9,408 research outputs found
Non-equilibrium chemistry and dust formation in AGB stars as probed by SiO line emission
We have performed high spatial resolution observations of SiO line emission
for a sample of 11 AGB stars using the ATCA, VLA and SMA interferometers.
Detailed radiative transfer modelling suggests that there are steep chemical
gradients of SiO in their circumstellar envelopes. The emerging picture is one
where the radial SiO abundance distribution starts at an initial high
abundance, in the case of M-stars consistent with LTE chemistry, that
drastically decreases at a radius of ~1E15 cm. This is consistent with a
scenario where SiO freezes out onto dust grains. The region of the wind with
low abundance is much more extended, typically ~1E16 cm, and limited by
photodissociation. The surpisingly high SiO abundances found in carbon stars
requires non-equilibrium chemical processes.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure. To be published in the proceedings of the
conference "Why Galaxies Care about AGB Stars", held in Vienna, August 7-11,
2006; F. Kerschbaum, C. Charbonnel, B. Wing eds, ASP Conf.Ser. in pres
Ground-state fidelity in one-dimensional gapless model
A general relation between quantum phase transitions and the second
derivative of the fidelity (or the "fidelity susceptibility") is proposed. The
validity and the limitation of the fidelity susceptibility in characterizing
quantum phase transitions is thus established. Moreover, based on the
bosonization method, general formulas of the fidelity and the fidelity
susceptibility are obtained for a class of one-dimensional gapless systems
known as the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid. Applying these formulas to the
one-dimensional spin-1/2 model, we find that quantum phase transitions,
even of the Beresinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type, can be signaled by the
fidelity susceptibility.Comment: 4+ pages, no figure, published versio
Investigating the Effect of Stratospheric Radiation on Seed Germination and Growth
Three seed types: bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), corn (Zea mays) and radish (Raphanus sativus) were flown in a high altitude weather balloon into the mid-stratosphere to investigate the effects of high altitude radiation on germination success and seedling growth. After recovering and planting the seeds, the bean seeds showed lower germination success with exposure to high altitude radiation, and consequently stunted seedling growth. Cord and radish seeds experienced a statistically significant positive effect on germination success form radiation exposure compared to control seeds, but negative effect on seedling growth. Overall, the field experiments presented here support laboratory studies that show radiation exposure on vegetable seeds has a mixed effect on the germination success and negative effect on seedling growth on investigated seed types
Low-energy Effective Theory for One-dimensional Lattice Bosons near Integer Filling
A low-energy effective theory for interacting bosons on a one-dimensional
lattice at and near integer fillings is proposed. It is found that two sets of
bosonic phase fields are necessary in order to explain the complete phase
diagram. Using the present effective theory, the nature of the quantum phase
transitions among various phases can be identified. Moreover, the general
condition for the appearance of the recently proposed Pfaffian-like state can
be realized from our effective action.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl
Threshold Error Penalty for Fault Tolerant Computation with Nearest Neighbour Communication
The error threshold for fault tolerant quantum computation with concatenated
encoding of qubits is penalized by internal communication overhead. Many
quantum computation proposals rely on nearest-neighbour communication, which
requires excess gate operations. For a qubit stripe with a width of L+1
physical qubits implementing L levels of concatenation, we find that the error
threshold of 2.1x10^-5 without any communication burden is reduced to 1.2x10^-7
when gate errors are the dominant source of error. This ~175X penalty in error
threshold translates to an ~13X penalty in the amplitude and timing of gate
operation control pulses.Comment: minor correctio
Supersymmetric Leptogenesis
We study leptogenesis in the supersymmetric standard model plus the seesaw.
We identify important qualitative differences that characterize supersymmetric
leptogenesis with respect to the non-supersymmetric case. The lepton number
asymmetries in fermions and scalars do not equilibrate, and are related via a
non-vanishing gaugino chemical potential. Due to the presence of new anomalous
symmetries, electroweak sphalerons couple to winos and higgsinos, and QCD
sphalerons couple to gluinos, thus modifying the corresponding chemical
equilibrium conditions. A new constraint on particles chemical potentials
corresponding to an exactly conserved -charge, that also involves the number
density asymmetry of the heavy sneutrinos, appears. These new ingredients
determine the matrices that mix up the density asymmetries of the
lepton flavours and of the heavy sneutrinos. We explain why in all temperature
ranges the particle thermodynamic system is characterized by the same number of
independent quantities. Numerical differences with respect to usual treatment
remain at the level.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures. Typos corrected, one reference added. Version
published in JCA
Low-energy renormalization of the electron dispersion of high-T superconductors
High-resolution ARPES studies in cuprates have detected low-energy changes in
the dispersion and absorption of quasi-particles at low temperatures, in
particular, in the superconducting state. Based on a new 1/N expansion of the
t-J-Holstein model, which includes collective antiferromagnetic fluctuations
already in leading order, we argue that the observed low-energy structures are
mainly caused by phonons and not by spin fluctuations, at least, in the optimal
and overdoped regime.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
On the full Boltzmann equations for Leptogenesis
We consider the full Boltzmann equations for standard and soft leptogenesis,
instead of the usual integrated Boltzmann equations which assume kinetic
equilibrium for all species. Decays and inverse decays may be inefficient for
thermalising the heavy-(s)neutrino distribution function, leading to
significant deviations from kinetic equilibrium. We analyse the impact of using
the full kinetic equations in the case of a previously generated lepton
asymmetry, and find that the washout of this initial asymmetry due to the
interactions of the right-handed neutrino is larger than when calculated via
the integrated equations. We also solve the full Boltzmann equations for soft
leptogenesis, where the lepton asymmetry induced by the soft SUSY-breaking
terms in sneutrino decays is a purely thermal effect, since at T=0 the
asymmetry in leptons cancels the one in sleptons. In this case, we obtain that
in the weak washout regime (K ~< 1) the final lepton asymmetry can change up to
a factor four with respect to previous estimates.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, to be published in JCA
The electronic specific heat in the pairing pseudogap regime
When pairing correlations in a quasi two dimensional electron system induce a
pseudogap in the single particle density of states, the specific heat must also
contain a sizeable pair contribution. The theoretically calculated specific
heat for such a system is compared to the experimental results of Loram and his
collaborators for underdoped YBa_2Cu_3O_{6+x} and La_{2-x}Sr_{x}CuO_4 samples.
The size and doping dependence of the extracted pseudogap energy scale for both
materials is comparable to the values obtained from a variety of other
experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 5 eps figure
Progress in Solving the 3-Dimensional Inversion Problem for Eddy Current NDE
The eddy current NDE inversion problem is to determine the parameters of a flaw from the measured eddy current sensor impedance changes. Mathematically, this requires finding the transformation which gives the sensor impedance changes in terms of the flaw parameters, and then inverting this transformation. Finding the transformation is called the forward problem, and finding the inverse of the transformation is equivalent to the inversion problem. The principal difficulty in solving the forward problem is finding solutions to Maxwell\u27s equations in the complex geometries involved. This paper describes a solution to the forward problem which is valid for ellipsoidal shaped void flaws in a non-magnetic conductor, and for flaw dimensions such that the incident field variations are at most linear over the region occupied by the flaw
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