1,133 research outputs found
Aligning archive maps and extracting footprints for analysis of historic urban environments.
Archive cartography and archaeologist's sketches are invaluable resources when analysing a historic town or city. A virtual reconstruction of a city provides the user with the ability to navigate and explore an environment which no longer exists to obtain better insight into its design and purpose. However, the process of reconstructing the city from maps depicting features such as building footprints and roads can be labour intensive. In this paper we present techniques to aid in the semi-automatic extraction of building footprints from digital images of archive maps and sketches. Archive maps often exhibit problems in the form of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in scale which can lead to incorrect reconstructions. By aligning archive maps to accurate modern vector data one may reduce these problems. Furthermore, the efficiency of the footprint extraction methods may be improved by aligning either modern vector data or previously extracted footprints, since common elements can be identified between maps of differing time periods and only the difference between the two needs to be extracted. An evaluation of two alignment approaches is presented: using a linear affine transformation and a set of piecewise linear affine transformations
Scalar-Tensor Theory of Gravity and Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics on the Event Horizon
In blackhole physics, the second law of thermodynamics is generally valid
whether the blackhole is a static or a non-static one. Considering the universe
as a thermodynamical system the second law of blackhole dynamics extends to the
non-negativity of the sum of the entropy of the matter and the horizon, known
as generalized second law of thermodynamics(GSLT). Here, we have assumed the
universe to be bounded by the event-horizon or filled with perfect fluid and
holographic dark energy in two cases. Thus considering entropy to be an
arbitrary function of the area of the event-horizon, we have tried to find the
conditions and the restrictions over the scalar field and equation of state for
the validity of the GSLT and both in quintessence-era and in phantom-era in
scalar tensor theory.Comment: 8 page
Adsorption-desorption kinetics in nanoscopically confined oligomer films under shear
The method of molecular dynamics computer simulations is employed to study oligomer melts confined in ultra-thin films and subjected to shear. The focus is on the self-diffusion of oligomers near attractive surfaces and on their desorption, together with the effects of increasing energy of adsorption and shear. It is found that the mobility of the oligomers near an attractive surface is strongly decreased. Moreover, although shearing the system forces the chains to stretch parallel to the surfaces and thus increase the energy of adsorption per chain, flow also promotes desorption. The study of chain desorption kinetics reveals the molecular processes responsible for the enhancement of desorption under shear. They involve sequences of conformations starting with a desorbed tail and proceeding in a very fast, correlated, segment-by-segment manner to the desorption of the oligomers from the surfaces.
Far-infrared photo-conductivity of electrons in an array of nano-structured antidots
We present far-infrared (FIR) photo-conductivity measurements for a
two-dimensional electron gas in an array of nano-structured antidots. We
detect, resistively and spectrally resolved, both the magnetoplasmon and the
edge-magnetoplasmon modes. Temperature-dependent measurements demonstrates that
both modes contribute to the photo resistance by heating the electron gas via
resonant absorption of the FIR radiation. Influences of spin effect and phonon
bands on the collective excitations in the antidot lattice are observed.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Recent Advances in Modeling Stellar Interiors
Advances in stellar interior modeling are being driven by new data from
large-scale surveys and high-precision photometric and spectroscopic
observations. Here we focus on single stars in normal evolutionary phases; we
will not discuss the many advances in modeling star formation, interacting
binaries, supernovae, or neutron stars. We review briefly: 1) updates to input
physics of stellar models; 2) progress in two and three-dimensional evolution
and hydrodynamic models; 3) insights from oscillation data used to infer
stellar interior structure and validate model predictions (asteroseismology).
We close by highlighting a few outstanding problems, e.g., the driving
mechanisms for hybrid gamma Dor/delta Sct star pulsations, the cause of giant
eruptions seen in luminous blue variables such as eta Car and P Cyg, and the
solar abundance problem.Comment: Proceedings for invited talk at conference High Energy Density
Laboratory Astrophysics 2010, Caltech, March 2010, submitted for special
issue of Astrophysics and Space Science; 7 pages; 5 figure
Harmonic E/B decomposition for CMB polarization maps
The full sky cosmic microwave background polarization field can be decomposed
into 'electric' (E) and 'magnetic' (B) components that are signatures of
distinct physical processes. We give a general construction that achieves
separation of E and B modes on arbitrary sections of the sky at the expense of
increasing the noise. When E modes are present on all scales the separation of
all of the B signal is no longer possible: there are inevitably ambiguous modes
that cannot be separated. We discuss the practicality of performing E/B
decomposition on large scales with realistic non-symmetric sky-cuts, and show
that separation on large scales is possible by retaining only the well
supported modes. The large scale modes potentially contain a great deal of
useful information, and E/B separation at the level of the map is essential for
clean detection of B without confusion from cosmic variance due to the E
signal. We give simple matrix manipulations for creating pure E and B maps of
the large scale signal for general sky cuts. We demonstrate that the method
works well in a realistic case and give estimates of the performance with data
from the Planck satellite. In the appendix we discuss the simple analytic case
of an azimuthally symmetric cut, and show that exact E/B separation is possible
on an azimuthally symmetric cut with a finite number of non-intersecting
circular cuts around foreground sources.Comment: Fixed numerical bug in tensor C_l: Planck detection probability
results updated (supersedes PRD version). Sample code and additional examples
available at http://cosmologist.info/polar
Decoherence : An irreversible Process
A wide-ranging theory of decoherence is derived from the quantum theory of
irreversible processes, with specific results having for their main limitation
the assumption of an exact pointer basis.Comment: 9 page
Electron spin coherence in semiconductors: Considerations for a spin-based solid state quantum computer architecture
We theoretically consider coherence times for spins in two quantum computer
architectures, where the qubit is the spin of an electron bound to a P donor
impurity in Si or within a GaAs quantum dot. We show that low temperature
decoherence is dominated by spin-spin interactions, through spectral diffusion
and dipolar flip-flop mechanisms. These contributions lead to 1-100 s
calculated spin coherence times for a wide range of parameters, much higher
than former estimates based on measurements.Comment: Role of the dipolar interaction clarified; Included discussion on the
approximations employed in the spectral diffusion calculation. Final version
to appear in Phys. Rev.
Theory of nuclear induced spectral diffusion: Spin decoherence of phosphorus donors in Si and GaAs quantum dots
We propose a model for spectral diffusion of localized spins in
semiconductors due to the dipolar fluctuations of lattice nuclear spins. Each
nuclear spin flip-flop is assumed to be independent, the rate for this process
being calculated by a method of moments. Our calculated spin decoherence time
ms for donor electron spins in Si:P is a factor of two longer than
spin echo decay measurements. For P nuclear spins we show that spectral
diffusion is well into the motional narrowing regime. The calculation for GaAs
quantum dots gives s depending on the quantum dot size. Our
theory indicates that nuclear induced spectral diffusion should not be a
serious problem in developing spin-based semiconductor quantum computer
architectures.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
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