On the void explanation of the Cold Spot

The integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) contribution induced on the cosmic microwave background by the presence of a supervoid as the one detected by Szapudi et al. (2015) is reviewed in this letter in order to check whether it could explain the Cold Spot (CS) anomaly. Two different models, previously used for the same purpose, are considered to describe the matter density profile of the void: a top hat function and a compensated profile produced by a Gaussian potential. The analysis shows that, even enabling ellipticity changes or different values for the dark-energy equation of state parameter $\omega$, the ISW contribution due to the presence of the void does not reproduce the properties of the CS. Finally, the probability of alignment between the void and the CS is also questioned as an argument in favor of a physical connection between these two phenomena

The group of strong Galois objects associated to a cocommutative Hopf quasigroup

Let H be a cocommutative faithfully flat Hopf quasigroup in a strict symmetric monoidal category with equalizers. In this paper we introduce the notion of (strong) Galois H-object and we prove that the set of isomorphism classes of (strong) Galois H-objects is a (group) monoid which coincides, in the Hopf algebra setting, with the Galois group of H-Galois objects introduced by Chase and Sweedler

Lubrication of DLC Coatings with Two Tris(pentafluoroethyl)trifluorophosphate Anion-Based Ionic Liquids

The lubrication of a Cr-DLC coating with ethyl-dimethyl-2-methoxyethylammonium tris(pentafluoroethyl)trifluoropho-sphate [(NEMM)MOE][FAP] and 1-butyl-1-methylpyrro-lidinium tris(pentafluoroethyl)trifluorophosphate [BMP] [FAP] ionic liquids (ILs) as 1 wt% additives to a polyalphaolefin (PAO 6) was studied. Zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP) was also used as reference in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the ILs. Reciprocating ball-on-plate tribological tests at loads of 20 and 40 N were performed. The results showed that both ILs exhibited a friction reduction, especially at the lowest load tested. Antiwear properties were also improved; the PAO 6 + 1% [BMP][FAP] mixture was slightly better, close to the values for PAO 6 + 1% ZDDP. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis indicated that the additive–surface interaction was responsible for the tribological improvement

Exploring two-spin internal linear combinations for the recovery of the CMB polarization

We present a methodology to recover cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization in which the quantity $P = Q+ iU$ is linearly combined at different frequencies using complex coefficients. This is the most general linear combination of the $Q$ and $U$ Stokes parameters which preserves the physical coherence of the residual contribution on the CMB estimation. The approach is applied to the internal linear combination (ILC) and the internal template fitting (ITF) methodologies. The variance of $P$ of the resulting map is minimized to compute the coefficients of the linear combination. One of the key aspects of this procedure is that it serves to account for a global frequency-dependent shift of the polarization phase. Although in the standard case, in which no global E-B transference depending on frequency is expected in the foreground components, minimizing $\left\langle |P|^2\right\rangle$ is similar to minimizing $\left\langle Q^2\right\rangle$ and $\left\langle U^2\right\rangle$ separately (as previous methodologies proceed), multiplying $Q$ and $U$ by different coefficients induces arbitrary changes in the polarization angle and it does not preserve the coherence between the spinorial components. The approach is tested on simulations, obtaining a similar residual level with respect to the one obtained with other implementations of the ILC, and perceiving the polarization rotation of a toy model with the frequency dependence of the Faraday rotation.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA