9,279 research outputs found
The Cosmological Constant and Advanced Gravitational Wave Detectors
Interferometric gravitational wave detectors could measure the frequency
sweep of a binary inspiral [characterized by its chirp mass] to high accuracy.
The observed chirp mass is the intrinsic chirp mass of the binary source
multiplied by , where is the redshift of the source. Assuming a
non-zero cosmological constant, we compute the expected redshift distribution
of observed events for an advanced LIGO detector. We find that the redshift
distribution has a robust and sizable dependence on the cosmological constant;
the data from advanced LIGO detectors could provide an independent measurement
of the cosmological constant.Comment: 13 pages plus 5 figure, LaTeX. Revised and final version, to appear
in Phys. Rev.
Topological Entropy of Braids on the Torus
A fast method is presented for computing the topological entropy of braids on
the torus. This work is motivated by the need to analyze large braids when
studying two-dimensional flows via the braiding of a large number of particle
trajectories. Our approach is a generalization of Moussafir's technique for
braids on the sphere. Previous methods for computing topological entropies
include the Bestvina--Handel train-track algorithm and matrix representations
of the braid group. However, the Bestvina--Handel algorithm quickly becomes
computationally intractable for large braid words, and matrix methods give only
lower bounds, which are often poor for large braids. Our method is
computationally fast and appears to give exponential convergence towards the
exact entropy. As an illustration we apply our approach to the braiding of both
periodic and aperiodic trajectories in the sine flow. The efficiency of the
method allows us to explore how much extra information about flow entropy is
encoded in the braid as the number of trajectories becomes large.Comment: 19 pages, 44 figures. SIAM journal styl
Alternative splicing of tropomyosin pre-mRNAs in vitro and in vivo
A single rat gene encodes both fibroblast TM-1 and skeletal muscle beta-tropomyosin by an alternative RNA-processing mechanism. The gene contains 11 exons: Exons 1-5 and exons 8 and 9 are constitutive exons common to all mRNAs expressed from this gene; exons 6 and 11 are used in fibroblasts as well as smooth muscle; exons 7 and 10 are used exclusively in skeletal muscle. We have studied the internal alternative RNA splice choice (exons 6 and 7) of the rat tropomyosin 1 gene in vitro, using nuclear extracts obtained from HeLa cells. Use of alternative splice sites in vitro is dependent on the ionic conditions of the assay, and correct splicing occurs only under well-defined salt conditions. Splicing of exon 5 to exon 6 (fibroblast-type splice) and exon 5 to exon 7 (skeletal muscle-type splice) was dependent on precursors in which exon 6 or 7 was first joined to exon 8. The same patterns of alternatively spliced RNAs were formed when similar templates were introduced in HeLa cells by transfection. Thus, there appears to be an ordered pathway of splicing in which the internal alternatively spliced exons must first be joined to the downstream constitutive exon before they can be spliced to the upstream constitutive exon. The data are consistent with a model in which the critical event in alternative splicing occurs during the joining of exon 6 to exon 8 (fibroblast-type splice) or exon 7 to exon 8 (skeletal muscle-type splice)
Crustal Oscillations of Slowly Rotating Relativistic Stars
We study low-amplitude crustal oscillations of slowly rotating relativistic
stars consisting of a central fluid core and an outer thin solid crust. We
estimate the effect of rotation on the torsional toroidal modes and on the
interfacial and shear spheroidal modes. The results compared against the
Newtonian ones for wide range of neutron star models and equations of state.Comment: 15 page
The approach to typicality in many-body quantum systems
The recent discovery that for large Hilbert spaces, almost all (that is,
typical) Hamiltonians have eigenstates that place small subsystems in thermal
equilibrium, has shed much light on the origins of irreversibility and
thermalization. Here we give numerical evidence that many-body lattice systems
generically approach typicality as the number of subsystems is increased, and
thus provide further support for the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Our
results indicate that the deviation of many-body systems from typicality
decreases exponentially with the number of systems. Further, by averaging over
a number of randomly-selected nearest-neighbor interactions, we obtain a
power-law for the atypicality as a function of the Hilbert space dimension,
distinct from the power-law possessed by random Hamiltonians.Comment: 6 pages, 2 png figures, revtex
Variation in Mating Dynamics across Five Species of Leiobunine Harvestmen (Arachnida: Opliones)
The study of mating choices often focuses on correlates of traits to the overall outcome of a mating interaction. However, mating interactions can proceed through a series of stages, with opportunities for assessment at each stage. We compared whether male or female size predicted mating interaction outcome across several stages of mating in five species of North American leiobunine harvestmen (commonly known as daddy longlegs). Leiobunine harvestmen have been previously shown to exhibit incredible morphological diversity consistent with a spectrum of male–female antagonism. Across all of the species, we found a general progression of female size predicting the outcome (success and timing) of early stages of interactions, and male size or male size relative to female size predicting the outcome and timing of later stages of interactions. We also found that size was not a strong predictor of outcome in the two species on the lower end of the antagonism spectrum. The variation in how female and male size predicted outcomes across species and stages of mating suggests that multiple mechanisms may operate to shape mating dynamics within and across species. Given the close relatedness of the species studied, the patterns we uncovered suggest a rapid evolution of the traits and processes predicting the outcome of mating interactions
Black Hole Spectroscopy: Testing General Relativity through Gravitational Wave Observations
Assuming that general relativity is the correct theory of gravity in the
strong field limit, can gravitational wave observations distinguish between
black hole and other compact object sources? Alternatively, can gravitational
wave observations provide a test of one of the fundamental predictions of
general relativity? Here we describe a definitive test of the hypothesis that
observations of damped, sinusoidal gravitational waves originated from a black
hole or, alternatively, that nature respects the general relativistic no-hair
theorem. For astrophysical black holes, which have a negligible charge-to-mass
ratio, the black hole quasi-normal mode spectrum is characterized entirely by
the black hole mass and angular momentum and is unique to black holes. In a
different theory of gravity, or if the observed radiation arises from a
different source (e.g., a neutron star, strange matter or boson star), the
spectrum will be inconsistent with that predicted for general relativistic
black holes. We give a statistical characterization of the consistency between
the noisy observation and the theoretical predictions of general relativity,
together with a numerical example.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure
- …