying cause of this
nonclassical behavior, as well as a perspective of its experimental
verification.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
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