2,704 research outputs found
The capability of capacitive sensors in the monitoring relative humidity in hypogeum environments
Hypogeum environments are characterized by high levels of relative humidity (RH).
Most humidity sensors currently in use are based on the capacitive effect of the dielectric material
to change according to water vapour uptake. In hypogeum environments the dielectric material
can be saturated by water vapor, implying a significant error in the RH measurement. To improve
the capacity of this type of humidity sensors, a modified hygrometer capacitive sensor, which
uses a heating cycle to avoid the condensation, has been recently developed by RotronicÂź.
During four field campaigns in two different hypogea environments (the Monkey Tomb in Siena
and the Mithreum of Caracalla Baths in Rome), RH was measured using the conventional
capacitive sensor (CCS) and the heated capacitive sensor (HCS). The purpose of this study was
to investigate the capability of HCS to detect RH variations when the environmental conditions
were close to vapor saturation. Significant differences were found between the measurements of
the two sensors: when RH was close to 100%, the CCS was not able to detect the RH decrease,
giving only a measure of RH=100%, while HCS detected such a RH decrease. Therefore, these
results encourage the use of HCS in the monitoring of RH levels in extreme humidity sites such
as hypogea sites
Photospheric and chromospheric activity in four young solar-type stars
We present a photometric and spectroscopic study of four G-K dwarfs, namely
HD 166, epsilon Eri, chi1 Ori and kappa1 Cet. In three cases, we find a clear
spatial association between photospheric and chromospheric active regions. For
chi1 Ori we do not find appreciable variations of photospheric temperature, and
chromospheric Halpha emission. We applied a spot/plage model to the observed
rotational modulation of temperature and flux to derive spot/plage parameters
and to reconstruct a rough three-dimensional map of the outer atmosphere of
kappa1 Cet, HD 166 and epsilon Eri.Comment: 12 pages, 3 tables, 9 figures. Submitted to Ap
Evidence from stellar rotation of enhanced disc dispersal: (I) The case of the triple visual system BD-21 1074 in the Pictoris association
The early stage of stellar evolution is characterized by a star-disc locking
mechanism. The disc-locking prevents the star to spin its rotation up, and its
timescale depends on the disc lifetime. Some mechanisms can significantly
shorten this lifetime, allowing a few stars to start spinning up much earlier
than other stars. In the present study, we aim to investigate how the
properties of the circumstellar environment can shorten the disc lifetime. We
have identified a few multiple stellar systems, composed of stars with similar
masses, which belong to associations with a known age. Since all parameters
that are responsible for the rotational evolution, with the exception of
environment properties and initial stellar rotation, are similar for all
components, we expect that significant differences among the rotation periods
can only arise from differences in the disc lifetimes. A photometric timeseries
allowed us to measure the rotation periods of each component, while
high-resolution spectra provided us with the fundamental parameters,
and chromospheric line fluxes. The rotation periods of the components differ
significantly, and the component B, which has a closer companion C, rotates
faster than the more distant and isolated component A. We can ascribe the
rotation period difference to either different initial rotation periods or
different disc-locking phases arising from the presence of the close companion
C. In the specific case of BD21 1074, the second scenario seems to be more
favored. In our hypothesis of different disc-locking phase, any planet orbiting
this star is likely formed very rapidly owing to a gravitational instability
mechanism, rather than core accretion. Only a large difference of initial
rotation periods alone could account for the observed period difference,
leaving comparable disc lifetimes.Comment: Accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics on July 31, 2014; Pages 12,
Figs.
Theory of dressed states in quantum optics
The dual Dyson series [M.Frasca, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 58}, 3439 (1998)], is used
to develop a general perturbative method for the study of atom-field
interaction in quantum optics. In fact, both Dyson series and its dual, through
renormalization group methods to remove secular terms from the perturbation
series, give the opportunity of a full study of the solution of the
Schr\"{o}dinger equation in different ranges of the parameters of the given
hamiltonian. In view of recent experiments with strong laser fields, this
approach seems well-suited to give a clarification and an improvement of the
applications of the dressed states as currently done through the eigenstates of
the atom-field interaction, showing that these are just the leading order of
the dual Dyson series when the Hamiltonian is expressed in the interaction
picture. In order to exploit the method at the best, a study is accomplished of
the well-known Jaynes-Cummings model in the rotating wave approximation, whose
exact solution is known, comparing the perturbative solutions obtained by the
Dyson series and its dual with the same approximations obtained by Taylor
expanding the exact solution. Finally, a full perturbative study of high-order
harmonic generation is given obtaining, through analytical expressions, a clear
account of the power spectrum using a two-level model, even if the method can
be successfully applied to a more general model that can account for ionization
too. The analysis shows that to account for the power spectrum it is needed to
go to first order in the perturbative analysis. The spectrum obtained gives a
way to measure experimentally the shift of the energy levels of the atom
interacting with the laser field by looking at the shifting of hyper-Raman
lines.Comment: Revtex, 17 page
The Chamaeleon II low-mass star-forming region: radial velocities, elemental abundances, and accretion properties
Radial velocities, elemental abundances, and accretion properties of members
of star-forming regions (SFRs) are important for understanding star and planet
formation. While infrared observations reveal the evolutionary status of the
disk, optical spectroscopy is fundamental to acquire information on the
properties of the central star and on the accretion characteristics. 2MASS
archive data and the Spitzer c2d survey of the Chamaeleon II dark cloud have
provided disk properties of a large number of young stars. We complement these
data with spectroscopy with the aim of providing physical stellar parameters
and accretion properties. We use FLAMES/UVES+GIRAFFE observations of 40 members
of Cha II to measure radial velocities through cross-correlation technique, Li
abundances by means of curves of growth, and for a suitable star elemental
abundances of Fe, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, and Ni using the code MOOG. From the
equivalent widths of the Halpha, Hbeta, and the HeI-5876, 6678, 7065 Angstrom
emission lines, we estimate the mass accretion rates, dMacc/dt, for all the
objects. We derive a radial velocity distribution for the Cha II stars
(=11.4+-2.0 km/s). We find dMacc/dt prop. to Mstar^1.3 and to Age^(-0.82)
in the 0.1-1.0 Msun mass regime, and a mean dMacc/dt for Cha II of ~7*10^(-10)
Msun/yr. We also establish a relationship between the HeI-7065 Angstrom line
emission and the accretion luminosity. The radial velocity distributions of
stars and gas in Cha II are consistent. The spread in dMacc/dt at a given
stellar mass is about one order of magnitude and can not be ascribed entirely
to short timescale variability. Analyzing the relation between dMacc/dt and the
colors in Spitzer and 2MASS bands, we find indications that the inner disk
changes from optically thick to optically thin at dMacc/dt~10^(-10) Msun/yr.
Finally, the disk fraction is consistent with the age of Cha II.Comment: 21 Pages, 15 Figures, 7 Tables. Accepted for publication in Astronomy
and Astrophysics. Abstract shortene
CleAir monitoring system for particulate matter. A case in the Napoleonic Museum in Rome
Monitoring the air particulate concentration both outdoors and indoors is becoming a more relevant issue in the past few decades. An innovative, fully automatic, monitoring system called CleAir is presented. Such a system wants to go beyond the traditional technique (gravimetric analysis), allowing for a double monitoring approach: the traditional gravimetric analysis as well as the optical spectroscopic analysis of the scattering on the same filters in steady-state conditions. The experimental data are interpreted in terms of light percolation through highly scattering matter by means of the stretched exponential evolution. CleAir has been applied to investigate the daily distribution of particulate matter within the Napoleonic Museum in Rome as a test case
Discontinuities, Generalized Solutions, and (Dis)agreement in Opinion Dynamics
This paper deals with continuous-time opinion dynamics that feature the interplay of continuous opinions and discrete behaviours. In our model, the opinion of one individual is only influenced by the behaviours of fellow individuals. The key technical difficulty in the study of these dynamics is that the right-hand sides of the equations are discontinuous and thus their solutions must be intended in some generalized sense: in our analysis, we consider both Carath'eodory and Krasovskii solutions. We first prove existence and completeness of Carath'e-o-dory solutions from every initial condition and we highlight a pathological behavior of Carath'eo-do-ry solutions, which can converge to points that are not (Carath'eodory) equilibria. Notably, such points can be arbitrarily far from consensus and indeed simulations show that convergence to non-consensus configurations is very common. In order to cope with these pathological attractors, we then study Krasovskii solutions. We give an estimate of the asymptotic distance of all Krasovskii solutions from consensus and we prove its tightness by an example of equilibrium such that this distance is quadratic in the number of agents. This fact implies that quantization can drastically destroy consensus. However, consensus is guaranteed in some special cases, namely when the communication among the individuals is described by either a complete or a complete bipartite graph
An extensive VLT/X-Shooter library of photospheric templates of pre-main sequence stars
Studies of the formation and evolution of young stars and their disks rely on
the knowledge of the stellar parameters of the young stars. The derivation of
these parameters is commonly based on comparison with photospheric template
spectra. Furthermore, chromospheric emission in young active stars impacts the
measurement of mass accretion rates, a key quantity to study disk evolution.
Here we derive stellar properties of low-mass pre-main sequence stars without
disks, which represent ideal photospheric templates for studies of young stars.
We also use these spectra to constrain the impact of chromospheric emission on
the measurements of mass accretion rates. The spectra in reduced,
flux-calibrated, and corrected for telluric absorption form are made available
to the community. We derive the spectral type for our targets by analyzing the
photospheric molecular features present in their VLT/X-Shooter spectra by means
of spectral indices and comparison of the relative strength of photospheric
absorption features. We also measure effective temperature, gravity, projected
rotational velocity, and radial velocity from our spectra by fitting them with
synthetic spectra with the ROTFIT tool. The targets have negligible extinction
and spectral type from G5 to M8. We perform synthetic photometry on the spectra
to derive the typical colors of young stars in different filters. We measure
the luminosity of the emission lines present in the spectra and estimate the
noise due to chromospheric emission in the measurements of accretion luminosity
in accreting stars. We provide a calibration of the photospheric colors of
young PMS stars as a function of their spectral type in a set of standard
broad-band optical and near-infrared filters. For stars with masses of ~
1.5Msun and ages of ~1-5 Myr, the chromospheric noise converts to a limit of
measurable mass accretion rates of ~ 3x10^-10 Msun/yr.Comment: Accepted for publication on Astronomy & Astrophysics. The spectra of
the photospheric templates will be uploaded to Vizier, but are already
available on request. Abstract shortened for arxiv constraints. Language
edited versio
Dynamical decoherence in a cavity with a large number of two-level atoms
We consider a large number of two-level atoms interacting with the mode of a
cavity in the rotating-wave approximation (Tavis-Cummings model). We apply the
Holstein-Primakoff transformation to study the model in the limit of the number
of two-level atoms, all in their ground state, becoming very large. The unitary
evolution that we obtain in this approximation is applied to a macroscopic
superposition state showing that, when the coherent states forming the
superposition are enough distant, then the state collapses on a single coherent
state describing a classical radiation mode. This appear as a true dynamical
effect that could be observed in experiments with cavities.Comment: 9 pages, no figures. This submission substitutes paper
quant-ph/0212148 that was withdrawn. Version accepted for publication in
Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physic
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