Nonzero solutions of perturbed Hammerstein integral equations with deviated arguments and applications

We provide a theory to establish the existence of nonzero solutions of perturbed Hammerstein integral equations with deviated arguments, being our main ingredient the theory of fixed point index. Our approach is fairly general and covers a variety of cases. We apply our results to a periodic boundary value problem with reflections and to a thermostat problem. In the case of reflections we also discuss the optimality of some constants that occur in our theory. Some examples are presented to illustrate the theory.Comment: 3 figures, 23 page

Cosmogenic neutrino fluxes under the effect of active-sterile secret interactions

Ultra High Energy cosmogenic neutrinos may represent a unique opportunity to unveil possible new physics interactions once restricted to the neutrino sector only. In the present paper we study the observable effects of a secret active-sterile interactions, mediated by a pseudoscalar, on the expected flux of cosmogenic neutrinos. The results show that for masses of sterile neutrinos and pseudoscalars of hundreds MeV, necessary to evade cosmological, astrophysical and elementary particle constraints, the presence of such new interactions can significantly change the energy spectrum of cosmogenic neutrinos at Earth in the energy range from PeV to ZeV. Interestingly, the distortion of the spectrum results to be detectable at GRAND apparatus if the scalar mediator mass is around 250 MeV and the UHECRs are dominated by the proton component. Larger mediator masses or a chemical composition of UHECRs dominated by heavier nuclei would require much larger cosmic rays apparatus which might be available in future.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty in Kentucky: A Comparison of Survey Results-1989, 1997, 1999

This bulletin examines changes in the attitudes of Kentucky residents toward the death penalty. Over the period 1989 to 1999, the level of opposition to the death in Kentucky has risen. In 1999, 28.3 percents of the respondents were either strongly (17.3 %) or somewhat (11%) against the death penalty. Also, the percentage of respondents who were unsure about the use of capital punishment declined from 16.3 to 12.5 percent. By 1999, support for the death penalty had declined by 10 percents points (59.2 %)

Relaxation due to random collisions with a many-qudit environment

We analyze the dynamics of a system qudit of dimension mu sequentially interacting with the nu-dimensional qudits of a chain playing the ore of an environment. Each pairwise collision has been modeled as a random unitary transformation. The relaxation to equilibrium of the purity of the system qudit, averaged over random collisions, is analytically computed by means of a Markov chain approach. In particular, we show that the steady state is the one corresponding to the steady state for random collisions with a single environment qudit of effective dimension nu_e=nu*mu. Finally, we numerically investigate aspects of the entanglement dynamics for qubits (mu=nu=2) and show that random unitary collisions can create multipartite entanglement between the system qudit and the qudits of the chain.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Microwave intermodulation distortion of MgB2 thin films

The two tone intermodulation arising in MgB2 thin films deposited in-situ by planar magnetron sputtering on sapphire substrates is studied. Samples are characterised using an open-ended dielectric puck resonator operating at 8.8 GHz. The experimental results show that the third order products increase with the two-tone input power with a slope ranging between 1.5 and 2.3. The behaviour can be understood introducing a mechanism of vortex penetration in grain boundaries as the most plausible source of non linearities in these films. This assumption is confirmed by the analysis of the field dependence of the surface resistance, that show a linear behaviour at all temperatures under test.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures; to be published in Appl. Phys. Let