Apparatus for purging systems handling toxic, corrosive, noxious and other fluids Patent

Fluid transferring system design for purging toxic, corrosive, or noxious fluids and fumes from materials handling equipment for cleansing and accident preventio

A Lorentz-Violating Alternative to Higgs Mechanism?

We consider a four-dimensional field-theory model with two massless fermions, coupled to an Abelian vector field without flavour mixing, and to another Abelian vector field with flavour mixing. Both Abelian vectors have a Lorentz-violating kinetic term, introducing a Lorentz-violation mass scale $M$, from which fermions and the flavour-mixing vector get their dynamical masses, whereas the vector coupled without flavour mixing remains massless. When the two coupling constants have similar values in order of magnitude, a mass hierarchy pattern emerges, in which one fermion is very light compared to the other, whilst the vector mass is larger than the mass of the heavy fermion. The work presented here may be considered as a Lorentz-symmetry-Violating alternative to the Higgs mechanism, in the sense that no scalar particle (fundamental or composite) is necessary for the generation of the vector-meson mass. However, the model is not realistic given that, as a result of Lorentz Violation, the maximal (light-cone) speed seen by the fermions is smaller than that of the massless gauge boson (which equals the speed of light in vacuo) by an amount which is unacceptably large to be compatible with the current tests of Lorentz Invariance, unless the gauge couplings assume unnaturally small values. Possible ways out of this phenomenological drawback are briefly discussed, postponing a detailed construction of more realistic models for future work.Comment: 16 pages revtex, three eps figures incorporate

Fitting theories of nuclear binding energies

In developing theories of nuclear binding energy such as density-functional theory, the effort required to make a fit can be daunting due to the large number of parameters that may be in the theory and the large number of nuclei in the mass table. For theories based on the Skyrme interaction, the effort can be reduced considerably by using the singular value decomposition to reduce the size of the parameter space. We find that the sensitive parameters define a space of dimension four or so, and within this space a linear refit is adequate for a number of Skyrme parameters sets from the literature. We do not find marked differences in the quality of the fit between the SLy4, the Bky4 and SkP parameter sets. The r.m.s. residual error in even-even nuclei is about 1.5 MeV, half the value of the liquid drop model. We also discuss an alternative norm for evaluating mass fits, the Chebyshev norm. It focuses attention on the cases with the largest discrepancies between theory and experiment. We show how it works with the liquid drop model and make some applications to models based on Skyrme energy functionals. The Chebyshev norm seems to be more sensitive to new experimental data than the root-mean-square norm. The method also has the advantage that candidate improvements to the theories can be assessed with computations on smaller sets of nuclei.Comment: 17 pages and 4 figures--version encorporates referee's comment

Credit and Equity Rationing in Markets with Adverse Selection

Previous theories of financial market rationing focused on a single market, either the credit or the equity market. An interesting question is whether credit and equity rationing are mutually compatible, and how they interact. We consider a model with two-dimensional asymmetric information, where entrepreneurs have private information about both the expected returns and the risk of their projects. We show that credit and equity rationing may occur individually or simultaneously. Moreover, competition between the two markets may generate the adverse selection that leads to rationing outcomes

Ab initio Studies of the Possible Magnetism in BN Sheet by Non-magnetic Impurities and Vacancies

We performed first-principles calculations to investigate the possible magnetism induced by the different concentrations of non-magnetic impurities and vacancies in BN sheet. The atoms of Be, B, C, N, O, Al and Si are used to replace either B or N in the systems as impurities. We discussed the changes in density of states as well as the extent of the spatial distributions of the defect states, the possible formation of magnetic moments, the magnitude of the magnetization energies and finally the exchange energies due to the presence of these defects. It is shown that the magnetization energies tend to increase as the concentrations of the defects decreases in most of the defect systems which implies a definite preference of finite magnetic moments. The calculated exchange energies are in general tiny but not completely insignificant for two of the studied defect systems, i.e. one with O impurities for N and the other with B vacancies.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Cross second virial coefficients and dilute gas transport properties of the (CH4 + CO2), (CH4 + H2S), and (H2S + CO2) systems from accurate intermolecular potential energy surfaces

The cross second virial coefficient and the dilute gas shear viscosity, thermal conductivity, and binary diffusion coefficient have been calculated for (CH4 + CO2), (CH4 + H2S), and (H2S + CO2) mixtures in the temperature range from (150 to 1200) K. The cross second virial coefficient was obtained using the Mayer-sampling Monte Carlo approach, while the transport properties were evaluated by means of the classical trajectory method. State-of-the-art intermolecular potential energy surfaces for the like and unlike species interactions were employed in the calculations. All potential energy surfaces are based on highly accurate quantum-chemical ab initio calculations, with the potentials for the unlike interactions reported in this work and those for the like interactions taken from our previous studies of the pure gases. The computed transport property values are in good agreement with the few available experimental data, which are limited to (CH4 + CO2) mixtures close to room temperature. The lack of reliable data makes the values of the thermophysical properties calculated in this work currently the most accurate estimates for low-density (CH4 + CO2), (CH4 + H2S), and (H2S + CO2) mixtures. Tables of recommended values for all investigated thermophysical properties as a function of temperature and composition are provided

Quasienergy anholonomy and its application to adiabatic quantum state manipulation

The parametric dependence of a quantum map under the influence of a rank-1 perturbation is investigated. While the Floquet operator of the map and its spectrum have a common period with respect to the perturbation strength $\lambda$, we show an example in which none of the quasienergies nor the eigenvectors obey the same period: After a periodic increment of $\lambda$, the quasienergy arrives at the nearest higher one, instead of the initial one, exhibiting an anholonomy, which governs another anholonomy of the eigenvectors. An application to quantum state manipulations is outlined.Comment: 10pages, 1figure. To be published in Phys. Rev. Lett

Mechanical and SEM analysis of artificial comet nucleus samples

Since 1987 experiments dealing with comet nucleus phenomena have been carried out in the DFVLR space simulation chambers. The main objective of these experiments is a better understanding of thermal behavior, surface phenomena and especially the gas dust interaction. As a function of different sample compositions and exposure to solar irradiation (xenon-bulbs) crusts of different hardness and thickness were measured. The measuring device consists of a motor driven pressure foot (5 mm diameter), which is pressed into the sample. The applied compressive force is electronically monitored. The microstructure of the crust and dust residuals is investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. Stress-depth profiles of an unirradiated and an irradiated model comet are given

Magnetic properties of vanadium-oxide nanotubes probed by static magnetization and {51}V NMR

Measurements of the static magnetic susceptibility and of the nuclear magnetic resonance of multiwalled vanadium-oxide nanotubes are reported. In this nanoscale magnet the structural low-dimensionality and mixed valency of vanadium ions yield a complex temperature dependence of the static magnetization and the nuclear relaxation rates. Analysis of the different contributions to the magnetism allows to identify individual interlayer magnetic sites as well as strongly antiferromagnetically coupled vanadium spins (S = 1/2) in the double layers of the nanotube's wall. In particular, the data give strong indications that in the structurally well-defined vanadium-spin chains in the walls, owing to an inhomogeneous charge distribution, antiferromagnetic dimers and trimers occur. Altogether, about 30% of the vanadium ions are coupled in dimers, exhibiting a spin gap of the order of 700 K, the other ~ 30% comprise individual spins and trimers, whereas the remaining \~ 40% are nonmagnetic.Comment: revised versio

Instanton Calculus of Lifshitz Tails

For noninteracting particles moving in a Gaussian random potential, there exists a disagreement in the literature on the asymptotic expression for the density of states in the tail of the band. We resolve this discrepancy. Further we illuminate the physical facet of instantons appearing in replica and supersymmetric derivations with another derivation employing a Lagrange multiplier field.Comment: 5 page