Accelerating Universe in a Big Bounce Model

Recent observations of Type Ia supernovae provide evidence for the acceleration of our universe, which leads to the possibility that the universe is entering an inflationary epoch. We simulate it under a ``big bounce'' model, which contains a time variable cosmological ``constant'' that is derived from a higher dimension and manifests itself in 4D spacetime as dark energy. By properly choosing the two arbitrary functions contained in the model, we obtain a simple exact solution in which the evolution of the universe is divided into several stages. Before the big bounce, the universe contracts from a $\Lambda$-dominated vacuum, and after the bounce, the universe expands. In the early time after the bounce, the expansion of the universe is decelerating. In the late time after the bounce, dark energy (i.e., the variable cosmological ``constant'') overtakes dark matter and baryons, and the expansion enters an accelerating stage. When time tends to infinity, the contribution of dark energy tends to two third of the total energy density of the universe, qualitatively in agreement with observations.Comment: Rextex4, 10 pages, 3 figures, revised and extended, accepted by Modern Physics Letter

Coordination of passive systems under quantized measurements

In this paper we investigate a passivity approach to collective coordination and synchronization problems in the presence of quantized measurements and show that coordination tasks can be achieved in a practical sense for a large class of passive systems.Comment: 40 pages, 1 figure, submitted to journal, second round of revie

The follow-up EVN observations of twelve GPS radio sources at 5 GHz

We defined a sub-sample of twelve GPS sources which have not been observed with the VLBI before, from the Parkes half-Jansky sample, and carried out VLBI observations at 1.6 GHz and 5 GHz with the European VLBI Network (EVN) in 2006 and 2008, respectively, to classify the source structure and to find compact symmetric objects (CSOs). Additionally, we carried out the 4.85 GHz flux density observations for these sources with the Urumqi 25-m telescope between the years 2007 and 2009 to study whether there is any variability in the total flux density of the GPS sources. The results of the 5 GHz VLBI observations and total flux densities of these sources are presented in this paper. From the VLBI morphologies, the spectral indices of components and the total flux variability of the twelve targets, we firmly classify three sources J0210+0419, J1135$-$0021, and J2058+0540 as CSOs, and classify J1057+0012, J1203+0414, and J1600$-$0037 as core-jet sources. The others J0323+0534, J0433$-$0229, J0913+1454, J1109+1043, and J1352+0232 are labelled CSO candidates, and J1352+1107 is a complex feature. Apart from core-jet sources, the total flux densities of the CSOs and candidates are quite stable at 5 GHz both during a long-term of $\sim$20 years relative to the PKS90 data and in a period between 2007 and 2009. The total flux densities are resolved-out by more than 20\% in the 5 GHz VLBI images for 6 sources, probably because of diffuse emission. In addition, we estimated the jet viewing angles $\Theta$ for the confirmed CSOs by using the double-lobe flux ratio of the sources, the result being indicative of relatively large $\Theta$ for the CSOs.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

New evidence for lack of CMB power on large scales

A digitalized temperature map is recovered from the first light sky survey image published by the Planck team, from which an angular power spectrum is derived. The amplitudes of the low multipoles measured from the preliminary Planck power spectrum are significantly lower than that reported by the WMAP team. Possible systematical effects are far from enough to explain the observed low-l differences.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

A study of the parity-odd nucleon-nucleon potential

We investigate the parity-violating nucleon-nucleon potential as obtained in chiral effective field theory. By using resonance saturation we compare the chiral potential to the more traditional one-meson exchange potential. In particular, we show how parameters appearing in the different approaches can be compared with each other and demonstrate that analyses of parity violation in proton-proton scattering within the different approaches are in good agreement. In the second part of this work, we extend the parity-violating potential to next-to-next-to-leading order. We show that generally it includes both one-pion- and two-pion-exchange corrections, but the former play no significant role. The two-pion-exchange corrections depend on five new low-energy constants which only become important if the leading-order weak pion-nucleon constant $h_\pi$ turns out to be very small.Comment: Published versio

Pathways: Augmenting interoperability across scholarly repositories

In the emerging eScience environment, repositories of papers, datasets, software, etc., should be the foundation of a global and natively-digital scholarly communications system. The current infrastructure falls far short of this goal. Cross-repository interoperability must be augmented to support the many workflows and value-chains involved in scholarly communication. This will not be achieved through the promotion of single repository architecture or content representation, but instead requires an interoperability framework to connect the many heterogeneous systems that will exist. We present a simple data model and service architecture that augments repository interoperability to enable scholarly value-chains to be implemented. We describe an experiment that demonstrates how the proposed infrastructure can be deployed to implement the workflow involved in the creation of an overlay journal over several different repository systems (Fedora, aDORe, DSpace and arXiv).Comment: 18 pages. Accepted for International Journal on Digital Libraries special issue on Digital Libraries and eScienc

Mesons and Nucleons in Soft-Wall AdS/QCD with Constrained Infrared Background

The purpose of this paper is to further study the soft-wall AdS/QCD model with constrained IR background. By including a quartic bulk scalar potential we study various meson and nucleon spectra. This model naturally realizes the asymptotical linearity of these mass spectra simultaneously, together with correctly pattern of explicit and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. The agreement between the theoretical calculations and the experimental data is good.Comment: 17 pages,5 table

Entanglement and interference between different degrees of freedom of photons states

In this paper, photonic entanglement and interference are described and analyzed with the language of quantum information process. Correspondingly, a photon state involving several degrees of freedom is represented in a new expression based on the permutation symmetry of bosons. In this expression, each degree of freedom of a single photon is regarded as a qubit and operations on photons as qubit gates. The two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference is well interpreted with it. Moreover, the analysis reveals the entanglement between different degrees of freedom in a four-photon state from parametric down conversion, even if there is no entanglement between them in the two-photon state. The entanglement will decrease the state purity and photon interference visibility in the experiments on a four-photon polarization state.Comment: 11 pages and 2 figure

Strings in extremal BTZ black holes

We study the spectrum of the worldsheet theory of the bosonic closed string in the massless and extremal rotating BTZ black holes. We use a hyperbolic Wakimoto representation of the SL(2,R) currents to construct vertex operators for the string modes on these backgrounds. We argue that there are tachyons in the twisted sector, but these are not localised near the horizon. We study the relation to the null orbifold in the limit of vanishing cosmological constant. We also discuss the problem of extending this analysis to the supersymmetric case.Comment: 20 pages, no figure

Assessment and enhancement of MERRA land surface hydrology estimates

The Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) is a state-of-the-art reanalysis that provides, in addition to atmospheric fields, global estimates of soil moisture, latent heat flux, snow, and runoff for 1979 present. This study introduces a supplemental and improved set of land surface hydrological fields ("MERRA-Land") generated by rerunning a revised version of the land component of the MERRA system. Specifically, the MERRA-Land estimates benefit from corrections to the precipitation forcing with the Global Precipitation Climatology Project pentad product (version 2.1) and from revised parameter values in the rainfall interception model, changes that effectively correct for known limitations in the MERRA surface meteorological forcings. The skill (defined as the correlation coefficient of the anomaly time series) in land surface hydrological fields from MERRA and MERRA-Land is assessed here against observations and compared to the skill of the state-of-the-art ECMWF Re-Analysis-Interim (ERA-I). MERRA-Land and ERA-I root zone soil moisture skills (against in situ observations at 85 U.S. stations) are comparable and significantly greater than that of MERRA. Throughout the Northern Hemisphere, MERRA and MERRA-Land agree reasonably well with in situ snow depth measurements (from 583 stations) and with snow water equivalent from an independent analysis. Runoff skill (against naturalized stream flow observations from 18 U.S. basins) of MERRA and MERRA-Land is typically higher than that of ERA-I. With a few exceptions, the MERRA-Land data appear more accurate than the original MERRA estimates and are thus recommended for those interested in using MERRA output for land surface hydrological studies