431 research outputs found
Epicycles and Poincar\'{e} Resonances in General Relativity
The method of geodesic deviations provides analytic approximations to
geodesics in arbitrary background space-times. As such the method is a useful
tool in many practical situations. In this note we point out some subtleties in
the application of the method related to secular motions, in first as well as
in higher order. In particular we work out the general second-order
contribution to bound orbits in Schwarzschild space-time and show that it
provides very good analytical results all the way up to the innermost stable
circular orbit.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figure
Occlusion-related lateral connections stabilize kinetic depth stimuli through perceptual coupling
Local sensory information is often ambiguous forcing the brain to integrate spatiotemporally separated information for stable conscious perception. Lateral connections between clusters of similarly tuned neurons in the visual cortex are a potential neural substrate for the coupling of spatially separated visual information. Ecological optics suggests that perceptual coupling of visual information is particularly beneficial in occlusion situations. Here we present a novel neural network model and a series of human psychophysical experiments that can together explain the perceptual coupling of kinetic depth stimuli with activity-driven lateral information sharing in the far depth plane. Our most striking finding is the perceptual coupling of an ambiguous kinetic depth cylinder with a coaxially presented and disparity defined cylinder backside, while a similar frontside fails to evoke coupling. Altogether, our findings are consistent with the idea that clusters of similarly tuned far depth neurons share spatially separated motion information in order to resolve local perceptual ambiguities. The classification of far depth in the facilitation mechanism results from a combination of absolute and relative depth that suggests a functional role of these lateral connections in the perception of partially occluded objects
GRAIL, an omni-directional gravitational wave detector
A cryogenic spherical and omni-directional resonant-mass detector proposed by
the GRAIL collaboration is described.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figs., contribution to proceedings GW Data Analysis
Workshop, Paris, nov. 199
Dynamics of (SUSY) AdS Space Isometry Breaking
Actions governing the dynamics of the Nambu-Goldstone modes resulting from
the spontaneous breaking of the SO(4,2) and isometries of five
dimensional anti-de Sitter space () and SUSY
spaces respectively due to a restriction of the motion to embedded four
dimensional space and four dimensional Minkowski space () probe
branes are presented. The dilatonic Nambu-Goldstone mode governing the motion
of the space probe brane into the covolume of the SUSY
space is found to be unstable. No such instablility appears in the other cases.
Gauging these symmetries leads to an Einstein-Hilbert action containing, in
addition to the gravitational vierbein, a massive Abelian vector field coupled
to gravity.Comment: 6 pages, 0 figures, to appear in Proceedings of IRGAC 2006: 2nd
International Conference on Quantum Theories and Renormalization Group in
Gravity and Cosmology, Barcelon
Visualization of Frequent Itemsets with Nested Circular Layout and Bundling Algorithm
International audienceFrequent itemset mining is one of the major data mining issues. Once generated by algorithms, the itemsets can be automatically processed, for instance to extract association rules. They can also be explored with visual tools, in order to analyze the emerging patterns. Graphical itemsets representation is a convenient way to obtain an overview of the global interaction structure. However, when the complexity of the database increases, the network may become unreadable. In this paper, we propose to display itemsets on concentric circles, each one being organized to lower the intricacy of the graph through an optimization process. Thanks to a graph bundling algorithm, we finally obtain a compact representation of a large set of itemsets that is easier to exploit. Colors accumulation and interaction operators facilitate the exploration of the new bundle graph and to illustrate how much an itemset is supported by the data
Nonrelativistic Chern-Simons Vortices on the Torus
A classification of all periodic self-dual static vortex solutions of the
Jackiw-Pi model is given. Physically acceptable solutions of the Liouville
equation are related to a class of functions which we term
Omega-quasi-elliptic. This class includes, in particular, the elliptic
functions and also contains a function previously investigated by Olesen. Some
examples of solutions are studied numerically and we point out a peculiar
phenomenon of lost vortex charge in the limit where the period lengths tend to
infinity, that is, in the planar limit.Comment: 25 pages, 2+3 figures; improved exposition, corrected typos, added
one referenc
On minimal coupling of the ABC-superparticle to supergravity background
By rigorous application of the Hamiltonian methods we show that the
ABC-formulation of the Siegel superparticle admits consistent minimal coupling
to external supergravity. The consistency check proves to involve all the
supergravity constraints.Comment: 8 pages RevTex file, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Supersymmetry and discrete transformations of the Dirac operators in Taub-NUT geometry
It is shown that the N=4 superalgebra of the Dirac theory in Taub-NUT space
has different unitary representations related among themselves through unitary
U(2) transformations. In particular the SU(2) transformations are generated by
the spin-like operators constructed with the help of the same covariantly
constant Killing-Yano tensors which generate Dirac-type operators. A parity
operator is defined and some explicit transformations which connect the
Dirac-type operators among themselves are given. These transformations form a
discrete group which is a realization of the quaternion discrete group. The
fifth Dirac operator constructed using the non-covariant Killing-Yano tensor of
the Taub-NUT space is quite special. This non-standard Dirac operator is
connected with the hidden symmetry and is not equivalent to the Dirac-type
operators of the standard N=4 supersymmetry.Comment: 14 pages, latex, no figure
Chiral gravity as a covariant formulation of massive gravity
We present a covariant nonlinear completion of the Fierz-Pauli (FP) mass term
for the graviton. The starting observation is that the FP mass is immediately
obtained by expanding the cosmological constant term, i.e. the determinant of
the vielbein, around Minkowski space to second order in the vielbein
perturbations. Since this is an unstable expansion in the standard case, we
consider an extended theory of gravity which describes two vielbeins that give
rise to chiral spin--connections (consequently, fermions of a definite
chirality only couple to one of the gravitational sectors). As for Einstein
gravity with a cosmological constant, a single fine-tuning is needed to recover
a Minkowski background; the two sectors then differ only by a constant
conformal factor. The spectrum of this theory consists of a massless and a
massive graviton, with FP mass term. The theory possesses interesting limits in
which only the massive graviton is coupled to matter at the linearized level.Comment: 1+16 pages LaTeX, typos corrected, and some references adde
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