15,993 research outputs found
The geometry of sound rays in a wind
We survey the close relationship between sound and light rays and geometry.
In the case where the medium is at rest, the geometry is the classical geometry
of Riemann. In the case where the medium is moving, the more general geometry
known as Finsler geometry is needed. We develop these geometries ab initio,
with examples, and in particular show how sound rays in a stratified atmosphere
with a wind can be mapped to a problem of circles and straight lines.Comment: Popular review article to appear in Contemporary Physic
Goryachev-Chaplygin, Kovalevskaya, and Brdi\v{c}ka-Eardley-Nappi-Witten pp-waves spacetimes with higher rank St\"ackel-Killing tensors
Hidden symmetries of the Goryachev-Chaplygin and Kovalevskaya gyrostats
spacetimes, as well as the Brdi\v{c}ka-Eardley-Nappi-Witten pp-waves are
studied. We find out that these spacetimes possess higher rank
St\"ackel-Killing tensors and that in the case of the pp-wave spacetimes the
symmetry group of the St\"ackel-Killing tensors is the well-known Newton-Hooke
group.Comment: 11 pages; accepted for publication in JM
Localized Activation of Bending in Proximal, Medial and Distal Regions of Sea-Urchin Sperm Flagella
Spermatozoa from the sea urchin, Colobocentrotus atratus, were partially demembranated by extraction with solutions containing Triton X-100 at a concentration which was insufficient to solubilize the membranes completely. The resulting suspension was a mixture containing some spermatozoa in which a proximal, medial, or distal portion of the flagellum was membrane-covered, while the remaining portion was naked axoneme. In reactivating solutions containing 12 µM ATP, only the naked portions of the flagellum became motile. In reactivating solutions containing 0.8 mM ADP, the membrane-covered regions became motile and beat at 6-10 beats/s, while the naked regions remained immobile, or beat very slowly at about 0.3 beat/s. Activation of membrane-covered regions in ADP solutions probably results from the membrane restricting the diffusion of ATP which is formed from ADP by the axonemal adenylate kinase. The results indicate that any region of the flagellum has the capacity for autonomous beating, and that special properties of the basal end of the flagellum are not required for bend initiation. However, the beating of different regions of the flagellum is not completely independent, for in a fair number of spermatozoa the beating of the distal, membrane-covered region in 0.8 mM ADP was intermittent, and was turned on and off in phase with the much slower bending cycle in the proximal region of naked axoneme
Flux-Confinement in Dilatonic Cosmic Strings
We study dilaton-electrodynamics in flat spacetime and exhibit a set of
global cosmic string like solutions in which the magnetic flux is confined.
These solutions continue to exist for a small enough dilaton mass but cease to
do so above a critcal value depending on the magnetic flux. There also exist
domain wall and Dirac monopole solutions. We discuss a mechanism whereby
magnetic monopolesmight have been confined by dilaton cosmic strings during an
epoch in the early universe during which the dilaton was massless.Comment: 8 pages, DAMTP R93/3
Bohm and Einstein-Sasaki Metrics, Black Holes and Cosmological Event Horizons
We study physical applications of the Bohm metrics, which are infinite
sequences of inhomogeneous Einstein metrics on spheres and products of spheres
of dimension 5 <= d <= 9. We prove that all the Bohm metrics on S^3 x S^2 and
S^3 x S^3 have negative eigenvalue modes of the Lichnerowicz operator and by
numerical methods we establish that Bohm metrics on S^5 have negative
eigenvalues too. We argue that all the Bohm metrics will have negative modes.
These results imply that higher-dimensional black-hole spacetimes where the
Bohm metric replaces the usual round sphere metric are classically unstable. We
also show that the stability criterion for Freund-Rubin solutions is the same
as for black-hole stability, and hence such solutions using Bohm metrics will
also be unstable. We consider possible endpoints of the instabilities, and show
that all Einstein-Sasaki manifolds give stable solutions. We show how Wick
rotation of Bohm metrics gives spacetimes that provide counterexamples to a
strict form of the Cosmic Baldness conjecture, but they are still consistent
with the intuition behind the cosmic No-Hair conjectures. We show how the
Lorentzian metrics may be created ``from nothing'' in a no-boundary setting. We
argue that Lorentzian Bohm metrics are unstable to decay to de Sitter
spacetime. We also argue that noncompact versions of the Bohm metrics have
infinitely many negative Lichernowicz modes, and we conjecture a general
relation between Lichnerowicz eigenvalues and non-uniqueness of the Dirichlet
problem for Einstein's equations.Comment: 53 pages, 11 figure
Compactifications of Deformed Conifolds, Branes and the Geometry of Qubits
We present three families of exact, cohomogeneity-one Einstein metrics in
dimensions, which are generalizations of the Stenzel construction of
Ricci-flat metrics to those with a positive cosmological constant. The first
family of solutions are Fubini-Study metrics on the complex projective spaces
, written in a Stenzel form, whose principal orbits are the Stiefel
manifolds divided by . The second family are
also Einstein-K\"ahler metrics, now on the Grassmannian manifolds
, whose principal orbits are the
Stiefel manifolds (with no factoring in this case). The
third family are Einstein metrics on the product manifolds , and are K\"ahler only for . Some of these metrics are believed
to play a role in studies of consistent string theory compactifications and in
the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We also elaborate on the geometric
approach to quantum mechanics based on the K\"ahler geometry of Fubini-Study
metrics on , and we apply the formalism to study the quantum
entanglement of qubits.Comment: 31 page
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