Frugivorous pigeons, stepping stones, and weeds in northern New South Wales

Lack of continuous vegetation (corridors) does not appear to prevent rainforest frugivores, such as pigeons, from using remnants or moving long distances from high to low elevations or along the coast. Historically, rainforests in New South Wales were fragmented by eucalypt forests. As a patchwork of geographically close "habitat islands', the smaller fragments formed stepping stones between rainforest at high and low elevations. Frugivorous pigeons cross open country and use a variety of vegetation, including exotic weeds, as stepping stones to move between remnants. While it may not be necessary to ensure habitat continuity for these species, a patchwork of vegetation may be required to facilitate movements and provide alternative feeding areas. In the short term, introduced species that provide winter food for frugivores and stepping stones between remnant rainforests should be retained to conserve rainforest frugivores. In the long term, they should be replaced by a network of native species

Electrodynamics with radiation reaction

The self force of electrodynamics is derived from a scalar field. The resulting equation of motion is free of all of the problems that plague the Lorentz Abraham Dirac equation. The age-old problem of a particle in a constant field is solved and the solution has intuitive appeal.Comment: 5 page

Radiation Reaction: General approach and applications, especially to electrodynamics

Radiation reaction (but, more generally, fluctuations and dissipation) occurs when a system interacts with a heat bath, a particular case being the interaction of an electron with the radiation field. We have developed a general theory for the case of a quantum particle in a general potential (but, in more detail, an oscillator potential) coupled to an arbitrary heat bath at arbitrary temperature, and in an external time-dependent $c$-number field. The results may be applied to a large variety of problems in physics but we concentrate by showing in detail the application to the blackbody radiation heat bath, giving an exact result for radiation reaction problem which has no unsatisfactory features such as the runaway solutions associated with the Abraham-Lorentz theory. In addition, we show how atomic energy and free energy shifts due to temperature may be calculated. Finally, we give a brief review of applications to Josephson junctions, quantum statistical mechanics, mesoscopic physics, quantum information, noise in gravitational wave detectors, Unruh radiation and the violation of the quantum regression theore

One-Loop Renormalization of a Self-Interacting Scalar Field in Nonsimply Connected Spacetimes

Using the effective potential, we study the one-loop renormalization of a massive self-interacting scalar field at finite temperature in flat manifolds with one or more compactified spatial dimensions. We prove that, owing to the compactification and finite temperature, the renormalized physical parameters of the theory (mass and coupling constant) acquire thermal and topological contributions. In the case of one compactified spatial dimension at finite temperature, we find that the corrections to the mass are positive, but those to the coupling constant are negative. We discuss the possibility of triviality, i.e. that the renormalized coupling constant goes to zero at some temperature or at some radius of the compactified spatial dimension.Comment: 16 pages, plain LATE

Using Nonlinear Response to Estimate the Strength of an Elastic Network

Disordered networks of fragile elastic elements have been proposed as a model of inner porous regions of large bones [Gunaratne et.al., cond-mat/0009221, http://xyz.lanl.gov]. It is shown that the ratio $\Gamma$ of responses of such a network to static and periodic strain can be used to estimate its ultimate (or breaking) stress. Since bone fracture in older adults results from the weakening of porous bone, we discuss the possibility of using $\Gamma$ as a non-invasive diagnostic of osteoporotic bone.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Quantum general relativity and Hawking radiation

In a previous paper we have set up the Wheeler-DeWitt equation which describes the quantum general relativistic collapse of a spherical dust cloud. In the present paper we specialize this equation to the case of matter perturbations around a black hole, and show that in the WKB approximation, the wave-functional describes an eternal black hole in equilibrium with a thermal bath at Hawking temperature.Comment: 13 pages, minor revisions in: (i) para 5 of Introduction, (ii) para following Eqn. (10). Revised version to appear in Phys. Rev.

A cosmological concordance model with dynamical vacuum term

We demonstrate that creation of dark-matter particles at a constant rate implies the existence of a cosmological term that decays linearly with the Hubble rate. We discuss the cosmological model that arises in this context and test it against observations of the first acoustic peak in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectrum, the Hubble diagram for supernovas of type Ia (SNIa), the distance scale of baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) and the distribution of large scale structures (LSS). We show that a good concordance is obtained, albeit with a higher value of the present matter abundance than in the \Lambda CDM model. We also comment on general features of the CMB anisotropy spectrum and on the cosmic coincidence problem.Comment: Revised version. Accepted for publication in Physics Letters

Analytical and numerical investigation of escape rate for a noise driven bath

We consider a system-reservoir model where the reservoir is modulated by an external noise. Both the internal noise of the reservoir and the external noise are stationary, Gaussian and are characterized by arbitrary decaying correlation functions. Based on a relation between the dissipation of the system and the response function of the reservoir driven by external noise we numerically examine the model using a full bistable potential to show that one can recover the turn-over features of the usual Kramers' dynamics when the external noise modulates the reservoir rather than the system directly. We derive the generalized Kramers' rate for this nonequilibrium open system. The theoretical results are verified by numerical simulation.Comment: Revtex, 25 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Conformal linear gravity in de Sitter space II

From the group theoretical point of view, it is proved that the theory of linear conformal gravity should be written in terms of a tensor field of rank-3 and mixed symmetry [Binegar, et al, Phys. Rev. D 27, (1983) 2249]. We obtained such a field equation in de Sitter space [Takook, et al, J. Math. Phys. 51, (2010) 032503]. In this paper, a proper solution to this equation is obtained as a product of a generalized polarization tensor and a massless scalar field and then the conformally invariant two-point function is calculated. This two-point function is de Sitter invariant and free of any pathological large-distance behavior.Comment: 16 pages, no figure, published versio

First Observation of Coherent π0\pi^0 Production in Neutrino Nucleus Interactions with Eν<E_{\nu}< 2 GeV

The MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab has amassed the largest sample to date of $\pi^0$s produced in neutral current (NC) neutrino-nucleus interactions at low energy. This paper reports a measurement of the momentum distribution of $\pi^0$s produced in mineral oil (CH$_2$) and the first observation of coherent $\pi^0$ production below 2 GeV. In the forward direction, the yield of events observed above the expectation for resonant production is attributed primarily to coherent production off carbon, but may also include a small contribution from diffractive production on hydrogen. Integrated over the MiniBooNE neutrino flux, the sum of the NC coherent and diffractive modes is found to be (19.5 $\pm$1.1 (stat) $\pm$2.5 (sys))% of all exclusive NC $\pi^0$ production at MiniBooNE. These measurements are of immediate utility because they quantify an important background to MiniBooNE's search for $\nu_{\mu} \to \nu_e$ oscillations.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Lett.