8,877 research outputs found
Quasiperpendicular high Mach number Shocks
Shock waves exist throughout the universe and are fundamental to
understanding the nature of collisionless plasmas. Reformation is a process,
driven by microphysics, which typically occurs at high Mach number
supercritical shocks. While ongoing studies have investigated this process
extensively both theoretically and via simulations, their observations remain
few and far between. In this letter we present a study of very high Mach number
shocks in a parameter space that has been poorly explored and we identify
reformation using in situ magnetic field observations from the Cassini
spacecraft at 10 AU. This has given us an insight into quasi-perpendicular
shocks across two orders of magnitude in Alfven Mach number (MA) which could
potentially bridge the gap between modest terrestrial shocks and more exotic
astrophysical shocks. For the first time, we show evidence for cyclic
reformation controlled by specular ion reflection occurring at the predicted
timescale of ~0.3 {\tau}c, where {\tau}c is the ion gyroperiod. In addition, we
experimentally reveal the relationship between reformation and MA and focus on
the magnetic structure of such shocks to further show that for the same MA, a
reforming shock exhibits stronger magnetic field amplification than a shock
that is not reforming.Comment: Accepted and Published in Physical Review Letters (2015
Geometrodynamical Distances to the Galaxy's Hydrogen Streams
We present a geometrodynamical method for determining distances to orbital
streams of HI gas in the Galaxy. The method makes use of our offset from the
Galactic centre and assumes that the gas comprising the stream nearly follows a
planar orbit about the Galactic centre. We apply this technique to the
Magellanic Stream and determine the distances to all points along it; a
consistency check shows that the angular momentum is approximately constant.
Applying this technique to the Large Magellanic Cloud itself gives an
independent distance which agrees within its accuracy of around 10%. Relaxing
the demand for exact conservation of energy and angular momentum at all points
along the stream allows for an increase in orbital period between the lagging
end and the front end led by the Magellanic Clouds. Similar methods are
applicable to other long streams of high-velocity clouds, provided they also
nearly follow planar orbits; these would allow otherwise unknown distances to
be determined.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures; typos corrected after being accepted by MNRA
grc4f v1.0: a Four-fermion Event Generator for e+e- Collisions
grc4f is a Monte-Carlo package for generating e+e- to 4-fermion processes in
the standard model. All of the 76 LEP-2 allowed fermionic final state processes
evaluated at tree level are included in version 1.0. grc4f addresses event
simulation requirements at e+e- colliders such as LEP and up-coming linear
colliders. Most of the attractive aspects of grc4f come from its link to the
GRACE system: a Feynman diagram automatic computation system. The GRACE system
has been used to produce the computational code for all final states, giving a
higher level of confidence in the calculation correctness. Based on the
helicity amplitude calculation technique, all fermion masses can be kept finite
and helicity information can be propagated down to the final state particles.
The phase space integration of the matrix element gives the total and
differential cross sections, then unweighted events are Generated. Initial
state radiation (ISR) corrections are implemented in two ways, one is based on
the electron structure function formalism and the second uses the parton shower
algorithm called QEDPS. The latter can also be applied for final state
radiation (FSR) though the interference with the ISR is not yet taken into
account. Parton shower and hadronization of the final quarks are performed
through an interface to JETSET. Coulomb correction between two intermediate
W's, anomalous coupling as well as gluon contributions in the hadronic
processes are also included.Comment: 30 pages, LaTeX, 5 pages postscript figures, uuencode
Nambu-Goldstone Mechanism in Real-Time Thermal Field Theory
In a one-generation fermion condensate scheme of electroweak symmetry
breaking, it is proven based on Schwinger-Dyson equation in the real-time
thermal field theory in the fermion bubble diagram approximation that, at
finite temperature below the symmetry restoration temperature , a
massive Higgs boson and three massless Nambu-Goldstone bosons could emerge from
the spontaneous breaking of electroweak group
if the two fermion flavors in the one generation are mass-degenerate, thus
Goldstone Theorem is rigorously valid in this case. However, if the two fermion
flavors have unequal masses, owing to "thermal flactuation", the Goldstone
Theorem will be true only approximately for a very large momentum cut-off
in zero temperature fermion loop or for low energy scales. All
possible pinch singularities are proven to cancel each other, as is expected in
a real-time thermal field theory.Comment: 11 pages, revtex, no figure, Phys. Rev. D, to appea
Magellanic Cloud Periphery Carbon Stars IV: The SMC
The kinematics of 150 carbon stars observed at moderate dispersion on the
periphery of the Small Magellanic Cloud are compared with the motions of
neutral hydrogen and early type stars in the Inter-Cloud region. The
distribution of radial velocities implies a configuration of these stars as a
sheet inclined at 73+/-4 degrees to the plane of the sky. The near side, to the
South, is dominated by a stellar component; to the North, the far side contains
fewer carbon stars, and is dominated by the neutral gas. The upper velocity
envelope of the stars is closely the same as that of the gas. This
configuration is shown to be consistent with the known extension of the SMC
along the line of sight, and is attributed to a tidally induced disruption of
the SMC that originated in a close encounter with the LMC some 0.3 to 0.4 Gyr
ago. The dearth of gas on the near side of the sheet is attributed to ablation
processes akin to those inferred by Weiner & Williams (1996) to collisional
excitation of the leading edges of Magellanic Stream clouds. Comparison with
pre LMC/SMC encounter kinematic data of Hardy, Suntzeff, & Azzopardi (1989) of
carbon stars, with data of stars formed after the encounter, of Maurice et al.
(1989), and Mathewson et al. (a986, 1988) leaves little doubt that forces other
than gravity play a role in the dynamics of the H I.Comment: 30 pages; 7 figures, latex compiled, 1 table; to appear in AJ (June
2000
Programmability and Performance of Parallel ECS-based Simulation of Multi-Agent Exploration Models
While the traditional objective of parallel/distributed simulation techniques has been mainly in improving performance and making very large models tractable, more recent research trends targeted complementary aspects, such as the “ease of programming”. Along this line, a recent proposal called Event and Cross State (ECS) synchronization, stands as a solution allowing to break the traditional programming rules proper of Parallel Discrete Event Simulation (PDES) systems, where the application code processing a specific event is only allowed to access the state (namely the memory image) of the target simulation object. In fact with ECS, the programmer is allowed to write ANSI-C event-handlers capable of accessing (in either read or write mode) the state of whichever simulation object included in the simulation model. Correct concurrent execution of events, e.g., on top of multi-core machines, is guaranteed by ECS with no intervention by the programmer, who is in practice exposed to a sequential-style programming model where events are processed one at a time, and have the ability to access the current memory image of the whole simulation model, namely the collection of the states of any involved object. This can strongly simplify the development of specific models, e.g., by avoiding the need for passing state information across concurrent objects in the form of events. In this article we investigate on both programmability and performance aspects related to developing/supporting a multi-agent exploration model on top of the ROOT-Sim PDES platform, which supports ECS
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