Systematic study of the symmetry energy coefficient in finite nuclei

The symmetry energy coefficients in finite nuclei have been studied systematically with a covariant density functional theory (DFT) and compared with the values calculated using several available mass tables. Due to the contamination of shell effect, the nuclear symmetry energy coefficients extracted from the binding energies have large fluctuations around the nuclei with double magic numbers. The size of this contamination is shown to be smaller for the nuclei with larger isospin value. After subtracting the shell effect with the Strutinsky method, the obtained nuclear symmetry energy coefficients with different isospin values are shown to decrease smoothly with the mass number $A$ and are subsequently fitted to the relation $\dfrac{4a_{\rm sym}}{A}=\dfrac{b_v}{A}-\dfrac{b_s}{A^{4/3}}$. The resultant volume $b_v$ and surface $b_s$ coefficients from axially deformed covariant DFT calculations are $121.73$ and $197.98$ MeV respectively. The ratio $b_s/b_v=1.63$ is in good agreement with the value derived from the previous calculations with the non-relativistic Skyrme energy functionals. The coefficients $b_v$ and $b_s$ corresponding to several available mass tables are also extracted. It is shown that there is a strong linear correlation between the volume $b_v$ and surface $b_s$ coefficients and the ratios $b_s/b_v$ are in between $1.6-2.0$ for all the cases.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Impacts of Fire Emissions and Transport Pathways on the Interannual Variation of CO In the Tropical Upper Troposphere

This study investigates the impacts of fire emission, convection, various climate conditions and transport pathways on the interannual variation of carbon monoxide (CO) in the tropical upper troposphere (UT), by evaluating the field correlation between these fields using multi-satellite observations and principle component analysis, and the transport pathway auto-identification method developed in our previous study. The rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) and singular value decomposition (SVD) methods are used to identify the dominant modes of CO interannual variation in the tropical UT and to study the coupled relationship between UT CO and its governing factors. Both REOF and SVD results confirm that Indonesia is the most significant land region that affects the interannual variation of CO in the tropical UT, and El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant climate condition that affects the relationships between surface CO emission, convection and UT CO. In addition, our results also show that the impact of El Nino on the anomalous CO pattern in the tropical UT varies strongly, primarily due to different anomalous emission and convection patterns associated with different El Nino events. In contrast, the anomalous CO pattern in the tropical UT during La Nina period appears to be less variable among different events. Transport pathway analysis suggests that the average CO transported by the "local convection" pathway (Delta COlocal) accounts for the differences of UT CO between different ENSO phases over the tropical continents during biomass burning season. Delta COlocal is generally higher over Indonesia-Australia and lower over South America during El Nino years than during La Nina years. The other pathway ("advection within the lower troposphere followed by convective vertical transport") occurs more frequently over the west-central Pacific during El Nino years than during La Nina years, which may account for the UT CO differences over this region between different ENSO phases.NASA Aura Science Team (AST) program NNX09AD85GJackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at AustinJet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under NASAGeological Science

G\"{o}del-type universes in f(R) gravity

The $f(R)$ gravity theories provide an alternative way to explain the current cosmic acceleration without a dark energy matter component. If gravity is governed by a $f(R)$ theory a number of issues should be reexamined in this framework, including the violation of causality problem on nonlocal scale. We examine the question as to whether the $f(R)$ gravity theories permit space-times in which the causality is violated. We show that the field equations of these $f(R)$ gravity theories do not exclude solutions with breakdown of causality for a physically well-motivated perfect-fluid matter content. We demonstrate that every perfect-fluid G\"{o}del-type solution of a generic $f(R)$ gravity satisfying the condition $df/dR > 0$ is necessarily isometric to the G\"odel geometry, and therefore presents violation of causality. This result extends a theorem on G\"{o}del-type models, which has been established in the context of general relativity. We also derive an expression for the critical radius $r_c$ (beyond which the causality is violated) for an arbitrary $f(R)$ theory, making apparent that the violation of causality depends on both the $f(R)$ gravity theory and the matter content. As an illustration, we concretely take a recent $f(R)$ gravity theory that is free from singularities of the Ricci scalar and is cosmologically viable, and show that this theory accommodates noncausal as well as causal G\"odel-type solutions.Comment: 7 pages, V3: Version to appear in Phys. Rev. D (2009), typos corrected, the generality of our main results is emphasized. The illustrative character of a particular theory is also made explici

The breakage prediction for hydromechanical deep drawing based on local bifurcation theory

A criterion of sheet metal localized necking under plane stress was established based on the bifurcation theory and the characteristics theory of differential equation. In order to be capable to incorporate the directional dependence of the plastic strain rate on stress rate, Ito-Goya’s constitutive equation which gave a one to one relationship between stress rate component and plastic strain rate component was employed. The hydromechanical deep drawing process of a cylindrical cup part was simulated using the commercial software ABAQUS IMPLICIT. The onset of breakage of the part during the forming process was predicted by combining the simulation results with the local necking criterion. The proposed method is applied to the hydro-mechanical deep drawing process for A2219 aluminum alloy sheet metal to predict the breakage of the cylindrical cup part. The proposed method can be applied to the prediction of breakage in the forming of the automotive bodies