12,476 research outputs found
General relativity on a null surface: Hamiltonian formulation in the teleparallel geometry
The Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity on a null surface is
established in the teleparallel geometry. No particular gauge conditons on the
tetrads are imposed, such as the time gauge condition. By means of a 3+1
decomposition the resulting Hamiltonian arises as a completely constrained
system. However, it is structurally different from the the standard
Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) type formulation. In this geometrical framework the
basic field quantities are tetrads that transform under the global SO(3,1) and
the torsion tensor.Comment: 15 pages, Latex, no figures, to appear in the Gen. Rel. Gra
CMB Lensing Reconstruction on the Full Sky
Gravitational lensing of the microwave background by the intervening dark
matter mainly arises from large-angle fluctuations in the projected
gravitational potential and hence offers a unique opportunity to study the
physics of the dark sector at large scales. Studies with surveys that cover
greater than a percent of the sky will require techniques that incorporate the
curvature of the sky. We lay the groundwork for these studies by deriving the
full sky minimum variance quadratic estimators of the lensing potential from
the CMB temperature and polarization fields. We also present a general
technique for constructing these estimators, with harmonic space convolutions
replaced by real space products, that is appropriate for both the full sky
limit and the flat sky approximation. This also extends previous treatments to
include estimators involving the temperature-polarization cross-correlation and
should be useful for next generation experiments in which most of the
additional information from polarization comes from this channel due to
sensitivity limitations.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D; typos correcte
Shortest Path Computation with No Information Leakage
Shortest path computation is one of the most common queries in location-based
services (LBSs). Although particularly useful, such queries raise serious
privacy concerns. Exposing to a (potentially untrusted) LBS the client's
position and her destination may reveal personal information, such as social
habits, health condition, shopping preferences, lifestyle choices, etc. The
only existing method for privacy-preserving shortest path computation follows
the obfuscation paradigm; it prevents the LBS from inferring the source and
destination of the query with a probability higher than a threshold. This
implies, however, that the LBS still deduces some information (albeit not
exact) about the client's location and her destination. In this paper we aim at
strong privacy, where the adversary learns nothing about the shortest path
query. We achieve this via established private information retrieval
techniques, which we treat as black-box building blocks. Experiments on real,
large-scale road networks assess the practicality of our schemes.Comment: VLDB201
Unexpected impact of D waves in low-energy neutral pion photoproduction from the proton and the extraction of multipoles
Contributions of waves to physical observables for neutral pion
photoproduction from the proton in the near-threshold region are studied and
means to isolate them are proposed. Various approaches to describe the
multipoles are employed
--a phenomenological one, a unitary one, and heavy baryon chiral perturbation
theory. The results of these approaches are compared and found to yield
essentially the same answers. waves are seen to enter together with
waves in a way that any means which attempt to obtain the multipole
accurately must rely on knowledge of waves and that consequently the latter
cannot be dismissed in analyses of low-energy pion photoproduction. It is shown
that waves have a significant impact on double-polarization observables
that can be measured. This importance of waves is due to the soft nature of
the wave and is a direct consequence of chiral symmetry and the
Nambu--Goldstone nature of the pion. -wave contributions are shown to be
negligible in the near-threshold region.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figures, 19 tables. Version to be published in Physical
Review
Nonlinear feedback oscillations in resonant tunneling through double barriers
We analyze the dynamical evolution of the resonant tunneling of an ensemble
of electrons through a double barrier in the presence of the self-consistent
potential created by the charge accumulation in the well.
The intrinsic nonlinearity of the transmission process is shown to lead to
oscillations of the stored charge and of the transmitted and reflected fluxes.
The dependence on the electrostatic feedback induced by the self-consistent
potential and on the energy width of the incident distribution is discussed.Comment: 10 pages, TeX, 5 Postscript figure
A model checking approach to the parameter estimation of biochemical pathways
Model checking has historically been an important tool to
verify models of a wide variety of systems. Typically a model has to exhibit
certain properties to be classed âacceptableâ. In this work we use
model checking in a new setting; parameter estimation. We characterise
the desired behaviour of a model in a temporal logic property and alter
the model to make it conform to the property (determined through
model checking). We have implemented a computational system called
MC2(GA) which pairs a model checker with a genetic algorithm. To
drive parameter estimation, the fitness of set of parameters in a model is
the inverse of the distance between its actual behaviour and the desired
behaviour. The model checker used is the simulation-based Monte Carlo
Model Checker for Probabilistic Linear-time Temporal Logic with numerical
constraints, MC2(PLTLc). Numerical constraints as well as the
overall probability of the behaviour expressed in temporal logic are used
to minimise the behavioural distance. We define the theory underlying
our parameter estimation approach in both the stochastic and continuous
worlds. We apply our approach to biochemical systems and present
an illustrative example where we estimate the kinetic rate constants in
a continuous model of a signalling pathway
Higher Spin Field Equation in a Virtual Black Hole Metric
In a quantum theory of gravity, fluctuations about the vacuum may be
considered as Planck scale virtual black holes appearing and annihilating in
pairs. Incident fields scattering from such fluctuations would lose quantum
coherence.
In a recent paper (hep-th/9705147), Hawking and Ross obtained an estimate for
the magnitude of this loss in the case of a scalar field. Their calculation
exploited the separability of the conformally invariant scalar wave equation in
the electrovac C metric background, which is justified as a sufficiently good
description of a virtual black hole pair in the limit considered.
In anticipation of extending this result, the Teukolsky equations for
incident fields of higher spin are separated on the vacuum C metric background
and solved in the same limit. With the exception of spin 2 fields, these
equations are shown in addition to be valid on the electrovac C metric
background. The angular solutions are found to reduce to the spin- weighted
spherical harmonics, and the radial solutions are found to approach
hypergeometrics close to the horizons.
By defining appropriate scattering boundary conditions, these solutions are
then used to estimate the transmission and reflection coefficients for an
incident field of spin s. The transmission coefficient is required in order to
estimate the loss of quantum coherence of an incident field through scattering
off virtual black holes.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, minor typo correcte
Effects of seawater and deionized water at 0 to 80 deg C on the flexural properties of a glass/epoxy composite
The effect on the flexural properties of a glass/epoxy composite of immersion in deionized water or seawater at 0, 25, and 80 C for 451 hr was examined. The percent weight gain at 0 and 25 C was low (0.06 to 0.17 percent) and there was no significant change in the flexural properties for these environmental conditions. At 80 C there was a decrease in the flexural strength of 17 and 20 percent in seawater and deionized water, respectively. This is a comparison to control samples exposed to 80 C heat alone. These decreases were found to be nearly reversible once the samples were dried. Optical microscopy did not reveal cracking of the matrix. The flexural modulus was essentially unaffected by exposure to deionized water and seawater at 80 C
Absorption of mass and angular momentum by a black hole: Time-domain formalisms for gravitational perturbations, and the small-hole/slow-motion approximation
The first objective of this work is to obtain practical prescriptions to
calculate the absorption of mass and angular momentum by a black hole when
external processes produce gravitational radiation. These prescriptions are
formulated in the time domain within the framework of black-hole perturbation
theory. Two such prescriptions are presented. The first is based on the
Teukolsky equation and it applies to general (rotating) black holes. The second
is based on the Regge-Wheeler and Zerilli equations and it applies to
nonrotating black holes. The second objective of this work is to apply the
time-domain absorption formalisms to situations in which the black hole is
either small or slowly moving. In the context of this small-hole/slow-motion
approximation, the equations of black-hole perturbation theory can be solved
analytically, and explicit expressions can be obtained for the absorption of
mass and angular momentum. The changes in the black-hole parameters can then be
understood in terms of an interaction between the tidal gravitational fields
supplied by the external universe and the hole's tidally-induced mass and
current quadrupole moments. For a nonrotating black hole the quadrupole moments
are proportional to the rate of change of the tidal fields on the hole's world
line. For a rotating black hole they are proportional to the tidal fields
themselves.Comment: 36 pages, revtex4, no figures, final published versio
Spontaneous formation and stability of small GaP fullerenes
We report the spontaneous formation of a GaP fullerene cage in ab-initio
Molecular Dynamics simulations starting from a bulk fragment. A systematic
study of the geometric and electronic properties of neutral and ionized GaP
clusters suggests the stability of hetero-fullerenes formed by a compound with
zincblend bulk structure. We find that GaP fullerenes up to 28 atoms have high
symmetry, closed electronic shells, large HOMO-LUMO energy gaps and do not
dissociate when ionized. We compare our results for GaP with those obtained by
other groups for the corresponding BN clusters.Comment: To appear on PRL, 4 pages, 1 figure, Late
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