50,966 research outputs found
Topology of the polarization field in ferroelectric nanowires from first principles
The behaviour of the cross-sectional polarization field is explored for thin
nanowires of barium titanate from first-principles calculations. Topological
defects of different winding numbers have been obtained, beyond the known
textures in ferroelectric nanostructures. They result from the inward
accommodation of the polarization patterns imposed at the surface of the wire
by surface and edge effects. Close to a topological defect the polarization
field orients out of the basal plane in some cases, maintaining a close to
constant magnitude, whereas it virtually vanishes in other cases.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
EXIST: Mission Design Concept and Technology Program
The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) is a proposed very large
area coded aperture telescope array, incorporating 8m^2 of pixellated Cd-Zn-Te
(CZT) detectors, to conduct a full-sky imaging and temporal hard x-ray (10-600
keV) survey each 95min orbit. With a sensitivity (5sigma, 1yr) of ~0.05mCrab
(10-150 keV), it will extend the ROSAT soft x-ray (0.5-2.5keV) and proposed
ROSITA medium x-ray (2-10 keV) surveys into the hard x-ray band and enable
identification and study of sources ~10-20X fainter than with the ~15-100keV
survey planned for the upcoming Swift mission. At ~100-600 keV, the ~1mCrab
sensitivity is 300X that achieved in the only previous (HEAO-A4, non-imaging)
all-sky survey. EXIST will address a broad range of key science objectives:
from obscured AGN and surveys for black holes on all scales, which constrain
the accretion history of the universe, to the highest sensitivity and
resolution studies of gamma-ray bursts it will conduct as the Next Generation
Gamma-Ray Burst mission. We summarize the science objectives and mission
drivers, and the results of a mission design study for implementation as a free
flyer mission, with Delta IV launch. Key issues affecting the telescope and
detector design are discussed, and a summary of some of the current design
concepts being studied in support of EXIST is presented for the wide-field but
high resolution coded aperture imaging and very large area array of imaging CZT
detectors. Overall mission design is summarized, and technology development
needs and a development program are outlined which would enable the launch of
EXIST by the end of the decade, as recommended by the NAS/NRC Decadal Survey.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. PDF file only. Presented at SPIE (Aug.
2002) and to appear in Proc. SPIE, vol. 485
The Neural Representation Benchmark and its Evaluation on Brain and Machine
A key requirement for the development of effective learning representations
is their evaluation and comparison to representations we know to be effective.
In natural sensory domains, the community has viewed the brain as a source of
inspiration and as an implicit benchmark for success. However, it has not been
possible to directly test representational learning algorithms directly against
the representations contained in neural systems. Here, we propose a new
benchmark for visual representations on which we have directly tested the
neural representation in multiple visual cortical areas in macaque (utilizing
data from [Majaj et al., 2012]), and on which any computer vision algorithm
that produces a feature space can be tested. The benchmark measures the
effectiveness of the neural or machine representation by computing the
classification loss on the ordered eigendecomposition of a kernel matrix
[Montavon et al., 2011]. In our analysis we find that the neural representation
in visual area IT is superior to visual area V4. In our analysis of
representational learning algorithms, we find that three-layer models approach
the representational performance of V4 and the algorithm in [Le et al., 2012]
surpasses the performance of V4. Impressively, we find that a recent supervised
algorithm [Krizhevsky et al., 2012] achieves performance comparable to that of
IT for an intermediate level of image variation difficulty, and surpasses IT at
a higher difficulty level. We believe this result represents a major milestone:
it is the first learning algorithm we have found that exceeds our current
estimate of IT representation performance. We hope that this benchmark will
assist the community in matching the representational performance of visual
cortex and will serve as an initial rallying point for further correspondence
between representations derived in brains and machines.Comment: The v1 version contained incorrectly computed kernel analysis curves
and KA-AUC values for V4, IT, and the HT-L3 models. They have been corrected
in this versio
A controlled expansion for certain non-Fermi liquid metals
The destruction of Fermi liquid behavior when a gapless Fermi surface is
coupled to a fluctuating gapless boson field is studied theoretically. This
problem arises in a number of different contexts in quantum many body physics.
Examples include fermions coupled to a fluctuating transverse gauge field
pertinent to quantum spin liquid Mott insulators, and quantum critical metals
near a Pomeranchuk transition. We develop a new controlled theoretical approach
to determining the low energy physics. Our approach relies on combining an
expansion in the inverse number (N) of fermion species with a further expansion
in the parameter \epsilon = z_b -2 where z_b is the dynamical critical exponent
of the boson field. We show how this limit allows a systematic calculation of
the universal low energy physics of these problems. The method is illustrated
by studying spinon fermi surface spin liquids, and a quantum critical metal at
a second order electronic nematic phase transition. We calculate the low energy
single particle spectra, and various interesting two particle correlation
functions. In some cases deviations from the popular Random Phase Approximation
results are found. Some of the same universal singularities are also calculated
to leading non-vanishing order using a perturbative renormalization group
calculation at small N extending previous results of Nayak and Wilczek.
Implications for quantum spin liquids, and for Pomeranchuk transitions are
discussed. For quantum critical metals at a nematic transition we show that the
tunneling density of states has a power law suppression at low energies.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figure
Dynamics of Vortex Core Switching in Ferromagnetic Nanodisks
Dynamics of magnetic vortex core switching in nanometer-scale permalloy disk,
having a single vortex ground state, was investigated by micromagnetic
modeling. When an in-plane magnetic field pulse with an appropriate strength
and duration is applied to the vortex structure, additional two vortices, i.e.,
a circular- and an anti-vortex, are created near the original vortex core.
Sequentially, the vortex-antivortex pair annihilates. A spin wave is created at
the annihilation point and propagated through the entire element; the relaxed
state for the system is the single vortex state with a switched vortex core.Comment: to appear in Appl. Phys. Let
A new form of the rotating C-metric
In a previous paper, we showed that the traditional form of the charged
C-metric can be transformed, by a change of coordinates, into one with an
explicitly factorizable structure function. This new form of the C-metric has
the advantage that its properties become much simpler to analyze. In this
paper, we propose an analogous new form for the rotating charged C-metric, with
structure function G(\xi)=(1-\xi^2)(1+r_{+}A\xi)(1+r_{-}A\xi), where r_\pm are
the usual locations of the horizons in the Kerr-Newman black hole. Unlike the
non-rotating case, this new form is not related to the traditional one by a
coordinate transformation. We show that the physical distinction between these
two forms of the rotating C-metric lies in the nature of the conical
singularities causing the black holes to accelerate apart: the new form is free
of torsion singularities and therefore does not contain any closed timelike
curves. We claim that this new form should be considered the natural
generalization of the C-metric with rotation.Comment: 13 pages, LaTe
Advanced nickel-cadmium batteries for geosynchronous spacecraft
A nickel cadmium battery was developed that can be operated at 80 percent depth of discharge in excess of 10 years in a geosynchronous orbit application, and has about a 30 percent weight savings per spacecraft over present nickel cadmium batteries when used with a 1000 watts eclipse load. The approach used in the development was to replace nylon separators with inert polymer impregnated zirconia, use electrochemically deposited plates in place of conventional chemically precipitated ones, and use an additive to extend negative plate lifetime. The design has undergone extensive testing using both engineering and protoflight cell configurations
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