2,228 research outputs found
Large-scale Vortices in Protoplanetary Disks: On the observability of possible early stages of planet formation
We investigate the possibility of mapping large-scale anti-cyclonic vortices,
resulting from a global baroclinic instability, as pre-cursors of planet
formation in proto-planetary disks with the planned Atacama Large Millimeter
Array (ALMA). On the basis of three-dimensional radiative transfer simulations,
images of a hydrodynamically calculated disk are derived which provide the
basis for the simulation of ALMA. We find that ALMA will be able to trace the
theoretically predicted large-scale anti-cyclonic vortex and will therefore
allow testing of existing models of this very early stage of planet formation
in circumstellar disks.Comment: Accepted by ApJ (Letters section). A preprint version with
high-quality figures can be downloaded from
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/swolf/homepage/public/preprints/
vortex.ps.g
KH15D: a star eclipsed by a large scale dusty vortex?
We propose that the large photometric variations of KH15D are due to an
eclipsing swarm of solid particles trapped in giant gaseous vortex rotating at
\~0.2 AU from the star. The efficiency of the capture-in-vortex mechanism
easily explains the observed large optical depth. The weaker opacity at
mid-eclipse is consistent with a size segregation of the particles toward the
center of the vortex. This dusty structure must extend over ~1/3 of an orbit to
account for the long eclipse duration. The estimated size of the trapped
particles is found to range from 1 to 10cm, consistent with the gray extinction
of the star. The observations of KH15D support the idea that giant vortices can
grow in circumstellar disks and play a central role in planet formation.Comment: Accepted in ApJ Letters - 4 pages - 2 figure
CoRoT's first seven planets: An overview
The up to 150 day uninterrupted high-precision photometry of about 100000
stars - provided so far by the exoplanet channel of the CoRoT space telescope -
gave a new perspective on the planet population of our galactic neighbourhood.
The seven planets with very accurate parameters widen the range of known planet
properties in almost any respect. Giant planets have been detected at low
metallicity, rapidly rotating and active, spotted stars. CoRoT-3 populated the
brown dwarf desert and closed the gap of measured physical properties between
standard giant planets and very low mass stars. CoRoT extended the known range
of planet masses down to 5 Earth masses and up to 21 Jupiter masses, the radii
to less than 2 Earth radii and up to the most inflated hot Jupiter found so
far, and the periods of planets discovered by transits to 9 days. Two CoRoT
planets have host stars with the lowest content of heavy elements known to show
a transit hinting towards a different planet-host-star-metallicity relation
then the one found by radial-velocity search programs. Finally the properties
of the CoRoT-7b prove that terrestrial planets with a density close to Earth
exist outside the Solar System. The detection of the secondary transit of
CoRoT-1 at the -level and the very clear detection of the 1.7 Earth
radii of CoRoT-7b at relative flux are promising evidence of
CoRoT being able to detect even smaller, Earth sized planets.Comment: 8 pages, 19 figures and 3 table
Formation of Giant Planets by Concurrent Accretion of Solids and Gas inside an Anti-Cyclonic Vortex
We study the formation of a giant gas planet by the core--accretion
gas--capture process, with numerical simulations, under the assumption that the
planetary core forms in the center of an anti-cyclonic vortex. The presence of
the vortex concentrates particles of centimeter to meter size from the
surrounding disk, and speeds up the core formation process. Assuming that a
planet of Jupiter mass is forming at 5 AU from the star, the vortex enhancement
results in considerably shorter formation times than are found in standard
core--accretion gas--capture simulations. Also, formation of a gas giant is
possible in a disk with mass comparable to that of the minimum mass solar
nebula.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures, ApJ in pres
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The Ingram Conjecture
We prove the Ingram Conjecture, i.e., we show that the inverse limit spaces of ev-
ery two tent maps with di®erent slopes in the interval [1; 2] are non-homeomorphic.
Based on the structure obtained from the proof, we also show that every self-
homeomorphism of the inverse limit space of the tent map is pseudo-isotopic, on
the core, to some power of the shift homeomorphism
Can aerosols be trapped in open flows?
The fate of aerosols in open flows is relevant in a variety of physical
contexts. Previous results are consistent with the assumption that such
finite-size particles always escape in open chaotic advection. Here we show
that a different behavior is possible. We analyze the dynamics of aerosols both
in the absence and presence of gravitational effects, and both when the
dynamics of the fluid particles is hyperbolic and nonhyperbolic. Permanent
trapping of aerosols much heavier than the advecting fluid is shown to occur in
all these cases. This phenomenon is determined by the occurrence of multiple
vortices in the flow and is predicted to happen for realistic particle-fluid
density ratios.Comment: Animation available at
http://www.pks.mpg.de/~rdvilela/leapfrogging.htm
Dust sedimentation and self-sustained Kelvin-Helmholtz turbulence in protoplanetary disk mid-planes. I. Radially symmetric simulations
We perform numerical simulations of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the
mid-plane of a protoplanetary disk. A two-dimensional corotating slice in the
azimuthal--vertical plane of the disk is considered where we include the
Coriolis force and the radial advection of the Keplerian rotation flow. Dust
grains, treated as individual particles, move under the influence of friction
with the gas, while the gas is treated as a compressible fluid. The friction
force from the dust grains on the gas leads to a vertical shear in the gas
rotation velocity. As the particles settle around the mid-plane due to gravity,
the shear increases, and eventually the flow becomes unstable to the
Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. The Kelvin-Helmholtz turbulence saturates when
the vertical settling of the dust is balanced by the turbulent diffusion away
from the mid-plane. The azimuthally averaged state of the self-sustained
Kelvin-Helmholtz turbulence is found to have a constant Richardson number in
the region around the mid-plane where the dust-to-gas ratio is significant.
Nevertheless the dust density has a strong non-axisymmetric component. We
identify a powerful clumping mechanism, caused by the dependence of the
rotation velocity of the dust grains on the dust-to-gas ratio, as the source of
the non-axisymmetry. Our simulations confirm recent findings that the critical
Richardson number for Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is around unity or larger,
rather than the classical value of 1/4Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. Some minor changes due to referee
report, most notably that the clumping mechanism has been identified as the
streaming instability of Youdin & Goodman (2005). Movies of the simulations
are still available at http://www.mpia.de/homes/johansen/research_en.ph
Enhancement of mammogram for detection of breast cancer using adaptive median filter
Digital mammogram becomes the most effective technique for early breast cancer detection modality and processing these images requires high computational capabilities. Computer image processing techniques will be applied to enhance images. This paper attempts to study about pre-processing is the most important step in the mammogram analysis due to poor captured mammogram image quality. Pre-processing is very important to correct and adjust the mammogram image for further study and processing. Different types of filtering techniques are available for pre-processing. Filters are used to improve image quality, remove the noise, preserves the edges within an image, enhance and smoothen the image. The experimental results concludes that the adaptive median filter is best for mammogram image noise removal and gives better performance by estimating the PSNR values Keywords: Median filter, Adaptive median filter, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, Mean Squared Error
An explicit KO-degree map and applications
The goal of this note is to study the analog in unstable -homotopy theory of the unit map from the motivic sphere spectrum to the
Hermitian K-theory spectrum, i.e., the degree map in Hermitian K-theory. We
show that "Suslin matrices", which are explicit maps from odd dimensional split
smooth affine quadrics to geometric models of the spaces appearing in Bott
periodicity in Hermitian K-theory, stabilize in a suitable sense to the unit
map. As applications, we deduce that for ,
which can be thought of as an extension of Matsumoto's celebrated theorem
describing of a field. These results provide the first step in a program
aimed at computing the sheaf for .Comment: 36 Pages, Final version, to appear Journal of Topolog
Vortices in Thin, Compressible, Unmagnetized Disks
We consider the formation and evolution of vortices in a hydrodynamic
shearing-sheet model. The evolution is done numerically using a version of the
ZEUS code. Consistent with earlier results, an injected vorticity field evolves
into a set of long-lived vortices, each of which has a radial extent comparable
to the local scale height. But we also find that the resulting velocity field
has a positive shear stress, . This effect appears
only at high resolution. The transport, which decays with time as t^-1/2,
arises primarily because the vortices drive compressive motions. This result
suggests a possible mechanism for angular momentum transport in low-ionization
disks, with two important caveats: a mechanism must be found to inject
vorticity into the disk, and the vortices must not decay rapidly due to
three-dimensional instabilities.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures (high resolution figures available in ApJ
electronic edition
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