288 research outputs found
Wild animals suppress the spread of socially transmitted misinformation
Understanding the mechanisms by which information and misinformation spread through groups of individual actors is essential to the prediction of phenomena ranging from coordinated group behaviors to misinformation epidemics. Transmission of information through groups depends on the rules that individuals use to transform the perceived actions of others into their own behaviors. Because it is often not possible to directly infer decision-making strategies in situ, most studies of behavioral spread assume that individuals make decisions by pooling or averaging the actions or behavioral states of neighbors. However, whether individuals may instead adopt more sophisticated strategies that exploit socially transmitted information, while remaining robust to misinformation, is unknown. Here, we study the relationship between individual decision-making and misinformation spread in groups of wild coral reef fish, where misinformation occurs in the form of false alarms that can spread contagiously through groups. Using automated visual field reconstruction of wild animals, we infer the precise sequences of socially transmitted visual stimuli perceived by individuals during decision-making. Our analysis reveals a feature of decision-making essential for controlling misinformation spread: dynamic adjustments in sensitivity to socially transmitted cues. This form of dynamic gain control can be achieved by a simple and biologically widespread decision-making circuit, and it renders individual behavior robust to natural fluctuations in misinformation exposure.</p
A real Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction
Many condensed matter systems are such that their collective excitations at
low energies can be described by fields satisfying equations of motion formally
indistinguishable from those of relativistic field theory. The finite speed of
propagation of the disturbances in the effective fields (in the simplest
models, the speed of sound) plays here the role of the speed of light in
fundamental physics. However, these apparently relativistic fields are immersed
in an external Newtonian world (the condensed matter system itself and the
laboratory can be considered Newtonian, since all the velocities involved are
much smaller than the velocity of light) which provides a privileged coordinate
system and therefore seems to destroy the possibility of having a perfectly
defined relativistic emergent world. In this essay we ask ourselves the
following question: In a homogeneous condensed matter medium, is there a way
for internal observers, dealing exclusively with the low-energy collective
phenomena, to detect their state of uniform motion with respect to the medium?
By proposing a thought experiment based on the construction of a
Michelson-Morley interferometer made of quasi-particles, we show that a real
Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction takes place, so that internal observers are
unable to find out anything about their `absolute ' state of motion. Therefore,
we also show that an effective but perfectly defined relativistic world can
emerge in a fishbowl world situated inside a Newtonian (laboratory) system.
This leads us to reflect on the various levels of description in physics, in
particular regarding the quest towards a theory of quantum gravity.Comment: 6 pages, no figures. Minor changes reflect published versio
Is nonperturbative inflatino production during preheating a real threat to cosmology?
We discuss toy models where supersymmetry is broken due to non-vanishing
time-varying vacuum expectation value of the inflaton field during preheating.
We discuss the production of inflatino the superpartner of inflaton due to
vacuum fluctuations and then we argue that they do not survive until
nucleosynthesis and decay along with the inflaton to produce a thermal bath
after preheating. Thus the only relevant remnant is the helicity \pm 3/2
gravitinos which can genuinely cause problem to nucleosynthesis.Comment: 10 pages, Updates to match the accepted version in Phys. Rev.
Sleptogenesis
We propose that the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe can naturally
arise from a net asymmetry generated in the sleptonic sector at fairly low
reheat temperatures. The best candidate is indeed the right-handed sneutrino.
The initial asymmetry in the sneutrino sector can be produced from the decay of
the inflaton, and is subsequently transferred into the Standard Model (s)lepton
doublet via the decay of the sneutrino. The active sphalerons then reprocess
the leptonic asymmetry into the baryonic asymmetry. The marked feature of this
scenario is that the lepton asymmetry is decoupled from the neutrino Yukawa
sector. We exhibit that our scenario can be embedded within models which seek
the origin of a tiny mass for neutrinos.Comment: 7 revtex pages, 2 figures (uses axodraw). Minor changes for better
clarification and updated references. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Laser-induced coloration of ceramic tiles covered with magnetron sputtered precursor layers
This paper reports a new methodology for the coloring of glazed ceramic tiles consisting of the near infrared pulsed laser processing of copper containing oxide coatings prepared by magnetron sputtering. As a second approach, the employ for the same purpose of a novel laser furnace technique is also described. Changing the laser parameters and using the laser furnace to treat the tiles at high temperature during irradiation has resulted in a wide color palette. The optical characterization of the modified tiles by UV-Vis spectroscopy has been complemented with their microstructural and compositional analysis by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), and Time Of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (TOF-SIMS). The chemical composition of the surface was obtained by X-ray Photoemission Spectroscopy (XPS) and its structure determined by X?ray diffraction (XRD). The chemical resistance was characterized by several tests following the norm ISO 10545-13. Color changes have been attributed to surface microstructural and chemical transformations that have been accounted for by simple models involving different ablation, melting, diffusion, and segregation/agglomeration phenomena depending on the laser treatments employed
Preheating in Supersymmetric Theories
We examine the particle production via preheating at the end of inflation in
supersymmetric theories. The inflaton and matter scalars are now necessarily
complex fields, and their relevant interactions are restricted by holomorphy.
In general this leads to major changes both in the inflaton dynamics and in the
efficiency of the preheating process. In addition, supersymmetric models
generically contain multiple isolated vacua, raising the possibility of
non-thermal production of dangerous topological defects. Because of these
effects, the success of leptogenesis or WIMPZILLA production via preheating
depends much more sensitively on the detailed parameters in the inflaton sector
than previously thought.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures; references adde
Modification to the power spectrum in the brane world inflation driven by the bulk inflaton
We compute the cosmological perturbations generated in the brane world
inflation driven by the bulk inflaton. Different from the model that the
inflation is a brane effect, we exhibit the modification of the power spectrum
of scalar perturbations due to the existence of the fifth dimension. With the
change of the initial vacuum, we investigate the dependence of the correction
of the power spectrum on the choice of the vacuum.Comment: replaced with the revised version, accepted for publication in PR
Coulomb-nuclear interference in the breakup of Be
Within a theory of breakup reactions formulated in the framework of the post
form distorted wave Born approximation, we calculate contributions of the pure
Coulomb and the pure nuclear breakup as well as those of their interference
terms to a variety of cross sections in breakup reactions of the one-neutron
halo nucleus Be on a number of target nuclei. In contrast to the
assumption often made, the Coulomb-nuclear interference terms are found to be
non-negligible in case of exclusive cross sections of the fragments emitted in
this reaction on medium mass and heavy target nuclei. The consideration of the
nuclear breakup leads to a better description of such data.Comment: 9 pages, latex, 2 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. C (Rapid
Communication
Counter-propagating radiative shock experiments on the Orion laser and the formation of radiative precursors
We present results from new experiments to study the dynamics of radiative
shocks, reverse shocks and radiative precursors. Laser ablation of a solid
piston by the Orion high-power laser at AWE Aldermaston UK was used to drive
radiative shocks into a gas cell initially pressurised between and $1.0 \
bar with different noble gases. Shocks propagated at {80 \pm 10 \ km/s} and
experienced strong radiative cooling resulting in post-shock compressions of {
\times 25 \pm 2}. A combination of X-ray backlighting, optical self-emission
streak imaging and interferometry (multi-frame and streak imaging) were used to
simultaneously study both the shock front and the radiative precursor. These
experiments present a new configuration to produce counter-propagating
radiative shocks, allowing for the study of reverse shocks and providing a
unique platform for numerical validation. In addition, the radiative shocks
were able to expand freely into a large gas volume without being confined by
the walls of the gas cell. This allows for 3-D effects of the shocks to be
studied which, in principle, could lead to a more direct comparison to
astrophysical phenomena. By maintaining a constant mass density between
different gas fills the shocks evolved with similar hydrodynamics but the
radiative precursor was found to extend significantly further in higher atomic
number gases (\sim4$ times further in xenon than neon). Finally, 1-D and 2-D
radiative-hydrodynamic simulations are presented showing good agreement with
the experimental data.Comment: HEDLA 2016 conference proceeding
Non-thermal leptogenesis with almost degenerate superheavy neutrinos
We present a model with minimal assumptions for non-thermal leptogenesis with
almost degenerate superheavy right-handed neutrinos in a supersymmetric set up.
In this scenario a gauge singlet inflaton is directly coupled to the
right-handed (s)neutrinos with a mass heavier than the inflaton mass. This
helps avoiding potential problems which can naturally arise otherwise. The
inflaton decay to the Standard Model leptons and Higgs, via off-shell
right-handed (s)neutrinos, reheats the Universe. The same channel is also
responsible for generating the lepton asymmetry, thus requiring no stage of
preheating in order to excite superheavy (s)neutrinos. The suppressed decay
rate of the inflaton naturally leads to a sufficiently low reheat temperature,
which in addition, prevents any wash out of the yielded asymmetry. We will
particularly elaborate on important differences from leptogenesis with on-shell
(s)neutrinos. It is shown that for nearly degenerate neutrinos a successful
leptogenesis can be accommodated for a variety of inflationary models with a
rather wide ranging inflationary scale.Comment: 10 revtex pages, 2 figure (uses axodraw). The derivation of the
asymmetry parameter for the general case and one figure added. Final version
to appear in Phys. Rev.
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