5,972 research outputs found
Detrimental adsorbate fields in experiments with cold Rydberg gases near surfaces
We observe the shift of Rydberg levels of rubidium close to a copper surface
when atomic clouds are repeatedly deposited on it. We measure transition
frequencies of rubidium to S and D Rydberg states with principal quantum
numbers n between 31 and 48 using the technique of electromagnetically induced
transparency. The spectroscopic measurement shows a strong increase of electric
fields towards the surface that evolves with the deposition of atoms. Starting
with a clean surface, we measure the evolution of electrostatic fields in the
range between 30 and 300 \mum from the surface. We find that after the
deposition of a few hundred atomic clouds, each containing ~10^6 atoms, the
field of adsorbates reaches 1 V/cm for a distance of 30 \mum from the surface.
This evolution of the electrostatic field sets serious limitations on cavity
QED experiments proposed for Rydberg atoms on atom chips.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures Submitted to Phys. Rev.
The distribution of stars around the Milky Way's central black hole II: Diffuse light from sub-giants and dwarfs
This is the second of three papers that search for the predicted stellar cusp
around the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A*, with new data and
methods. We aim to infer the distribution of the faintest stellar population
currently accessible through observations around Sagittarius A*. We use
adaptive optics assisted high angular resolution images obtained with the NACO
instrument at the ESO VLT. Through optimised PSF fitting we remove the light
from all detected stars above a given magnitude limit. Subsequently we analyse
the remaining, diffuse light density. The analysed diffuse light arises from
sub-giant and main-sequence stars with KS ~ 19 - 20 with masses of 1 - 2 Msol .
These stars can be old enough to be dynamically relaxed. The observed power-law
profile and its slope are consistent with the existence of a relaxed stellar
cusp around the Milky Way's central black hole. We find that a Nuker law
provides an adequate description of the nuclear cluster's intrinsic shape
(assuming spherical symmetry). The 3D power-law slope near Sgr A* is \gamma =
1.23 +- 0.05. At a distance of 0.01 pc from the black hole, we estimate a
stellar mass density of 2.3 +- 0.3 x 10^7 Msol pc^-3 and a total enclosed
stellar mass of 180 +- 20 Msol. These estimates assume a constant mass-to-light
ratio and do not take stellar remnants into account. The fact that no cusp is
observed for bright (Ks 16) giant stars at projected distances of roughly
0.1-0.3 pc implies that some mechanism has altered their appearance or
distribution.Comment: Accepted for publication A&
The distribution of old stars around the Milky Way's central black hole I: Star counts
(abridged) In this paper we revisit the problem of inferring the innermost
structure of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster via star counts, to clarify
whether it displays a core or a cusp around the central black hole. Through
image stacking and improved PSF fitting we push the completeness limit about
one magnitude deeper than in previous, comparable work. Contrary to previous
work, we analyse the stellar density in well-defined magnitude ranges in order
to be able to constrain stellar masses and ages. The RC and brighter giant
stars display a core-like surface density profile within a projected radius
R<0.3 pc of the central black hole, in agreement with previous studies, but
show a cusp-like surface density distribution at larger R. The surface density
of the fainter stars can be described well by a single power-law at R<2 pc. The
cusp-like profile of the faint stars persists even if we take into account the
possible contamination of stars in this brightness range by young pre-main
sequence stars. The data are inconsistent with a core-profile for the faint
stars.Finally, we show that a 3D Nuker law provides a very good description of
the cluster structure. We conclude that the observed stellar density at the
Galactic Centre, as it can be inferred with current instruments, is consistent
with the existence of a stellar cusp around the Milky Way's central black hole,
Sgr A*. This cusp is well developed inside the influence radius of about 3 pc
of Sgr A* and can be described by a single three-dimensional power-law with an
exponent gamma=1.23+-0.05. The apparent lack of RC stars and brighter giants at
projected distances of R < 0.3 pc (R<8") of the massive black hole may indicate
that some mechanism has altered their distribution or intrinsic luminosity.Comment: Accepted for publication A&
Compact Radio Sources within 30" of Sgr A*: Proper Motions, Stellar Winds and the Accretion Rate onto Sgr A*
Recent broad-band 34 and 44 GHz radio continuum observations of the Galactic
center have revealed 41 massive stars identified with near-IR counterparts, as
well as 44 proplyd candidates within 30" of Sgr A*. Radio observations obtained
in 2011 and 2014 have been used to derive proper motions of eight young stars
near Sgr A*. The accuracy of proper motion estimates based on near-IR
observations by Lu et al. and Paumard et al. have been investigated by using
their proper motions to predict the 2014 epoch positions of near-IR stars and
comparing the predicted positions with those of radio counterparts in the 2014
radio observations. Predicted positions from Lu et al. show an rms scatter of 6
mas relative to the radio positions, while those from Paumard et al. show rms
residuals of 20 mas, which is mainly due to uncertainties in the IR-based
proper motions. Under the assumption of homogeneous ionized winds, we also
determine the mass-loss rates of 11 radio stars, finding rates that are on
average 2 times smaller than those determined from model atmosphere
calculations and near-IR data. Clumpiness of ionized winds would reduce the
mass loss rate of WR and O stars by additional factors of 3 and 10,
respectively. One important implication of this is a reduction in the expected
mass accretion rate onto Sgr A* from stellar winds by nearly an order of
magnitude to a value of few \msol\ yr. Finally, we
present the positions of 318 compact 34.5 GHz radio sources within 30\arcs\ of
Sgr A*. At least 45 of these have stellar counterparts in the near-IR
(2.18 m) and (3.8m) bands.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, ApJ (in press
The Computer Science Ontology: A Large-Scale Taxonomy of Research Areas
Ontologies of research areas are important tools for characterising, exploring, and analysing the research landscape. Some fields of research are comprehensively described by large-scale taxonomies, e.g., MeSH in Biology and PhySH in Physics. Conversely, current Computer Science taxonomies are coarse-grained and tend to evolve slowly. For instance, the ACM classification scheme contains only about 2K research topics and the last version dates back to 2012. In this paper, we introduce the Computer Science Ontology (CSO), a large-scale, automatically generated ontology of research areas, which includes about 26K topics and 226K semantic relationships. It was created by applying the Klink-2 algorithm on a very large dataset of 16M scientific articles. CSO presents two main advantages over the alternatives: i) it includes a very large number of topics that do not appear in other classifications, and ii) it can be updated automatically by running Klink-2 on recent corpora of publications. CSO powers several tools adopted by the editorial team at Springer Nature and has been used to enable a variety of solutions, such as classifying research publications, detecting research communities, and predicting research trends. To facilitate the uptake of CSO we have developed the CSO Portal, a web application that enables users to download, explore, and provide granular feedback on CSO at different levels. Users can use the portal to rate topics and relationships, suggest missing relationships, and visualise sections of the ontology. The portal will support the publication of and access to regular new releases of CSO, with the aim of providing a comprehensive resource to the various communities engaged with scholarly data
Electroexcitation of the Roper resonance from CLAS data
The helicity amplitudes of the electroexcitation of the Roper resonance on
proton are extracted at 1.7 < Q2 < 4.2 GeV2 from recent high precision
JLab-CLAS cross sections data and longitudinally polarized beam asymmetry for
pi+ electroproduction on protons. The analysis is made using two approaches,
dispersion relations and unitary isobar model, which give consistent results.
It is found that the transverse helicity amplitude for the gamma* p -->
P11(1440) transition, which is large and negative at Q2=0, becomes large and
positive at Q2 ~ 2 GeV2, and then drops slowly with Q2. Longitudinal helicity
amplitude, that was previously found from CLAS data as large and positive at
Q2=0.4,0.65 GeV2, drops with Q2. These results rule out the presentation of
P11(1440) as a 3qG hybrid state, and provide strong evidence in favor of this
resonance as a first radial excitation of the 3q ground state.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, Talk on the Workshop on "The Physics of Excited
Nucleons", Bonn, Germany, October 200
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