Application of conformal mapping to diffraction and scattering problems

Integral equation method based on conformal mapping applied to scattering and diffraction problems of plane waves by infinite cylinder with arbitrary cross sectio

Scientific publications of the bioscience programs division. Volume 5 - Planetary quarantine

Bibliography and indexes on planetary quarantin

NASA contract listings of publications under the behavioral biology program

Behavioral biology - bibliograph

Multiple scattering in random mechanical systems and diffusion approximation

This paper is concerned with stochastic processes that model multiple (or iterated) scattering in classical mechanical systems of billiard type, defined below. From a given (deterministic) system of billiard type, a random process with transition probabilities operator P is introduced by assuming that some of the dynamical variables are random with prescribed probability distributions. Of particular interest are systems with weak scattering, which are associated to parametric families of operators P_h, depending on a geometric or mechanical parameter h, that approaches the identity as h goes to 0. It is shown that (P_h -I)/h converges for small h to a second order elliptic differential operator L on compactly supported functions and that the Markov chain process associated to P_h converges to a diffusion with infinitesimal generator L. Both P_h and L are selfadjoint (densely) defined on the space L2(H,{\eta}) of square-integrable functions over the (lower) half-space H in R^m, where {\eta} is a stationary measure. This measure's density is either (post-collision) Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution or Knudsen cosine law, and the random processes with infinitesimal generator L respectively correspond to what we call MB diffusion and (generalized) Legendre diffusion. Concrete examples of simple mechanical systems are given and illustrated by numerically simulating the random processes.Comment: 34 pages, 13 figure

Advanced nickel-cadmium batteries for geosynchronous spacecraft

A nickel cadmium battery was developed that can be operated at 80 percent depth of discharge in excess of 10 years in a geosynchronous orbit application, and has about a 30 percent weight savings per spacecraft over present nickel cadmium batteries when used with a 1000 watts eclipse load. The approach used in the development was to replace nylon separators with inert polymer impregnated zirconia, use electrochemically deposited plates in place of conventional chemically precipitated ones, and use an additive to extend negative plate lifetime. The design has undergone extensive testing using both engineering and protoflight cell configurations

Enhanced dielectric response by disordered nanoscale/mesoscopic insulators

Enhancement of the dielectric response of insulators by disorder is theoretically proposed, where the quantum interference of electronic waves through the nanoscale/mesoscopic system and its change due to external perturbations control the polarization. In the disordered case with all the states being localized, the resonant tunneling, which is topologically protected, plays a crucial role, and enhances the dielectric response by a factor 30~40 compared with the pure case. Realization of this idea with accessible materials/structures is also discussed.Comment: 4 pages including 3 figures; minor revision; a high-resolution figure available at http://appi.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~sonoda/papers.htm

Measuring Dark Energy with Gamma-Ray Bursts and Other Cosmological Probes

It has been widely shown that the cosmological parameters and dark energy can be constrained by using data from type-Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy, the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the X-ray gas mass fraction in clusters, and the linear growth rate of perturbations at z=0.15 as obtained from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. Recently, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have also been argued to be promising standard candles for cosmography. In this paper, we present constraints on the cosmological parameters and dark energy by combining a recent GRB sample including 69 events with the other cosmological probes. First, we find that for the LambdaCDM cosmology this combination makes the constraints stringent and the best fit is close to the flat universe. Second, we fit the flat Cardassian expansion model and find that this model is consistent with the LambdaCDM cosmology. Third, we present constraints on several two-parameter dark energy models and find that these models are also consistent with the LambdaCDM cosmology. Finally, we reconstruct the dark energy equation-of-state parameter w(z) and the deceleration parameter q(z). We see that the acceleration could have started at a redshift from z_T=0.40_{-0.08}^{+0.14} to z_T=0.65_{-0.05}^{+0.10}. This difference in the transition redshift is due to different dark energy models that we adopt. The most stringent constraint on w(z) lies in the redshift range z\sim 0.3-0.6.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ. One reference added, one minor change in the final paragraph of section

Hadronization Approach for a Quark-Gluon Plasma Formed in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

A transport model is developed to describe hadron emission from a strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma formed in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The quark-gluon plasma is controlled by ideal hydrodynamics, and the hadron motion is characterized by a transport equation with loss and gain terms. The two sets of equations are coupled to each other, and the hadronization hypersurface is determined by both the hydrodynamic evolution and the hadron emission. The model is applied to calculate the transverse momentum distributions of mesons and baryons, and most of the results agree well with the experimental data at RHIC.Comment: 16 pages, 24 figures. Version accepted by PR