4,624 research outputs found
NEW PALAEOZOIC FISH REMAINS FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA
The fossil fish record of southern Africa is
both sparse and spotty and the only group with a
relatively complete record is the Actinopterygii;
indeed several of the major fish groups have not so
far been described from the African Continent.
The Palaeozoic rocks of southern Africa have
yielded an even more restricted fish fauna
(Gardiner 1962; 1969). However, an accumulation
of new, but fragmentary, material from several
localities has shown the undoubted presence of
two groups, coelacanths and acanthodians, hitherto
unrecorded from the Palaeozoic strata of southern
Africa
A NEW DICTYOPYGID FROM THE CAVE SANDSTONE OF LESOTHO, SOUTHERN AFRICA
The Lower Triassic of South Africa has
yielded an array of early dictyopygids (Brough,
1931, 1936) yet none of those advanced dictyopygids
so characteristic of the Upper Triassic of
North America (Schaeffer, 1967) has so far been
recorded from the African continent. The geographical
distribution of the dictyopygids appears
to be a discontinuous one with the Lower Triassic
forms coming mainly from South Africa, the
Middle Triassic ones from Australia and the Upper
Triassic forms from North America. It is thus
surprising to find a seemingly advanced dictyopygid
in the rather unfossiliferous Cave Sandstone of
Lesotho
Disruption of reflecting Bose-Einstein condensates due to inter-atomic interactions and quantum noise
We perform fully three-dimensional simulations, using the truncated Wigner
method, to investigate the reflection of Bose-Einstein condensates from abrupt
potential barriers. We show that the inter-atomic interactions can disrupt the
internal structure of a cigar-shaped cloud with a high atom density at low
approach velocities, damping the center-of-mass motion and generating vortices.
Furthermore, by incorporating quantum noise we show that scattering halos form
at high approach velocities, causing an associated condensate depletion. We
compare our results to recent experimental observations.Comment: 5 figure
Quantum Kinetic Theory VI: The Growth of a Bose-Einstein Condensate
A detailed analysis of the growth of a BEC is given, based on quantum kinetic
theory, in which we take account of the evolution of the occupations of lower
trap levels, and of the full Bose-Einstein formula for the occupations of
higher trap levels, as well as the Bose stimulated direct transfer of atoms to
the condensate level introduced by Gardiner et al. We find good agreement with
experiment at higher temperatures, but at lower temperatures the experimentally
observed growth rate is somewhat more rapid. We also confirm the picture of the
``kinetic'' region of evolution, introduced by Kagan et al., for the time up to
the initiation of the condensate. The behavior after initiation essentially
follows our original growth equation, but with a substantially increased rate
coefficient.
Our modelling of growth implicitly gives a model of the spatial shape of the
condensate vapor system as the condensate grows, and thus provides an
alternative to the present phenomenological fitting procedure, based on the sum
of a zero-chemical potential vapor and a Thomas-Fermi shaped condensate. Our
method may give substantially different results for condensate numbers and
temperatures obtained from phenomentological fits, and indicates the need for
more systematic investigation of the growth dynamics of the condensate from a
supersaturated vapor.Comment: TeX source; 29 Pages including 26 PostScript figure
Quantifying the Drivers of Star Formation on Galactic Scales. I. The Small Magellanic Cloud
We use the star formation history of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) to
place quantitative limits on the effect of tidal interactions and gas infall on
the star formation and chemical enrichment history of the SMC. The coincident
timing of two recent (< 4 Gyr) increases in the star formation rate and
SMC/Milky Way(MW) pericenter passages suggests that global star formation in
the SMC is driven at least in part by tidal forces due to the MW. The Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is the other potential driver of star formation, but is
only near the SMC during the most recent burst. The poorly constrained LMC-SMC
orbit is our principal uncertainty. To explore the correspondence between
bursts and MW pericenter passages further, we model star formation in the SMC
using a combination of continuous and tidally-triggered star formation. The
behavior of the tidally-triggered mode is a strong inverse function of the
SMC-MW separation (preferred behavior ~ r^-5, resulting in a factor of ~100
difference in the rate of tidally-triggered star formation at pericenter and
apocenter). Despite the success of these closed-box evolutionary models in
reproducing the recent SMC star formation history and current chemical
abundance, they have some systematic shortcomings that are remedied by
postulating that a sizable infall event (~ 50% of the total gas mass) occured
about 4 Gyr ago. Regardless of whether this infall event is included, the
fraction of stars in the SMC that formed via a tidally triggered mode is > 10%
and could be as large as 70%.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
Bragg scattering of Cooper pairs in an ultra-cold Fermi gas
We present a theoretical treatment of Bragg scattering of a degenerate Fermi
gas in the weakly interacting BCS regime. Our numerical calculations predict
correlated scattering of Cooper pairs into a spherical shell in momentum space.
The scattered shell of correlated atoms is centered at half the usual Bragg
momentum transfer, and can be clearly distinguished from atoms scattered by the
usual single-particle Bragg mechanism. We develop an analytic model that
explains key features of the correlated-pair Bragg scattering, and determine
the dependence of this scattering on the initial pair correlations in the gas.Comment: Manuscript substantially revised. Version 2 contains a more detailed
discussion of the collisional interaction used in our theory, and is based on
three-dimensional solution
Aharonov-Casher oscillations of spin current through a multichannel mesoscopic ring
The Aharonov-Casher (AC) oscillations of spin current through a 2D ballistic
ring in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction and external magnetic
field has been calculated using the semiclassical path integral method. For
classically chaotic trajectories the Fokker-Planck equation determining
dynamics of the particle spin polarization has been derived. On the basis of
this equation an analytic expression for the spin conductance has been obtained
taking into account a finite width of the ring arms carrying large number of
conducting channels. It was shown that the finite width results in a broadening
and damping of spin current AC oscillations. We found that an external magnetic
field leads to appearance of new nondiagonal components of the spin
conductance, allowing thus by applying a rather weak magnetic field to change a
direction of the transmitted spin current polarization.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure
Charge Transport in a Quantum Electromechanical System
We describe a quantum electromechanical system(QEMS) comprising a single
quantum dot harmonically bound between two electrodes and facilitating a
tunneling current between them. An example of such a system is a fullerene
molecule between two metal electrodes [Park et al., Nature, 407, 57 (2000)].
The description is based on a quantum master equation for the density operator
of the electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom and thus incorporates the
dynamics of both diagonal (population) and off diagonal (coherence) terms. We
derive coupled equations of motion for the electron occupation number of the
dot and the vibrational degrees of freedom, including damping of the vibration
and thermo-mechanical noise. This dynamical description is related to
observable features of the system including the stationary current as a
function of bias voltage.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. B., 13 pages, single colum
Critical fluctuations and anomalous transport in soft Yukawa-Langevin systems
Simulation of a Langevin-dynamics model demonstrates emergence of critical
fluctuations and anomalous grain transport which have been observed in
experiments on "soft" quasi-two-dimensional dusty plasma clusters. It has been
suggested that these anomalies derive from particular non-equilibrium physics,
but our model does not contain such physics: the grains are confined by an
external potential, interact via static Yukawa forces, and are subject to
stochastic heating and dissipation from neutrals. One remarkable feature is
emergence of leptokurtic probability distributions of grain displacements
on time-scales , where is the
time at which the standard deviation
approaches the mean inter-grain distance . Others are development of
humps in the distributions on multiples of , anomalous Hurst exponents,
and transitions from leptokurtic towards Gaussian displacement distributions on
time scales . The latter is a signature of intermittency,
here interpreted as a transition from bursty transport associated with hopping
on intermediate time scales to vortical flows on longer time scales.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure
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