536 research outputs found
Polarimetry of an Intermediate-age Open Cluster: NGC 5617
We present polarimetric observations in the UBVRI bands of 72 stars located
in the direction of the medium age open cluster NGC 5617. Our intention is to
use polarimetry as a tool membership identification, by building on previous
investigations intended mainly to determine the cluster's general
characteristics rather than provide membership suitable for studies such as
stellar content and metallicity, as well as study the characteristics of the
dust lying between the Sun and the cluster. The obsevations were carried out
using the five-channel photopolarimeter of the Torino Astronomical Observatory
attached to the 2.15m telescope at the Complejo Astron\'omico El Leoncito
(CASLEO; Argentina. We are able to add 32 stars to the list of members of NGC
5617, and review the situation for others listed in the literature. In
particular, we find that five blue straggler stars in the region of the cluster
are located behind the same dust as the member stars are and we confirm the
membership of two red giants. The proposed polarimetric memberships are
compared with those derived by photometric and kinematical methods, with
excellent results. Among the observed stars, we identify 10 with intrinsic
polarization in their light. NGC 5617 can be polarimetrically characterized
with and . The spread in polarization
values for the stars observed in the direction of the cluster seems to be
caused by the uneven distribution of dust in front of the cluster's face.
Finally, we find that in the direction of the cluster, the interstellar medium
is apparently free of dust, from the Sun's position up to the
Carina-Sagittarius arm, where NGC 5617 seems to be located at its farthest
border
Identification of serine/threonine kinase and nucleotide-binding site–leucine-rich repeat (NBS-LRR) genes in the fire blight resistance quantitative trait locus of apple cultivar ‘Evereste’
Fire blight is the most destructive bacterial disease affecting apple (Malus×domestica) worldwide. So far, no resistance gene against fire blight has been characterized in apple, despite several resistance regions having been identified. A highly efficacious resistance quantitative trait locus (QTL) was localized on linkage group 12 (LG12) of the ornamental cultivar ‘Evereste’. A marker previously reported to be closely linked to this resistance was used to perform a chromosome landing. A bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clone of 189 kb carrying the fire blight resistance QTL was isolated and sequenced. New microsatellite markers were developed, and the genomic region containing the resistance locus was limited to 78 kb. A cluster of eight genes with homologies to already known resistance gene structures to bacterial diseases was identified and the corresponding gene transcription was verified. From this cluster, two genes were recognized in silico as the two most probable fire blight resistance genes showing homology with the Pto/Prf complex in tomato
Invariants of solvable rigid Lie algebras up to dimension 8
The invariants of all complex solvable rigid Lie algebras up to dimension
eight are computed. Moreover we show, for rank one solvable algebras, some
criteria to deduce to non-existence of non-trivial invariants or the existence
of fundamental sets of invariants formed by rational functions of the Casimir
invariants of the associated nilradical.Comment: 16 pages, 7 table
Velocity fluctuations in forced Burgers turbulence
We propose a simple method to compute the velocity difference statistics in
forced Burgers turbulence in any dimension. Within a reasonnable assumption
concerning the nucleation and coalescence of shocks, we find in particular that
the `left' tail of the distribution decays as an inverse square power, which is
compatible with numerical data. Our results are compared to those of various
recent approaches: instantons, operator product expansion, replicas.Comment: 10 pages latex, one postcript figur
Equivariant volumes of non-compact quotients and instanton counting
Motivated by Nekrasov's instanton counting, we discuss a method for
calculating equivariant volumes of non-compact quotients in symplectic and
hyper-K\"ahler geometry by means of the Jeffrey-Kirwan residue-formula of
non-abelian localization. In order to overcome the non-compactness, we use
varying symplectic cuts to reduce the problem to a compact setting, and study
what happens in the limit that recovers the original problem. We implement this
method for the ADHM construction of the moduli spaces of framed Yang-Mills
instantons on and rederive the formulas for the equivariant volumes
obtained earlier by Nekrasov-Shadchin, expressing these volumes as iterated
residues of a single rational function.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures; minor typos corrected, to appear in Comm. Math.
Phy
On the athermal character of structural phase transitions
The significance of thermal fluctuations on nucleation in structural
first-order phase transitions has been examined. The prototype case of
martensitic transitions has been experimentally investigated by means of
acoustic emission techniques. We propose a model based on the mean
first-passage time to account for the experimental observations. Our study
provides a unified framework to establish the conditions for isothermal and
athermal transitions to be observed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. Let
Magnetic hysteresis in the Cu-Al-Mn intermetallic alloy: experiments and modeling
We study isothermal magnetization processes in the Cu-Al-Mn intermetallic
alloy. Hysteresis is observed at temperatures below the spin-freezing of the
system. The characteristics of the hysteresis cycles as a function of
temperature and Mn content (magnetic element) are obtained. At low temperature
(5 K) a change from smooth to sharp cycles is observed with increasing Mn
content, which is related to the decrease of configurational disorder. We also
study a zero-temperature site-diluted Ising model, suitable for the description
of this Cu-Al-Mn system. The model reproduces the main features of the
hysteresis loops observed experimentally. It exhibits a disorder-induced
critical line separating a disordered phase from an incipient ferromagnetic
ground-state. The comparison between the model and the experiments allows to
conclude that the observed change in the experimental hysteresis loops can be
understood within the framework of the theory of disorder-induced criticality
in fluctuationless first-order phase transitions.Comment: 30 pages, 15 eps figures, 2 tables. To appear Phys. Rev. B 59 (June
1999
Magnetic hysteresis in the Cu-Al-Mn intermetallic alloy: experiments and modeling
We study isothermal magnetization processes in the Cu-Al-Mn intermetallic
alloy. Hysteresis is observed at temperatures below the spin-freezing of the
system. The characteristics of the hysteresis cycles as a function of
temperature and Mn content (magnetic element) are obtained. At low temperature
(5 K) a change from smooth to sharp cycles is observed with increasing Mn
content, which is related to the decrease of configurational disorder. We also
study a zero-temperature site-diluted Ising model, suitable for the description
of this Cu-Al-Mn system. The model reproduces the main features of the
hysteresis loops observed experimentally. It exhibits a disorder-induced
critical line separating a disordered phase from an incipient ferromagnetic
ground-state. The comparison between the model and the experiments allows to
conclude that the observed change in the experimental hysteresis loops can be
understood within the framework of the theory of disorder-induced criticality
in fluctuationless first-order phase transitions.Comment: 30 pages, 15 eps figures, 2 tables. To appear Phys. Rev. B 59 (June
1999
Hysteresis and Avalanches in the Random Anisotropy Ising Model
The behaviour of the Random Anisotropy Ising model at T=0 under local
relaxation dynamics is studied. The model includes a dominant ferromagnetic
interaction and assumes an infinite anisotropy at each site along local
anisotropy axes which are randomly aligned. Two different random distributions
of anisotropy axes have been studied. Both are characterized by a parameter
that allows control of the degree of disorder in the system. By using numerical
simulations we analyze the hysteresis loop properties and characterize the
statistical distribution of avalanches occuring during the metastable evolution
of the system driven by an external field. A disorder-induced critical point is
found in which the hysteresis loop changes from displaying a typical
ferromagnetic magnetization jump to a rather smooth loop exhibiting only tiny
avalanches. The critical point is characterized by a set of critical exponents,
which are consistent with the universal values proposed from the study of other
simpler models.Comment: 40 pages, 21 figures, Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
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