The observed spiral structure of the Milky Way

The spiral structure of the Milky Way is not yet well determined. The keys to understanding this structure are to increase the number of reliable spiral tracers and to determine their distances as accurately as possible. HII regions, giant molecular clouds (GMCs), and 6.7-GHz methanol masers are closely related to high mass star formation, and hence they are excellent spiral tracers. We update the catalogs of Galactic HII regions, GMCs, and 6.7-GHz methanol masers, and then outline the spiral structure of the Milky Way. We collected data for more than 2500 known HII regions, 1300 GMCs, and 900 6.7-GHz methanol masers. If the photometric or trigonometric distance was not yet available, we determined the kinematic distance using a Galaxy rotation curve with the current IAU standard, $R_0$ = 8.5 kpc and $\Theta_0$ = 220 km s$^{-1}$, and the most recent updated values of $R_0$ = 8.3 kpc and $\Theta_0$ = 239 km s$^{-1}$, after we modified the velocities of tracers with the adopted solar motions. With the weight factors based on the excitation parameters of HII regions or the masses of GMCs, we get the distributions of these spiral tracers. The distribution of tracers shows at least four segments of arms in the first Galactic quadrant, and three segments in the fourth quadrant. The Perseus Arm and the Local Arm are also delineated by many bright HII regions. The arm segments traced by massive star forming regions and GMCs are able to match the HI arms in the outer Galaxy. We found that the models of three-arm and four-arm logarithmic spirals are able to connect most spiral tracers. A model of polynomial-logarithmic spirals is also proposed, which not only delineates the tracer distribution, but also matches the observed tangential directions.Comment: 22 Pages, 16 Figures, 7 Tables, updated to match the published versio

Searching for sub-millisecond pulsars from highly polarized radio sources

Pulsars are among the most highly polarized sources in the universe. The NVSS has catalogued 2 million radio sources with linear polarization measurements, from which we have selected 253 sources, with polarization percentage greater than 25%, as targets for pulsar searches. We believe that such a sample is not biased by selection effects against ultra-short spin or orbit periods. Using the Parkes 64m telescope, we conducted searches with sample intervals of 0.05 ms and 0.08 ms, sensitive to submillisecond pulsars. Unfortunately we did not find any new pulsars.Comment: 2 pages 1 figure. To appear in "Young Neutron Stars and Their Environments" (IAU Symposium 218, ASP Conference Proceedings), eds F. Camilo and B. M. Gaensle

Criticality and Continuity of Explosive Site Percolation in Random Networks

This Letter studies the critical point as well as the discontinuity of a class of explosive site percolation in Erd\"{o}s and R\'{e}nyi (ER) random network. The class of the percolation is implemented by introducing a best-of-m rule. Two major results are found: i). For any specific $m$, the critical percolation point scales with the average degree of the network while its exponent associated with $m$ is bounded by -1 and $\sim-0.5$. ii). Discontinuous percolation could occur on sparse networks if and only if $m$ approaches infinite. These results not only generalize some conclusions of ordinary percolation but also provide new insights to the network robustness.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Supersymmetric QCD flavor changing top quark decay

We present a detailed and complete calculation of the gluino and scalar quarks contribution to the flavour-changing top quark decay into a charm quark and a photon, gluon, or a Z boson within the minimal supersymmetric standard model including flavour changing gluino-quarks-scalar quarks couplings in the right-handed sector. We compare the results with the ones presented in an earlier paper where we considered flavour changing couplings only in the left-handed sector. We show that these new couplings have important consequences leading to a large enhancement when the mixing of the scalar partners of the left- and right-handed top quark is included. Furthermore CP violation in the flavour changing top quark decay will occur when a SUSY phase is taken into account.Comment: 14 pages, latex, 3 figure

Phonon spectral function for an interacting electron-phonon system

Using exact diagonalzation techniques, we study a model of interacting electrons and phonons. The spectral width of the phonons is found to be reduced as the Coulomb interaction U is increased. For a system with two modes per site, we find a transfer of coupling strength from the upper to the lower mode. This transfer is reduced as U is increased. These results give a qualitative explanation of differences between Raman and photoemission estimates of the electron-phonon coupling constants for A3C60 (A= K, Rb).Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 2 eps figur