5,161 research outputs found
Self-adjointness of Dirac operators via Hardy-Dirac inequalities
Distinguished selfadjoint extensions of Dirac operators are constructed for a
class of potentials including Coulombic ones up to the critical case,
. The method uses Hardy-Dirac inequalities and quadratic form
techniques.Comment: PACS 03.65.P, 03.3
Faint emission lines in the Galactic H II regions M16, M20 and NGC 3603
We present deep echelle spectrophotometry of the Galactic {\hii} regions M16,
M20 and NGC 3603. The data have been taken with the Very Large Telescope
Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph in the 3100 to 10400 \AA range. We have
detected more than 200 emission lines in each region. Physical conditions have
been derived using different continuum and line intensity ratios. We have
derived He, C and O abundances from pure recombination
lines as well as abundances from collisionally excited lines for a large number
of ions of different elements. We have obtained consistent estimations of the
temperature fluctuation parameter, {\ts}, using different methods. We also
report the detection of deuterium Balmer lines up to D (M16) and to
D (M20) in the blue wings of the hydrogen lines, which excitation
mechanism seems to be continuum fluorescence. The temperature fluctuations
paradigm agree with the results obtained from optical CELs and the more
uncertain ones from far IR fine structure CELs in NGC 3603, although, more
observations covering the same volume of the nebula are necessary to obtain
solid conclusions.Comment: 22 pages, 13 Tables, 7 Figures. Accepted for publication by MNRA
New Ways to Soft Leptogenesis
Soft supersymmetry breaking terms involving heavy singlet sneutrinos provide
new sources of lepton number violation and of CP violation. In addition to the
CP violation in mixing, investigated previously, we find that `soft
leptogenesis' can be generated by CP violation in decay and in the interference
of mixing and decay. These additional ways to leptogenesis can be significant
for a singlet neutrino Majorana mass that is not much larger than the
supersymmetry breaking scale, . In contrast to CP violation
in mixing, for some of these new contributions the sneutrino oscillation rate
can be much faster than the decay rate, so that the bilinear scalar term need
not be smaller than its natural scale.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure
The Dirac equation without spinors
In the first part of the paper we give a tensor version of the Dirac
equation. In the second part we formulate and analyse a simple model equation
which for weak external fields appears to have properties similar to those of
the 2--dimensional Dirac equation.Comment: 20 pages. Submitted for publication in the proceedings of the
conference `Functional analysis, partial differential equations and
applications', Rostock (Germany) 31 August--4 September 199
Silicon-based three-dimensional microstructures for radiation dosimetry in hadrontherapy
In this work, we propose a solid-state-detector for use in radiation microdosimetry. This device improves the performance of existing dosimeters using customized 3D-cylindrical microstructures etched inside silicon. The microdosimeter consists of an array of micro-sensors that have 3D-cylindrical electrodes of 15 μm diameter and a depth of 5 μm within a silicon membrane, resulting in a well-defined micrometric radiation sensitive volume. These microdetectors have been characterized using an 241Am source to assess their performance as radiation detectors in a high-LET environment. This letter demonstrates the capability of this microdetector to be used to measure dose and LET in hadrontherapy centers for treatment plan verification as part of their patient-specific quality control program
The Gaia-ESO Survey: dynamics of ionized and neutral gas in the Lagoon nebula (M8)
We present a spectroscopic study of the dynamics of the ionized and neutral
gas throughout the Lagoon nebula (M8), using VLT/FLAMES data from the Gaia-ESO
Survey. We explore the connections between the nebular gas and the stellar
population of the associated star cluster NGC6530. We characterize through
spectral fitting emission lines of H-alpha, [N II] and [S II] doublets, [O
III], and absorption lines of sodium D doublet, using data from the
FLAMES/Giraffe and UVES spectrographs, on more than 1000 sightlines towards the
entire face of the Lagoon nebula. Gas temperatures are derived from line-width
comparisons, densities from the [S II] doublet ratio, and ionization parameter
from H-alpha/[N II] ratio. Although doubly-peaked emission profiles are rarely
found, line asymmetries often imply multiple velocity components along the line
of sight. This is especially true for the sodium absorption, and for the [O
III] lines. Spatial maps for density and ionization are derived, and compared
to other known properties of the nebula and of its massive stars 9 Sgr,
Herschel 36 and HD 165052 which are confirmed to provide most of the ionizing
flux. The detailed velocity fields across the nebula show several expanding
shells, related to the cluster NGC6530, the O stars 9 Sgr and Herschel 36, and
the massive protostar M8East-IR. The origins of kinematical expansion and
ionization of the NGC6530 shell appear to be different. We are able to put
constrains on the line-of-sight (relative or absolute) distances between some
of these objects and the molecular cloud. The large obscuring band running
through the middle of the nebula is being compressed by both sides, which might
explain its enhanced density. We also find an unexplained large-scale velocity
gradient across the entire nebula. At larger distances, the transition from
ionized to neutral gas is studied using the sodium lines.Comment: 26 pages, 31 figures, accepted on Astronomy and Astrophysics journa
Decoherence in the cosmic background radiation
In this paper we analyze the possibility of detecting nontrivial quantum
phenomena in observations of the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic
background radiation (CBR), for example, if the Universe could be found in a
coherent superposition of two states corresponding to different CBR
temperatures. Such observations are sensitive to scalar primordial fluctuations
but insensitive to tensor fluctuations, which are therefore converted into an
environment for the former. Even for a free inflaton field minimally coupled to
gravity, scalar-tensor interactions induce enough decoherence among histories
of the scalar fluctuations as to render them classical under any realistic
probe of their amplitudes.Comment: 15 pages, accepted to be published in Classical and Quantum Gravit
Testing the chemical tagging technique with open clusters
Context. Stars are born together from giant molecular clouds and, if we
assume that the priors were chemically homogeneous and well-mixed, we expect
them to share the same chemical composition. Most of the stellar aggregates are
disrupted while orbiting the Galaxy and most of the dynamic information is
lost, thus the only possibility of reconstructing the stellar formation history
is to analyze the chemical abundances that we observe today.
Aims. The chemical tagging technique aims to recover disrupted stellar
clusters based merely on their chemical composition. We evaluate the viability
of this technique to recover co-natal stars that are no longer gravitationally
bound.
Methods. Open clusters are co-natal aggregates that have managed to survive
together. We compiled stellar spectra from 31 old and intermediate-age open
clusters, homogeneously derived atmospheric parameters, and 17 abundance
species, and applied machine learning algorithms to group the stars based on
their chemical composition. This approach allows us to evaluate the viability
and efficiency of the chemical tagging technique.
Results. We found that stars at different evolutionary stages have distinct
chemical patterns that may be due to NLTE effects, atomic diffusion, mixing,
and biases. When separating stars into dwarfs and giants, we observed that a
few open clusters show distinct chemical signatures while the majority show a
high degree of overlap. This limits the recovery of co-natal aggregates by
applying the chemical tagging technique. Nevertheless, there is room for
improvement if more elements are included and models are improved.Comment: accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Corrected
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