Ginzburg-Landau theory of dirty two band s±s_{\pm} superconductors

In this paper we study the effect of non-magnetic impurities on two-band $s_{\pm}$ superconductors by deriving the corresponding Ginzburg-Landau (GL) equation. Depending on the strength of (impurity-induced) inter-band scattering we find that there are two distinctive regions where the superconductors behave very differently. In the strong impurity induced inter-band scattering regime $T_c<<\tau^{-1}_t$, where $\tau_t\sim$ mean-life time an electron stays in one band the two-band superconductor behaves as an effective one-band dirty superconductor. In the other limit $T_c\geq\tau^{-1}_t$, the dirty two-band superconductor is described by a network of frustrated two-band superconductor grains connected by Josepshon tunnelling junctions. We argue that most pnictide superconductors are in the later regime.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

NEW PARTICLES AND INTERACTIONS

We analyze the manifestations of new matter particles predicted by models of new physics beyond the Standard Model, at present and future high--energy colliders. We consider both the production of these new particles and some of their indirect signatures at $pp$ and $eP$ colliders as well as TeV \ee colliders with their \ee, e \gamma, \gamma \gamma and $e^- e^-$ modes. The report is arranged into four main sections plus an overview. These sections will deal separately with exotic and excited fermions, difermions, and new interactions.Comment: 64 pages, latex, 30 figures (not included). The full *.ps file including the figures can be obtained via anonymous ftp at ftp://lpsvsh.lps.umontreal.ca/hep_th/dpf.ps . To appear as a chapter in "Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and Beyond the Standard Model", edited by T. Barklow, S. Dawson, H.E. Haber and S. Siegrist, World Scientifi

Lower body design of the ‘iCub’ a human-baby like crawling robot

The development of robotic cognition and a greater understanding of human cognition form two of the current greatest challenges of science. Within the RobotCub project the goal is the development of an embodied robotic child (iCub) with the physical and ultimately cognitive abilities of a 2frac12 year old human baby. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide the cognition research community with an open human like platform for understanding of cognitive systems through the study of cognitive development. In this paper the design of the mechanisms adopted for lower body and particularly for the leg and the waist are outlined. This is accompanied by discussion on the actuator group realisation in order to meet the torque requirements while achieving the dimensional and weight specifications. Estimated performance measures of the iCub are presented

Probing the Galaxy I. The galactic structure towards the galactic pole

Observations of (B-V) colour distributions towards the galactic poles are compared with those obtained from synthetic colour-magnitude diagrams to determine the major constituents in the disc and spheroid. The disc is described with four stellar sub-populations: the young, intermediate, old, and thick disc populations, which have respectively scale heights of 100 pc, 250 pc, 0.5 kpc, and 1.0 kpc. The spheroid is described with stellar contributions from the bulge and halo. The bulge is not well constrained with the data analyzed in this study. A non-flattened power-law describes the observed distributions at fainter magnitudes better than a deprojected R^{1/4}-law. Details about the age, metallicity, and normalizations are listed in Table 1. The star counts and the colour distributions from the stars in the intermediate fields towards the galactic anti-centre are well described with the stellar populations mentioned above. Arguments are given that the actual solar offset is about 15 pc north from the galactic plane.Comment: 11 pages TeX, 4 separate pages with additional figures, accepted for publication in A&