Variations of the solar granulation motions with height using the GOLF/SoHO experiment

Below 1 mHz, the power spectrum of helioseismic velocity measurements is dominated by the spectrum of convective motions (granulation and supergranulation) making it difficult to detect the low-order acoustic modes and the gravity modes. We want to better understand the behavior of solar granulation as a function of the observing height in the solar atmosphere and with magnetic activity during solar cycle 23. We analyze the Power Spectral Density (PSD) of eleven years of GOLF/SOHO velocity-time series using a Harvey-type model to characterize the properties of the convective motions in the solar oscillation power spectrum. We study then the evolution of the granulation with the altitude in the solar atmosphere and with the solar activity. First, we show that the traditional use of a lorentzian profile to fit the envelope of the p modes is not well suitable for GOLF data. Indeed, to properly model the solar spectrum, we need a second lorentzian profile. Second, we show that the granulation clearly evolves with the height in the photosphere but does not present any significant variation with the activity cycle.Comment: Paper accepted in A&A. 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Review of the measurements of the strong coupling constant at LEP 2

Since 1995, LEP has steadily increased the center of mass energy of the colliding beams, from the M_Z resonance to 133, 161 and 172 GeV. New measurements of the strong coupling constant, alpha_s, at these energies have been performed by the LEP experiments, L3, ALEPH, OPAL and DELPHI. In this article, the new results are summarized, and combined with the previous LEP measurement of alpha_s(M_Z) in order to obtain an updated LEP average of alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.120 +- 0.005.Comment: 5-6 pages, 3 figures. Talk given at the DIS 97 conference, Chicago, April 1997.Replacement: update figure 1. Also available here http://hep.ph.liv.ac.uk/~martis

Thermodynamics of black holes in (n+1)(n+1)-dimensional Einstein-Born-Infeld dilaton gravity

We construct a new class of $(n+1)$-dimensional $(n\geq3)$ black hole solutions in Einstein-Born-Infeld-dilaton gravity with Liouville-type potential for the dilaton field and investigate their properties. These solutions are neither asymptotically flat nor (anti)-de Sitter. We find that these solutions can represent black holes, with inner and outer event horizons, an extreme black hole or a naked singularity provided the parameters of the solutions are chosen suitably. We compute the thermodynamic quantities of the black hole solutions and find that these quantities satisfy the first law of thermodynamics. We also perform stability analysis and investigate the effect of dilaton on the stability of the solutions.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figure