Proper identification of RR Lyrae Stars brighter than 12.5 mag

RR Lyrae stars are of great importance for investigations of Galactic structure. However, a complete compendium of all RR-Lyraes in the solar neighbourhood with accurate classifications and coordinates does not exist to this day. Here we present a catalogue of 561 local RR-Lyrae stars V_max less equal 12.5 mag according to the magnitudes given in the Combined General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS) and 16 fainter ones. The Tycho2 catalogue contains about 100 RR Lyr stars. However, many objects have inaccurate coordinates in the GCVS, the primary source of variable star information, so that a reliable cross-identification is difficult. We identified RR Lyrae from both catalogues based on an intensive literature search. In dubious cases we carried out photometry of fields to identify the variable. Mennessier and Colome (2002) have published a paper with Tyc2-GCVS identifications, but we found that many of their identifications are wrong. Keywords: astrometry -- Stars: RR Lyrae stars -- Catalogues: Tycho-2 catalogue -- Catalogues: The HST Guide Star Catalogue, Version 1.2 -- Catalogues: Combined General Catalogue of Variable StarsComment: 5 pages with 2 figures; A and A accepted Online-Data are available under http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~gmaint

Quantum signatures of classical multifractal measures

A clear signature of classical chaoticity in the quantum regime is the fractal Weyl law, which connects the density of eigenstates to the dimension $D_0$ of the classical invariant set of open systems. Quantum systems of interest are often {\it partially} open (e.g., cavities in which trajectories are partially reflected/absorbed). In the corresponding classical systems $D_0$ is trivial (equal to the phase-space dimension), and the fractality is manifested in the (multifractal) spectrum of R\'enyi dimensions $D_q$. In this paper we investigate the effect of such multifractality on the Weyl law. Our numerical simulations in area-preserving maps show for a wide range of configurations and system sizes $M$ that (i) the Weyl law is governed by a dimension different from $D_0=2$ and (ii) the observed dimension oscillates as a function of $M$ and other relevant parameters. We propose a classical model which considers an undersampled measure of the chaotic invariant set, explains our two observations, and predicts that the Weyl law is governed by a non-trivial dimension $D_\mathrm{asymptotic} < D_0$ in the semi-classical limit $M\rightarrow\infty$

Impact of lexical and sentiment factors on the popularity of scientific papers

We investigate how textual properties of scientific papers relate to the number of citations they receive. Our main finding is that correlations are non-linear and affect differently most-cited and typical papers. For instance, we find that in most journals short titles correlate positively with citations only for the most cited papers, for typical papers the correlation is in most cases negative. Our analysis of 6 different factors, calculated both at the title and abstract level of 4.3 million papers in over 1500 journals, reveals the number of authors, and the length and complexity of the abstract, as having the strongest (positive) influence on the number of citations.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 3 table

Scaling laws and fluctuations in the statistics of word frequencies

In this paper we combine statistical analysis of large text databases and simple stochastic models to explain the appearance of scaling laws in the statistics of word frequencies. Besides the sublinear scaling of the vocabulary size with database size (Heaps' law), here we report a new scaling of the fluctuations around this average (fluctuation scaling analysis). We explain both scaling laws by modeling the usage of words by simple stochastic processes in which the overall distribution of word-frequencies is fat tailed (Zipf's law) and the frequency of a single word is subject to fluctuations across documents (as in topic models). In this framework, the mean and the variance of the vocabulary size can be expressed as quenched averages, implying that: i) the inhomogeneous dissemination of words cause a reduction of the average vocabulary size in comparison to the homogeneous case, and ii) correlations in the co-occurrence of words lead to an increase in the variance and the vocabulary size becomes a non-self-averaging quantity. We address the implications of these observations to the measurement of lexical richness. We test our results in three large text databases (Google-ngram, Enlgish Wikipedia, and a collection of scientific articles).Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Recurrence time analysis, long-term correlations, and extreme events

The recurrence times between extreme events have been the central point of statistical analyses in many different areas of science. Simultaneously, the Poincar\'e recurrence time has been extensively used to characterize nonlinear dynamical systems. We compare the main properties of these statistical methods pointing out their consequences for the recurrence analysis performed in time series. In particular, we analyze the dependence of the mean recurrence time and of the recurrence time statistics on the probability density function, on the interval whereto the recurrences are observed, and on the temporal correlations of time series. In the case of long-term correlations, we verify the validity of the stretched exponential distribution, which is uniquely defined by the exponent $\gamma$, at the same time showing that it is restricted to the class of linear long-term correlated processes. Simple transformations are able to modify the correlations of time series leading to stretched exponentials recurrence time statistics with different $\gamma$, which shows a lack of invariance under the change of observables.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Stochastic model for the vocabulary growth in natural languages

We propose a stochastic model for the number of different words in a given database which incorporates the dependence on the database size and historical changes. The main feature of our model is the existence of two different classes of words: (i) a finite number of core-words which have higher frequency and do not affect the probability of a new word to be used; and (ii) the remaining virtually infinite number of noncore-words which have lower frequency and once used reduce the probability of a new word to be used in the future. Our model relies on a careful analysis of the google-ngram database of books published in the last centuries and its main consequence is the generalization of Zipf's and Heaps' law to two scaling regimes. We confirm that these generalizations yield the best simple description of the data among generic descriptive models and that the two free parameters depend only on the language but not on the database. From the point of view of our model the main change on historical time scales is the composition of the specific words included in the finite list of core-words, which we observe to decay exponentially in time with a rate of approximately 30 words per year for English.Comment: corrected typos and errors in reference list; 10 pages text, 15 pages supplemental material; to appear in Physical Review

Predictability of extreme events in social media

It is part of our daily social-media experience that seemingly ordinary items (videos, news, publications, etc.) unexpectedly gain an enormous amount of attention. Here we investigate how unexpected these events are. We propose a method that, given some information on the items, quantifies the predictability of events, i.e., the potential of identifying in advance the most successful items defined as the upper bound for the quality of any prediction based on the same information. Applying this method to different data, ranging from views in YouTube videos to posts in Usenet discussion groups, we invariantly find that the predictability increases for the most extreme events. This indicates that, despite the inherently stochastic collective dynamics of users, efficient prediction is possible for the most extreme events.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Stochastic perturbations in open chaotic systems: random versus noisy maps

We investigate the effects of random perturbations on fully chaotic open systems. Perturbations can be applied to each trajectory independently (white noise) or simultaneously to all trajectories (random map). We compare these two scenarios by generalizing the theory of open chaotic systems and introducing a time-dependent conditionally-map-invariant measure. For the same perturbation strength we show that the escape rate of the random map is always larger than that of the noisy map. In random maps we show that the escape rate $\kappa$ and dimensions $D$ of the relevant fractal sets often depend nonmonotonically on the intensity of the random perturbation. We discuss the accuracy (bias) and precision (variance) of finite-size estimators of $\kappa$ and $D$, and show that the improvement of the precision of the estimations with the number of trajectories $N$ is extremely slow ($\propto 1/\ln N$). We also argue that the finite-size $D$ estimators are typically biased. General theoretical results are combined with analytical calculations and numerical simulations in area-preserving baker maps.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, manuscript submitted to Physical Review

Optimal noise maximizes collective motion in heterogeneous media

We study the effect of spatial heterogeneity on the collective motion of self-propelled particles (SPPs). The heterogeneity is modeled as a random distribution of either static or diffusive obstacles, which the SPPs avoid while trying to align their movements. We find that such obstacles have a dramatic effect on the collective dynamics of usual SPP models. In particular, we report about the existence of an optimal (angular) noise amplitude that maximizes collective motion. We also show that while at low obstacle densities the system exhibits long-range order, in strongly heterogeneous media collective motion is quasi-long-range and exists only for noise values in between two critical noise values, with the system being disordered at both, large and low noise amplitudes. Since most real system have spatial heterogeneities, the finding of an optimal noise intensity has immediate practical and fundamental implications for the design and evolution of collective motion strategies.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev. Let