Diamond nucleation on cleaved Si(111)

Diamond crystallites have been nucleated and grown by hot filament chemical vapor deposition at 600°C on the untreated fracture surface of a cleaved Si(111) sample. The flat surface of the cleaved crystal was inactive towards diamond nucleation while, on the terraced surface formed by the propagating crack, a high density of nuclei was found. The crystallites were nucleated in correspondence of edges between (111) terrace planes and step planes. The occurrence of edges, as determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the nucleation and this fact suggests that particular atomic arrangements are required for the diamond nucleus formation

QCD and the Chiral Critical Point

As an extension of $QCD$, consider a theory with ``$2+1$'' flavors, where the current quark masses are held in a fixed ratio as the overall scale of the quark masses is varied. At nonzero temperature and baryon density it is expected that in the chiral limit the chiral phase transition is of first order. Increasing the quark mass from zero, the chiral transition becomes more weakly first order, and can end in a chiral critical point. We show that the only massless field at the chiral critical point is a sigma meson, with the universality class that of the Ising model. Present day lattice simulations indicate that $QCD$ is (relatively) near to the chiral critical point.Comment: 7 pages + 2 figures, BNL-GGP-

Seabird Bycatch in Pelagic Longline Fisheries Is Grossly Underestimated when Using Only Haul Data

Hundreds of thousands of seabirds are killed each year as bycatch in longline fisheries. Seabirds are predominantly caught during line setting but bycatch is generally recorded during line hauling, many hours after birds are caught. Bird loss during this interval may lead to inaccurate bycatch information. In this 15 year study, seabird bycatch was recorded during both line setting and line hauling from four fishing regions: Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean, Coral Sea and central Pacific Ocean. Over 43,000 albatrosses, petrels and skuas representing over 25 species were counted during line setting of which almost 6,000 seabirds attempted to take the bait. Bait-taking interactions were placed into one of four categories. (i) The majority (57%) of bait-taking attempts were “unsuccessful” involving seabirds that did not take the bait nor get caught or hooked. (ii) One-third of attempts were “successful” with seabirds removing the bait while not getting caught. (iii) One-hundred and seventy-six seabirds (3% of attempts) were observed being “caught” during line setting, with three albatross species – Laysan (Phoebastria immutabilis), black-footed (P. nigripes) and black-browed (Thalassarche melanophrys)– dominating this category. However, of these, only 85 (48%) seabird carcasses were retrieved during line hauling. Most caught seabirds were hooked through the bill. (iv) The remainder of seabird-bait interactions (7%) was not clearly observed, but likely involved more “caught” seabirds. Bait taking attempts and percentage outcome (e.g. successful, caught) varied between seabird species and was not always related to species abundance around fishing vessels. Using only haul data to calculate seabird bycatch grossly underestimates actual bycatch levels, with the level of seabird bycatch from pelagic longline fishing possibly double what was previously thought

Heavy top quark from Fritzsch mass matrices

It is shown, contrary to common belief, that the Fritzsch ansatz for the quark mass matrices admits a heavy top quark. With the ansatz prescribed at the supersymmetric grand unified (GUT) scale, one finds that the top quark may be as heavy as 145 GeV, provided that tan$\beta$ (the ratio of the vacuum expectation values of the two higgs doublets) $\gg 1$. Within a non-supersymmetric GUT framework with two (one) light higgs doublets, the corresponding approximate upper bound on the top mass is $120~ (90)$ GeV. Our results are based on a general one--loop renormalization group analysis of the quark masses and mixing angles and are readily applied to alternative mass matrix ans\"{a}tze.Comment: LaTeX, 14 figures (not included, available on request

Origins and composition of fine atmospheric carbonaceous aerosol in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

In this paper we report chemically resolved measurements of organic aerosol (OA) and related tracers during the Biosphere Effects on Aerosols and Photochemistry Experiment (BEARPEX) at the Blodgett Forest Research Station, California from 15 August–10 October 2007. OA contributed the majority of the mass to the fine atmospheric particles and was predominately oxygenated (OOA). The highest concentrations of OA were during sporadic wildfire influence when aged plumes were impacting the site. In situ measurements of particle phase molecular markers were dominated by secondary compounds and along with gas phase compounds could be categorized into six factors or sources: (1) aged biomass burning emissions and oxidized urban emissions, (2) oxidized urban emissions (3) oxidation products of monoterpene emissions, (4) monoterpene emissions, (5) anthropogenic emissions and (6) local methyl chavicol emissions and oxidation products. There were multiple biogenic components that contributed to OA at this site whose contributions varied diurnally, seasonally and in response to changing meteorological conditions, e.g. temperature and precipitation events. Concentrations of isoprene oxidation products were larger when temperatures were higher during the first half of the campaign (15 August–12 September) due to more substantial emissions of isoprene and enhanced photochemistry. The oxidation of methyl chavicol, an oxygenated terpene emitted by ponderosa pine trees, contributed similarly to OA throughout the campaign. In contrast, the abundances of monoterpene oxidation products in the particle phase were greater during the cooler conditions in the latter half of the campaign (13 September–10 October), even though emissions of the precursors were lower, although the mechanism is not known. OA was correlated with the anthropogenic tracers 2-propyl nitrate and carbon monoxide (CO), consistent with previous observations, while being comprised of mostly non-fossil carbon (>75%). The correlation between OA and an anthropogenic tracer does not necessarily identify the source of the carbon as being anthropogenic but instead suggests a coupling between the anthropogenic and biogenic components in the air mass that might be related to the source of the oxidant and/or the aerosol sulfate. Observations of organosulfates of isoprene and α-pinene provided evidence for the likely importance of aerosol sulfate in spite of neutralized aerosol although acidic plumes might have played a role upwind of the site. This is in contrast to laboratory studies where strongly acidic seed aerosols were needed in order to form these compounds. These compounds together represented only a minor fraction (<1%) of the total OA mass, which may be the result of the neutralized aerosol at the site or because only a small number of organosulfates were quantified. The low contribution of organosulfates to total OA suggests that other mechanisms, e.g. NO_x enhancement of oxidant levels, are likely responsible for the majority of the anthropogenic enhancement of biogenic secondary organic aerosol observed at this site

Electric-magnetic duality and the conditions of inflationary magnetogenesis

The magnetogenesis scenarios triggered by the early variation of the gauge coupling are critically analyzed. In the absence of sources, it is shown that the electric and magnetic power spectra can be explicitly computed by means of electric-magnetic duality transformations. The remnants of a pre-inflationary expansion and the reheating process break explicitly electric-magnetic duality by inducing Ohmic currents. The generation of large-scale magnetic field and the physical distinction between electric and magnetic observables stems, in this class of models, from the final value reached by the conductivity of the plasma right after inflation. Specific numerical examples are given. The physical requirements of viable magnetogenesis scenarios are spelled out.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figure

Isospin Breaking Effects in the Extraction of Isoscalar and Isovector Spectral Functions From e+e−→hadronse^+e^-\to hadrons

We investigate the problem of the extraction of the isovector and isoscalar spectral functions from data on $e^+e^-\to hadrons$, in the presence of non-zero isospin breaking. It is shown that the conventional approach to extracting the isovector spectral function in the $\rho$ resonance region, in which only the isoscalar contribution associated with $\omega\to \pi\pi$ is subtracted, fails to fully remove the effects of the isoscalar component of the electromagnetic current. The additional subtractions required to extract the pure isovector and isoscalar spectral functions are estimated using results from QCD sum rules. It is shown that the corrections are small ($\sim 2$) in the isovector case (though relevant to precision tests of CVC), but very large ($\sim 20$) in the case of the $\omega$ contribution to the isoscalar spectral function. The reason such a large effect is natural in the isoscalar channel is explained, and implications for other applications, such as the extraction of the sixth order chiral low-energy constant, $Q$, are discussed.Comment: minor changes to introduction, section 2. In Press Phys. Rev.

Third Generation Effects on Fermion Mass Predictions in Supersymmetric Grand Unified Theories

Relations among fermion masses and mixing angles at the scale of grand unification are modified at lower energies by renormalization group running induced by gauge and Yukawa couplings. In supersymmetric theories, the $b$ quark and $\tau$ lepton Yukawa couplings, as well as the $t$ quark coupling, may cause significant running if $\tan \beta$, the ratio of Higgs field expectation values, is large. We present approximate analytic expressions for the scaling factors for fermion masses and CKM matrix elements induced by all three third generation Yukawa couplings. We then determine how running caused by the third generation of fermions affects the predictions arising from three possible forms for the Yukawa coupling matrices at the GUT scale: the Georgi-Jarlskog, Giudice, and Fritzsch textures.Comment: phyzzx, 26 pp., 6 figures not included, e-mailable upon request, JHU-TIPAC-93000

Current helicity of active regions as a tracer of large-scale solar magnetic helicity

We demonstrate that the current helicity observed in solar active regions traces the magnetic helicity of the large-scale dynamo generated field. We use an advanced 2D mean-field dynamo model with dynamo saturation based on the evolution of the magnetic helicity and algebraic quenching. For comparison, we also studied a more basic 2D mean-field dynamo model with simple algebraic alpha quenching only. Using these numerical models we obtained butterfly diagrams both for the small-scale current helicity and also for the large-scale magnetic helicity, and compared them with the butterfly diagram for the current helicity in active regions obtained from observations. This comparison shows that the current helicity of active regions, as estimated by $-{\bf A \cdot B}$ evaluated at the depth from which the active region arises, resembles the observational data much better than the small-scale current helicity calculated directly from the helicity evolution equation. Here ${\bf B}$ and ${\bf A}$ are respectively the dynamo generated mean magnetic field and its vector potential. A theoretical interpretation of these results is given.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, revised versio