Determination of pilot and vehicle describing functions from the Gemini 10 mission

Three types of manual control maneuvers conducted during the Gemini-10 mission have been analyzed in order to measure and document the describing function of the pilot, the vehicle and the pilot-vehicle combination during an actual space mission. Measurements made from the data records of the reentry maneuver (a single axis control task) indicate that the pilot's control behavior changes during critical portions of the reentry. Measurements made of the deorbit maneuver and of a terminal phase initiation maneuver (three axis tasks) show that the pilot assigns priorities to the separate axes and controls them differently. His control technique is also influenced by the magnitude of the thrust disturbance present during the maneuvers. The results for all three types of maneuvers show that the pilot adapts to the nonlinear spacecraft control system in such a way that the combined pilot-vehicle dynamics take the form of the linear crossover model

Use of reaction wheels and nonlinear control for a satellite scanning a small celestial area

Reaction wheel control torque for satellite system scanning of small celestial are

G. F. Edwards to Dr. Silver, 21 March 1941

Professional correspondenc

VLBA Polarization Observations of Markarian 421 After a Gamma-Ray High State

We present four high dynamic range, dual-circular polarization, Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations at 22 GHz of Markarian 421, taken throughout the year following the source's unprecedented gamma-ray high state in early 2001. These four new VLBA observations are combined with data from our earlier 1999 paper and archival VLBA data-sets that have become available since 1999 to produce a combined 28 epoch VLBA data-set on Mrk 421 spanning the years 1994 to 2002. No new component associated with the 2001 flares was seen on the total intensity images, but the combined data-set allowed precise measurements of the apparent speeds of the existing components. The peak measured apparent speed was for component C5, which has an apparent speed of 0.1 +/- 0.02 c (H_0=71 km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}, Omega_m=0.27, and Omega_Lambda=0.73). No counterjet is seen with a limit on the jet to counterjet brightness ratio J >~ 100. These observed VLBI properties of Markarian 421 are consistent with a jet with a bulk Lorentz factor of about 2 and an angle to the line-of-sight of about 1 degree, suggesting a jet that decelerates between the gamma-ray producing region and the parsec scale. The VLBI core and inner jet (component C7) have fractional polarizations of about 5%, and an electric vector position angle (EVPA) aligned with the jet axis. Component C5 (at 1.5 mas from the core) has a higher fractional polarization of about 15%, and an EVPA nearly orthogonal to the jet axis. Significant variability is detected in the EVPA of component C6, which at two of the four epochs shows an EVPA aligned with the jet axis, possibly a sign of propagating disturbances that are only visible on the polarization images. If these propagating disturbances are linked to the 2001 gamma-ray high state, then their inferred apparent speed is between 1 and 3 c.Comment: 11 pages, accepted to Ap

Apparatus description and data analysis of a radiometric technique for measurements of spectral and total normal emittance

The development of a radiometric technique for determining the spectral and total normal emittance of materials heated to temperatures of 800, 1100, and 1300 K by direct comparison with National Bureau of Standards (NBS) reference specimens is discussed. Emittances are measured over the spectral range of 1 to 15 microns and are statistically compared with NBS reference specimens. Results are included for NBS reference specimens, Rene 41, alundum, zirconia, AISI type 321 stainless steel, nickel 201, and a space-shuttle reusable surface insulation

S and D-wave phase shifts in isospin-2 pi pi scattering from lattice QCD

The isospin-2 pi pi system provides a useful testing ground for determining elastic hadron scattering parameters from finite-volume spectra obtained using lattice QCD computations. A reliable determination of the excited state spectrum of two pions in a cubic box follows from variational analysis of correlator matrices constructed using a large basis of operators. A general operator construction is presented which respects the symmetries of a multi-hadron system in flight. This is applied to the case of pi pi and allows for the determination of the scattering phase-shifts at a large number of kinematic points, in both S-wave and D-wave, within the elastic region. The technique is demonstrated with a calculation at a pion mass of 396 MeV, where the elastic scattering is found to be well described by a scattering length parameterisation.Comment: Tables of little-group CGCs in ancillary file; v2: minor changes to reflect published versio

A variant approach to the overlap action

I describe an implementation of the overlap action, which is built from an action which is itself an approximate overlap action. It appears to be about a factor of 15-20 less expensive to use, than the usual overlap action with the Wilson fermion action as its kernel. Ingredients include a fat link to suppress coupling to dislocations and a free field action with a spectrum which resembles an overlap; much of the gain comes from the use of eigenmodes of the approximate action to begin the overlap calculation. As a physics example, I compute the quark condensate in finite volume in the quenched approximation.Comment: 15 pages, Revtex, postscript figures. COLO-HEP-44

The nature of the long time decay at a second order transition point

We show that at a second order phase transition, of \phi^4 like system, a necessary condition for streched exponential decay of the time structure factor is obeyed. Using the ideas presented in this proof a crude estimate of the decay of the structure factor is obtained and shown to yield stretched exponential decay under very reasonable conditions.Comment: 7 page

Topological Entanglement of Polymers and Chern-Simons Field Theory

In recent times some interesting field theoretical descriptions of the statistical mechanics of entangling polymers have been proposed by various authors. In these approaches, a single test polymer fluctuating in a background of static polymers or in a lattice of obstacles is considered. The extension to the case in which the configurations of two or more polymers become non-static is not straightforward unless their trajectories are severely constrained. In this paper we present another approach, based on Chern--Simons field theory, which is able to describe the topological entanglements of two fluctuating polymers in terms of gauge fields and second quantized replica fields.Comment: 16 pages, corrected some typos, added two new reference

Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering From Fully-Dynamical Lattice QCD

We present results of the first fully-dynamical lattice QCD determination of nucleon-nucleon scattering lengths in the 1S0 channel and 3S1-3D1 coupled channels. The calculations are performed with domain-wall valence quarks on the MILC staggered configurations with lattice spacing of b=0.125 fm in the isospin-symmetric limit, and in the absence of electromagnetic interactions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure