An Evaluation of the effects of DC\u27s voucher program on public school achievement and racial integration after one year

This study evaluates the initial effect Washington D.C.\u27s Opportunity Scholarship Program (OPS) on the academic performance of public schools and its effects on the opportunities District students have to attend integrated schools. OPS is a federally sponsored school voucher program that provides vouchers worth up to $7,500 for an estimated 1,800 to 2,000 students in the District of Columbia. Students can use the scholarships to pay tuition at participating private schools in the District. The pilot program is designed to last for 5 years

A tidally interacting disk in the young triple system WL 20?

We present high-resolution λ = 2.7 mm imaging of the close triple pre-main-sequence system WL 20. Compact dust emission with integrated flux density of 12.9 ± 1.3 mJy is associated with two components of the triple system, WL 20W and WL 20S. No emission above a 3 σ level of 3.9 mJy is detected toward the third component, WL 20E, which lies 3."17 (400 AU) due east in projection from its neighbors. A possibly warped structure of ~0.1 M_☉ and ≤3."2 extent encompasses WL 20W and WL 20S, which have a projected separation of 2."25 (~280 AU) along a north-south axis. This structure is most likely a tidally disrupted disk surrounding WL 20S. New near-infrared spectra of the individual components show a remarkable similarity between the two T Tauri stars of the system: WL 20E has a K7 spectral type (T_eff = 4040 K) with r_K = 0.2, and WL 20W has an M0 spectral type (T_eff = 3800 K) with r_K = 0.2. The spectrum of WL 20S is consistent with that of a source intrinsically similar to WL 20W, with r_K < 0.9, but seen through an A_V = 25 in addition to the A_V = 16.3 to the system as a whole. Taken together, these millimeter and infrared data help explain the peculiar nature of the infrared companion, WL 20S, as resulting from a large enhancement in its dusty, circumstellar environment in relation to its companions

On the Theory of Fermionic Preheating

In inflationary cosmology, the particles constituting the Universe are created after inflation due to their interaction with moving inflaton field(s) in the process of preheating. In the fermionic sector, the leading channel is out-of equilibrium particle production in the non-perturbative regime of parametric excitation, which respects Pauli blocking but differs significantly from the perturbative expectation. We develop theory of fermionic preheating coupling to the inflaton, without and with expansion of the universe, for light and massive fermions, to calculate analytically the occupation number of created fermions, focusing on their spectra and time evolution. In the case of large resonant parameter $q$ we extend for rermions the method of successive parabolic scattering, earlier developed for bosonic preheating. In an expanding universe parametric excitation of fermions is stochastic. Created fermions very quickly, within tens of inflaton oscillations, fill up a sphere of radius $\simeq q^{1/4}$ in monetum space. We extend our formalism to the production of superheavy fermions and to `instant' fermion creation.Comment: 14 pages, latex, 12 figures, submitted for publicatio

The Development of Equilibrium After Preheating

We present a fully nonlinear study of the development of equilibrium after preheating. Preheating is the exponentially rapid transfer of energy from the nearly homogeneous inflaton field to fluctuations of other fields and/or the inflaton itself. This rapid transfer leaves these fields in a highly nonthermal state with energy concentrated in infrared modes. We have performed lattice simulations of the evolution of interacting scalar fields during and after preheating for a variety of inflationary models. We have formulated a set of generic rules that govern the thermalization process in all of these models. Notably, we see that once one of the fields is amplified through parametric resonance or other mechanisms it rapidly excites other coupled fields to exponentially large occupation numbers. These fields quickly acquire nearly thermal spectra in the infrared, which gradually propagates into higher momenta. Prior to the formation of total equilibrium, the excited fields group into subsets with almost identical characteristics (e.g. group effective temperature). The way fields form into these groups and the properties of the groups depend on the couplings between them. We also studied the onset of chaos after preheating by calculating the Lyapunov exponent of the scalar fields.Comment: 15 pages, 23 figure

Evidence for Antiferromagnetic Order in La2−x_{2-x}Cex_{x}CuO4_{4} from Angular Magnetoresistance Measurements

We investigated the in-plane angular magnetoresistivity (AMR) of $T^{^{\prime}}$-phase La$_{2-x}$Ce$_{x}$CuO$_{4}$ (LCCO) thin films ($x=0.06-0.15$) fabricated by a pulsed laser deposition technique. The in-plane AMR with $\mathbf{H}\parallel ab$ shows a twofold symmetry instead of the fourfold behavior found in other electron-doped cuprates such as Pr$_{2-x}$Ce$_{x}$CuO$_{4}$ and Nd$_{2-x}$Ce$_{x}$CuO$_{4}$. The twofold AMR disappears above a certain temperature, $T_{D}$. The $T_{D}(x)$ is well above $T_{c}(x)$ for $x=0.06$ ($\sim 110$ K), and decreases with increasing doping, until it is no longer observed above $T_{c}(x)$ at $x=0.15$. This twofold AMR below $T_{D}(x)$ is suggested to originate from an antiferromagnetic or spin density wave order.Comment: to be published in Phys. Rev. B, Vol. 80 (2009