13,741 research outputs found
Dynamical light vector mesons in low-energy scattering of Goldstone bosons
We present a study of Goldstone boson scattering based on the flavor SU(3)
chiral Lagrangian formulated with vector mesons in the tensor field
representation. A coupled-channel channel computation is confronted with the
empirical s- and p-wave phase shifts, where good agreement with the data set is
obtained up to about 1.2 GeV. There are two relevant free parameters only, the
chiral limit value of the pion decay constant and the coupling constant
characterizing the decay of the rho meson into a pair of pions. We apply a
recently suggested approach that implements constraints from micro- causality
and coupled-channel unitarity. Generalized potentials are obtained from the
chiral Lagrangian and are expanded in terms of suitably constructed conformal
variables. The partial-wave scattering amplitudes are defined as solutions of
non-linear integral equations that are solved by means of an N/D ansatz.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, typos corrected, accepted for publication in
Physics Letters
XMM-Newton Spectroscopy of the Starburst Dominated Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxy NGC 6240
We present new XMM-Newton observation of the Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxy
(ULIRG) NGC 6240. We analyze the reflecting grating spectrometer (RGS) data,
and data from the other instruments, and find a starburst dominated 0.5-3 keV
spectrum with global properties resembling those observed in M82 but with a
much higher luminosity. We show that the starburst region can be divided into
an outer zone, beyond a radius of about 2.1 kpc, with a gas temperature of
about 10^7 K and a central region with temperatures in the range (2-6) x 10^7
K. The gas in the outer region emits most of the observed Oviii Lyman-alpha
line and the gas in the inner region the emission lines of higher ionization
ions, including a strong Fexxv line. We also identify a small inner part, very
close to the active nuclei, with typical Seyfert 2 properties including a large
amount of photoionized gas producing a strong Fe K-alpha 6.4 keV line. The
combined abundance, temperature and emission measure analysis indicates super
solar Ne/O, Mg/O, Si/O, S/O and possibly also Fe/O. The analysis suggests
densities in the range of (0.07-0.28) x epsilon^(-1/2) cm^(-3) and a total
thermal gas mass of about 4 x 10^8 x epsilon^(1/2) solar masses, where epsilon
is the volume filling factor. We used a simple model to argue that a massive
starburst with an age of about 2 x 10^7 years can explain most of the observed
properties of the source. NGC 6240 is perhaps the clearest case of an X-ray
bright luminous AGN, in a merger, whose soft X-ray spectrum is dominated by a
powerful starburst.Comment: 10 pages, 6 diagrams, accepted by ApJ, added a few minor change
Local Swift-BAT active galactic nuclei prefer circumnuclear star formation
We use Herschel data to analyze the size of the far-infrared 70micron
emission for z<0.06 local samples of 277 hosts of Swift-BAT selected active
galactic nuclei (AGN), and 515 comparison galaxies that are not detected by
BAT. For modest far-infrared luminosities 8.5<log(LFIR)<10.5, we find large
scatter of half light radii Re70 for both populations, but a typical Re70 <~ 1
kpc for the BAT hosts that is only half that of comparison galaxies of same
far-infrared luminosity. The result mostly reflects a more compact distribution
of star formation (and hence gas) in the AGN hosts, but compact AGN heated dust
may contribute in some extremely AGN-dominated systems. Our findings are in
support of an AGN-host coevolution where accretion onto the central black hole
and star formation are fed from the same gas reservoir, with more efficient
black hole feeding if that reservoir is more concentrated. The significant
scatter in the far-infrared sizes emphasizes that we are mostly probing spatial
scales much larger than those of actual accretion, and that rapid accretion
variations can smear the distinction between the AGN and comparison categories.
Large samples are hence needed to detect structural differences that favour
feeding of the black hole. No size difference AGN host vs. comparison galaxies
is observed at higher far-infrared luminosities log(LFIR)>10.5 (star formation
rates >~ 6 Msun/yr), possibly because these are typically reached in more
compact regions in the first place.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Effects of infection with Anguillicola crassus and simultaneous exposure with Cd and 3,3′,4,4′,5-pentachlorobiphenyl (PCB 126) on the levels of cortisol and glucose in European eel (Anguilla anguilla)
To investigate whether the stress response of European eels infected with Anguillicola crassus is influenced by environmental pollutants, experimentally infected eels were exposed to Cd and/or to 3,3′, 4,4′, 5-pentachlorobiphenyl (PCB 126). Serum cortisol and glucose concentrations of these eels were monitored over a period of 103 days and were compared with data from infected, unexposed eels as well as with data from uninfected eels. Additionally, the levels of cortisol were correlated with concentrations of Anguillicola-specific antibodies. All eels showed an initial increase of the cortisol levels until day 63. This general elevation of plasma cortisol is most likely due to handling stress, as all eels were repeatedly netted and afterwards inoculated with a feeding tube. At the end of the exposure period eels which were infected and those which were infected and simultaneously exposed to Cd and PCB showed significantly higher levels than the controls. The general course of serum glucose levels in eels resembled that of cortisol. Accordingly, Spearman correlation analysis revealed that an increase in serum cortisol concentrations is correlated with rising levels of glucose. With respect to immune-endocrine interactions a significant negative correlation between cortisol and anti-A. crassus antibodies was found. Our data show that A. crassus is the most potent stressor for European eels among the treatments tested within this study. This is important in terms of ecotoxicological studies as the main effects are caused by parasites rather than chemicals. Accordingly, effects of parasites on the physiological homeostasis of organisms must be considered in ecotoxicology. From the parasitological point of view our results suggest that probably as part of an unbalanced host-parasite interaction A. crassus evokes a strong cortisol response in A. anguilla, thereby suppressing the immune response which in turn enables the parasite to establish. The parasite-induced stress response in the newly adopted European eel might be one of the factors which contributes to the extremely effective colonizing strategy of A. crassus
Anomalous Levy decoherence
We investigate the decoherence of a small quantum system weakly coupled to a
complex, chaotic environment when the dynamics is not Gaussian but Levy
anomalous. By studying the time dependence of the linear entropy and the
damping of the interference of two Gaussian wave packets in the Wigner
representation, we show that the decoherence time for a quantum Levy stable
process is always smaller than for Gaussian diffusion.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Irreversibility and the arrow of time in a quenched quantum system
Irreversibility is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. While
microscopic physical laws are perfectly reversible, macroscopic average
behavior has a preferred direction of time. According to the second law of
thermodynamics, this arrow of time is associated with a positive mean entropy
production. Using a nuclear magnetic resonance setup, we measure the
nonequilibrium entropy produced in an isolated spin-1/2 system following fast
quenches of an external magnetic field and experimentally demonstrate that it
is equal to the entropic distance, expressed by the Kullback-Leibler
divergence, between a microscopic process and its time-reverse. Our result
addresses the concept of irreversibility from a microscopic quantum standpoint.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, RevTeX4-1; Accepted for publication Phys. Rev.
Let
- …